Chapter 81: Beauty 01

In the instant when timespaces connected, people with looks of panic suddenly found themselves traversing between two worlds—strikingly similar yet utterly different. A vast galaxy seemed to stretch out before them, fine snow cascading like a waterfall, wilderness sprawling endlessly.

The world fell silent, like an exquisite void of pure beauty.

As they passed through that faintly perceptible door separating different times and spaces…

What would the wistful travelers see?

A tidal wave of all-encompassing darkness receded, revealing a brilliant, abundant expanse of gold in its wake.

Along with the long-forgotten subtle pressure on his high-bridged nose.

Yu Bai blinked his eyes open in a daze. First, he saw the thin, transparent pane of glass, and only afterward the true, tangible world.

He was still wearing those large, clunky black-framed glasses.

He was still standing in the opulent golden elevator.

The gleaming, brand-new walls of the elevator car continued to display soothing, lively morning news on the screen.

A time readout ticked away in sync at the top of the screen and below the news footage.

07:05:13

07:05:14

The clock calmly ticked over to the next second.

The dream hidden in the cracks of time had come to an end.

The brown-haired young man, who had looked bewildered at first, blinked. Countless fleeting thoughts raced through his clear, pale eyes.

The muscular man, who had been scratching his head in confusion, blinked as well. His expression turned to shock in an instant, mingled with dazed reluctance and lingering attachment. He murmured, “I saw…”

The elementary school girl huddled in the corner blinked too. Her childish eyes filled with startled surprise—and the deepest, most profound cherishing.

She nearly blurted out, “So many, many stars!”

Back when she had wandered inside those pitch-black walls, she would often hear sounds from other families outside.

Lively voices weaving into stars through the walls—hazy, so close, yet so far away.

The stars streaked past her, but not a single one belonged to her.

Yet in that moment when similar darkness surged in, amid the all-consuming dizziness, He Xi had seen countless brilliant, radiant stars.

Stars sparkling vividly in a world of pure black.

Stars hovering beside her in the golden elevator.

No sooner had the child’s words faded than another dazed voice chimed in. “No, not stars.”

“I saw big snowflakes drifting in the darkness,” he said haltingly. “And a paper airplane flying high… so very far away.”

As Yan Jing spoke, he instinctively looked up, only to see the brilliant golden ceiling of the elevator car.

This was the new elevator that Tian Ge had rushed to install overnight for Little Bai, after being away from the real world for so many days.

Little by little, he gathered his wandering thoughts and yawned. In bewilderment, he asked, “How did I suddenly come back? …I was just dreaming in bed a moment ago. Did I oversleep, and now it’s time?”

As he said this, his gaze shifted slightly. Yu Bai and He Xi beside him looked over as well, their faces twisting in shock at almost the same moment.

The little boy with the flushed face was gone.

In his place stood the hunched old man they hadn’t seen in days.

The clothes he wore were no longer the children’s outfits Yu Bai had bought for him, but a solemn, well-fitted black suit.

Identical to what he had worn at the funeral parlor the day before.

His time seemed to have rewound to the moment before his inexplicable return to childhood.

Only now, clutched in his hand, it wasn’t the black-and-white Go stone he had angrily hurled at the Turtle Bastard’s family—but a sheet of paper folded into a neat, precise block.

As timespace shifted abruptly, Yuan Yuxing snapped out of his shock and hurriedly looked down at the paper in his hand.

His withered, trembling fingers carefully unfolded the neatly creased sheet.

Under the elevator’s soft lighting, the A4 paper bore creases crisscrossing both sides, covered in writing.

One side held the four possibilities he had racked his brains to write down during the Pen Fairy game with the blue orb.

The other side was filled with dense lines of text, penned in vigorous, bold strokes full of character.

The handwriting styles were strikingly similar yet distinct.

Clearly the work of two different hands.

The long passages of text, condensed onto the page one after another, lay quietly side by side.

The instant the old man saw the handwriting on the other side, he let out a huge sigh of relief. His eyes instantly reddened.

No longer a child, he fought back his tears and looked up at Yu Bai beside him. His voice trembled as he said, “I brought it back. I really brought it back… It really happened. It wasn’t a dream.”

He had brought back Zhang Yunjiang’s handwritten will.

His old friend, who had slipped into a coma without a chance to speak and passed away, could finally find the blue peace he deserved.

Hearing the old man’s clearly choked whisper, Yu Bai replied softly, “It wasn’t a dream. We all saw Uncle Zhang.”

“Yes, we saw him. I saw him too.” Yuan Yuxing hung his head, his hunched figure trembling faintly. “…He really did have unfinished business.”

Seeing the old man suddenly restored to his normal appearance made Yu Bai realize this as well.

Recalling the muffled sobs he’d heard outside the chess room earlier, and the snippets of words carried on the wind, he could vaguely guess what Zhang Yunjiang’s dying wish had been.

A regret and longing buried deep in his heart for many years, impossible to voice to a stranger he had only just met.

A regret and longing tied to another person.

Once that regret was fulfilled, the travelers from another realm detached from that timespace that shouldn’t have existed and returned to reality.

So, was this because time had reached that forked second—or because the old man’s wish had been granted, dissolving the bonds that held them?

Yu Bai, too preoccupied in the moment of darkness to note the time, couldn’t be sure.

Nor did it matter anymore.

Now, abruptly back in the elevator, he had only one small thought in his mind.

Gold turned out to be such a solemn, orderly, brilliantly radiant color.

So bright it brought tears to the eyes.

Yu Bai thought he might actually like this extravagantly styled golden elevator a little.

Because in this golden elevator, by some twist of fate, he had become a hero in someone else’s life.

He had once thought saving the world was something grand and arduous, never imagining it could be as simple as quietly accompanying a chance-met old man through a brief yet eternal winter day.

So small, so straightforward.

Like riding an electric scooter down the road and suddenly deciding to turn in a new direction.

The lavish golden elevator descended slowly and came to a stop at one floor.

In the busy morning rush, the golden doors slid open to either side. Hurrying residents stepped in, casting surprised glances at the elevator’s occupants.

The unfamiliar passengers wore complex, inscrutable expressions. They were plainly just taking the elevator down, yet they looked as if they had returned from an extraordinarily long and distant journey.

A journey no one else could know.

The burly muscular man leaned against the elevator wall in a daze, still picturing that beautiful snowy scene right before his eyes. He glanced at the time on the display and muttered softly, ” …I need to call in sick for another day to recover.”

After such a bizarre ordeal, he had no heart for work today.

The little girl, no longer shrinking timidly, thought for a moment and then asked, “Can I call in sick too?”

The thought of never seeing kindly Grandpa Zhang again filled her with sorrow and reluctance. She didn’t want to go to school.

She didn’t want to leave these people beside her now.

The brown-haired young man in the center smiled. “Do you know your teacher’s number? I can call for you.”

The somewhat stooped old man wiped at his reddened eyes and chuckled too. “Little Bai, seeing you in glasses again feels a bit strange now.”

Yuan Yuxing’s gaze swept over Yu Bai, restored to his otaku look, then to Teacher Xie beside him—the one often mistaken for mixed-race.

His tone was full of emotion: “The me who insisted on challenging you that day was really bold.”

“But thank goodness I did.”

The old man let out a deep sigh, his eyes filling with sincere admiration. “That game of Go you played was truly masterful… I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life.”

Especially with his departed old friend standing by, watching.

The man who had been exceptionally quiet since returning to this timespace looked up at him but said nothing—a response in itself.

It was as if they all shared memories of that experience in the other timespace.

…Wait!

Yu Bai’s smile froze on his face at those words.

Even as he moved with the crowd out of the elevator, his steps halted abruptly.

In the bustling first-floor lobby, amid the hurried footsteps of the morning crowd, Yu Bai stared at the wistful old man and blurted out, “What did you just say?!”

“Huh?” Yuan Yuxing blinked, then caught on. “Oh, I meant the Go game with Teacher Xie.”

“I don’t know why, but the instant I stepped back into the elevator, a new segment of memory suddenly appeared in my mind… Memories different from this world. They must be the events from that day in the time loop, just like you said.”

From some point that afternoon until before he met Yu Bai and Xie Wufang, everything had been exactly the same as his experiences in the real world.

But after they met, it diverged completely.

The game of chess against the blue-eyed young man who was learning for the first time. The overwhelming excitement that made him faint on the spot. Waking up in the hospital room to see the view outside the window inexplicably transform into a mirror-like lake, only for the sky to swiftly return to normal.

Yan Jing was stunned. “What? You remembered what happened in the time loop?! But why didn’t I?”

He Xi looked equally puzzled. “I didn’t get any extra memories either.”

Yuan Yuxing chimed in. “Maybe it’s because your day wasn’t altered by Little Bai. Even if those memories were added, they wouldn’t be any different from what happened in the real world!”

He Xi responded immediately. “I remember the sky anomaly that day. Brother Little Bai said it was very brief, but there wasn’t one at all in the real world.”

As she spoke, realization dawned on her. “…Except I was inside the wall at that moment, so I couldn’t see it.”

In that case, it really was identical to the real world.

Yan Jing got it now. He thumped his chest in frustration. “I was slacking off in the gym bathroom back then… Little Bai, why didn’t you call me to come hang out in the park with you? Damn it, I ended up working a full extra day for nothing.”

The group chatted animatedly, but a deafening alarm rang in Yu Bai’s mind.

He turned in disbelief toward Xie Wufang, who had remained utterly silent thus far. Clinging to a sliver of hope, he asked tensely, “…You remembered it too?”

“Mm.”

The black-haired man with blue eyes—the godlike figure—nodded faintly. In a perfectly even tone, he dealt Yu Bai an even heavier blow.

“When an extra timespace dissipates, it leaves some lingering effects on this world.”

For instance, it allowed travelers who had personally visited that timespace to recover memories they had originally lost within the time loop.

Yu Bai’s scalp prickled. He drew in a deep breath and pressed urgently, “If we get pulled into other timespaces stored in the Doom Orb in the future, will we remember them like this once we get out?”

“Yes.”

Xie Wufang’s answer left the man beside him frozen stiff. His gaze snapped to the Black Box cradling the Small Ball in his hand, staring at it like the most intractable headache imaginable.

A faint ripple of confusion spread through those distinctive gray-blue eyes.

He spoke softly. “You seem really tense.”

“…” Yu Bai let out a dry chuckle and shook his head with zero conviction. “I’m not tense. Not at all.”

He wasn’t worried about the memories Xie Wufang had just gained.

In this timespace, aside from the mildly embarrassing act of cold-calling non-humans, everything else had been fairly normal.

The most outrageous incident—dragging Xie Wufang out of the police station—he had confessed to him right from the beginning.

No, what had Yu Bai on edge were the timespaces they hadn’t yet visited. The ones that could suck them in by accident at any moment.

The ones where he had grown bolder and more reckless, banking on the fact that no one else would remember.

Like the timespace where he had locked Xie Wufang in the kitchen to cook for him all day long.

Like the timespace when he had suddenly felt crushed by despair and isolation, and dragged Xie Wufang along to hurl themselves into the river.

Like the timespace where he had pulled Xie Wufang into a whirlwind of underground chaos, and then…

“What are you thinking about, then?”

Xie Wufang regarded the man before him—the one who claimed not to be tense, even as his expressions flickered wildly—and asked with a thoughtful air.

“I’m thinking…” Yu Bai’s words caught in his throat. He swerved abruptly and stiffly. “Ah, I’m starving. Let’s, uh, get some breakfast.”

He wanted to grab the ball and run right now!!

Or better yet, just perish together with the damn thing. That would settle it once and for all.

Because this time, he was truly doomed.

…

🙂