"Ti loop?" Jin Jiuchi echoed with a blank face. He felt like he had heard that term sowhere during their months of studying and researching, but right now he could not think of anything on top of his head.
Shen Nianzu shot him a speechless look. So all that cramming was for nothing, then. He checked the ti, realizing that they had wasted almost five minutes of the allocated twelve. With a resigned exhale, he finally decided to forsake this loop. "Okay, let’s take this ti to clear our heads and make a plan for our future course of action," he clapped his hands together. "I will make it simple. Right now, we are stuck in this specific sequence of events. We will go back to the beginning again and again, reliving the sa events over and over... until we manage to break the cycles and achieve a different outco. Are you with so far?"
Jin Jiuchi blinked, processing the information. "The different outco you’re talking about is..."
"Oh, I know!" Gu Luoxin took the initiative to answer, still with a hushed voice so as to not attract the zombies here. "We can only escape once we board the train in Chrono Junction Express!"
"You’re right," Shen Nianzu nodded in affirmation. "From the start, the voice in the speaker has given us a clue. We have to catch the train so that we can escape from this cursed loop. Otherwise, we will keep dying again and again..."
Following his words, Gu Luoxin and Jin Jiuchi shuddered at the sa ti as they recalled the shocking instances of their death. Nope, they did not want to go through that again. Thank you very much!
"What should we do now, Xiao Shen?" Gu Luoxin inquired anxiously.
Shen Nianzu lowered his gaze in thought as he started to analyze, "Our main goal here is to make it onto the train. Now, let’s talk about the challenges we will be facing, naly the zombies and... the unidentified attackers who ambushed us. As of now, we still have no idea who they are and how many people are there in their group. One thing for certain, they possess a huge amount of firearms. There are two possible scenarios here: either they brought those firearms with them, or they scavenged them sowhere. Are we clear until here?"
Both Jin Jiuchi and Gu Luoxin nodded in unison like two obedient students listening to their teacher’s lecture.
"Do you an to say that..." Jin Jiuchi rubbed his chin as he pondered on the situation. "If those weapons are theirs to begin with, then it’s a huge problem for us. But if they looted them sowhere..."
Gu Luoxin’s eyes lit up as he started to see where he was going. "We can just outpace them and seize those weapons for ourselves! By then, we will be invincible! Da Shen, you’re a genius!"
Jin Jiuchi rubbed his nose with a proud look, "Hehe, ain’t I aweso?"
Shen Nianzu couldn’t help but feel secretly pleased. As expected of the teammates he had chosen. They were neither stupid nor ignorant, just a tad slow and needed a little guidance. He spoke up to dampen the two children’s excitent, "Don’t get too carried away. We need to remain cautious and consider the first possibility – what if the firearms are originally theirs?"
Gu Luoxin’s happiness quickly morphed into tension. "I–If that’s the case, then what should we do?"
Shen Nianzu narrowed his eyes, a glint of murderous intent flickering in his purple eyes. He still could not erase the image of Jin Jiuchi’s death from his mind. The shattered skull, the warm blood that splattered all over his body, and the despair. The overwhelming despair. He almost descended into madness right there and then. Even though technically the event had yet to happen in this tiline, he couldn’t bring himself to forgive them.
An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. He, too, had to obliterate them like they had done to his teammates – to his lover.
"If that’s the case," he responded to Gu Luoxin’s question, his voice cold and determined. "We simply have to be faster and strike them when they least expect it. I don’t believe that we are weaker than them, especially with our props and skill cards. We were just caught off guard the last ti."
A renewed spark ignited in the other two’s eyes, their determination soaring high. "That’s right, we are not weak either! We won’t let them get the upper hand again!"
"Damn, who could have guessed that a grenade would land near my feet all of a sudden?!" Gu Luoxin rubbed his chest and let out a shaky sigh. "Almost scared to death!"
Jin Jiuchi offered a not-so-subtle reminder, "You really died, rember?"
"You—!"
Clearing his throat, Shen Nianzu steered the conversation back to their current predicant. "I’ve noticed a few problems with our actions last ti. First, the ti we spent searching the managent office and driving out of the park nearly amounted to ten minutes. Do you still rember?" He directed the question to Gu Luoxin.
"Now that you ntion it..." Gu Luoxin hit his fist on his open palm, his eyes widening in sudden realization. "When I found the car key, I rember there were just four and a half minutes left. And by the ti we left the park, we only had two minutes and twenty seconds! Oh my God, we wasted so much ti!"
Shen Nianzu nodded in approval, "Plus, it must be the noise from the car that had alerted our attackers. If we want to sneak an attack on them, we might have to forgo the car altogether. However, it ans we will be more exposed to the zombies and I’m still uncertain about their characteristics..."
", , !" Gu Luoxin raised his hand, eager to answer. As an avid fan of apocalypse and survival movies, he was quite knowledgeable about zombies. Who knew that it would co handy at a ti like this? Moreover, this was the first ti he was being the most well-inford in the group and feeling extrely proud, he began to share everything he knew,
"Well, for starters, their movents are typically slow and sluggish. They lack cognitive functions and their behavior is more instinctual. They’re very sensitive to sounds and will infect humans through scratches and bites. They don’t fear danger or injury, and will keep moving forward even if they lose a limb. What else... ah, that’s right! They will always be hungry for flesh and brains, and the only way to stop them is to destroy their brains!"
"Ah, no wonder..." Jin Jiuchi remarked.
Perplexed, Gu Luoxin asked, "No wonder what?"
No wonder the zombies imdiately scrambled to devour the remaining pieces of Gu Luoxin’s flesh, even disregarding the machine gun that could pierce holes into their bodies. He was about to launch into a detailed explanation, sprinkled with a little spice here and there to make it sound more flavorful, to recount how the zombies relentlessly feasted on him even after his death. However, Shen Nianzu swiftly interjected, glaring at him as though guessing the direction of his thoughts,
"Thank you for the information, Xinxin. Now we know for certain they’re sensitive to sounds, driving a car becos even more disadvantageous. In the next tiline, we will go by foot, run as quickly as we can and deal with them with little to no sound possible. Let’s try it like this and sneak into the station to set up an ambush. And if we were to fail again next ti..." his expression twisted in displeasure, but he still forced himself to say, "Then we will try again and again until we succeed. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Sir!" Jin Jiuchi and Gu Luoxin straightened up in reflex.
As their discussion reached its conclusion, the countdown to the ti limit was approaching its very last second, and everything turned dark before their eyes. The next mont, they were back inside the moving bus again, with the familiar cheerful female voice coming through the speaker,
"Local ti... bzzz bzzz... 8.03 pm! The train will be... bzzz... leaving in twelve... minutes... so make sure to board it... in ti!"
The trio exchanged looks and nodded with determination. As soon as the bus door slid open, they burst out as though they had wind beneath their feet. Their sole target: leave the park and reach the station in the shortest ti possible!
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