204: Chapter 2 Problems Brought by Time-Space Retrospection 204: Chapter 2 Problems Brought by Time-Space Retrospection At eight o’clock in the evening, Wang Yunxiao met another Zhou Qing at the Special Service Bureau.
On the same timeline, there appeared two Zhou Qings.
One was human, the other a ghost.
The Zhou Qing of the past, unable to bear the public pressure from the newspapers, had chosen to take her own life.
But after time-space retrospection, she had not seen that newspaper and continued to live.
Jiang Yinyin was still alive, though her whereabouts remained unknown.
Shen Haowen was still studying at school, had not used sorcery to harm anyone, nor had he been persuaded to leave by the school.
Wang Yunxiao felt that his intelligence was unable to handle such a complex issue.
All he could think about now was why time-space retrospection would affect the past of Qinghe Middle School?
Could the butterfly effect be so exaggerated?
You think this is like rebooting the universe!
If this were a movie, and the director decided that Zhang San’s fart would cause global warming, giving the protagonist a reason to beat him up, that might just pass muster.
Its internal logic would be sound.
But the situation at Qinghe Middle School was clearly unreasonable.
What does the might of Godzilla have to do with me?
I’m just an apathetic gorilla, yet you insist on making me take a photo with him.
It made no sense, unless…
The Cosmos had not arrived in port on time and was secretly connected to a series of events at Qinghe Middle School through unknown causal links.
Unable to grasp the logical relationship, Wang Yunxiao could only seek answers from another person in the know.
Yan Yu’an.
Liang Bin had his breakfast and then simply patted his buttocks and went home.
The other squads that had participated in the battle were not so relaxed.
Yan Yu’an was still in the hospital and had not left; judging by his facial expression, he looked even more haggard than he did in the morning.
After listening to Wang Yunxiao’s suggestion at the time, he drank a bowl of lamb soup, which greatly improved his state.
But by evening, he had returned to this decrepit look…
perhaps that was just the way he was normally.
It was hard to understand how the nickname of the suave and debonair “Nine-Patterned Dragon” came about.
Was it because others saw his frail condition and thought he had kidney problems?
He had not wasted his day.
When Wang Yunxiao found him, he had already collected nearly all the intelligence from the squads.
He had filled more than a dozen pages with information spread out on the ground, biting his finger as he pondered deeply.
“It’s possible because the incident with the Cosmos involved issues that went far beyond what we see on the surface,” Yan Yu’an affirmed Wang Yunxiao’s guess and then threw a bombshell in return.
“You don’t think time-space retrospection is something that can be used casually, do you?”
Wang Yunxiao thought to himself that he had no idea what rules applied to their “film set”, where monsters next door could throw a terawatt fireball at Ultraman without even breaking a glass, leaving them without reason to complain.
“To my knowledge, this is the first time the Special Service Bureau has initiated time-space retrospection since the establishment of the new government.
The energy from just the Cosmos is far from enough to warrant such attention from the higher-ups.
It’s merely an accidental fuse that’s sparked, connected to who knows how many powder kegs,” explained Yan Yu’an.
Picking up a paper from the ground, Yan Yu’an handed it to Wang Yunxiao, “Look, this is what I’ve compiled, the eyewitness battle reports from last night.
We had nine squads in total participating in the battle, all positioned on the perimeter of the battlefield dealing with the diversions.
But the members of these diversions were too diverse—ranging from demons from hell, cultists, vampires, wizards, fallen angels, Fusang ronin, and even masked martial arts experts.”
“This is still just the ones we’ve seen slip through the net.
The situation at the heart of the battlefield, only those inside the Special Service Bureau would know.”
“Moreover, this also involves a more troublesome issue.
After activating Time-Space Retrospection, the battle we fought might as well not have happened, and we still have to find and kill these hidden guys again, but our casualties are real…”
“What do you mean, ‘it might as well not have happened’?”
Wang Yunxiao was utterly confused, “You’re saying they resurrected, and our people didn’t?”
“Have you studied the macro theory of multi-dimensional dimensions?”
Yan Yu’an, holding his forehead in thought, said, “I’ll explain it to you in simple terms you can understand, don’t ask why, just get the gist of it.”
“Suppose we and the Foreigners are in the same classroom, and the teacher is teaching the Three Character Classic in Chinese.
Although there isn’t that much of a difference in intelligence levels with Foreigners our age, Chinese is our mother tongue, so for the same Three Character Classic, we would definitely learn it faster than the Foreigners.”
“Time-Space Retrospection is like this Three Character Classic.
Our domestic time-space dimensions are quite stable, equivalent to having the advantage of a mother tongue, whereas the time-space dimensions abroad are unstable—they can only rote memorize.”
“The teacher taught twelve characters on the first day, we memorized them all, but the Foreigners didn’t memorize a single one, as if they learned nothing.”
“To accommodate the Foreigners’ learning pace, the teacher taught these twelve characters all over again on the second day.”
“In other words, our Resistance to this aspect is different from that of the Foreigners.”
“After the Time-Space restart is initiated, the time on the Cosmos will rewind, and all kinds of people and events associated with the Cosmos will undergo corresponding changes.
But we won’t rewind, we have already learned those twelve characters from the Three Character Classic.”
“Then why…”
“Don’t ask, you wouldn’t understand even if I explained.”
“Alright.”
“Where was I…
ah right, the Three Character Classic.
On the second day, even though the teacher taught the same content, there was already a clear gap between us, the Foreigners, and any new students.”
“You can think of this gap as ‘dimensions.'”
“This means that after experiencing Time-Space Retrospection, whether we went back to the past or not, we are no longer in the same dimension as the Real World after the Time-Space Retrospection.”
“Huh?”
Wang Yunxiao thought dismayedly, not only is this retrospection responsible for a BUG like Zhou Qing, but we also got retrograded out of existence?
Which programmer wrote this crap underlying code, they haven’t already made a run for it, have they?
“The Special Service Bureau’s method of solving this problem is very simple, just a bowl of mutton soup.”
Yan Yu’an rubbed his bloodshot and sore eyes and sighed, “Through the effects of medication to cause short-term memory loss, blurring the boundaries of cognition, ignoring the differences in dimensions.
Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it?
We were inexplicably dragged to the front lines, fought battles, people died, and we are yet to be coaxed into drinking medicine, to forget the pain…”
Wang Yunxiao was silent.
In so many teams, of course, there weren’t only smart people like him.
He felt something was off and thus refused Qiao Hongyi’s further enticement.
Yan Yu’an, on the other hand, arrived at this conclusion through his intelligence gathering.
Whether it’s accurate or not is hard to say, but the general direction should be without issue.
They had been duped.
“Yo?
What are you two researching here?”
As the two exchanged silent glances, Huo Qingyang walked over with his hands in his pockets, glancing casually at the notebook Yan Yu’an had placed on the ground, “Why blindly study this stuff?
If there’s a problem, why not just ask me?”