When Lu Shiyan’s gaze swept toward Chen Ping'an, Chen Ping'an instinctively held his breath.
The look was not exactly sharp. It simply pressed down on him with a heavy weight.
Chen Ping'an began to wonder what he had done wrong.
“Chen Ping'an,” Jiang Ce said with a grin, “now that your family has been rescued, the next step is clearing out the restricted zone. Noncombatants will only be in danger if they stay here. Hurry to the area outside Zone E and reunite with them.”
Chen Ping'an finally understood. This was a polite way of asking him to leave. Squad Zero was about to hold an internal meeting.
He nodded repeatedly. “Thank you! Be careful!”
Then he turned and ran toward the outskirts of Zone E as though fleeing for his life, his back radiating the panic of someone who had narrowly escaped disaster.
The group soon relocated to a helicopter that had already been cleared of all personnel. Qi Sui seemed to have finally remembered his duties as the team’s medical officer and walked over to Lu Shiyan’s side.
He took a slender syringe from his medical bag. Deep blue liquid shimmered gently inside the transparent tube.
“High-purity ability stabilizer,” Qi Sui said in a soft voice. “Captain, your ability was just pushed beyond its limits. You should take a dose.”
Lu Shiyan gave a slight nod.
The needle pressed against the inside of Lu Shiyan’s arm. His expression did not change in the slightest as he allowed Qi Sui to administer the injection.
The medicine entered his bloodstream, its coldness spreading through his veins. At last, the tension in Lu Shiyan’s shoulders eased somewhat.
Standing a few steps away, Jiang Nuan watched the scene, her fingers unconsciously curling inward.
She remembered the sight of him in the Sea God Building not long ago, supporting half of the structure by himself.
His complexion was still paler than usual. His jaw was clenched tight, and yet his eyes remained as calm as ever, revealing not the slightest trace of fatigue.
Only the syringe that had just been emptied bore witness once more to what he had paid.
“All done.” Qi Sui put the syringe away and stepped back. “For at least the next half hour, Captain, try not to use any abilities.”
His gaze swept over everyone present, and his smile deepened.
“I suggest we leave a longer interval between high-risk operations from now on. After all, we really can’t afford to see one person stand in for an entire team a second time.”
Qinian snorted from the side, folding his arms as he leaned back in his seat. “Brother, could you stop talking like that? It’s making my teeth ache.”
“Nian Nian, are you teaching me how to do my job?” Qi Sui tilted his head, his smile gentle.
Qinian rolled his eyes but fell silent.
Lu Shiyan had already turned toward Shen Wu. “Tell us what you found.”
Shen Wu activated a holographic projection on the tactical terminal.
The image showed a gaunt, haggard man with graying hair and vacant eyes. His lips moved over and over, but he could not form a complete sentence.
“We found him during reconnaissance, near the restricted zone,” Shen Wu said.
He swiped across the interface and brought up another screen.
“Zhou Hao. Investigation Team designation JG-017. His official records list him as twenty-three years old.”
“He was a member of one of the three teams sent to deal with the restricted zone this time.”
Jiang Nuan stared at the aged face, her heart giving a hard thump.
Twenty-three?
He looked at least seventy.
“His mental state has completely collapsed,” Shen Wu said flatly. “All he can do is repeat fragmented phrases: ‘The kids are getting out of school,’ ‘What should we have for dinner?’ ‘My wife’s arthritis is acting up again.’”
“But the records say he’s unmarried and has no children.” Ye Que frowned as he looked at the personnel file in the holographic display.
“Correct.” Shen Wu enlarged a set of data. “The medical scans show that the degree of organ failure and skeletal calcification… all of it is consistent with natural aging. This wasn’t an ability attack or contamination from the restricted zone. It was simply the most ordinary aging a human body can undergo.”
Qi Sui raised an eyebrow. “But those three teams were only sent to deal with the restricted zone last night.”
“Yes. So my deduction is that either this restricted zone possesses both powerful hallucinatory effects and the ability to manipulate the passage of time within the body, causing him to live out an entire lifetime in an illusion while his body aged along with it…” Shen Wu paused. “Or it’s the more troublesome possibility.”
Jiang Nuan glanced at the gray mist continuously spreading outward from the city center. Combined with this bizarre phenomenon, it suddenly reminded her of the White Whale.
That restricted zone had also been shrouded in dense fog and possessed control over time.
She voiced her thought. “Could this be the same restricted zone as the White Whale? When we left that stretch of sea before, we only exhausted a large amount of the zone’s energy. We couldn’t be certain that the restricted zone had truly disappeared.”
“It is somewhat similar,” Shen Wu said with a nod. But then he changed tack. “However, the restricted zone surrounding the White Whale involved rewinding time or directly altering the aging and death of cells in parts of the body—as if someone had pressed fast-forward on a living organism. But this place…”
He switched screens and brought up another report.
“The team member we found experienced a complete life trajectory inside the restricted zone. It doesn’t seem like a hallucination. Instead, it resembles a genuine timeline with a chain of cause and effect. He got married, had children, watched them go to school and start working, and had even begun looking forward to holding his grandchildren.”
Shen Wu’s voice turned cold.
“But in reality, less than seven hours had passed between his entering the restricted zone and being found.”
The helicopter fell silent.
Lu Shiyan spoke. “So your second theory is that this restricted zone possesses its own method of calculating space and time. Zhou Hao truly lived inside it for several decades.”
“Yes.” Shen Wu nodded. “But either way, once we’re trapped inside, if we can’t find the core of the restricted zone, we may unknowingly live out the rest of our lives. Even if we eventually escape…”
He did not finish.
But everyone understood.
Just like the team member whose hair had turned gray: he had made it out alive, but his body had already aged.
All that remained of his life was decline.
Jiang Nuan bit down hard on her lower lip. What kind of bizarre restricted zone was this? She had never even heard of anything like it.
Just as everyone was absorbing this horrifying deduction, Lu Shiyan suddenly spoke.
“There’s also this. We’ve found several bodies belonging to members of the Bai family.”
The holographic projection changed.
One of the men had a gray, ashen complexion and cracked lips. There were no obvious external injuries on his body.
“This is the Bai family’s eldest son, Bai Zhengze. Cause of death: starvation,” Lu Shiyan said.
Shen Wu added, “The Bai family arrived at the Zone E docks last night. Judging by the timeline, even if they had been trapped inside the restricted zone immediately, there wouldn’t have been enough time for him to starve to death.”
He paused.
“So this is more consistent with the second theory. Inside the restricted zone, he experienced an extended period of time. His bodily functions aged and deteriorated along with the zone’s timeline, until he eventually… starved to death at some point, after which the restricted zone expelled his body.”
Jiang Nuan looked away, no longer able to stare at the corpses.
Bai Siyuan’s refined, gentle face suddenly rose in her mind.
And then she realized that something didn’t add up.
Although Zhou Hao looked as though he would not survive more than a few days, he at least seemed to have lived out a relatively happy life inside the restricted zone. The few corpses from the Bai family, however, looked as if they had endured agonizing torment.
Either the restricted zone possessed a consciousness of its own, or there was something else she still couldn’t understand.
“Captain.” Qinian broke the silence. “If time truly runs independently inside the restricted zone, what will happen to the flow of time in the outside world after we enter?”
“Unknown,” Lu Shiyan said. “If we resolve the situation quickly, perhaps only a few minutes will pass. But we don’t have enough samples yet to determine whether this is the true pattern governing the restricted zone. It’s also possible that by the time we come out, the world will have changed beyond recognition.”
The air seemed to freeze for a moment.
Lu Shiyan looked at Jiang Nuan. “What are your thoughts?”
Everyone’s attention turned toward her.
Jiang Nuan forced herself to pull away from that icy fear. She stared at the files, corpses, and data repeatedly playing across the holographic projection.
At last, her gaze settled on Zhou Hao’s deeply aged face.
“If the only ways to leave are defeating the core of the restricted zone or dying,” she said, voicing her thoughts as they formed, “then Zhou Hao neither died nor defeated the core, yet he still came out. That doesn’t make sense. So…” She paused. “We can use the life he lived inside the restricted zone as a clue and work backward to find the point where the situation can be broken.”
“Very clear.” Qi Sui was the first to applaud, her smile gentle. “No wonder you’re the analyst the captain chose.”
Lu Shiyan nodded. “The plan is feasible.”
“Considering the possibility of abnormal time flow within the restricted zone, as well as the extreme uncertainty of the internal environment…”
He paused.
“The reconnaissance team will consist of me, Ye Que, Qinian, and Shen Wu.”
The team was practically a gathering of the Zero Squad’s strongest mobile combat forces.
As the first group, the four of them would bear the highest level of uncertainty and risk, scouting the boundary between life and death for those who followed.
“Qi Sui, Jiang Ce, and Jiang Nuan will enter in the second group, twenty minutes later.”
She, Qi Sui, and Jiang Ce—with his exceptional defensive abilities—would serve as the reserve force, ensuring that the team could go farther. The arrangement was flawless.
Jiang Ce was the first to extend his fist and bump it against Qinian’s. “Let’s do our best, everyone.”
Qinian grinned. He slammed his fist against Jiang Ce’s with force, producing a muffled thud.
He lifted his chin toward Jiang Ce. “We’ll go in and scout the way first. We’ll wait for you inside the restricted zone.”
Qi Sui watched her younger brother with a smile and said softly, “We’ll be right behind you. Hang in there.”
Ye Que lowered his head and checked his weapons once more, making sure they were positioned exactly where he could reach them most easily. Then he looked around at everyone, his gaze finally coming to rest on Jiang Nuan.
The solemnity before a great battle descended over them all. The first group was about to step into that gray mist that devoured time.
Meeting their eyes, Jiang Nuan said, each word deliberate, “Come back together.”
The air seemed to freeze for a moment.
All traces of joking vanished from Qinian’s face, replaced by solemn resolve. He nodded firmly.
Ye Que’s Adam’s apple bobbed slightly before he repeated her words. “Come back together.”
Shen Wu’s calm voice sounded in her mind. 【Is that an order? All right. I accept it.】
Lu Shiyan’s gaze swept over everyone before lingering on Jiang Nuan’s face for half a second longer.
His gaze was deep, as if he intended to etch her image into his memory through the drifting gray mist and the invisible fabric of space-time.
“Move out.”
