Tong Yang walked into the kitchen alone and served himself a bowl of rice.
He appeared calm and unbothered about his current situation—having done little but still bearing the brunt of the blame.
After training ended that evening, Tong Yang returned to the dormitory and found a quiet spot to call Wu Pingxue.
“Hey, how have you been lately?” Wu Pingxue greeted him casually.
Without wasting time, Tong Yang cut straight to the point: “What’s your connection to the armed militants appearing in the slums?”
Whenever something like this happened, Tong Yang’s first thought was always Wu Pingxue—the cunning old fox.
Wu Pingxue sounded surprised. “What armed militants?”
Tong Yang pursed his lips. “Don’t play dumb.”
Wu Pingxue chuckled softly. “Nothing gets past you.”
Tong Yang frowned. “Is it really connected to you?”
Wu Pingxue replied, “A little bit.”
“What’s going on?”
Wu Pingxue explained, “You should already know that before you discovered the parallel world, some people from the real world accidentally slipped into it.”
“And?”
Wu Pingxue continued, “Those who ended up in the parallel world without finding a way back have no choice but to stay there forever—and there are quite a few of them.”
Tong Yang’s eyes dropped. “People who vanished without a trace?”
“Exactly,” Wu Pingxue confirmed. “Over the past decades, eighty percent of the people who disappeared from the real world without any bodies found actually slipped into the parallel world and the First World through some kind of mysterious trigger.”
Tong Yang lowered his gaze and asked, “So the armed militants in the slums… they’re all from the real world?”
“More or less,” Wu Pingxue said. “After arriving in the parallel world, some died under the harsh social system; some adapted completely and became part of the oppressors; the rest hid in the slums, barely surviving, waiting for a chance to return home.”
Tong Yang fell silent for a long moment before asking, “How did you find them?”
Wu Pingxue answered, “The government of Country Z established contact with them. If they hold on a little longer, they’ll be able to bring them back to the real world.”
“And the weapons? Who supplied them?”
“They developed them on their own.”
Tong Yang was stunned. “They managed to create weapons under those conditions?”
Wu Pingxue smiled. “I thought it was unbelievable too. But they did it. Over time, they’ve built up a formidable arsenal. Apparently, they originally planned to overthrow the First World’s Unified Government and find their own way back to the real world.”
Tong Yang felt shocked but also deeply moved. Throughout this time, she had never considered that these people came from the real world—and that under such harsh conditions, they created their own weapons stockpile.
“Under the influence of the magnetic field energy, the people of the First World and the parallel world have hardly ever thought of resisting, nor had the ability to do so. But the humans from the real world never gave up on their dream of returning home. They kept striving, building everything from nothing. How could that not inspire respect?” Wu Pingxue sighed, “This is the true brilliance of human nature.”
Tong Yang’s lack of understanding of the brilliance of human nature didn’t stop her from admiring those living far away in strange lands. If she were in their shoes, she probably would have become a ruthless aggressor herself, desperately searching for a way back to the real world.
“They’re acting like this, but the United Government won’t just stand by and watch. No matter how many weapons they have, it wouldn’t be hard for the United Government to wipe them out,” Tong Yang pondered, then continued, “The parallel world knows that the person behind them is the Time Anchor. They won’t let them off either.”
Wu Pingxue said, “The parallel world might take action against them, but the First World might not.”
Tong Yang asked, “Why not?”
“As far as I know, the First World hasn’t yet located your position. Suddenly, a group of armed militants appears, wielding a large number of firearms, and they claim the person behind them is you. The First World has no reason not to believe it.”
Hearing this, Tong Yang understood. “Now that the parallel world is also watching closely, the First World at least needs to ensure the Time Anchor never falls into the hands of the parallel world.”
No wonder, after losing eight combat aircraft, the United Government didn’t immediately strike back but chose to negotiate instead. They must have already been suspicious.
After a brief pause, Tong Yang asked, “Besides delaying the First World’s bombing of the slums and creating a balance between the First and the parallel worlds, what else is the purpose of this?”
Wu Pingxue smiled, “There’s an old saying: ‘He who wins the hearts of the people wins the world.’ The First World uses you to bomb the slums, but they also use you to protect the slums at the same time. When things reach a certain point, the United Government’s lies will collapse on their own.”
“But they can’t stop the United Government’s actions; they can only resist stubbornly and minimize casualties in the slums.”
Tong Yang paused thoughtfully, then said, “What do you need me to do?”
Wu Pingxue replied, “Find a way to get in touch with them.”
“Got it.”
After a few seconds of silence, Wu Pingxue continued, “There are twelve gates leading from the slums to the civilian areas, each corresponding to one of twelve families in the wealthy district. One of them is the Maynard family.”
Tong Yang asked, “What about the other eleven families?”
“Unknown.”
“Maynard doesn’t know either?”
“That’s right. Only insiders within the families know.”
“Should I find them?”
“Yes, you must find them.”
“Is it related to magnetic field energy?”
“Exactly.”
Tong Yang said, “I understand.”
Having learned the information she wanted, Tong Yang ended the call and returned to her dormitory.
In the corridor, she passed by Meng Xiao, and the two exchanged nods in greeting before heading back to their respective rooms.
After spending so much time together at the training base, there was no need to pretend not to know each other.
As for how to get in touch with the armed militants in the slums, it was a bit difficult for Tong Yang.
She decided to take it one step at a time.
Not long after, the identities of the armed militants in the slums were exposed—the mastermind behind them was revealed to be the Time Anchor of the Third World.
The residents of the slums were stirred into a fervor, hoping the United Government would soon round up all the armed militants in one decisive sweep. Yet, contrary to everyone's expectations, the government didn’t clash with the militants. Instead, they repeatedly sent envoys to negotiate, claiming to respect the human rights of the slum dwellers and shifting the blame onto a parallel world—after all, official statements had been issued demanding justice for the slum population.
However, almost every negotiation ended in failure.
Normally, information between the slums and the civilian districts was strictly compartmentalized; news about the militants should have been kept under wraps. Yet, inexplicably, every time the United Government dispatched someone to negotiate, the media would report it, making the whole civilian district aware.
During that period, the atmosphere at the training base grew tense. The instructors’ demands became increasingly stringent. Even Xue Wei, usually cheerful and welcoming, wore a constant frown.
Sometimes, when Tong Yang passed by him, she could hear his sighs.
“Sigh.”
Without expression, Tong Yang pinched her water cup and walked past him.
“Sigh!”
Perhaps feeling ignored, Xue Wei deliberately raised his voice and glanced at Tong Yang with a raised brow.
Tong Yang still paid him no mind.
“Hey!” Xue Wei called out, unable to hold back any longer.
Tong Yang looked coldly in his direction, her face showing clear impatience.
“Your esteemed instructor is in a bad mood. As a student, shouldn’t you care? Ask me what’s wrong, and help me ease my worries,” he said.
Tong Yang looked at him with disdain. “If there’s nothing else, I’m leaving.”
“Wait!” Xue Wei shot her a sharp look. “Don’t you know what’s going on in the slums lately?”
Tong Yang turned and faced him. “I’ve heard. So? What does that have to do with me?”
Xue Wei replied, “How could it not involve you?”
Tong Yang’s smile was faint and ambiguous. “How exactly does it concern me?”
Her eyes darkened, hinting at some hidden meaning.
Xue Wei said, “It’s not just about you—it affects the entire First World.”
Growing impatient, Tong Yang asked, “So what exactly are you trying to say?”
Xue Wei stared at her quietly, a trace of dissatisfaction in his gaze.
After her phone call with Wu Pingxue, Tong Yang hadn’t taken any action—partly because she hadn’t had the chance, and partly because she didn’t want to raise suspicion.
She had planned to wait for the right moment to ask questions, but hadn’t expected Xue Wei to approach her first.
With a sigh, Xue Wei said, “In the past two days, all attempts at negotiation between the United Government and the militants have been flatly rejected.”
Tong Yang responded, “If they’ve already refused to negotiate, why not just take action? Doesn’t the United Government have the means to wipe them out completely? That can’t be the case.”
Xue Wei explained, “You know as well as I do—the United Government doesn’t want to harm the Time Anchor. If they attack those militants, the Second World might seize the opportunity to intervene. If the Time Anchor falls into the hands of the Second World, it would be disastrous.”
Tong Yang nodded. “Then the United Government could keep negotiating, or propose a meeting with the Time Anchor. Maybe they could even cooperate to resist the Second World together.”
Xue Wei rested his hands behind his head and sighed, “The coalition government shares your view—negotiating face-to-face with the Time Anchor could at least secure a temporary truce. The problem is that those armed militants have completely refused to negotiate with us. They threaten us with force at the slightest provocation. Meanwhile, the Second World is stirring unrest, and the higher-ups are overwhelmed, completely at a loss.”
Tong Yang pondered for a moment before saying, “Then you should think of other solutions.”
Xue Wei immediately asked, “Do you have any ideas?”
Tong Yang replied, “If they refuse to negotiate, then find a way to force them to.”
“For example?”
“For example, threats, or taking hostages. They’re supposedly protecting the slums, right? Taking a few people from the slums as leverage shouldn’t be difficult.”
Xue Wei lowered his gaze, lost in thought. “There’s a chance it could work, but it might also enrage them further.”
“Then think of something else.”
Xue Wei rubbed his chin with his right hand, his expression distant. “What if we sent someone from the slums themselves to negotiate? Would that make things any easier?”
Tong Yang narrowed his eyes. “You don’t mean you want me to go negotiate alone, do you?”
Xue Wei looked surprised. “Are you scared? I thought you were fearless.”
Tong Yang: “?”
“Do you think reverse psychology works on me?”
Xue Wei sighed helplessly. “A few months ago, if someone from the slums had negotiated with them, their resistance probably wouldn’t have been so fierce.”
“I might die.”
“What are you saying? Of course, we’ll find a way to keep you safe.”
Tong Yang eyed him suspiciously. After a long pause, she asked, “What’s in it for me if I take the risk and negotiate with them?”
Xue Wei looked at her incredulously. “You expect a reward for contributing to society?”
“No? Then don’t come to me with this.”
Seeing her turn to leave, Xue Wei hurriedly said, “Wait, we can negotiate!”
“How so?”
“What do you want?”
Tong Yang said, “I’ll keep it pending. I’ll tell you when the time comes.”
Xue Wei raised an eyebrow. “You’re agreeing to this?”
Tong Yang nodded. “Yeah, I’m quite interested in them.”
“Alright then, I’ll report to the higher-ups. Get ready—should be within the next couple of days.”
Tong Yang said, “Not tomorrow. I promised Yang Miao I’d pick her up on Friday.”
Xue Wei didn’t insist. “Alright.”
“I’m off.”
The next day, at 3:30 p.m., Tong Yang rode a black military-grade motorcycle to pick up Miao Miao.
The training base and the school were not far apart—about a twenty-minute walk.
But since they occasionally rode the military motorcycles to nearby places to buy things, Miao Miao had seen it and insisted strongly that Tong Yang pick her up on the bike today. Plus, with her progress in the entrance exams, Tong Yang agreed.
Tong Yang swung her long legs over the motorcycle, put on her helmet, and left the training base.
Meanwhile, outside the Experimental Middle School, cars came and went in a steady stream.
Since this place was a fair distance from the city, every Friday when school let out, parents would come by car to pick up their children.
Tong Yang was usually busy with training and rarely came to pick her up. Most of the time, she stayed at school or was taken out for a meal on weekends. She had never appeared in front of her classmates with her family.
Several cars were parked along the wide roadside, and a group of students wearing white school uniforms stood nearby.
Yang Miao looked toward the opposite direction of the traffic, backpack on her back, eagerly waiting.
After all this time of recuperation, she had gained quite a bit of weight, and her cheeks had become a little fuller.
“Yang Miao, that’s the way back home!”
A boy pointed toward the city and called out loudly.
“I’ve never seen your family, and you never mention your parents. Are you sure you’re not lying?”
“What do you know! Sister Yang Miao is at the training base, she goes there all the time!”
“Really? The training base is so close to school, why hasn’t your sister come to see you?”
Yang Miao said, “Sister is very busy and works hard. She used to pick me up on weekends.”
“Weekends? You stay at school all weekend. Who knows if that’s true? No one else has seen her. We’ve all been waiting here with you for a long time.”
Yang Miao replied, “I never asked you to wait with me. Isn’t your mom already here? You should go with her.”
The boy snapped, “If you hadn’t said your sister would come on the training base’s motorcycle, I would have left already!”
“Well, you can leave now,” Yang Miao said, her tone sharp and unwelcoming.
“You…” The boy glared at her angrily but, for some reason, didn’t dare to pick a fight. Instead, he turned to the others. “Do you really believe she has a sister? No one’s ever seen anyone pick her up, no one’s ever called or brought her anything. Not even at the parent-teacher meeting last semester.”
The others looked confused and said, “But I really want to see the training base’s motorcycle. It’s so cool.”
“The training base’s motorcycle is really cool. I wish I could ride it!”
The boy said, “She doesn’t have a sister at all! School ends at three. If her sister was really at the training base, she’d have been here long ago. We’ve waited for half an hour, and no one’s come.”
Yang Miao tightened her lips and shot him a look. “I didn’t ask you to wait. You can leave.”
Kids around eleven or twelve were very sensitive about their pride. Yang Miao’s calm, indifferent attitude felt like an insult to him. None of the other students sided with him. Furious, the boy shouted, “You’re a liar, an orphan! I heard from the teacher that you’re the only one who hasn’t paid tuition. You’re an orphan… ah!”
Before he could finish, Yang Miao kicked him hard in the chest.
The boy fell to the ground with a thud, staring blankly at her.
“Your whole family is a bunch of orphans,” Yang Miao shot back bitterly.
“Stop! What are you doing, hitting someone?!”
A woman jumped out quickly from one of the cars parked by the roadside, her eyes blazing as she marched toward Yang Miao.
“Mom… boohoo…”
Apparently, someone was backing him up. The boy clutched his sore backside and started to whimper.
“What do you think you’re doing!” The woman suddenly shoved Yang Miao hard and turned to help the boy.
Yang Miao stumbled backward a few steps. Having spent so much time with Tong Yang, she hadn’t learned much else—except how not to let herself get the short end of the stick. Knowing she couldn’t take on an adult, she lunged forward and kicked the boy hard.
“How dare you hit my son?” The woman was furious, raising her hand to slap Yang Miao.
Just then, the distant roar of a motorcycle engine broke through the tension.
“Here they come!” someone shouted from the crowd.
“Smack—”
Yang Miao failed to dodge in time and a solid slap landed across her cheek, which quickly swelled visibly.
But she wasn’t about to back down. She lunged forward and bit the woman’s arm.
“Ah!” The woman screamed in pain.
At the end of the road, a black motorcycle sped toward the crowd like a leopard on the hunt.
The woman gritted her teeth in pain and shoved Yang Miao away with all her strength.
Yang Miao, after all, was just a child. She fell to the ground, and the woman, boiling with rage, raised her foot to kick her.
“Mom!”
Suddenly, the boy cried out.
The woman instinctively looked up just as the black motorcycle barreled straight toward her at full speed.
She tried to dodge, but her mind went blank in that moment, her limbs weak and unresponsive. She could only widen her eyes and watch the motorcycle grow closer and closer.
The black motorcycle was moving so fast it was almost a blur. The rider hunched low over the handlebars, eyes calm and deep behind tinted goggles. At just a meter away from the woman, the rider slammed on the brakes, spun the bike sharply, and the rear wheel barely scraped the tips of her toes before coming to a steady stop right in front of her.
The woman, clearly shaken, felt her legs give out and she collapsed to the ground, murmuring, “You’re crazy… you’re insane…”
“So cool!”
“Yang Miao, is that your sister? She’s so cool!”
Tong Yang put down the kickstand, planted his long legs firmly on the ground, and removed his helmet. His gaze swept over the woman on the ground and the stunned boy before he walked over to Yang Miao and helped her up.
“Sis,” Yang Miao looked up at her, a clear fingerprint mark on her right cheek, her eyes reddening.
“I-I’m going to report you! Are you from the training base? I’m going to file a complaint right now!” The woman scrambled to her feet, using both hands and feet, pointing at Tong Yang with venom.
Tong Yang glanced at the fingerprints on Yang Miao’s face, then at the woman. “You hit her?”
Yang Miao’s voice was a faint buzz. “It was her. Sis, my face really hurts.”
For some reason, the boy seemed afraid of Tong Yang and stammered, “Ya-Yang Miao hit me first… she started it…”
Yang Miao said, “Who told you to insult me? Not only did you insult me, you even cursed my sister!”
The boy’s eyes widened. “When did I ever curse your sister?”
“You called me an orphan. Isn’t that wishing your sister would die sooner?”
Tong Yang shot her a sharp glance. Yang Miao immediately fell silent, standing quietly at her side, head bowed.
“Yang Miao is under twelve years old. If you harm a child, you’ll face criminal charges. Serious cases can lead to fines, detention, or even being sent to the slums. Or if you come from the wealthy district, maybe you can ignore the laws of the commoners?”
Hearing the words "slum," the woman’s face paled slightly. She stammered, "I—I just accidentally hit her once. She didn’t bleed, and her mental state is fine..."
Before she could finish, Yang Miao, who had been quietly standing beside Tong Yang, suddenly twitched all over and collapsed to the ground.
The woman was stunned. "This... this has nothing to do with me..."
"Whether her mental state is okay isn’t up to you to decide," Tong Yang said firmly.
The woman gritted her teeth. The situation wasn’t as serious as Tong Yang made it out to be; no irreparable damage had been done. But since the other party was from the training base, she dared not continue to argue.
"What do you want to do?" the woman asked.
"Apologize. That shouldn’t be hard, right?"
The woman slapped the back of the boy’s head. "Apologize to your classmate!"
The boy looked aggrieved. "I’m sorry!"
Tong Yang kicked Yang Miao, who was still on the ground. "Get up."
Yang Miao quickly opened her eyes and got to her feet. "I don’t accept it."
The boy’s eyes widened in disbelief as he stared at her.
"Don’t push your luck."
Yang Miao snorted coldly. "For your sister’s sake, I’ll reluctantly forgive you."
Tong Yang glanced at the circle of teeth marks on the woman’s arm and said, "I think that’s enough. Let’s all back down a bit. What do you think?"
The woman scowled but nodded, quickly pulling the boy back to the car.
As they passed the motorcycle, the boy glanced back longingly.
"Sis."
After they left, Yang Miao stood in front of her, cautiously looking at her expression. "Did I cause you trouble?"
Tong Yang looked down at her and said, "Next time something like this happens, I don’t recommend you just jump in and hit someone."
Yang Miao was momentarily stunned. "...Huh?"
She had expected to be scolded.
"There are many ways to get back at someone. Given your situation, direct confrontation is the dumbest choice."
Yang Miao nodded, half understanding. "I get it."
Tong Yang took off the other helmet from the motorcycle and handed it to her. "Your classmates?"
"Hello, sis!"
"Hello, sis! We’re Yang Miao’s classmates!"
Yang Miao said, "They’re all my classmates."
Tong Yang nodded and greeted them. "Hello."
No wonder she insisted on riding the motorcycle.
"Let’s go," Tong Yang said.
"Okay!"
Yang Miao put on the helmet and sat on the back seat of the motorcycle.
The boy and his mother seemed to be waiting for someone and hadn’t left. He sat in the passenger seat, cradling a lifelike doll, staring longingly at Tong Yang and Yang Miao.
Yang Miao shot him a glare that clearly said, "What are you looking at?"
The boy glared back defiantly.
It was obvious neither of them was willing to back down.
As long as the adults didn’t get involved, Tong Yang couldn’t be bothered to settle petty squabbles between kids.
After folding up the motorcycle’s kickstand and preparing to leave, Tong Yang suddenly heard a crisp slap.
Without warning, the lifelike doll in the boy’s arms raised its hand and slapped him.
"Nyah nyah nyah!"
The boy was stunned, while Yang Miao looked thoroughly pleased with herself.
