Chapter 87
Jiang Wang glanced out of the meeting room. He didn’t see anyone but he could see a shadow projected on the ground.
His breath caught in his throat once again. The shadow had a knife in his hand.
The shadow was getting closer and closer to the meeting room. Jiang Wang looked around in fright, looking for a place to hide. However, the conference room didn’t not have any good hiding places. The tables were skeletal and there was no way to hide. As soon as that shadow enters the conference room, he would immediately be spotted under the tables.
The only place was the window, where there was a foot-wide ledge where he could stand.
Jiang Wang immediately pulled down the blackout curtain, stepped on the window sill and hid behind the blackout curtain.
He held his breath. He could hear the heavy and shallow footsteps outside walking into the conference room.
The elevator would make a noise. Qin Zhou didn’t take the elevator up to the ninth floor. He climbed the stairs quickly and then pushed open the stairwell door on the ninth floor.
Looking in, he saw there were lights on the ninth floor, including in the conference room.
Qin Zhou was just in time to see ‘Shunxi’ pull out the wire hairpin that Jiang Wang had forgotten in the meeting room’s door lock. He then walked casually into the meeting room.
The meeting room was separated from the workstations by frosted glass so that Shunxi’s figure appeared like a mosaic.
Qin Zhou made his way nearer. From outside, he could see the figure inside the room. Similarly, his figure could also be seen from the inside but would appear blurred like a mosaic.
The only thing he could do was find a position that was in a blind spot for anyone in the meeting room and listen to the movement inside.
There were several electronic dings from inside.
Hearing these sounds, Qin Zhou understood.
Shunxi himself was deleting Shunxi’s pictures and the reason why the editor-in-chief suddenly wouldn’t allow them to enter the building and angrily claimed that there was a company spy among them could be found in this time rewind.
Qin Zhou’s guess was that either he or Jiang Wang had been seen in the company’s surveillance. So they mistakenly thought that he or Jiang Wang had deleted the submitted photos.
After Shunxi deleted the photos, he didn’t come out of the meeting room. Qin Zhou still hadn’t seen Jiang Wang so he looked at the meeting room again.
Jiang Wang couldn’t be seen anywhere else on the ninth floor so Jiang Wang was probably in the conference room.
Qin Zhou quietly approached the alarm and sounded it without hesitation.
Jiang Wang was dead; this was an established fact.
Qin Zhou reckoned that Jiang Wang had already seen Shunxi’s face and Shunxi had followed Jiang Wang upstairs. It was impossible for Shunxi not to know that Jiang Wang was in this meeting room. Even if Jiang Wang hadn’t violated Shunxi’s ‘having my face seen by Shunxi’ Rule of Death, there was no guarantee that Shunxi wouldn’t kill people to silence them, much like how he’d chased after Cen Qian for so many years.
But Qin Zhou still sounded the alarm in an attempt to save Jiang Wang’s life.
The alarm rang out loudly on the ninth floor and then spread to the whole building. Qin Zhou was still hiding in the dark, waiting for an opportunity to see if he could see Shunxi’s face.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Dea fnfc joafg atf jijgw rbecvfv, Vteczl vlvc’a gec jkjs ogbw atf mbcofgfcmf gbbw. Llr mbwqbregf kjr oglutafclcuis ubbv.
Cwlvra atf yijgf bo atf jijgw, Hlc Itbe tfjgv jc jygeqa rmgfjw.
Ktf rmgfjw tjv mbwf ogbw Aljcu Qjcu. Snfc lo Hlc Itbe tjvc’a klacfrrfv atf wegvfg, tf mbeiv uefrr ogbw ktja atfs’v rffc bo Aljcu Qjcu’r ybvs, atja tf’v yffc rajyyfv lc atf atgbja ys Vteczl.
After that, Shunxi came out of the conference room. He bypassed the elevators this time, planning to make his escape through the stairwell.
But Shunxi stopped in front of the stairwell door. He stopped then turned around, looking across the ninth floor.
The door to the stairwell was closed. When Shunxi had arrived at the ninth floor, he had already arranged for an escape route. At that time, the door to the stairwell hadn’t been closed.
This proved that there was another person on the ninth floor and he might even have witnessed everything he’d done.
His sharp eyes swept across the ninth floor and Shunxi couldn’t immediately spot anyone else. However, he no longer had the time to search for this witness.
He could only let it go for the time being.
Shunxi took out the wire hairpin he’d obtained from the lock on the meeting room door. He then went to poke it into lock of the stairwell door. In such a building, the doors of the stairwell were rarely used, and rust has grown in the keyhole. Shunxi’s insert hadn’t been very smooth and just as he was about to open the door, the elevator arrived for a third time this night at the night floor.
The alarm had alerted the police and they caught Shunxi before he could escape.
Shunxi raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
The police didn’t notice that he put the wire hairpin in his mouth as he was making the gesture.
Qin Zhou thought that he probably knew why the Singularity News Agency had the exclusive on Shunxi’s arrest.
After all, he’d been arrested in this very news agency building.
Qin Zhou didn’t get to see what happened next. The white light that took him to this time rewind reappeared, signaling that he was now about to return to the present.
Shunxi was stuffed into the back of the police car. His hands were handcuffed but Shunxi seemed completely unaffected. He patiently waited for the right opportunity. When the person escorting him wasn’t paying attention, he spit out wire hairpin. Using this little thing that he got by chance, he unlocked his handcuffs.
And then killed in retaliation.
–
After listening to Qin Zhou’s narration, Lin Yi and Ren Li understood what about his time rewind Qin Zhou found unexpected.
Cen Qian hadn’t appeared in his time rewind last night.
The basis for their speculation that Cen Qian was the protagonist of the 4-4 Rule World was because the time rewinds were related to Cen Qian. But the wire hairpin time rewind challenged this speculation.
Seeing Lin Yi and Ren Li’s pondering expressions, Qin Zhou said, “Let’s hear what had happened to you two first. We’ll discuss all these at the end.”
Lin Yi nodded. “OK.”
Ren Li then spoke.
After he had fallen asleep, Ren Li saw the door that Lin Yi and Qin Zhou had described. He stepped forward and opened it without hesitation.
The white light behind the door took him outside Cen Qian’s apartment building in another time.
Because Ren Li was outside, he couldn’t find anything to give him an accurate time and date.
Ren Li can only contrast it with the present through the ivy growing on the building’s face.
In the “present time”, although the ivy bypassed Cen Qian’s apartment, it had almost covered the entire front wall.
Based on the characteristics of Boston Ivy, it would have taken about two years for the ivy to climb the wall.
And another six to seven years to cover the entire face.
Right now the ivy had climbed to the height of Cen Qian’s apartment. Cen Qian’s apartment was on the second floor and there were five floors in this building.
Ren Li wasn’t as fast as Lin Yi when it came to calculations. After all, Lin Yi could mentally calculate the very complicated Manhattan circles formula. This was impossible for him. He had to squat down and pick up a wooden stick to scratch out the calculations in flower bed, calculating the climbing time of the ivy.
Ren Li: “…”
He calculated silently and after about seven or eight minutes, Ren Li finally calculated that he should be on a certain night four years ago.
He threw away the stick and made to go to Cen Qian’s apartment.
After walking a few steps, Ren Li stopped.
He looked up at Cen Qian’s house. Four years ago, the windows of Cen Qian’s apartment hadn’t been covered by newspapers.
That’s why Ren Li could clearly see what was going on in Cen Qian’s apartment. At this moment, there was a figure in the bedroom Cen Qian had assigned to Lin Yi and the figure was searching for something in the bedroom.
The height was comparable to that of Shunxi, though the figure seemed a bit thinner.
Through the window of the living room, Ren Li saw another figure, a figure seated on a wheelchair. The wheelchair was just outside the bedroom door. It seemed that Cen Qian had discovered Shunxi in the bedroom.
Due to Ren Li’s personality, he was rarely ever agitated. However, at this moment, his brows and eyes turned downcast.
He couldn’t understand what Cen Qian was thinking. Shunxi had appeared in Cen Qian’s apartment but Cen Qian didn’t run or hide. Rather, he sat in the wheelchair and listened quietly to the movements in his apartment.
As things stood, they still haven’t determined the Rules of Death. They didn’t know whether it was “having one’s face seen by Shunxi’ or ‘not saving Cen Qian’. Both were possible.
Ren Li couldn’t ignore Cen Qian’s situation.
He strode towards Cen Qian’s apartment. But after two or three steps, he smelled smoke.
Ren Li took a closer look. Cen Qian’s apartment, which had been completely fine a moment ago, was now on fire. The fire was burning more and more violently. The figure in the bedroom was startled by the sudden fire and when he went to pull the door open, he found that the bedroom door had been locked from the outside.
And Cen Qian was still sitting in front of the bedroom door. Though the flames raged around him, he remained motionless in a posture as steady as Mount Tai.
Ren Li realized that the fire Cen Qian must have been the one to set the fire. Did he want to trap Shunxi in the bedroom and burn him to death?
No wonder, that after four years, the ivy had grown around Cen Qian’s windows.
He stopped and stared into the bedroom.
Shunxi couldn’t open the bedroom door, so he had to escape through the window. Ren Li was also worried about being seen by Shunxi so he dodged and hid behind an apartment building, waiting for Shunxi to jump out of the window. He’ll take advantage of that moment to see what Shunxi looked like.
But almost half a minute passed and Shunxi gave no indication that he intended to jump out the window.
However, this wasn’t the time to ponder what was wrong with Shunxi head, although Ren Li thought that a lot of people in this world had problems with their heads.
The most urgent task was to save Cen Qian. The fire wasn’t only going to swallow Shunxi, but also Cen Qian.
But there was Shunxi in the apartment. If he rushes in to save Cen Qian, it is very likely that he’ll be seen by the Shunxi after he breaks through the door.
After a short moment of thought, Ren Li ran in the opposite direction. He went to the security booth and found the guard.
He then asked the guard to call the fire station.
When Ren Li returned outside of Cen Qian’s apartment building he saw that the figure in the bedroom was looking a little shaky, unsteady. Cen Qian was still sitting in his wheelchair, staring at the bedroom door.
The police was dispatched quickly and the fire department arrived within two minutes of Ren Li sounding the alarm.
The firemen broke in and rescued Cen Qian from the fire that was about to turn into an inferno. But the only one there was Cen Qian.
Ren Li looked into the bedroom again. The figure he’d seen before had disappeared.
He had no idea when Shunxi left. It seemed like it happened in the blink of an eye. Even from the conversations between the firefighters and the discussions among the onlookers, Ren Li never heard them talk about a second person caught in the fire.
It was as if there had only been Cen Qian in the apartment the entire time.
Hiding among the onlookers, Ren Li saw Cen Qian being sent into the ambulance. There were burn marks on Cen Qian’s face and body.
After the fire was extinguished, Ren Li ran into the apartment, regardless of warnings.
He kicked open the broken bedroom door. There was no one there.
Lin Yi pursed his lips. “No one?”
Ren Li: “Yes.”
Qin Zhou: “Are you sure?”
Ren Li said, “I’m sure.”
Qin Zhou scoffed.
The figure disappeared from before his very eyes. This situation was very similar to theirs.
This game really is creating some sort of time loop where the future affects the past. Creepy.
Ooooohhh
Thank you for the update ❤️💯
Could it be this Shunxi is also a participant but from the future (probably Lin Yi, judging from the scene that appear before they got dragged into the 4-4 Rule World)? He dissapear from the middle of fire because it’s already the time for him to come back to the future?
…damn does shenxi also time travel….?
That statement about Ren Li having to use a stick to scratch calculations in the flower bed for about 7 or 8 minutes has me in a chock hold 🤣(I felt really seen cause I’m bad at math🥲😭ಥಥ). In a world filled with geniuses (able to calculate some Manhattan circle formula used to look for serial killers👀←←, they should leave a little space for us normal people🥲(个_个)) it’s good to show the normal folks (good job author👍🏽)