Chapter 2: The Chrono-Watch and Yesterday's Shadow
The blue light faded. The nauseating vertigo subsided, leaving a dull throb behind my eyes and the bitter taste of bile in my mouth. Solid ground materialized beneath my feet, but the landing was jarring. I (Liang) stumbled, catching myself on a nearby metal console, gagging for a moment. "Damn… that jump… packed a bigger punch than usual…" I wiped cold sweat from my brow and took in our surroundings.
We were back in the "Shell," our makeshift refuge tucked away in a dimensional pocket. A hundred square meters, crammed with salvaged tech and jury-rigged equipment. Screens flickered with corrupted data and static; strange devices hummed with low, resonant frequencies, bathing the cramped space in an eerie blue and violet glow; energy cells and repair tools lay scattered in corners. The air hummed faintly, thick with the familiar tang of ozone, engine oil, and rusting metal. This was "home" – cold, chaotic, but for now, a shield against the storm outside.
"Shield? Don't make me laugh!" Lu Zixian's voice, tight with suppressed fury and lingering fear, cut through the relative quiet. I turned. He was standing by the entrance monitor, his face grim. His injured arm, treated with a basic med-spray, had stopped bleeding but hung limply at his side. On the screen, an ominous red warning curve spiked upwards. "Look at this energy residue! Those mimic-bots and Sand Vipers definitely tagged us with some kind of tracker beacon! It's faint, but the system picked it up! The Shell's coordinates are likely compromised! We can't stay here long!"
"Holy crap! Already?! Did they slap a damn GPS sticker on our asses?!" The fragile sense of safety I'd felt shattered instantly, replaced by a surge of frustration and despair. "So what now?! Where the hell do we run?! The universe is big, but it feels like there's nowhere left to hide!"
"Running is a temporary fix, we'll just get cornered eventually." Lu Zixian walked towards the center of the room, towards a heavy-duty safe built from reinforced alloy, his expression hardening with grim determination. He began inputting a complex security code. "Unless… we find a permanent solution. Either we eliminate the 'eyes' tracking us for good, or… we go back. Back to the source. Change the 'cause' that led us to this miserable 'effect'."
The safe door hissed open with a soft *whoosh*, revealing a cool, soft light from within. Nestled on padded cushioning lay… a watch? No, it was far more than that. Its design was starkly minimalist – a silver-grey casing, devoid of any markings or hands. The face was a perfect circle of pure, deep black, so dark it seemed to swallow the light, like a tiny singularity. The strap was a flexible, non-metallic material with a faint sheen. The entire object radiated an unsettling aura – cold, precise, and profoundly dangerous. Like a forbidden piece of future tech, or Pandora's Box holding ultimate destruction.
"'The Chrono-Watch'…" I (Liang) breathed the name, staring at the ultimate trump card we'd risked everything to acquire but never dared to use. A complex mix of emotions churned within me. Go back, change fate – the temptation was immense! But… the cost? "Using this thing… the risk is insane… Those warnings in the manual, written in blood-red digital ink…"
"Risk? Do we even have the luxury of talking about risk anymore?!" Lu Zixian snapped, his voice raw with desperation. "I know the warnings better than you do! Rule #1: Go back, 100% chance you meet your past self! Rule #2: Meet your past self, 99% chance you trigger a paradox or get 'formatted' by cosmic rules! Rule #3: Our past selves were socially awkward, tech-addicted, basement-dwelling wimps! I know all that!"
"But tell me! What other choice do we have?! Get caught by the Dragon Group, brainwashed and dissected?! Get used as living batteries by those Warring States freaks?! Or get vaporized from existence by a 'Singularity Cannon' like they almost did back there?! Rather than die like cornered rats, I'd rather go back, even if it triggers the damn Big Bang! Take my past self down with me in a blaze of glory!"
His words hit me like a physical blow. He was right. We were out of options. Better to gamble on the impossible than wait for certain annihilation.
"So… have you decided on a time point? A specific moment?" I took a deep breath, trying to steady my voice, but my fingers trembled as I picked up the Chrono-Watch. It felt unnaturally cold in my hand, heavy, despite its size. My palm was slick with nervous sweat.
"Not finalized yet." Lu Zixian moved to the main console, bringing up star charts and timeline databases. His injured arm hampered his movements, but his eyes were intensely focused. "We need a point… where we can get close to our past selves, find clues to fix our current mess, *and*… ideally, avoid direct contact. Minimize the paradox risk."
"Avoid contact? How? The manual said 'inevitable encounter'!" I frowned.
"Inevitable encounter doesn't necessarily mean a face-to-face chat," Lu Zixian countered, a sly glint in his eyes, like a hacker finding a loophole. "Maybe we can exploit their past… 'shyness'. If we appear nearby, observe from a distance, leave some clues… They were so timid back then, they probably wouldn't dare approach to confirm, might even convince themselves they were hallucinating…"
"You think… that could actually work?" I was skeptical. It felt like playing with temporal fire with faulty gloves.
"Don't know, but it's worth a shot." Lu Zixian pointed to a stream of data scrolling across the screen. "Based on the fragmented activity logs we managed to salvage about our own teenage years… there's one place, one time, that might give us the best chance."
"Where?"
"Our… 'hometown'," Lu Zixian said the word, his expression complicated, stirring up buried memories. "Back when… we were still in school, playing basketball, stressing about homework. Back when 'we' were naive, but also… vulnerable."
Chapter 3: Aurora Breach, Warring States Visitors
"Thinking here isn't helping." I (Liang) stared at the coordinates for the past flickering on the screen. My stomach twisted into knots. It felt like standing on a cliff edge – jump forward into the unknown abyss, or wait for the hunters to close in from behind. "Let's go downstairs, to the 'water bar'. Change of scenery, get a drink, think this through properly. This is too big to rush."
Lu Zixian nodded, offering no argument. He also needed a moment to process the sheer insanity of the decision, to try and formulate a plan, however flimsy. Years of shared hell had forged an understanding that often transcended words.
We activated the rickety, jury-rigged lift platform, descending with a series of groans and creaks. Exposed wires and pipes lined the shaft, emitting faint electrical hums and the gurgle of recycled fluids. The small alcove below was bathed in a softer, warmer light, a stark contrast to the cold blue glow of the main Shell. In the corner, the ancient water-recycling unit chugged along with a low "glug-glug" sound, filling the air with the faint, oddly comforting smell of disinfectant and some synthetic "calming" fragrance we'd added ages ago – our sad attempt at making it feel less like a morgue.
We slumped onto two relatively stable metal chairs facing each other. The recycler dispensed two cups of lukewarm, slightly yellowish recycled water. Steam curled upwards, dancing in the dim light. Through the small viewport, the eternal, unchanging blackness of the dimensional void pressed in, utterly silent, utterly empty.
I picked up the cup, the warmth seeping into my cold fingers, trying to find some semblance of calm in this brief pause. The Chrono-Watch, yesterday's self, pathological shyness, unknown temporal ripples… each thought felt like a lead weight in my gut.
Lu Zixian was silent too, his uninjured fingers drumming a restless, near-silent rhythm on the tabletop – his telltale sign of deep thought. His usually calm eyes were clouded with a profound worry.
Just as the fragile, oppressive quiet stretched to its breaking point—
*WEEE-OOO! WEEE-OOO! WEEE-OOO! WEEE-OOO!!!*
A klaxon! Piercing, ear-splitting, screaming at maximum volume, erupting without any warning! It shattered the false tranquility instantly! The entire space was plunged into a sickening, pulsating blood-red emergency light that strobed with heart-stopping intensity!
"Shit! What the hell is that?!" I (Liang) jolted, spilling the hot water, leaping from my chair!
"Maximum security breach! Something got through the final defense layer! Up top!!" Lu Zixian was on his feet too, his face deathly pale, eyes wide with disbelief and horror!
How was that possible?! We'd just checked; the shields were holding, even if the coordinates were compromised! Unless—
An explosion of light, impossibly bright, erupted from *outside* the viewport! Not aimed *at* us, but detonating in the void just *above* our Shell! It wasn't a beam, but a multi-hued, reality-tearing aurora, like the universe itself screaming in agony as it was ripped apart!
*KRA-KOOOOM!!!*
A shockwave, not of sound or energy, but of pure, high-dimensional *force*, slammed downwards! The entire Shell, this fragile bubble of reality, buckled and groaned under the unimaginable pressure! The metal floor beneath our feet vibrated violently; the ceiling shrieked as stress fractures spiderwebbed across its surface! The whole world felt like it was imploding!
"That's… not an energy weapon! It's… a spatial disruption field! They're collapsing the space around us!" I (Liang) shrieked, pure terror flooding my system!
Almost simultaneously, the reinforced force field protecting the ceiling above us crackled violently, like shattered glass.
*CRACK-KSSSHHH!*
The field imploded inwards in a shower of sparking energy fragments and warped metal debris!
And then, dropping through the collapsing ceiling like malevolent gods descending from a ruined heaven, came several figures – tall, massively built, radiating an aura of cold, heavy, suffocating pressure! They landed on the deck with a series of heavy, floor-shaking *THUDS!*
Camera zooms in, focusing on their armor – not like anything we'd seen from the Federation or common pirates. It was a bizarre, terrifying fusion of ancient Eastern samurai aesthetics and brutalist future-tech. Heavy plates of dark, burnished gold, angular and sharp, etched with intricate, twisting, seemingly organic glyphs that pulsed faintly with an unholy, inner crimson light. Their faces were completely hidden behind full helms shaped like snarling demon masks, the narrow visors glowing with two points of malevolent, inhuman scarlet light!
"It's… it's…" I (Liang) stammered, my teeth chattering uncontrollably, finding it hard to breathe. A name, synonymous with ultimate dread, clawed its way up my throat like bile: "War… Warring States… aliens!!"
"How… How did they breach the dimensional lock?! And… direct spatial jump insertion?!" Lu Zixian's voice cracked with disbelief and terror. He instinctively raised his Gauss pistol, but it looked pathetically inadequate against these monstrous figures.
The lead Warring States alien, even larger and more imposing than the others, its armor adorned with several blood-red, faceted crystals on the shoulders and chest, slowly raised one massive arm encased in complex machinery and power conduits. Its heavy, claw-like gauntlet opened, five thick fingers splayed. In the center of its palm, the air itself began to warp and shimmer as a sphere of energy, dense and scorching hot, rapidly coalesced, emitting an increasingly loud, high-pitched whine like tortured metal! The sphere glowed an ominous, deep crimson, pulsing with raw destructive power!
It was their standard-issue horror – the "Hyper-Sense" directed energy beam! Capable of vaporizing us and the entire Shell into absolute nothingness!
The shadow of death, absolute and inescapable, fell upon us. Cold terror, thick and cloying, wrapped around my heart, squeezing the air from my lungs! Time itself seemed to freeze!
"RUN!!!" A primal scream, fueled by pure survival instinct, ripped from my (Liang's) throat! I grabbed Lu Zixian, who was frozen beside me, locked in terror, and yanked him with all my might towards the corner of the room – towards the hidden panel concealing our last-ditch, one-way emergency escape portal! Our final, desperate hope!
Time stretched impossibly long, yet compressed into an instant!
The crimson energy sphere in the alien leader's palm reached critical mass, radiating heat that scorched the very soul! Its baleful red light reflected in the polished obsidian of its demonic mask!
We scrambled, two blurred shapes propelled by sheer terror, diving towards the faint, flickering blue light marking the portal entrance!
Behind us, the cold breath of annihilation!
A flash of blue! In that final, heart-stopping microsecond between existence and oblivion, the portal's energy field enveloped us in a thin, shimmering cocoon!
And in the very next instant—
*VWOOOSH-CRACKLE-HISS!!!*
A beam of devastating crimson energy, thick as a starship's core, erupted from the alien's hand, striking the exact spot where we had stood!
The alloy floor, the structure beneath, simply ceased to exist! Vaporized instantly! Leaving behind a gaping, ten-meter wide, impossibly deep crater with edges smooth as polished black glass, radiating waves of unimaginable heat and residual energy! The shockwave obliterated everything else within the collapsing dimensional bubble, reducing it all to swirling, incandescent plasma!
If we had been even one Planck time slower…
The familiar, brutal wrench of disorientation and tearing forces slammed into us again! Vertigo! We were tumbling, spinning, ripped apart and reassembled in the chaotic, violent, energy-scarred vortex of the emergency transit corridor… Alarms screamed in our minds, a cacophony of system failures and imminent collapse…
Chapter 4: The Indian Uncle's "One Cent" and the Geocore Chain
After an eternity of nauseating, bone-jarring chaos in the temporal Kwik-E-Mart Slurpee machine of a transit corridor, the violent forces abruptly ceased. The sensation of weightlessness vanished, replaced by a brutal, yanking force that dragged us out of the swirling vortex and slammed us, like discarded sacks of meat, onto… sand?
*Thump! Thump!*
The impact knocked the breath from my (Liang's) lungs, stars exploding behind my eyelids. My whole body screamed in protest, feeling like every bone had been individually shattered and poorly glued back together. A thick, coppery taste filled my mouth, mixed with the gritty texture of sand. *Ptui!* I spat out a mouthful of blood and grit, gasping for air on the cold, rough sand, coughing rackingly, each heave sending jolts of agony through my battered frame. The world swam in a dizzying haze, the only constant the dull roar in my ears, like a thousand angry wasps.
"Cough… cough… damn it… arm… my arm…" Lu Zixian groaned beside me, his voice strained with pain. I forced my blurry eyes open. He was curled on the ground, face contorted in agony, pale as a ghost. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead. His injured left arm was twisted at an even more grotesque angle now, the makeshift bandage soaked through with fresh, dark blood that stained the sand around it. The metallic tang of blood hung heavy in the air.
We were back in the wasteland. Endless dunes stretched out under a sky the color of lead, heavy and suffocating. The wind howled like a banshee, whipping sand against our exposed skin like tiny shards of glass. The air was colder now, biting deep into our bones. And fainter, but undeniably present, was that lingering smell of something burnt – the ghost of our destroyed Shell, clinging to us like a shroud. This place… it looked exactly like the same gods-forsaken patch of desert! Had the emergency portal malfunctioned and just dumped us nearby?! A wave of icy despair washed over me (Liang).
"Here… still the same damn place?" Lu Zixian managed to ask, propping himself up on his good arm, his voice hoarse.
"Looks… like it." I nodded, my heart sinking. "And… I've got a bad feeling… they're still on us!" I closed my eyes, concentrating past the pain and disorientation. Yes! That chilling sensation, like being watched by a million cold, unblinking eyes, that feeling of being *locked on* by something vast and inescapable… it was back! Fainter than before, maybe, but definitely returning, like a predator slowly reacquiring the scent!
"The Geocore Chain?! Already?!" Lu Zixian gasped, raw panic flaring in his eyes. "We just landed! How the hell are they tracking us so fast?! This is impossible!"
"It has to be! Those Warring States freaks and their tech don't play by normal rules!" I (Liang) gritted my teeth. "We can't stay here! We have to move, now! Or their 'special delivery' will arrive any second!"
"Move? How?! You can barely crawl, and my arm's busted! Where do we even go?!" Lu Zixian gestured helplessly at the desolate landscape with his good arm, his voice cracking with despair.
"No! Wait!" My fingers, fumbling inside my tattered coat for anything useful, brushed against something small, hard, and strangely familiar! The metal sphere! The last-resort communicator from the crazy old mystic! "The Indian Uncle! Maybe… just maybe… he can pull a rabbit out of his turban! Last chance! We bet everything on him not being full of shit!"
"That… that guy who claims he owns shares in multiple dimensions and talks to intergalactic space llamas?!" Lu Zixian stared at me, incredulous. "Seriously?! You're pinning our hopes on *him*?!"
"Got a better idea?! It's either trust the crazy mystic or become alien chow!" I snapped, pulling out the small, walnut-sized metal sphere, its surface etched with intricate, unreadable patterns. It felt cool and smooth in my trembling hand, despite the surrounding cold. Taking a deep breath, smelling the acrid mix of blood, burnt ozone, and dust in the frigid air, I didn't hesitate. I squeezed the sphere with all my remaining strength!
*Click!* A faint, sharp sound as the outer shell cracked like an egg, crumbling to dust. Inside, a tiny point of emerald light flared brilliantly for a microsecond, then died. The signal… was sent.
Silence. Only the wind moaning around us, and the frantic pounding of our own hearts against our ribs. The feeling of being targeted intensified, cold dread tightening its grip.
"Anything?! Is it working?! Come on, you old fraud!" I (Liang) whispered desperately, scanning the empty air around us.
"Shit! Yilun! Look! Your right!" Lu Zixian suddenly croaked, pointing with his good hand!
I whipped my head around! Just a meter to my right, the air itself rippled, like the surface of water disturbed by an unseen pebble! The ripples intensified, the space distorting, blurring! Then, impossibly, silently, a thin, ribbon-like conveyor belt made of pure, soft white light snaked out from the distortion! It hovered steadily before me! And nestled on a small, glowing platform at its end was a single, ancient-looking bronze coin, green with tarnish, depicting a bizarre, three-headed, six-armed deity!
"It actually worked!" My heart leaped!
But as my left hand, trembling with a mixture of hope and disbelief, reached out to touch the cold, corroded surface of the coin— *WHOOOM!*
An unimaginable torrent of information, raw data, warnings, schematics, principles, slammed directly into my mind! Not through senses, but a direct, brutal, high-bandwidth psychic data dump! It felt like my skull was splitting open, my brain overloaded, short-circuiting!
"Aaarghh!!!" I screamed, clutching my head, collapsing onto the sand, my body convulsing!
"Yilun! What's wrong?!" Lu Zixian yelled, terrified!
"In... Information! Too much! Geocore Chain… Quantum entanglement… monitoring the planet's core… High-dimensional signature…" I gasped, forcing the crucial information through the blinding pain, relaying it to Lu Zixian via our shared mental link. "Evade… Jump! Frantic jumps! Random! Wide-range! Overload their system! Crash it!" "And… find 'natives'! Low-tech worlds! Interact! Talk! Buy stuff! Borrow their 'low-frequency field'! Jam the signal!" "Quick! Keep moving! Jump often! Interact often! …Uncle says… that's all he can do… good luck…"
The data flood ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving my mind reeling, empty, throbbing. The white light conveyor belt retracted silently into the now-vanished spatial ripple. Only the ancient, cold, strangely vibrating coin remained clutched in my trembling left hand. The sky pressed down, darker now, the wind screaming like a hungry demon. A desperate, insane race against time, against technology beyond comprehension, was about to begin.
Chapter 5: The Serpent Girl and Fifty Desperate Leaps
"Holy… shit…" Lu Zixian breathed, his face a mask of stunned disbelief after receiving the mental data dump. "So… our survival plan is basically… become interdimensional pinballs, bouncing randomly between universes, while occasionally popping into ancient history to… chat up cavemen and hope their 'primitive vibes' mess with the enemy's super-advanced tracking system? Is that seriously the plan?!"
"Looks like it! And it's the only plan we've got!" I (Liang) staggered to my feet, clutching the strange coin like a lifeline, my head still pounding but my mind racing. A desperate, almost feral energy surged through me. "We need a 'driver'! Someone who can handle that kind of insane, high-frequency, random jumping! Someone whose 'ride' doesn't scream 'high-tech target' on every damn sensor! Someone fast, efficient, and… maybe a little bit nuts!"
"A driver… capable of that kind of dimensional hopscotch… and 'low-signature'…" Lu Zixian's eyes, previously glazed with despair, suddenly lit up with a flicker of recognition. He looked at me, and we both spoke the name simultaneously, a shared memory surfacing from the depths of our chaotic past:
"Ultra-Long Mei!"
I immediately fumbled for the small, compass-like device hidden in another pocket. It felt cool and metallic against my sweaty palm. This was the one-way emergency communicator we'd forced on Ultra-Long Mei ('Ultra-Long Sister,' our private nickname for her) when we parted ways ages ago – a girl whose unique, almost grotesque body modifications gave her an unbelievable, near-effortless short-range teleportation ability. We'd hoped she'd never need to use it, or us hers. "Her power… it's more biological, less tech-based, right? Lower energy signature! High frequency, short jumps, unpredictable! She fits the profile perfectly!"
"But her personality…" Lu Zixian frowned, worry creasing his pale face. "She's cripplingly shy, Yilun! Like, clinical-level social anxiety! Asking her to ferry us on a non-stop, life-or-death chase across fifty dimensions… Will she even agree? Or just panic and teleport away?"
"We don't have time to worry about that! We're out of options! The Geocore lock-on is getting stronger every second!" I stabbed the activation button on the communicator, sending out the faint, high-frequency ping into the void.
The wait was agonizing. Each second stretched into an eternity. The wind shrieked louder, the leaden sky seemed to press down harder. The feeling of being targeted, that cold, inescapable scrutiny, intensified, prickling the back of my neck like ice. They were re-calibrating!
"Come on… come on, Mei… please…" I muttered, scanning the empty air, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"There!" Lu Zixian hissed, pointing!
Just ahead of us, the air shimmered, like heat rising from asphalt, but colder, more ethereal. Ripples spread outwards, distorting the view. Then, like a figure emerging from mist, or a ghost phasing into reality, a slender, unnaturally elongated shape materialized before us!
She was swathed in voluminous, drab grey robes that hid her form, leaving only her enormous, luminous dark eyes visible. Eyes currently wide with alarm, nervousness, and an almost unbearable shyness. She trembled like a frightened fawn, darting glances around the desolate landscape, her gaze finally landing on us with confusion and fear.
"...You… you called… me? Wh-what's wrong?" Her voice was a barely audible whisper, thin as spider silk, almost lost in the howling wind.
"Ultra-Long Mei! Thank god! You came!" Relief washed over me (Liang), so potent it almost made my knees buckle. I immediately switched to mental communication, projecting urgency and desperation, pouring out the situation – Warring States aliens, Geocore tracking, the need for rapid, random, low-signature jumps, hitting low-tech worlds for interference! "We need your help! Desperately! Life or death! Only you can do this! Jump! Now! Anywhere! Everywhere! Fast! Random!"
Her large eyes blinked rapidly, processing the torrent of information and raw emotion. Her slight frame trembled more violently. For a heart-stopping moment, I thought she would simply vanish. But then, something shifted in those dark depths. The overwhelming fear didn't disappear, but it was overlaid with a strange, almost fatalistic resolve. She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
"She agreed!" I mentally shouted to Lu Zixian.
"Then go! Now!"
Without a word, Ultra-Long Mei acted. She extended her impossibly long, unnervingly flexible arms – they moved like boneless ribbons – and gently, hesitantly, placed her hands on our shoulders. Her fingertips were shockingly cold, smooth, resilient, not quite human to the touch.
"Hold on! This is gonna be rough!" Lu Zixian gritted his teeth.
The world *shattered*.
We weren't teleported; we were *flung* into a kaleidoscopic nightmare of collapsing realities! It felt like being shredded and rewoven by the fabric of spacetime itself! Senses overloaded, gravity reversed, up became down, sound turned into color, colors screamed!
*WHOOSH!* (Medieval Slum): Mud splattered! The stench of sewage, rot, and coal smoke hit us! Haggard faces in roughspun clothes stared! A leper begged! *WHOOSH!* (Crystal City): Blinding light! Soaring crystalline spires in a purple nebula! Melodious hums! Sweet floral air! A crystal chunk nearly brained me! *WHOOSH!* (Primordial Jungle): Crushing humidity! Towering, alien ferns blotted out the sun! The reek of decay and megafauna musk! A giant, iridescent frog croaked inches from my face! *WHOOSH!* (20th Century Street Corner): Asphalt! A kid on a bicycle stared, mouth agape! I yelled, "Did you finish your homework?!" His eyes widened in terror! *WHOOSH!* (Castle Courtyard): Stone! Clanging metal! Knights in armor! Lu Zixian made a lewd gesture and yelled, "Your king's a degenerate!" Swords were drawn! *WHOOSH!*
Again! And again! And again! A relentless, sanity-shredding barrage of dimensional shifts! Ultra-Long Mei was an engine of controlled chaos! Each jump was instantaneous, the destinations utterly random across timelines, realities, even physical laws! We had no time to orient, no time to think, barely time to breathe before being ripped away again! We were just baggage, clinging desperately to her cold, unyielding shoulders as she piloted us through the infinite, raging storm of existence!
Vertigo, nausea, tinnitus, blurred vision, muscles screaming, bones grinding – the physical toll was immense! We became numb, operating on pure instinct, fueled by raw adrenaline and the primal urge to survive!
But we remembered the Uncle's words! In those fleeting milliseconds we spent in recognizable "low-tech" Earth timelines, we *interacted*! A shared glance with a bewildered peasant! Grabbing a rusty nail from a bombed-out WWI trench! Making a goofy face at a Victorian child! Yelling random greetings at 1950s businessmen!
And it *worked*! Each time, we felt that chilling lock-on sensation flicker, fuzz out, like static disrupting a clear signal! Our "high-dimensional signatures" were being temporarily scrambled by contact with those "low-frequency fields"!
We didn't know how many jumps. Dozens? Fifty? A hundred? Our internal chronometers were useless, our senses battered into submission. We just held on, lost in the temporal tempest.
Then, subtly at first, we felt it. A tremor in Ultra-Long Mei's usually steady arms. Her breathing, always shallow, became almost inaudible, punctuated by faint, pained gasps. Through a gap in her robe, the skin on her neck looked impossibly pale, translucent, the veins beneath starkly visible and tinged with an unhealthy blue. Her energy signature, usually a faint hum, was now a flickering, dying ember.
She was burning out!
"Mei! Stop! You have to stop! Find somewhere safe! Please!" I (Liang) projected frantically, guilt and alarm overriding everything else.
She seemed to heed the plea, gathering her last vestiges of power for one final, gentler jump.
The chaotic tearing sensation eased. The world resolved.
We were back. Back on the cold, gritty sand of the same gods-forsaken wasteland. The derelict diner stood silent and dark in the distance.
But the sky… seemed a fraction less oppressive. And the feeling… that suffocating, soul-chilling feeling of being *watched*, targeted, locked-on…
It was gone. Utterly, completely gone.
"It… it worked?" Lu Zixian breathed, disbelief warring with overwhelming relief on his battered face. "We… we actually lost them?"
"Holy… fucking… shit…" Relief hit me (Liang) like a physical blow. I collapsed onto the sand, laughing and crying hysterically, a broken, sobbing mess.
"Thank… thank you… Ultra-Long Mei… truly…" Lu Zixian struggled over to her, his voice thick with emotion. He fumbled in his depleted pack and pulled out the last high-energy nutrient paste tube. "Here… take this… please… you need it…"
She looked at the tube, then at us, her huge, exhausted eyes filled with an unfathomable sadness. She shook her head weakly, a gesture of refusal, pushing his hand away with a trembling, almost transparent finger.
Without another sound, not even a whisper, she raised one impossibly long, flickering arm and traced a line in the air before her.
Space itself seemed to part silently, like a curtain of reality. She stepped through, a figure of fading light, and the rift sealed behind her as if she had never been. Only a faint, snowflake-like chill lingered for a moment, then dissipated on the moaning wind.
The wasteland wind still howled, whipping at our tattered clothes, chilling our exhausted bodies.
"She…" I stared at the empty space, a profound sense of loss and gratitude washing over me.
"She saved our damn lives," Lu Zixian said quietly after a long silence, clutching the nutrient tube tightly. "We owe her everything."
"Yeah." I nodded, pushing myself up from the sand. My body screamed protest, but my mind felt strangely clear. The immediate threat was gone, but the war was far from over.
"So… now what?" Lu Zixian asked, looking around the bleak landscape, the despair replaced by a weary uncertainty.
I took a deep breath of the cold, gritty air. My gaze turned towards a point in the distance, a coordinate point burned into my memory, into our very beings. A place of tangled pasts, broken futures, and maybe… just maybe… the key to everything.
"We go home," I said, my voice hoarse but filled with a newfound, unshakeable resolve. I met Lu Zixian's gaze.
"Back to the Liang residence."
Chapter 6: Homecoming and an Unexpected Encounter
The wind, though slightly less brutal now, still carried the bite of the wasteland and the fine grit that coated everything. The sky remained a uniform, depressing grey, offering no hint of sun or hope. We stood in silence for a long moment, the vast emptiness of the desert mirroring the hollow exhaustion deep within us. The adrenaline rush had faded, leaving behind only aching muscles, throbbing injuries, and the gnawing uncertainty of what came next.
"'The Liang residence'…" Lu Zixian echoed the name, his voice flat. He looked down at his mangled arm, then back at me, his usually calm eyes troubled. "Are we really doing this? Going back… to *that* specific point in time?" The unspoken question hung heavy in the cold air: *Are we ready for the consequences?* "Our condition… and the risk… meeting ourselves…"
I (Liang) looked towards the horizon, towards the place only visible in my mind's eye. The wind whipped strands of sandy hair across my face, stinging my eyes, but my gaze didn't waver. "We don't have a choice anymore, Zixian," I said, my voice still rough but steady now. "The Geocore Chain is only temporarily scrambled. Who knows when they'll pick up our trail again? Ultra-Long Mei pushed herself to the absolute limit; we can't rely on her for another escape like that. We need a real solution, not just running in circles like headless chickens."
I opened my left hand, staring at the ancient bronze coin nestled in my palm. Its cold, metallic surface felt strangely grounding amidst the chaos. "The Liang residence, back when 'we' were kids… yeah, they were clueless, maybe even cowardly, but things were… simpler. There might be clues there we overlooked, things related to why we're being hunted, maybe even something about the Desert Crystal. At the very least," I added, trying to convince him as much as myself, "it's a relatively 'low-tech' environment, familiar territory. A place to lie low, patch ourselves up, maybe even scavenge some basic supplies." "As for meeting 'them'… like you said before, we play it smart. Stay hidden. Observe. Exploit their… social awkwardness. We'll be ghosts."
Lu Zixian remained silent for a long moment, weighing the terrible options. Finally, he gave a slow, reluctant nod. He knew I was right. It was the least worst choice in a sea of bad ones.
"The coordinates… you still got 'em locked?" Lu Zixian asked gruffly.
"Burned into my brain." I (Liang) retrieved the sleek, black Chrono-Watch from an inner pocket. Its mirror-like face reflected our own grimy, exhausted features. The non-metal composite felt cool and alien against my skin. Taking another deep breath, I ran my fingertip across several near-invisible sensor points on the side of the casing, inputting the target temporal and spatial parameters – Destination: Earth, Year 2025 AD (our estimated mid-teenage years), vicinity of the Liang family apartment building.
*Vmmmmm…* A barely audible hum emanated from the watch. The deep black face shimmered, coming alive with swirling patterns of faint, complex blue data streams, like a miniature galaxy being born.
"Hold on tight," I warned.
Lu Zixian placed his good hand firmly on my shoulder.
A soft, ethereal blue light pulsed from the Chrono-Watch, expanding outwards, enveloping us both like a gentle wave. There was none of the violent tearing or disorientation of the emergency jumps. This felt smooth, controlled, just a slight, almost pleasant sensation of sinking into a deep, calm ocean. The desolate wasteland around us blurred, stretched, distorted, colors bleeding into one another, finally dissolving into a flowing river of pure light and shadow.
The light faded. The sense of weightlessness vanished. Our boots met solid, slightly gritty concrete.
The world snapped back into focus. Gone was the howling wind and oppressive grey sky. Bright, warm sunlight streamed down from a clear, impossibly blue sky. The air was filled with the fresh scent of cut grass, the slightly musty smell of old apartment buildings, and, drifting from somewhere nearby, the cheap but enticing aroma of fried street food. Sounds assaulted our ears – children laughing, the cheerful *ding-ding* of bicycle bells, the muffled drone of a television from an open window, the chatter of neighbors… the vibrant, chaotic, wonderfully *normal* symphony of everyday life in a peaceful era.
We stood blinking, momentarily disoriented, at the bottom of a slightly worn apartment block. Its beige paint was peeling in places, revealing the grey concrete beneath. Colorful laundry fluttered from lines strung across balconies overflowing with potted plants. It was… achingly familiar. The place where 'we' grew up. So real, yet feeling like a scene from a half-forgotten dream.
Just as we were taking in the sensory overload, a burst of energetic shouts and the rhythmic *thump-thump-thump* of a bouncing basketball erupted from the small, paved courtyard in front of the building.
"Pass it! Over here! I'm open!"
"Shoot it, man! What are you waiting for?!"
"Nice! Three-pointer!"
Our heads snapped towards the sound. My (Liang's) heart skipped a beat, breath catching in my throat.
There, under the bright afternoon sun, two boys in sweaty white t-shirts and shorts were playing a furious game of one-on-one. Sunlight gleamed on their young, limber bodies; sweat dripped from flushed faces contorted in concentration and exertion. Every jump, every shot, every feint radiated an uncontainable, almost explosive youthful energy.
It was… a younger version of… me! (Liang Yilun)!
And beside him, equally young, face still holding a trace of baby fat, but his eyes already showing hints of that characteristic cool focus… Lu Zixian!
Seeing them… seeing *us*… a bizarre, almost painful wave of emotion washed over me. Intense familiarity, a pang of nostalgia so sharp it hurt, yet simultaneously, an immense, unbridgeable distance. Like watching ghosts. *Our* ghosts. Playing out a life we had long since left behind, a life we could never return to. The sheer temporal displacement, the weight of all the years and horrors that separated 'us' now from 'them' then, felt crushing.
Lu Zixian beside me stiffened, his breath catching audibly. I felt his hand briefly touch my arm, a silent warning to stay calm, stay hidden.
"They're… almost done," he breathed, his voice barely a whisper, strained.
We snapped back to reality, shoving down the turbulent emotions. Instantly, instinctively, we melted back into the deep shadows of the building's entranceway, pressing ourselves flat against the cool, rough concrete wall. Our hearts hammered against our ribs, palms slick with sudden sweat. That was too close! A few seconds later and they would have seen us!
We held our breath, peering out from the darkness like fugitives, tracking their movements.
Sure enough, the game wound down. Teenage Liang grabbed a towel draped over a nearby railing, wiping his sweaty face. Teenage Lu picked up the basketball. Shoulder-to-shoulder, laughing and shoving playfully, they headed towards the building entrance. Their voices, clear and young, drifted into the shadows where we hid.
"...Totally beat… gotta shower first thing when I get back…" That was young Liang's voice, bright, maybe a little breathless, carrying that faint undertone of shyness I barely remembered.
"Yeah, yeah, shower then homework. Physics model's due tomorrow… Did you finish that stupid spaceship thing yet?" Young Lu's voice, steadier, already carrying a hint of his future pragmatism.
"Nag, nag, nag… let me get a drink first, okay…"
They ambled into the stairwell, the sound of their sneakers echoing on the concrete. The jingle of keys, the click of a lock, the familiar heavy *clunk* of our old green security door opening and closing.
"Now!" Lu Zixian hissed.
Like two wraiths, we darted from the shadows. Moving with the practiced silence and speed honed by years of desperate flight, we slipped into the same apartment building just as the stairwell door swung shut behind them, making absolutely no sound, attracting no attention.
We didn't follow immediately. We paused in the dim, musty-smelling space at the foot of the stairs, leaning against the cool, damp concrete wall, taking deep breaths to steady our racing hearts. The close call, the jarring confrontation with our own past… it was almost more unnerving than facing down enemy blasters.
"Whew… that was… way too close for comfort," I (Liang) exhaled slowly, feeling the sweat trickling down my back.
"Nearly blew it right at the start," Lu Zixian agreed, his voice still tight. He closed his eyes for a second, visibly centering himself. "Okay. Remember the plan. Objective: the storage room. Find the disk. Get it, get out. Minimal noise, zero contact with 'them'. Got it?"
"Got it." I nodded, my expression hardening. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by a cold focus. That disk… if the fragmented intel was right, it held a secret the Warring States aliens desperately wanted. It might be our only bargaining chip, our only way out of this endless chase.
We exchanged a final look – a silent acknowledgment of the danger and the stakes. Then, moving with the stealth of seasoned predators, we began our ascent up the dusty, dimly lit staircase, the faint smell of mildew and old cooking clinging to the air. Towards the past. Towards the secrets hidden within the 'Liang residence'.
Chapter 7: Storage Room Secrets and the Black Hole Trap
The stairwell was dim, smelling faintly of dust, damp concrete, and the lingering aroma of someone's fried fish dinner from the floor below. Pale sunlight filtered weakly through grimy windows on each landing, illuminating swirling dust motes in the stale air. Our footsteps, clad in worn, soft-soled boots, made almost no sound on the concrete steps, but my (Liang's) own heartbeat thudded like a war drum against my ribs, echoing unnervingly in the silence. Each floor we passed felt like ascending through layers of my own forgotten history, a bizarre and unnerving sensation. This sneaking around in my own past… it felt deeply wrong, like violating a sacred space.
Reaching the floor where the Liang apartment was located, we paused again, pressing ourselves flat against the wall by the stairwell corner, straining our ears. From behind the familiar, slightly battered green security door, we could faintly hear the muffled sounds of life within – the low murmur of voices (too indistinct to make out words), the occasional rustle of paper, the scratch of a pen. It sounded like the two boys were indeed occupied, likely in their separate rooms, engrossed in homework or whatever teenagers did in 2025.
"They're inside, occupied. Good," Lu Zixian breathed, barely moving his lips. He gestured silently towards the side of the apartment.
We didn't risk the front door. Instead, we tiptoed along the narrow corridor wrapping around the apartment unit, heading towards the small, often overlooked metal service door that led directly onto the back balcony. In my memory, this door was almost never locked, used mainly for hanging laundry or storing junk.
The door handle was cool and slightly gritty to the touch. Lu Zixian produced a slender, multi-frequency lockpick tool from a hidden pouch. The metal sliver slid into the old-fashioned keyhole with a faint *click*. He held his breath, fingers manipulating the tool with practiced delicacy. Tiny metallic scraping sounds, barely audible, emanated from the lock mechanism. My (Liang's) breath hitched. After a few tense seconds, another soft *click* echoed – the sound of the latch disengaging. Success.
We eased the metal door open just enough to slip through, the rusty hinges emitting a low, protesting groan that sounded deafeningly loud in the quiet corridor. A gust of warm air, carrying the scent of sunshine and laundry detergent, greeted us as we stepped onto the small, cluttered balcony. Faded school uniforms and athletic shirts hung limply on a sagging clothesline, swaying gently in the breeze. In the corner, a deflated basketball lay amongst discarded flowerpots and cleaning supplies. We quickly slipped inside and carefully pulled the metal door shut behind us, securing the latch from the inside.
The glass sliding door leading from the balcony into the living room was, as expected, unlocked. We slid it open a crack, the rollers grating slightly on the track, and slipped silently into the apartment.
The living room was empty, bathed in the warm glow of the afternoon sun slanting through the large window. Dust motes danced lazily in the sunbeams. On an old wooden coffee table lay several open physics and math textbooks, pages ruffled slightly by the breeze from the balcony door. Beside them sat a half-empty glass of water, condensation beading on its surface. The doors to the two bedrooms leading off the living room were both firmly closed. Faint light seeped from under one, accompanied by the persistent, rhythmic scratching of a pen on paper. They were definitely in their rooms, hopefully deeply engrossed. A strange sense of unreality washed over me (Liang). Here we were, fugitives from the future, risking everything, while our past selves were just… doing homework. The sheer mundanity of it, contrasted with our desperate situation, felt almost insulting.
"Objective: storage room," Lu Zixian whispered, his voice pulling me back from the brink of existential crisis.
Right. The mission. We moved like shadows across the worn linoleum floor, heading towards the back of the apartment, towards the small, windowless room typically used for storing junk and forgotten relics of family life.
The storage room door was plain, unpainted wood, the surface rough, the cheap brass doorknob loose and tarnished. We turned the knob slowly, carefully. It opened with a soft creak. A thick, heavy wave of stale air rolled out, hitting us with the overpowering stench of dust, mildew, decaying paper, and something vaguely like old mothballs. It was the smell of neglected time. The room beyond was almost completely dark, only a sliver of light leaking in from the hallway, barely illuminating towering, chaotic piles of… stuff. Old books yellowed with age, broken toys with missing limbs, defunct electronic gadgets trailing wires, cardboard boxes collapsing under their own weight, spilling out faded photographs and bundles of letters… The clutter reached almost to the ceiling, leaving only a narrow, winding path between the debris.
"Split up. Find it fast," I (Liang) murmured, squeezing sideways into the cramped space. My foot immediately caught on something soft that squished under my boot with a sickening sound, making me jump.
We began the painstaking process of searching through the mountain of forgotten history. Every movement had to be deliberate, silent. Lifting a box lid, shifting a stack of old magazines, peering into dusty corners – all done with excruciating care. The thick dust made my nose itch and my throat raw; the musty smell clung to the back of my throat. Seconds stretched into minutes. Sweat trickled down my back, soaking through my tattered shirt. But the target – that specific, supposedly crucial optical disk – remained stubbornly elusive.
"Are you sure… the intel was accurate?" Lu Zixian's whisper held a note of rising anxiety and frustration. "Maybe it was never here? Or maybe 'they' already took it?"
"Keep looking… It *has* to be here…" I (Liang) wiped sweat from my brow with a grimy sleeve, my own doubts beginning to gnaw at me. Had we risked everything, traveled back thirty years, only to chase a phantom? No… the fragmented data, the whispers we'd intercepted… they all pointed here…
Just as despair began to set in, my searching fingers brushed against an anomaly deep within a pile of old blankets stacked against the back wall. The wallpaper behind the blankets felt… wrong. It was loose, bubbled, peeling away from the wall. And beneath it… my fingers didn't meet solid plaster or brick. They met… nothing? A yielding softness? A cold… void?
My heart gave a sudden lurch. "Zixian, over here! Look at this!"
He carefully navigated the obstacle course of junk and joined me. I ripped away the loose section of faded, floral-patterned wallpaper with a soft tearing sound. What lay beneath wasn't a wall at all.
It was… a hole. A patch of absolute, light-devouring blackness. Roughly circular, perhaps half a meter in diameter, its edges indistinct, fuzzy, as if reality itself frayed at the boundary. Inside was a darkness so profound, so complete, it felt like staring into the abyss, into the primordial emptiness before creation. A chill, not of temperature but of something far deeper and more terrifying, emanated from the opening, prickling the hairs on my arms.
"What… what the hell is *that*?!" Lu Zixian breathed, his eyes wide with shock and a dawning, horrified recognition. "A spatial warp? A micro-singularity? Or… or some kind of… trap?"
"This feeling…" I (Liang) stared into the unnerving blackness, a fragmented memory, a flash of déjà vu from a previous time-travel mishap, surfaced in my mind. We'd seen something like this before… briefly… disastrously… "The disk… what if… what if it's *inside* there?" The thought was insane, reckless, born of desperation. Maybe this wasn't a wall defect, but the *real* hiding place? Or a doorway *to* the hiding place?
Driven by a potent cocktail of curiosity, urgency, and perhaps a latent self-destructive impulse, I didn't hesitate. "I'm going in to check!" I hissed at Lu Zixian, taking a deep breath of the musty air. I crouched down and, like diving into pitch-black water, plunged headfirst into the unnerving darkness.
"Wait! Yilun! Don't be an idiot!" Lu Zixian lunged forward to stop me, but it was too late.
My body was instantly enveloped by a strange force – gentle, yet freezing cold, like being submerged in liquid nitrogen that somehow didn't burn. The darkness wasn't absolute emptiness; far in the distance, infinitesimal points of light, like dying stars or quantum foam, flickered in and out of existence. There was no sound, no smell, only a bizarre, disorienting sensation of my own physical being becoming… diluted? Stretched thin across dimensions?
Just as my legs cleared the opening, and Lu Zixian, propelled by worry, leaned in after me—
*VROOOMMM!*
A low, resonant hum vibrated through the very fabric of the space around us!
The portal behind us – the hole in the wall – suddenly flared with a swirling membrane of grey, mist-like energy! The energy solidified, hardened, in less than a second! The torn wallpaper smoothed over, the solid-looking wall reappearing as if the black hole had never existed!
"Shit!" Lu Zixian yelped, trying to scramble back out, but slammed face-first into an invisible, unyielding barrier! He bounced off, landing in a heap beside me in the strange, cold darkness.
I felt it too! We were… trapped! Sealed inside this… pocket dimension? This anomaly hidden within the storage room wall?!
"Hello?! Anybody?! Uncle! Grandma! Bro! Sis!" I (Liang) yelled instinctively towards where the exit had been, my voice sounding muffled, absorbed by the oppressive silence, echoing back emptily. A wave of claustrophobic panic, cold and suffocating, washed over me.
"Zixian?! What happened?! We're stuck?!"
"Stop yelling! It's useless!" Lu Zixian pushed himself up, trying the invisible barrier again with his fists, futilely. He slumped back against the cold, smooth 'wall' of the pocket dimension, his face grim in the near-total darkness. "We… we walked right into it. It *was* a trap."
Cut off. Completely isolated from the house, from the world outside. So close, yet universes away. Our shouts couldn't penetrate the bizarre prison wall. Only darkness, cold, and the suffocating weight of the unknown pressed in on us.
Chapter 8: Marooned and the Time Shift
Absolute darkness. Absolute silence.
Trapped. Like bugs in a lightless jar. The 'walls' of this pocket dimension felt smooth, seamless, and unnervingly cold to the touch – not solid matter, more like hardened energy. The 'air', if you could call it that, was thin, stagnant, carrying no scent, offering no resistance to breath, only a chilling sense of… nothingness. The only sounds were the ragged rhythm of our own breathing, amplified in the crushing stillness, and the frantic *thump-thump* of my (Liang's) heart against my ribs.
Time lost all meaning here. No light, no shadows, no cycles. Had it been hours? Days? There was no way to tell. Our senses, starved of input, began to play tricks. Phantom whispers seemed to echo just beyond hearing; fleeting shapes seemed to move in the impenetrable gloom.
We sat slumped against the cold boundary, not speaking. Words felt pointless, swallowed by the vast, oppressive silence.
(Liang's internal monologue) I closed my eyes, but the darkness behind my eyelids was no different from the darkness without. Except, in the inner dark, memories flickered like faulty holoprojectors. This storage room… I remembered sneaking in here as a kid. Hiding candy wrappers, broken action figures, secret drawings in the dusty corners. It was my sanctuary, my treasure trove of junk. The wobbly bookshelf in the corner, piled high with faded comics and worn paperbacks… Uncle's mysterious half-smile, Grandma's endless nagging, my sisters' squabbles, my brother locked in his room, muttering about lottery numbers and political algorithms… Vivid flashes of a life that felt simultaneously like yesterday and a million years ago. They were right outside, separated by an impossible barrier, oblivious to our desperate plight… A sharp pang of loss, of helpless nostalgia, twisted in my gut.
After what felt like an age, the suffocating silence became unbearable. Maybe it was the Libra in me craving balance, needing *some* kind of interaction to break the void. "Hey… Zixian…" My voice sounded strange, hollow, rusty from disuse. "You… uh… getting bored yet?"
A weary sigh echoed faintly from the darkness near me. "Bored? Is that really our primary concern right now, Yilun?" Lu Zixian's voice was flat, drained. "I'm more interested in *who* set this trap, and *why*. Was it aimed specifically at us, or is this… anomaly always here?" Even now, his analytical mind was trying to find patterns.
"Who knows…" I sighed back. Then, forcing a weak chuckle, trying to inject a sliver of normalcy into the abyss, "Alright, alright, Mr. Logic. Though… hey, remember that time I hid your limited-edition gravity-sneakers in the back of this very storage room? Took you three days to find 'em?"
A few seconds of silence, then a dry, humorless sound from Lu Zixian. "I remember. And I remember pounding you into the carpet when I finally found them."
A fragile moment of shared, albeit dark, history. Then the silence returned, heavier than before, pregnant with despair. We were adrift, lost in a pocket of non-time, non-space, with no exit in sight.
Just as a weary numbness began to creep over me, my mind starting to drift towards unconsciousness—
*Click.*
A sound. Faint, but sharp. Distinct. Like an old, rusty latch being thrown.
Both Lu Zixian and I snapped instantly alert! Every nerve ending screamed! Our hearts leaped into our throats!
Then, in the direction opposite the wall we'd entered through, a blinding sliver of light pierced the absolute darkness like a divine sword! It wasn't harsh, but a warm, dusty yellow light – the kind found indoors during the day.
A door?!
Where there had been only cold, seamless boundary, a door now stood slightly ajar, spilling light into our prison! It hadn't been there before! Had it just… appeared? Or opened on its own?
We scrambled to our feet, instantly back-to-back, weapons raised, scanning the impossible doorway with maximum vigilance. Who opened it? What was outside? Was this another layer of the trap? Or… salvation? Hope and terror warred within us, making our breath come in ragged gasps.
We exchanged a wide-eyed look. No words needed. Forward was the only option.
Moving with infinite caution, we crept towards the beckoning light. The closer we got, the more distinct the smells from the other side became – dust, decay, something stale and unpleasant.
We reached the doorway. It looked like an ordinary, albeit very old and warped, white-painted wooden door. Its hinges creaked faintly as it swung slightly in some unseen draft.
Holding our breath, weapons ready, we burst through the opening!
The scene that greeted us slammed into our senses, freezing us in place like statues struck by lightning. Our blood ran cold.
We were… still in the Liang residence! The layout, the furniture placement – ghosts of familiarity lingered.
But everything… *everything*… was wrong. Utterly, devastatingly wrong.
The walls were no longer just peeling; they were crumbling, revealing stained brickwork and patches of black mold. The ceiling sagged, riddled with water stains and deep cracks. Thick, grey cobwebs draped every corner like macabre decorations. The sofa we remembered was now a rotten husk, springs bursting through decaying fabric. Wooden tables and chairs were coated in a thick layer of grey dust, pockmarked with insect holes and gnawed by rodents. The floor was littered with debris, filth, and unidentifiable stains. The very air hung heavy, thick with the suffocating stench of dust, mildew, rot, and profound, deathly stillness.
*Squeak! Squeak!* Several enormous, greasy rats, utterly unafraid, scurried past our feet, leaving tiny black droppings in their wake. A chill draft blew through a broken windowpane, stirring the dust into ghostly swirls, carrying the smell of neglect and decay.
This wasn't just an old house. This was a tomb. Lifeless. Cold. Desolate.
"What… What the *hell* happened here?!" I (Liang) whispered, my voice trembling, a wave of nausea and profound wrongness washing over me. "We were… just in the storage room… How…?"
Ignoring the filth and our own shock, we frantically searched the apartment. Living room, kitchen, bedrooms – all the same story. Decay. Emptiness. Abandonment.
Uncle, Grandma, my sisters… everyone who should have been here in 2025… gone. Vanished without a trace. Even my eccentric, number-crunching brother… his room was empty, coated in the same thick layer of dust as everywhere else.
"Where is everyone?! What happened?!" Panic clawed at my throat.
Then, Lu Zixian spotted it. On the dust-covered ruin of the living room table, half-eaten by silverfish and rats, lay a fragment of an old electronic news-slate. He carefully picked up the brittle, yellowed piece, gently blowing away the accumulated grime.
The headline was illegible, lost to time and decay. But the date, displayed in the upper right corner in faded digital print, was horrifyingly, impossibly clear:
October 21, 2050 AD
2050?!
The date hit us like a physical blow. We stared at it, then at each other, understanding dawning with sickening certainty.
We hadn't escaped the trap in the storage room wall. We had merely passed from its entrance to its *exit*. And the trap… it wasn't just a spatial anomaly… it was a *time machine*?! A one-way ticket, thirty years into the future!
This house, once filled with life and memories, had succumbed to three decades of neglect and abandonment.
My brother… if time passed normally for him, he'd be in his sixties now… Where did he go? Moved out? Or… worse?
And us… We looked down at ourselves. Still young, unchanged. Our tattered clothes, relics of a different time, starkly out of place in this mausoleum of decay.
The absurdity. The despair. The crushing weight of being playthings of fate, tossed across decades like flotsam… it washed over us, leaving us utterly adrift in the ruins of our own past, stranded in a future we never asked for.
Chapter 9: The Burden of Immortality and the Desert Crystal
We stood amidst the wreckage of the Liang residence, circa 2050. The silence was profound, broken only by the mournful sigh of the wind through broken windowpanes and the scuttling of unseen rodents within the walls. Thirty years… a lifetime for a house, for a family. For us? Barely a blink. The dust motes dancing in the weak sunlight seemed to mock our unchanging forms.
Why? Why were we still like this, untouched by the relentless march of time that had ravaged everything else around us?
A memory, cold and clinical, surfaced unwanted from the deep archives of my (Liang's) mind. A flashback, sharp and sterile.
Long ago… 2060? Earlier? Back when the world was different, when *we* were different, facing some nebulous, world-ending threat (the details were hazy, deliberately obscured, perhaps?), or maybe just chasing the intoxicating allure of power, of transcending human limits… we volunteered. Or were 'persuaded'. For an experiment. Radical. Unproven. Dangerous.
I remembered the lab – gleaming white surfaces, the low hum of incomprehensible machinery, the sharp, antiseptic smell mingling with ozone. Faceless researchers in sterile suits, their eyes gleaming with fanatical zeal behind protective goggles. Lying on the cold metal slab, needles piercing skin, energy beams probing deep, causing waves of pain and numbness…
The core of it was something they called "Consciousness Matrix/Bio-substrate Forced Synchronization." A fancy term for… chip conversion. Implanting a bio-integrated processor, powered by some exotic energy source, designed to interface directly with our neural pathways, our very essence. It would upload, store, and *anchor* our consciousness, our memories, our core identity, to a stable, self-repairing energy matrix – one theoretically immune to the decay of biological time.
The result? Immortality. Of a sort. Our bodies were locked at a specific physiological age. Cells stopped aging, damage repaired at an accelerated rate. As long as the internal power source held, we would… persist. Unchanging. Forever.
But was it a gift? Or a curse?
I remembered our insistence, Lu Zixian's and mine, repeated like a mantra to the lead scientist, a stern woman with eyes like chips of ice: "Whatever you do, preserve our 'individual imprint'! Our core consciousness! Don't turn us into… soulless machines!"
She'd assured us, with cold confidence, that the technology was flawless, designed only to enhance, never to diminish, the essential 'self'.
Liar. Or perhaps just tragically arrogant. Who could truly control such forces? Playing God with life, time, identity… Maybe, in that transformation, the most vital parts of us, the unique sparks that made us *us*, were eroded, corrupted, overwritten?
Immortality… sounded grand in theory. In practice? It was a cage. We had infinite time, but lost the right to experience its natural passage. We were specimens trapped in temporal amber, forced to watch the world around us shift, crumble, decay, while we remained… static. Forever young, forever exiled from the river of life.
"Hey. Snap out of it." Lu Zixian's voice jarred me back to the derelict present. He nudged me with his good elbow. "Spacing out won't help. We need to figure out our next move."
I (Liang) shook my head, forcing the heavy thoughts away. He was right. Wallowing in existential angst wasn't productive. We hadn't risked coming back to the Liang residence – even this future version of it – just to reminisce about our lost youth or cursed immortality.
Our original goal here, back in 2025, was that damned disk, the one supposedly linked to the Warring States aliens. That lead was now cold, thirty years too late. But our *ultimate* objective, the one that transcended timelines, the burden that perhaps justified our very existence, remained: finding the legendary Desert Crystal.
Fragmented texts from lost civilizations, whispers in the data streams of interstellar networks, cryptic prophecies from future timelines we'd barely glimpsed… they all spoke of it. A substance of unimaginable creative energy, not native to this universe, a condensation of higher-dimensional power. The only thing capable of truly healing a ravaged planet like Earth, of mending the scars left by careless technology and endless conflict. The key to repairing temporal paradoxes, sealing dimensional rifts… maybe even elevating an entire world, an entire species, to a higher state of being.
Find the Crystal. Heal the world(s). That was the 'job'. The impossible quest we'd somehow taken upon ourselves. Maybe *that* was why we'd accepted the burden of immortality? To have enough time, enough chances, to actually succeed? The memory was a blur, but the *mission*… that was seared into our souls.
And then the Warring States aliens had shown up. Hunting us. Maybe they wanted the Crystal too? Or maybe they just saw us – two uncontrollable variables with time-travel tech and a potentially reality-altering goal – as intolerable loose ends that needed to be snipped. Their relentless pursuit had forced us into this endless, desperate game of temporal hide-and-seek.
"Timeline migration"... high-frequency jumps... low-dimensional interaction... all just stalling tactics. Only the Desert Crystal offered a real chance. A chance to fight back, to maybe even win.
A wave of profound exhaustion washed over me (Liang), heavy as lead. The constant running, the fighting, the temporal jumps, the shock of the time shift, the weight of our mission… it was all catching up. My body screamed for rest, my mind felt frayed at the edges.
My gaze drifted towards the corner of the ruined storage room, towards the object that vaguely resembled… a bed? The frame was rotten, slats broken, the thin mattress (or what was left of it) stained, ripped, covered in dust and unmistakable rat droppings. A thick, cloying smell of mildew and ammonia rose from it. Utterly disgusting. Yet, to my utterly depleted body, that pile of filth looked… almost inviting? A horizontal surface. A place to collapse.
"We need… to rest," Lu Zixian's voice was equally drained. He clutched his injured arm, his face etched with pain and weariness. "We're running on fumes. Push any harder and we'll just collapse. We're no good to anyone like this."
"...Yeah." I (Liang) nodded numbly. Logic dictated rest, even if the conditions were appalling. Survival first. Hygiene… a distant second.
We helped each other stumble towards the ruined bed. Ignoring the stench, ignoring the filth, we used our sleeves to brush away the worst of the debris and droppings from the warped wooden slats.
The frame groaned ominously as we carefully lowered ourselves onto it, sharing the dubious space. The uneven surface dug into our backs; the smell was nearly overpowering.
But exhaustion was a more potent force than disgust. Almost as soon as my head hit the dusty, splintered wood, the world dissolved. Consciousness surrendered, plunging into a deep, dreamless, desperately needed oblivion. It felt like trying to sleep off centuries of running, centuries of fear, melting it all away in the welcoming darkness.
Chapter 10: The Modified Balcony and the Land of Divine Origin
A stubborn beam of sunlight, slicing through a grimy crack in the boarded-up window, lanced across my (Liang's) eyelids. The warmth, startling after the deep chill of the ruined house, stirred me. Awareness returned slowly, like sediment settling in disturbed water. My eyes fluttered open, focusing on the stained, cracked ceiling above. The air still held that thick, musty scent of decay, but perhaps a little less pungent now, diluted by the weak morning light. My body ached, every joint protesting, but the soul-crushing fatigue had receded. My mind felt clearer, sharper.
I sat up carefully, the rotten bed frame groaning precariously beneath me. Beside me, Lu Zixian was already awake, leaning against the crumbling wall, examining his injured arm. The emergency med-spray seemed to have done its job; the bleeding had stopped, and the flesh looked less inflamed, though still swollen and bruised. He met my gaze and gave a curt nod, his eyes alert, calculating.
"Sleep okay?" he asked, his voice raspy.
"Like the dead," I (Liang) admitted, rubbing the stiffness from my neck with a self-deprecating grimace. "But hey, still breathing. Your arm?"
"Functional. Barely. Needs proper setting." Lu Zixian flexed his fingers carefully. "Forget that for now. We need intel. Figure out what year this *really* is, what happened here, and more importantly… our next move."
"Yeah." I (Liang) pushed myself to my feet, brushing dust and god-knows-what-else from my tattered clothes. "Let's check the balcony. Maybe… maybe something survived up there."
We navigated our way out of the disaster zone that was the storage room, back through the equally derelict living room. Sunlight streamed through the filth-caked windows, illuminating swirling galaxies of dust motes in the dead air.
We reached the staircase leading up to the balcony – that strangely familiar, yet alien structure. It was an old split-level design. A narrow set of white-painted steps led up from the left, meeting a wider main staircase halfway. Almost on autopilot, driven by decades-old muscle memory, I (Liang) stepped onto the left-hand white stairs first. The concrete felt cold and gritty beneath my boots. The white paint was chipped and faded, revealing the grey cement underneath, scored with countless hairline cracks and worn patches from years of use. I remembered running up and down these specific steps as a kid, pretending it was some secret passage… Now, stepping on them again, in this ruined future, felt… profoundly strange. A ghost walking in his own graveyard.
A few steps up, merging onto the main stairs, then a few more, and we stood at the entrance to the balcony.
The space that opened before us was both instantly recognizable and utterly transformed.
The basic shape was the same – a modest, semi-enclosed terrace. But the *details*… remnants of advanced technology, our own handiwork from a different timeline, clung stubbornly to the decaying structure.
The floor wasn't cracked concrete anymore, but panels of some dark grey, self-healing polymer composite, gleaming dully even under layers of dust and debris. The original flimsy railing had been replaced with a high, sturdy barrier of transparent aluminum alloy, its surface now scratched and opaque, embedded indicator lights long extinguished. Most striking were the two small, phone-booth-sized cubicles built into one corner, constructed from sheets of the same transparent alloy. Inside, faint outlines of control consoles and severed wiring harnesses could still be seen.
This… we did this.
The memory flooded back, vivid and sharp. Around 2030 AD, in a timeline brimming with the first explosive wave of true AI and ubiquitous tech. We, driven by a complex nostalgia, maybe a yearning for a simpler past amidst bewildering change, had returned to this empty shell of our childhood home. And we'd… retrofitted it. Lavishly. Impulsively. Using tech that was cutting-edge *then*. We reinforced the structure, expanded the space, installed independent life support and power… Why? Was it just sentimentality? Or were we trying to anchor ourselves, create a fixed point in the ever-shifting currents of time and reality?
More importantly, my (Liang's) eyes fixed on a circular metal plate set into the floor in the lower right corner, half-hidden beneath rubble. That plate, and the energy conduits running up the wall from it… that was the emitter pad for the experimental "Stairway Teleporter" system we'd installed.
It was designed to beam a person from that pad directly up to the small second-level loft we'd added (now mostly collapsed). And during activation, it was programmed to deploy two or three state-of-the-art micro-drones – for reconnaissance, defense, maybe just because they looked cool. We were young, flush with access to tech we barely understood… Was it just a high-tech toy? Or did we build it for a *reason*? A danger we anticipated even then?
Standing here now, in 2050, amidst the ruins, the dust-caked floor, the shattered alloy… the advanced tech looked just as forlorn, just as obsolete as the crumbling concrete around it. A monument to lost futures and the relentless decay of time.
I (Liang) walked to the edge of the balcony, leaning on the grimy alloy railing, and looked out. To the left, where a bustling, brightly lit hotel should have stood – built by my enigmatic, possibly billionaire Uncle (the one who always reminded me of a character from those old tomb-raiding novels) – there was only a skeletal ruin. Concrete bones overgrown with thick, tenacious vines, silhouetted against the bleak grey sky like a giant tombstone. The charming pebble path leading down to it was long gone, swallowed by weeds and neglect.
Why *had* we poured so much effort, so much advanced tech, into *this* specific, unremarkable balcony?
The deeper reason, the one whispered in fragmented data logs and ancient, apocryphal texts, surfaced again.
This land. This specific plot of ground where the Liang house stood… it was known, in certain esoteric circles, as "Shen Yuan Zhi Di" – the Land of Divine Origin.
Legends claimed that long before the Egyptians discovered their first energy crystals, deep beneath this unassuming patch of Malaysian soil, near the planet's molten core, lay a colossal, natural energy source. Not volatile, but pulsing with a slow, steady rhythm, radiating a gentle, life-giving energy field upwards. Growing up here, we'd always felt… *something*. A sense of peace, of well-being, an almost imperceptible hum of… *pleasantness* in the air. We'd dismissed it as good feng shui. Now, I wondered… was it the subtle influence of the Shen Yuan?
Later, in that far-flung 2100 AD timeline, we'd managed to capture and analyze this energy. And discovered its miraculous property: it could be converted, via a specific resonant frequency device, into an endless supply of pure, potable water. Independent of any AI-controlled infrastructure, which by then was becoming dangerously unreliable. A literal miracle.
And the subsequent deep-core scans and cross-referenced historical data yielded an even more staggering revelation: deeper still, near the edge of the Earth's core, lay not only remnants of Emperor Qin Shi Huang's legendary eastern expeditions (perhaps a hidden tomb or vault related to his quest for immortality?), but also… an unimaginable hoard of gold, silver, precious artifacts, and lost knowledge from antiquity!
We'd tried digging for it, back in 2045. Failed miserably. Conventional tech couldn't penetrate that deep. It wasn't until we turned to the god-like AI, ChatGPT-21, that we found a way. It designed… no, *extruded*… a drilling machine beyond our comprehension. A biomechanical marvel of liquid metal and focused spacetime warping we nicknamed the "Water Dragon Boat."
We deployed it near the old Liang house site. It burrowed down, silent and relentless, bypassing millennia of rock and pressure using physics we couldn't fathom. And it reached the target. The tomb, the treasure vault, whatever it was. And it brought *everything* back, teleporting the contents across dimensions to our secure location.
After that incredible feat, we'd found ourselves drawn back here, to this balcony. Again. It was always this place. Our anchor. Our curse.
Now, standing on its dusty, broken surface in 2050, gazing out at the overgrown wasteland below, the legends of Shen Yuan and the triumph of the Water Dragon Boat felt like half-remembered dreams, utterly disconnected from this grim reality.
The water-generating device, naturally, was long dead. Only decay remained. And memories, heavy as ghosts.
Just then, a faint, sputtering, mechanical whirring sound reached our ears, seeming to come from directly below the balcony edge!
Lu Zixian and I tensed instantly! Every nerve ending firing! We spun towards the sound, hands instinctively reaching for weapons we no longer possessed (except the Chrono-Watch)!
Chapter 11: Star Missions and the Detective's Brand
The faint mechanical whirring grew slightly louder, accompanied by a low hum. From below the balcony edge, near the circular metal plate of the defunct teleporter, three small, dark shapes rose slowly, vertically, with an eerie, almost silent smoothness. They were fist-sized, rotorless, propelled by some kind of anti-gravity field.
The camera zooms in, focusing on their forms. Drones! Instantly recognizable, despite the layers of grime and rust! They were the exact model of advanced micro-recon/defense drone we'd integrated into the balcony's system back in 2030! Some parts were missing, casings cracked, sensor lenses clouded, yet somehow… impossibly… their core systems were still active?!
How?! Thirty years of neglect! No power source connection we could see! No maintenance! It defied all logic! Unless… was the 'Shen Yuan' energy field somehow still providing a trickle of power? Or was this something else entirely? A cold dread seeped into my (Liang's) heart.
The three drones hovered in a perfect triangular formation about five meters away, their movements unnervingly precise despite their dilapidated state. The clouded lenses where their optical sensors should be suddenly glowed with a faint, malevolent red light. The light swept across us, slowly, methodically, scanning our faces, our bodies.
"Not good!" I (Liang) hissed, instinctively trying to activate a non-existent personal shield.
Too late.
After a few seconds of scanning, a burst of static crackled from the lead drone. Then, a synthesized voice, flat, emotionless, devoid of inflection like a malfunctioning service bot, echoed eerily in the quiet air:
"Warning: Unauthorized genetic sequence detected… Cross-referencing database… Identity verification in progress…"
A pause that stretched for an eternity. Then, the chilling pronouncement:
"Identity confirmed: Designation 'Detective'. As per Temporal Management Statute 7, Amendment 3, Paragraph C, high-dimensional entities bearing the 'Detective' genetic marker or exhibiting associated occupational predispositions are prohibited from lingering within designated Low-Dimension Historical Preservation Zone G-2050-CN-BT. Vacate immediately! Repeat! Vacate immediately! Failure to comply will result in initiation of compulsory expulsion protocols in T-minus ten seconds!"
Detective?!
Lu Zixian and I exchanged stunned, bewildered glances.
'Detective'? What the hell kind of designation was that? Some archaic 'occupational tag' embedded in our altered genetic code? A leftover marker from some forgotten mission profile? This was the first time we'd ever been identified as such! And according to this rust-bucket drone's outdated legal protocols, being a 'Detective' in this specific time and place (2050, Liang residence ruins) made us… illegal 'high-dimensional entities'?! Trespassers in our own future?!
And worse – ten seconds?! Compulsory expulsion?! What the hell did that even—
Before we could even formulate a plan to disable or evade the drones, it happened. So fast, so bizarre, we didn't even register it as an attack.
A barely perceptible ripple in the air, an almost subliminal energy field washed over us. Not painful, not forceful, more like… a targeted disintegration wave?
Suddenly, I (Liang) felt… cold. Exposed. I looked down— *HOLY MOTHER OF—!!!*
My clothes! Lu Zixian's clothes! Everything we were wearing – the tattered coats, the worn shirts, the pants, the boots – everything except the Chrono-Watch on my wrist and whatever minuscule tech was embedded in our bodies – had simply… vanished! Dissolved into microscopic dust! Instantly! Silently!
We were stark naked. Standing on a ruined balcony in the desolate future, facing three armed (presumably) drones flashing red warning lights.
This… This was the 'compulsory expulsion protocol'?! Forced public nudity?! What kind of twisted bureaucratic logic was this?! The sheer, mind-boggling absurdity of the situation, layered on top of the danger and the shock, left us utterly speechless, brains completely short-circuited.
And just as we stood there, frozen in a state of naked, bewildered horror—
*Screeech—*
Behind us, the grimy, cracked glass sliding door leading back into the living room was wrenched open!
A figure stepped out onto the balcony!
An old man. Perhaps in his late sixties. Hair mostly grey, thin on top. Face deeply lined, back slightly stooped. But his eyes, sharp and piercing behind thick-rimmed glasses, held an unnerving intelligence, the look of a mind constantly analyzing, calculating!
It was… him! My (Liang's) eccentric, number-obsessed, politics-analyzing older brother! The 2050 version! He hadn't vanished! He'd just been… out somewhere?!
He stepped out, seemingly drawn by the commotion or the drone's warning sounds. His sharp gaze swept past the hovering drones and landed squarely… on the two naked figures standing awkwardly in the middle of his ruined balcony. His eyes widened as he recognized our faces – faces identical to his own, thirty years younger.
Four pairs of eyes locked. His, filled with shock, disbelief, and a flicker of something unreadable. Ours, filled with sheer panic, mortification, and the dawning horror of being caught in the most compromising, most inexplicable situation imaginable.
Game over. Utterly, devastatingly, nakedly game over. This had to be the lowest, most humiliating point in our entire chaotic existence.
Chapter 12: The Mathematician's Rescue and the Getaway Car
My brother (the 2050 version) stood frozen at the doorway for a heartbeat, his face a canvas of conflicting emotions. Shock warred with disbelief, confusion with a dawning, weary understanding. Then, surprisingly, the panic didn't set in. Instead, his sharp, analytical gaze shifted from our mortified, naked forms to the three hovering drones, still flashing their menacing red lights.
"Ah… Material fatigue cascade in the energy containment field… leaky capacitors interfering with the recognition and execution subroutines… Figures. I knew those old power readings were anomalous…" he muttered to himself, his voice the dry rasp of an academic, instantly diagnosing the technical fault that had likely caused our involuntary disrobing.
Ignoring us completely for the moment, he spun around and hurried back inside. Seconds later, he reappeared, clutching a battered, ancient-looking tablet computer – the kind with a physical keyboard attached, a museum piece by our standards. His fingers, surprisingly nimble despite their age spots, flew across the cracked screen, tapping and swiping with practiced speed, muttering complex equations and strings of code under his breath. Years spent wrestling with data and abstract logic hadn't deserted him. And, as someone who likely grew up with the precursors to this drone technology, he knew its weaknesses.
"Got it! The emergency override backdoor! Simple architecture, sloppy encryption… ha!" A spark of triumph lit his sharp eyes. He looked up at us, his voice urgent, snapping us out of our stunned state. "Listen! Emergency shutdown command override is – Alpha! Five! Eight! Six! Oscar! Got it?! A586O!"
He relayed the code, then his eyes widened slightly, as if sensing something else, something far more dangerous approaching. "No time! Quick! You two! Together! *Now*! Use… use that… whatever future tech thing you have! Activate it *while touching*! Hurry! It's the only way! Or we're all toast!"
Touching?! Activate future tech while touching?!
Lu Zixian and I stared at each other, utterly bewildered but sensing the absolute, desperate urgency in my brother's voice. The drones' red lights were flashing faster now, emitting a rising, ominous whine. And a deeper, more terrifying sense of impending doom prickled the air around us, far worse than the drones.
No time to question the bizarre instructions! Trust him!
Overcoming a massive wave of awkwardness and sheer weirdness (two naked guys hugging?), we scrambled towards each other, clumsily, stiffly, wrapping our arms around each other in a tight, skin-on-skin embrace. It felt incredibly strange, wrong on multiple levels.
But the instant our bodies made full contact— *IT HAPPENED!*
The Chrono-Watch on my wrist! And maybe something deeper, something hardwired into our modified biology, some latent emergency protocol we never knew existed – *IGNITED!*
*VMMMMMM-BZZZZZZT!*
An unbelievable surge of raw power erupted from the point of contact between us! It felt like a dormant volcano suddenly blowing its top inside our very cells! I (Liang) could *feel* our individual bio-energy fields merging, resonating, amplifying each other exponentially! Our joined bodies became the epicenter of a blinding energy detonation!
An incandescent sphere of pure white light exploded outwards from us, vaporizing the air, swallowing the balcony, the drones, my brother's shocked face, the entire world in a silent, all-consuming flash!
When the searing light subsided, when consciousness returned from the brink of annihilation, the world had changed.
No more crumbling balcony floor. Instead… familiar, gritty, cold sand beneath our bare feet!
No more ruined apartment building. Instead… the vast, desolate, wind-swept expanse of the wasteland stretching out before us!
No more smell of dust and decay. Instead… the dry, sharp, sand-filled tang of the desert air!
Wait a minute… This landscape… it was the same damn place! Near the derelict diner where the Dragon Group car had been parked!
We… we'd been teleported back?! By hugging?! What the actual—?!
"It worked?! We escaped?!" A surge of incredulous joy flooded me (Liang). But it lasted only a nanosecond, instantly replaced by a tidal wave of horror and grief.
Because through the rapidly closing spatial rift behind us, the tear connecting back to that 2050 balcony, we saw the final, horrifying image—
My brother, having successfully used his hacked command to make the drones sputter and wobble erratically, stood exposed on the balcony. And from the sky above, tearing through the clouds like a spear of divine vengeance, a beam of energy far thicker, far more potent than anything the drones could produce, slammed down!
He didn't even have time to register it. The beam struck him directly. His body blackened, twisted in the searing light, collapsing backwards like a burnt matchstick.
And at almost the same instant, drawn by the commotion, our Uncle (he *was* still there too?! Just not in the living room earlier?!) rushed out from inside the house. Before he could even grasp the situation, another beam, slightly thinner but just as lethal, lanced down from above. It hit him squarely. His body, his startled expression, simply… disintegrated. Vanished into fine grey ash that scattered instantly on the wind.
Gone. Both of them. Sacrificed. To cover our escape.
"NOOOOO!!!" A raw, agonized roar tore from my (Liang's) throat, fueled by unbearable grief and white-hot rage!
The Warring States bastards! Again! They hadn't left! They'd used the drones, used my brother's ingenuity and courage, lured us out, and then… executed them!
Overwhelming grief, fury, and a crushing sense of guilt – *they died because of us* – threatened to consume me. But cold, hard reason, the survival instinct honed by years of flight, screamed louder: *Not now! Grieve later! Survive first! Revenge later!*
"The car!" Lu Zixian suddenly choked out, pointing with his good arm, his voice trembling with shared grief and hatred!
My head snapped around. Yes! There it was! The sleek, black 'Shadow-7' police cruiser, still parked exactly where we'd first seen it! Like a silent, deadly invitation. The occupants… the ones who'd fired those beams… were they still inside? Or had they left it here deliberately?
"Steal it! Now!" The thought, insane and audacious, flashed through my (Liang's) mind, fueled by grief and a burning desire for retribution! They killed my family? I'll take their ride! An eye for an eye!
"What?!" Lu Zixian stared, momentarily stunned by the sheer audacity.
"No time! Get in! It's our only way out of here! Our only weapon!" I (Liang) grabbed his good arm, hauling him towards the menacing black vehicle, running purely on adrenaline and rage!
Incredibly… or perhaps suspiciously… the driver's side door was unlocked! The interior tech was even humming faintly in standby mode! We scrambled inside, pulling the doors shut! The cockpit was cramped, filled with complex holographic displays and glowing consoles, smelling faintly of ozone and sterile metal. I (Liang) slammed into the pilot's seat, my hands shaking uncontrollably from shock, grief, and fury as I gripped the cool, slightly yielding material of the advanced steering yoke.
"What… what do we do?! How do we fly this thing?! And what about… them?!" Lu Zixian stammered, gesturing wildly towards the sky with his good arm, his face a mask of terror. This was Dragon Group elite tech; we had no idea how to operate it, let alone fight with it!
As my (Liang's) trembling fingers fumbled across the unfamiliar console, desperately searching for an ignition sequence or *any* control that made sense—
*KRA-THOOOM!!!*
A deafening roar erupted directly overhead, shaking the very air!
We instinctively looked up through the cracked windshield! And saw… descending rapidly from the heavens, trailing sparks and golden light, looking utterly, surreally out of place… a gigantic, gleaming, ridiculously ornate… golden ingot?! Like something out of an ancient Chinese legend, but the size of a small car, aimed directly at our stolen police vehicle!
"An ingot?! Are you shitting me?! Who throws ingots from the sky?!" I (Liang) stared, utterly dumbfounded, as the massive, glittering lump of gold filled the windshield, blocking out the sky, my brain completely failing to process this latest absurdity! What fresh hell was this?!