Mist (Web Novel CN)-Chapter 12: Chapter 12

Ouroboros

Chapter 12

Hyperthymesia?

Tianqiong’s interpersonal relations were messy and there are also a lot of gossip. As early as two years ago, when Song Qinglan was a Guardian without any major achievements, he had heard about it at the Guardian training camp. At that time, the ranks following a certain exam was released and the teacher with an abundance of knowledge was ranked second. In class, the teacher joked to the students, “Actually, it doesn’t count as a loss. Ji Yushi in first place has hyperthymesia. Who can beat him?”

It was a line that sounded like a joke. It sounded like he was using an exaggerated descriptive term to describe how good this person called Ji Yushi’s memory was.

In fact, Song Qinglan had also thought it was just a description.

But……it was an illness?

Standing so close, the dampness around the roots of Ji Yushi’s eyelashes were clearly visible.

His skin was extremely pale and when he was angry, his capillaries didn’t dilate or flush. He looked like an ice-cold sculpture.

“My caudate nucleus and frontal lobe are a little unusual and will uncontrollably store memories long term. I remember the colour of the socks I wore the first day I went to elementary school, I remember whether it was raining or not on the first weekend after I started working and I also remember whether I stepped into this bookstore earlier with my right foot or my left foot first.”

Ji Yushi’s eyes were clear and his gaze didn’t carry any emotion. He spoke like he was narrating.

“As long as I have seen, heard or felt something, no matter whether it is important or not, I will remember it. There is no screening or filtering process. In other words, I don’t have the ability to forget.”

Song Qinglan’s frown smoothed out. A hint of surprise appeared in his eyes, “……..”

Don’t have the ability to forget?

Ji Yushi continued, “What you think is abnormal is however completely normal for me. As long as it is something I have experienced, it doesn’t make any difference whether I have experienced it once or countless times. In other words, I am just like you. I am going through this again after the first time.”

“So the reason you appear to be almost omniscient is because you remember it all?”

“Yes.”

“Anything?”

“Anything. You can test me.”

Ji Yushi didn’t look like he was lying.

Of course, Song Qinglan didn’t know the other party well enough and he also didn’t know if the other person was in any way related to their current circumstance. He just asked, “Then why the bookstore?”

“I saw it on the drone projection.” Ji Yushi seemed to think that this question was very stupid, “With no internet, all the electronics are only there for show. Upon arriving at an unfamiliar place, where would you go if you want to quickly learn about the history of it?”

Song Qinglan: “………”

Ji Yushi’s words carried double meaning, “Cap Song, don’t just think about using force.”

Reaching Song Qinglan’s ears, that tone was almost as good as saying ‘read more when you have time’ and ‘don’t rely on force to bully others’.

Guardians have a clear purpose when carrying out their missions and are required to be fast and accurate. When encountering an obstacle, they are expected to charge on.

This wasn’t the first time the two have confronted each other since they’ve met but for the first time Song Qinglan had to admit that the other party’s words were right. In this unfamiliar world, it was impossible to be fast and accurate. Lack of caution had become a Guardian’s shortfall. At present, Ji Yushi just happened to make up for it.

“But you are right on one point. My medicine really us used to keep my mind clear and alert.” Ji Yushi poked Song Qinglan’s shoulder with his finger, “Cap Song, can you move aside?”

Song Qinglan only now realised how ambiguous their positions were.

This scene was fine if it was another person of the same sex, for example, Li Chun. This scene usually meant that Li Chun who had been slacking off with his training was about to get a beating but, with Ji Yushi who was half a head shorter than himself, slender, pale and big-eyed, taking that place, it felt a little strange.

Most importantly, the entire Tianqiong knew about Ji Yushi’s sexual orientation: Men.

Cap Song who dared to casually press someone down with his tall stature was finally willing to move aside letting the weak and delicate Advisor Ji out.

It was just that the expression on that handsome face was a bit unsightly.

The small rectangular medicine box was thrown away just now.

With so many bookshelves and books, it would be hard to find the medicine box without seeing which direction it was thrown in. Ji Yushi looked around several times but was unable to find it.

At this moment, the teammates who had left returned.

“Bang, bang, bang——”

Gunshots suddenly sounded outside the bookstore.

“Cap Song!!” Zhou Mingxuan’s sounded, “Close the door, hurry!!”

The three people rushing in were covered in zombie blood.

Twenty or thirty zombies poured towards the door. Seeing the living people inside through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the bookstore, they growled as they slapped at the glass and some used their teeth to gnaw at the glass, leaving behind pieces of flesh and blood stains.

As soon as he was out of danger, Li Chun cussed, “Fuck, all the food was taken. We found a supermarket with nothing but just a couple of these cans. Seeing that there were several of them on the shelf, it seems no one wanted them.”

Zhou Mingxuan thrown over the remaining cans, “Probably doesn’t taste good.”

“How bad can it be?” Song Qinglan picked one up, “It’s the end of the world and people would worry about that?”

As soon as Tang Le entered, he saw a bottle of mineral water on the bookshelf and drank it without another word. He was clearly very thirsty, “There is something wrong with this place!”

Ji Yushi looked at the bottle of water but didn’t speak up to stop him.

He just picked up a can and inspected it.

The can was decorated with green beans and the packaging wrote ‘Kemeng Beans’. It looked no different from ordinary beans. Turning the can around, the ingredients listed also seemed very normal but the small print at the bottom caught Ji Yushi’s attention. There were two lines written in both Chinese and English: PU-31 Golden Crow No. 2’s first batch of organic vegetables since establishment.

From early morning to midday and with the intense scuffles earlier, no matter how physically strong this group of young people are, it was no surprise they’re hungry.

Li Chun who had long emptied the contents of his stomach at the beginning no longer cared about whether the canned food tasted good or not. He pulled out his dagger and began to open the can, “It’s not just this place that’s strange. It’s like this everywhere!”

Tang Le downed half the bottle of water in one go, “I was going to say that I ran into a dog just now but I don’t know if I saw wrong.”

Song Qinglan, “The dog was also infected?”

Tang Le hesitated for a moment with a grimace, “No, it seemed to have two tails. Forget it, take it as if I hadn’t said anything.”

Everyone: “…….”

“Pei—–” Li Chin took a bite of the Kemeng Beans and immediately spat it back out, “Fucking hell, it’s disgusting!”

Zhou Mingxuan pushed his head aside, “Having something to eat is better than nothing. Just close your eyes and swallow it. Cap Song and I once had to survive in a rainforest and ate bugs and bark and even almost started eating mud.”

Li Chun opened several more cans and distributed it to everyone.

Ji Yushi gave it a taste. The taste was astringent and bitter, and the texture was also strange, completely unlike the ones grown from the soil, but he still swallowed it down.

Seeing that even the most ‘delicate’ Ji Yushi could eat it, Li Chun felt that he shouldn’t complain anymore and silently began to eat.

Song Qinglan, “All full? Eat more if you haven’t eaten enough. We don’t know what the situation will be like afterwards, this may possibly be our last meal.”

The original group of seven had now lost two.

No one felt that those words were too harsh, after all, it was the truth.

Song Qinglan was the squad’s backbone. He coldly turned on the communicator projection and explained while drawing in the air, “The problems we are facing now are one, zombies, and two, the black wall. No matter which one we encounter, it’s a dead end. Zombies we can kill but we have no information about the black wall. So far we still do not know about the wall’s pattern of movement or why it exists.”

Song Qinglan marked the current location of the black wall on the map.

It was still more than ten kilometres away from them. Since it would take some time for to reach their location, the bookstore was temporarily safe.

“The mission rules said death elimination.” Zhou Mingxuan mused, “I’m guessing that the purpose of the black walls existence is to devour those zombies, not to eliminate us. There is no need for them to give us this rule for the mission we have to do. Our deaths will not help those superiors in any way. That rule is probably a reminder to us that the black wall cannot distinguish between zombies and living humans and that we will die once we touch it so that we can avoid being eliminated.”

Speaking of death elimination, everyone thought of Tang Qi and Duan Wen.

With Tang Qi around, Tang Le was responsible for being the carefree one but at this moment, he seemed to have matured considerably. He continued the conversation without much trouble, “Old Zhou’s words seem possible. But how did the black wall come about? Could the technology in this world have surpassed ours by so much?”

“I don’t think it’s right.” Song Qinglan denied it, “If they had the ability to create a black wall to eliminate the zombies, why not directly blow them up? The result would be the same anyway, why take a detour?”

Ji Yushi’s appetite was the smallest. Having finished eating first, he endured the bitterness in his mouth and had already begun to search the bookshelves.

Seeing that everyone had finished eating, he walked over with a book in his hands, “What if the mission that was sent to us wasn’t from the Tianqiong from our time and space?”

Everyone raised their heads.

Ji Yushi spoke, “I know what PU-31 means.”

A book with an orange cover was thrown over. On the cover was a green planet and there was the writing <Mini World: PU31>.

“PU, Parallel Universe.” Ji Yushi explained, “A small planet with the code name 31. With a diameter of 3696km, it is smaller than Mercury. It is an artificial colony that exists in the crevice between parallel universes.”

Ever since time travel was invented, the Time Alliance formed by the countries have been controlling it very strictly.

But since this technology was invented, it meant that from that day onwards, Tianqiong would exist in every future. In a situation where a similar frequency wavelength was used, Guardians who have travelled to the future may at times experience interference with their communicator and hear information for the guardians from that particular time coordinate.

Everything has a cause and effect. When mankind invents something that surpasses the technology from its times, it was destined to not be completely under their control.

As such, a vow would be recited before each departure with great sincerity and earnestness.

———

“Never change the past!”

“Never talk about the present!”

“Never be obsessed with the future!”

Everyone fell into thought.

Song Qinglan: “So you mean that when we transferred, we were intercepted by the Tianqiong from this time and sent to their colony?”

Ji Yushi said, “I think it is very likely. It can also explain why it warned us of an illegal transition and why we cannot contact the command centre. Even the mission details were received through the park administrator’s communicator.”

“Pa!”

Outside the window, several zombies could see the living humans in the bookstore from their angle. They slapped at the glass windows repeatedly, their grey and turbid eyes looking up, but no one inside was in the mood to pay them any attention.

This news was more crippling than being besieged by a thousand zombies.

“Fuck.” Li Chun’s heart tightened. His eyes showed horror and his words were filled with expletives, “Then how do we get back? By completing the mission? If we were really sent over by the Tianqiong from this place, can’t the people in the command centre give us more information? What bullshit was that useless mission detail? Would saying a bit more kill them?!”

This angry complaint pretty much summed up everyone’s thoughts.

Zhou Mingxian patted Li Chun on the shoulder, “Brother, keep going.”

Song Qinglan pursed his lips. At this moment, the sharp blade-like atmosphere coming from him was hard to ignore.

“Since this place called PU-31 is an artificial colony, it is very likely that there is no so-called command centre here. The system……..itself is just a machine anyway. What do you expect from it?”

“Then will Chief Wang and them find us?” Li Chun said, “The people in the command centre must’ve realised that we’ve gone missing.”

“Not necessarily.” Tang Le’s eyes were a little dazed and his voice was small, “Parallel universe. Perhaps to them only a second had passed. And my brother and Old Duan are left in this place……….”

The bookstore was silent.

Song Qinglan, “So what exactly is the chaser of darkness mentioned in the mission objective?”

He turned his head and spoke to Ji Yushi, “Advisor Ji, while we still have time can you check a few more books to see if you can find anything?”

Ji Yushi was rather indifferent, “I’ll try my best. After all, I’m not a little genius who can speed read quantum waves.”

Everyone: “……..”

Fuck.

The line Song Qinglan had said before departing was actually returned back to him by Ji Yushi!

Even at a time like this, he held a grudge!!

“Also.”

Ji Yushi stood there and gently pulled up his sleeves, revealing the marks on his wrists.

There were several bruises on his fair skin. It looked like finger marks, as if he had just been abused.

Ji Yushi said slowly and nonchalantly, “Can someone help me find the books? My hands hurt.”

Song Qinglan: “………”

Song Qinglan: “I’ll do it.”