Jiang Ye pointed directly at the hourglass:
"See that? There's an extra grain of blood sand inside."
Guan He nodded: "I noticed it in the last cycle. That was caused by my blood."
Jiang Ye continued: "Based on the previous cycle—"
"This grain of blood sand didn't flow into the upper half of the hourglass before the cycle ended."
"In other words, if a normal cycle lasts 180 seconds, with this blood sand, the cycle ti becos 179 seconds."
Guan He nodded in agreent.
But she followed with her own speculation: "If that's the case, then if we turn all 180 grains into blood sand, maybe we can end the cycle?"
That was her thought process.
That's why she had rushed over earlier - wanting to stain all the sand grains with her blood, but Jiang Ye had stopped her.
Jiang Ye had a different perspective. Frowning, he analyzed:
"End the cycle? But what do you think would happen to us if we ended it this way?"
"Haven't you noticed? The first day in our Novice Apartnt was unusually long!"
"Were all the subsequent days that long?"
"No! I suspect the Doomsday Apartnt's abnormal ti was also shortening day by day."
"And then? What happened when the Doomsday Apartnt's final day ended? The apartnt was destroyed!"
"So I have reason to believe—"
"If we really follow your idea and stain all 180 grains with blood, reducing the cycle ti from 180 seconds to 0 seconds..."
"The result might not be breaking free from the ti loop, but rather the three of us being destroyed when ti runs out!"
Jiang Ye had this thought not just because of his analysis.
There was another important reason—
Earlier, his light clone had heard another self-proclaid "sa kind" being in the underground graveyard's tombstone area say this:
"If the world is a ga... then the only currency is ti."
Although Lin Ling later said that so-called "sa kind" was just his hallucination.
Jiang Ye didn't believe Lin Ling's explanation.
And he rembered those words vividly.
So naturally, he now thought—
If this 3-minute cycle is a test.
Then their chips are those 180 seconds!
Yet now, they've turned 180 seconds into 179...
Guan He pondered this, glancing again at the hourglass, and felt Jiang Ye made sense.
Rashly reducing the cycle ti to zero indeed didn't seem wise.
What if when the cycle ti reached zero, instead of escaping the loop, they entered a 0-second cycle...
Wouldn't a 0-second cycle an destruction?
Following Jiang Ye's logic, Guan He had another unsettling thought:
"If what you say is true, then even if we don't add blood to the hourglass, the cycle ti will still decrease with each repetition."
"This is our 4th cycle."
"Perhaps by the 10th cycle, or so number, the cycle ti will automatically decrease!"
"And if we can't solve this cycle before the ti fully runs out..."
"The result would still be ti running out and us being destroyed."
Guan He's tone was grave as she spoke these words.
anwhile, during their discussion, the 4th cycle was nearing its end!
This ti, Jiang Ye attempted a second type of clone fusion.
During the 2nd cycle, he had fused the discarded clone outside the grid to the light clone inside.
This ti, he tried fusing the light clone to the clone outside the grid.
But the result...
Failed!
The light clone seed trapped, unable to fuse outward!
A thought flashed through Jiang Ye's mind.
But before he could voice it, the 4th cycle ended.
The 5th cycle began—
"Welco back... my children..."
This ti, Jiang Ye didn't hesitate before speaking to Guan He:
"I have a bold idea now, but I need to kill you to verify it."
Guan He's eyelid twitched slightly as she deadpanned: "What a coincidence. I also have an idea that requires killing you to verify."
"..."
Jiang Ye thought for a mont, then nodded: "Fine. This cycle you kill , next cycle I kill you."
Guan He was surprised by his straightforwardness.
After consideration, she suggested: "If we do it now, you'll waste two minutes."
"So let's wait until this cycle is almost over before I kill you. For now, let's analyze so more?"
Jiang Ye nodded, pointing at the hourglass:
"Actually, before you suggested dripping blood on the mirror, I had another thought."
"From our perspective, this hourglass is strange—its sand flows from bottom to top."
"So I was thinking—maybe in this cycle grid we're in, it's not just ti that's problematic, but space too?"
"If we could rotate the entire space back to its correct position, moving the hourglass from the mirror's upper right corner to the lower left..."
"Then the sand would flow normally from top to bottom."
"Would ti then return to normal?"
This thought ca mainly from Jiang Ye's past readings on ti theory, which almost always discussed ti and space together.
And in analyses of ti-space research, one principle was almost always used—the fundantal postulate of special relativity: the principle of the constancy of the speed of light.
Ti, space, light...
Also, among the Nomadic rchant's abilities was an X-tier "Infinite Space-Ti."
Clearly combining ti and space abilities into one.
Guan He carefully considered this and found Jiang Ye's reasoning plausible.
But the problem was—
Her eyes swept across the cycle grid space as she frowned: "But we don't have space manipulation abilities. How would we rotate this inverted space to its correct position?"
At this point, Chen Cang had mostly grasped their situation from their conversation.
He volunteered: "I can try to determine whether this space is truly inverted."
Taking out a compass full of holes, he began adjusting it.
The compass emitted friction sounds, as if containing another smaller compass inside.
As he manipulated it, the holes on the compass shifted.
Finally, all holes aligned with the compass's markings. Chen Cang frowned:
"Either Lu Renjia's analysis was wrong, or my compass can't detect spatial inversion. In any case, its directional readings are the sa as in normal space."
Guan He seed thoughtful, then turned to Jiang Ye:
"The 5th cycle is almost over. Should I do it now?"
Jiang Ye nodded without resistance.
With death, his consciousness ended early.
Directly connecting from the mont of death to the start of the 6th cycle—
"Welco back... my children..."
Hearing this for the 6th ti, it sounded like a curse.
Jiang Ye imdiately looked at Guan He: "Well?"
Guan He glanced at Chen Cang and slightly shook her head.
Though she said nothing, Jiang Ye understood—
When she killed him last cycle, there had been no bounty announcent.
So Chen Cang still didn't know he was actually Huang Bo.
And to keep this secret, Guan He couldn't explain.
aning—
Deaths in the cycle triggered neither bounty rewards nor clone substitutions.
They weren't real deaths!
As Jiang Ye processed this, Guan He continued:
"However, you didn't see the end of the last cycle. Let describe it—"
"When the hourglass inverted at the last cycle's end, Chen Cang's compass also moved on its own."
"So your speculation is likely correct—ti and space rotate together."
"This cycle I'll let you kill , but again near the cycle's end."
Jiang Ye's experint in killing Guan He was to see if killing within this small cycle would trigger the clone-killing-clone effect.
But based on current information, it likely wouldn't.
Because everything in this cycle grid probably wasn't real!
The deaths were fake! The Lightburn was fake!
That's why Chen Cang's death and revival didn't spread Lightburn—
He was never truly infected with real Lightburn!
Jiang Ye's light clone never truly died, hence no bounty was triggered!
The three of them might just be consciousnesses trapped in this Mirror Palace cycle, while their real bodies were elsewhere!
This explained why during his 2nd cycle clone fusion experint—
While his external clone sensed the discarded clone still fused with it,
By the 3rd cycle, he thought the fusion had ended.
This was probably because the discarded clone was fused with his real body.
While the false body in the cycle was reset at the cycle's start.
So his external clone's perception was correct—
This Mirror Palace cycle wasn't a true cycle.
But a fake cycle simulated through special ans!
Jiang Ye couldn't help recalling what the Nomadic rchant had once told him.
A rather lengthy speech, whose last line was—
"If life cannot wake you, then let reincarnation wake you..."
"Until you wake up."
Reviews
All reviews (0)