“Don’t worry, I’ve always been myself.”
Qi Xia reached out and patted Qiao Jiajin’s shoulder, then turned to look at Chen Junnan: “Originally, I thought about leaving you two behind and handling this alone. But now I realize I really need someone to help steer the final direction of this matter.”
“Even I can be useful…?” Chen Junnan asked.
“You’ve always been useful,” Qi Xia replied. “What you need to do next is just like Qiao Jiajin—rely on your ‘instincts.'”
Then Qi Xia also patted Chen Junnan’s shoulder, as if making up his mind about something, before walking off toward “Paradise” with a serious expression.
The timing wasn’t too early or too late—just past “noon.” As Qi Xia had predicted, “Pegasus” didn’t activate the “Pegasus Hour” two days in a row.
And with the absence of “Capricorn,” the “Capricorn Hour” couldn’t be triggered either. The next few hours were safe.
But… who was “Monkey”?
After the “Hour of the Goat” came the “Hour of the Monkey.” Would “Monkey,” as the sign of the Monkey, make a move then?
A deathly moment tied to “intelligence” or “agility,” coinciding with dusk—the time when people were most off guard. Would the “participants” need to run or flee when it came?
“Wait…” Qi Xia pondered again.
If dusk could bring an “Hour of the Celestial,” what about night?
If the “Hour of the Rooster” came at 5 to 7 PM, that was manageable. But beyond that, the mortality rate would skyrocket.
Next would be the dog at 7-9 PM, the pig at 9-11 PM, the rat at 11 PM-1 AM, the ox at 1-3 AM, and the tiger at 3-5 AM—all “Celestial Hours” spanning from evening to dawn.
Unlike other places, once night fell in the “Land of End,” every city would become deathly silent. Without moonlight or electric lights, there wouldn’t be a single glimmer of light.
“Not good…” Qi Xia muttered to himself. “I need to contact ‘Azure Dragon’ quickly…”
He checked the time and quickened his pace toward “Paradise.”
—
When Qi Xia and the others arrived at the entrance of “Paradise,” they noticed the crowd had grown larger. More and more people seemed to be gathering there.
Among them, Qiao Jiajin spotted Li Xiangling, whom he hadn’t seen in a long time, along with familiar faces like Jin Yuanxun and Auntie Tong.
The people of “Paradise” looked pleasantly surprised. Despite enduring the “Pegasus Hour” and the “Serpent Hour,” all their members had survived—though some had strange gaps in their memories. They were alive but couldn’t recall what had happened during those deadly hours.
But that wasn’t important to them. “Memory” had always been a nebulous concept here. Now, everyone was huddled in small groups, sharing their recent experiences.
Qiao Jiajin went to talk to Li Xiangling, while Qin Dingdong headed into the school building to look for someone.
Chen Junnan wandered around the playground, greeting dozens of people nonstop, though few seemed to recognize him.
Unfazed, he strolled back to Qi Xia after his social rounds and asked, “Old Qi, was this your doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, the ‘total survival’ or ‘selective amnesia’ thing,” Chen Junnan said.
“Yes,” Qi Xia nodded. “That was me.”
“Was that necessary?” Chen Junnan frowned. “You don’t even know these people, and they won’t thank you for it. Why save them? Every time you use your ‘ability,’ there’s a drawback, isn’t there?”
“It was just an experiment,” Qi Xia replied.
“An experiment?!” Chen Junnan scratched his head. “Shouldn’t you already know your ability can ‘replicate’ people out of thin air? Why bother with this?”
“My experiment wasn’t about ‘replication’—it was about ‘time,'” Qi Xia said.
“Time…?”
“Chen Junnan, whether it’s you or those people on the playground who forgot the ‘Celestial Hours,’ you all share one common trait.”
“What trait?”
“Your memories from this cycle have been stripped of a day or two, yet your remaining memories still connect seamlessly. You haven’t lost your sanity,” Qi Xia explained. “For you, time ‘fast-forwarded.'”
“Wait, hold on—” Chen Junnan raised a hand to stop him. “Where did I lose you? How did we ‘fast-forward’?”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” Qi Xia said. “If the ‘Celestial Hours’ are deadly, then I… helped these people ‘skip’ them.”
“Holy shit…” Chen Junnan froze. “Wait, Old Qi, something doesn’t add up. These people *died* horribly during the ‘Celestial Hours.’ Your ‘fast-forward’ has a gaping hole—their corpses are still lying around…”
“That’s only from our perspective,” Qi Xia countered. “We, as observers, know what happened. But for those involved, it *was* a ‘fast-forward.’ Their memories skipped the ‘Celestial Hours,’ and now they’re standing here unharmed.”
Chen Junnan’s expression shifted. What Qi Xia was saying felt like something on a higher level—something he couldn’t quite grasp yet.
“Don’t you think this experiment is interesting?” Qi Xia continued. “If this happened in the real world, it wouldn’t be called ‘fast-forward’ but ‘amnesia,’ because even if people lost a day’s memory, their age would still increase. That doesn’t fit ‘fast-forward.’ But in the ‘Land of End,’ it’s different. Everyone’s time is frozen. Even if you skipped ten days, their age wouldn’t change.”
“I’m really struggling to keep up,” Chen Junnan admitted. “A person clearly died horribly, but you made a copy of them, kept them alive, and erased a day’s memory—and that’s called ‘skipping a day’? It makes *logical* sense, but something about it feels *really* off…”
“It’s not off, and like I said earlier,” Qi Xia replied, “I’m trying to accurately ‘manipulate time.'”
“But you’re not manipulating *time*!” Chen Junnan argued. “You’re manipulating *people*!”
“People *are* time,” Qi Xia said. “From a macro perspective, the fact that all of us are stuck in time follows the same logic.”
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