Chapter 2080: The Two-Day Time Difference
“This story isn’t anything new.” Xu Huo observed the situation along the street as he responded. “I have an enhanced version, too.”
“That person entered an unreal space, believed everything he saw was real, immersed himself in fine wine and food, and kept eating and drinking unconsciously and endlessly until he literally bloated to death.”
He turned back to glance at Wang Ling. “In this case, swapping the fine wine and food for destroying buildings would work just as well.”
Wang Ling paused in his motion of weighing the explosive prop, amused. “You think we’ll be trapped here until we die?”
“Whether we’re trapped or not is hard to say, but even if the city is destroyed, we might not necessarily get out.” Xu Huo’s gaze drifted into the distance. “The scale of this space is probably larger than we imagine. Can we really blow it all up?”
The fog obscured the view, but it didn’t feel like a deliberate trick to hide a cramped space.
“Let’s keep moving forward,” he said. “Maybe we’ll run into someone else.”
“Moving around in a place this empty alone is pretty boring,” Wang Ling didn’t object. “Hopefully, the next person we meet has some brains.”
The two arrived at the Time Tower. This Time Tower was far smaller than the famous one at the C9 wormhole point, standing only about fifty meters tall. The time difference between it and the surrounding buildings was considerable, and it looked very old.
Four clocks hung on each side of the tower. The front door showed 9:17. Going counterclockwise, the next three times were 12:03, 9:00, and 12:00.
The clocks used a 12-hour system, and the second hands were all stopped at the “12” position. There was no information about the date or month.
“Want to go in and take a look?” Wang Ling asked casually. He wasn’t really interested in going in, because the Time Tower was basically hollow. Although it had a door, you could see everything inside from outside—just some metal structures, not even suitable for hiding anything.
Xu Huo noticed the newsstand next to it. It was empty.
“Too strange.” He turned around again to look behind them.
This city seemed both real and fake. He had noticed many details: street signs, bus stop signs, information on items sold in shops, even the dates on packaging were precise, along with fresh fruits and vegetables and freshly cooked food. Based on these alone, it was entirely believable that someone had been living here just a second ago.
But other details were absurdly fake. For instance, books and other paper-based items appeared very rarely. Even in places where they should be, like this newsstand—normally, if it were still in use, it would have newspapers and magazines, or at least some text notices posted. Yet, like every other spot on the street where even a single flyer couldn’t be seen, it was too clean here.
In all the places they’d seen so far, electronic screens were also very scarce. Even the control rooms of large shopping malls lacked holographic projection equipment. Under these circumstances, aside from the network, these things should be the main medium for information dissemination. Their absence was abnormal.
“It is a bit strange.” Wang Ling rubbed his forehead. “Can’t even find a map, and they still have the nerve to put up tourist signs.”
“I didn’t see a police station nearby. I don’t have a ready-made connection device for the network equipment. Do you?”
Xu Huo did have one prepared, but he didn’t think it would be useful. However, since Wang Ling brought it up, he tried it anyway.
He found a nearby terminal device and powered it with the instrument. The terminal device showed no response at all.
“What’s going on?” Wang Ling frowned. “They can’t have brought players in here just to starve us to death, can they?”
Xu Huo’s gaze fell back on the Time Tower. The time everywhere else was basically consistent, but the time on the Time Tower was wrong. These four times must have some special meaning.
“Boom!” A muffled sound, neither too loud nor too soft, came from not far away. Both of them moved immediately and rushed over. Sure enough, it was another player. But when they met face to face, both Xu Huo and the other person had a hard time hiding their surprise.
The player who had suddenly fallen to the ground was none other than the sweet-faced girl from the puppet instance.
“You got out of the instance that fast?” Xu Huo frowned slightly.
The sweet-faced girl sneered, supporting her atrophied right arm. “What, do you think you’re the only one who can walk out of an instance alive?”
“I didn’t mean anything by it.” Xu Huo explained. “I was asking, how long after I left the instance did you clear it?”
“Why should I tell you?” The sweet-faced girl was completely uncooperative, quickly scanning the surroundings. “Didn’t think my luck would be this bad. I just got out of one instance and I’m already in another.”
Two against one, plus she was severely injured, with one arm seemingly immobile. Under normal circumstances, she should have tried to escape immediately. Yet, after looking around, she showed no intention of leaving.
“You’ve figured it out,” Xu Huo said. “This isn’t an ordinary random instance. It’ll be hard to get out alone.”
The sweet-faced girl stared at him. “Do you think I’d believe you’d help me?”
“Not help you, but mutual aid,” Xu Huo said.
The sweet-faced girl hesitated for a moment before answering his earlier question. “I cleared it in the second week. And I was the only other person besides you who cleared it.”
Xu Huo had left the instance on the first Sunday. He had only stayed outside for less than a day before entering this instance. According to the time conversion between the puppet instance and C11-011, when the sweet-faced girl left the instance, it should have been three days later in Zone 011…
The timing was off. Which link had gone wrong?
Seeing his expression suddenly turn very grim, the sweet-faced girl said hesitantly, “Is there something wrong with my clearing time?”
“Your time isn’t the problem. My time is the problem.” Xu Huo looked at the time prop on his wrist. To more easily distinguish between the time in the home zone and the instance zone, this type of prop often had multiple miniature dials specifically for players to adjust the time. When he entered, one of the dials wasn’t too different from the other stopped clocks and watches in the city. And the time here was roughly the same as the time outside in Zone 011. That’s why he thought the dial he had adjusted for Zone 011 was fine, hadn’t made any changes, and assumed he had just entered this abandoned city space…
But if he had just entered, where did the two-day time difference between him and the sweet-faced girl’s clearance go?
If it were just a few seconds, or even a few minutes, he could let it slide for now. After all, entering a completely different space could cause time discrepancies—it wasn’t an absolute impossibility. But being completely unaware of two entire days passing couldn’t be explained away by mere spatial crossing errors!
“Do you have any more timekeeping tools?” Xu Huo took two spare watches from his luggage compartment, set the time according to the numbers on the Time Tower, and stopped them.
“I only have one,” Wang Ling said. “Why would I prepare so many timekeeping tools?”
He was still using the basic version of an automatic zone-time-switching tool.
“I have one.” The sweet-faced girl tossed one over.