Chapter 2099: The Increment of Time
"Now the clocks on 17th Street are also running backward. What does this mean?" Wang Ling said. "Are 6th Street and 18th Street in the same state? Is the city's time symmetrical?"
"It appears so," Xu Huo nodded. Pumpkin City was symmetrical—everyone had known this when they got the map. From left to right, there were 23 streets. Except for the central straight street, 12th Street, all other streets corresponded one-to-one. 1st Street corresponded to 23rd Street.
The time after 9:17 PM was clearly chaotic. That was why when they had looked in both directions on 16th Street earlier, the clocks were moving in opposite directions. Although their timing tools were still running normally, the blurring effect of prolonged time perception, combined with the lack of external aids for judgment, made it impossible to determine the exact time. Moreover, in Pumpkin City after 9:17 PM, time seemed to have lost any precise definition.
"Why did you send Meng Wenguang to 6th Street?" Tang Ming asked. "When we were on 17th Street, the clocks on 16th and 18th Streets were moving in opposite directions. Shouldn't the position he chose have been 7th Street? Did you figure out the time pattern?"
"Actually, this pattern is quite simple." Xu Huo stared at the clock on 17th Street, which had already started running backward. "A clock running backward represents past time, while a clock running normally represents future time. If we go to 19th Street now, the clock on 18th Street would still be running normally, meaning we have surpassed the time."
Tang Ming frowned, but Wang Ling had already caught on. "Are you saying that the time on each street increases sequentially? The time on our timing tools is accurate. It's currently 10:36 PM. Streets with times earlier than this point have clocks running backward, while streets with times later than this point have clocks running normally. We happen to be right on the dividing line of correct time?"
"That should be correct," Xu Huo said.
"Then why do the people over there see the clocks running correctly?" Tang Ming asked. "If time is incrementing, shouldn't it be uniform?"
"I've been thinking about that too." Xu Huo casually pulled out a map from the roadside and repeatedly studied the street layout on it.
Based on the current situation, after 9:17 PM, starting from 12th Street, for each street outward, the time was delayed by approximately 15 minutes. So when they walked from 12th Street to 13th Street, the time on 13th Street should be around 9:32 PM. By the time they reached 14th Street, it would be 9:47 PM. Following this pattern to 18th Street, the clock on 17th Street had just changed from running forward to running backward, because the time checkpoint on 17th Street should be around 10:32 PM.
But this was highly contradictory to what they currently understood about time power.
It was known that different wormhole point zones had different time flow rates. So it was understandable that some zones had slightly advanced time while others had slightly delayed time. Under normal understanding, this meant that the time flow on 12th Street was slightly slower, while the time flow on other streets was slightly faster, with each street being faster than the last. This created a contradiction—the players themselves had not experienced any time jump.
If the time flow rate had changed, when they crossed streets, their timing tools should have detected the difference in time and adjusted accordingly. But so far, their timing tools were still running according to the time of Zone 011, which was also the time on 12th Street in Pumpkin City. Of course, his current judgment was based on the direction of the clocks on the streets, without precise comparative time. Perhaps the time on the later streets was no different from 12th Street, and Pumpkin City was simply presenting this phenomenon to make players draw such a conclusion.
From the moment they noticed the time issue with the clocks and streets until now, the players hadn't truly felt any change in time. But the gradual changes in the streets and clocks were a real reminder that something was indeed different. Or perhaps Pumpkin City was trying to remind them of something, but they just hadn't realized it yet.
After surpassing the current time, the clocks on the left and right sides moved in opposite directions. But if they were still on the previous street, the clocks moved normally. This meant that people in different positions saw different things. Pumpkin City had made this distinction, as if indicating that the time on different streets was indeed different...
Xu Huo felt a bit confused. Different streets had different time distinctions, but the clocks on the street where the players stood were running normally. When they crossed streets, they had no special sensation...
His train of thought suddenly paused here. There was no particular feeling in the flow of time, and even the timing tools hadn't changed. This could easily give the illusion that Pumpkin City was just putting on a show. But the time here was definitely not normal, because every time he crossed a street, he felt a kind of electric shock sensation.
But since time had changed, what exactly had changed?
This didn't seem to be simply a matter of different time flow rates...
"Any findings?" Meng Wenguang had returned.
"One good news, one bad news," Wang Ling said. "The good news is that we've roughly figured out that the time difference between each street is about fifteen minutes. The bad news is that this doesn't help our current situation at all."
Even knowing this, they still didn't understand what it meant. They were completely clueless about what to do next or how to do it.
"Isn't that good news?" Meng Wenguang said. "If we go forward two streets and then come back, wouldn't we be able to travel through time?"
Everyone found this quite speechless and didn't even want to argue with him. It was Yue Rui who said, "Brother Meng, that's not how it works. The time difference is on the streets, not on the players. The time difference between different streets doesn't affect us, and we can't affect the time difference."
Currently, the fact that different spaces in the game world had different time flow rates was already common knowledge among players. Based on this, players had further accepted that time travel was impossible—that is, the time on a player's body would not flow backward. Even if a person spent a year or more in a space with a faster time flow rate, while their original space had only passed a few days, returning didn't mean they had traveled through time. Because the two spaces were independent, the time and experiences the player had gone through hadn't changed. So even though it seemed like they had returned to an earlier time, the time was still later than the moment the player left their original zone, making time reversal impossible.
"Wasn't Dr. Wu trying to go back in time to prevent his wife and daughter from being killed?" Meng Wenguang was puzzled. "Maybe the solution to this space is exactly that."
"Did you go back to before the incident earlier and change the outcome?" Tang Ming asked. "When you were going back and forth on the street earlier, did time reverse?"