# 1852
Chapter 1845: The Lost Number 22
Moonlight scattered across the endless ice field; in this snow-white world, several figures were carefully advancing forward.
Kubera was about to carve a number on the ice beneath his feet, but just as he was halfway through, Number 22's voice suddenly rang out:
"Wait."
"What's wrong, Holy Sovereign?" Kubera looked up in confusion.
Number 22 scraped away the half-written number with the King's Treasure Sword and said in a deep voice:
"We can't use characters that anyone can understand at a glance. Otherwise, no matter how many we carve, we might end up benefiting others in the end... We need to use a type of character only we can read to mark time."
The crowd suddenly understood.
"Then what characters should we use?"
Number 22 contemplated briefly, then began sketching on the ground. "Let's make an agreement—this character represents 1, this one represents 2, this one represents..."
The members of Divine Desire Paradise gathered together, carefully studying the characters Number 22 invented. Once they had memorized all the characters, they couldn't help but applaud and praise.
"Indeed the Holy Sovereign, truly far-sighted!"
"Yes, now we can read his characters but he can't read ours! We also have more people—we have every advantage!"
"The Lin Qiye of Great Xia is nothing compared to this."
...
Amidst the flattery, Number 22 pressed the King's Treasure Sword firmly against the ice and carved a self-invented "0" character, then calmly said:
"Let's go."
The group took a step forward. After arriving at another point in time, they turned back to look—the character from before had already vanished.
"I know! It's because the time we're at now is earlier than before." Kubera slapped his palm, answering excitedly.
"Something so simple, did you have to say it?" Another Chief God shot him a disdainful glance.
Number 22 carved a "-1" on the ground and continued forward.
When they looked back once more, neither character was visible.
"The time here is even earlier." Kubera stated with certainty once more.
The group repeated the process, leaving another mark and continuing forward. They walked several steps consecutively, but each time they looked back, they couldn't see the slightest mark.
"Strange... how is it that the entire path we've walked has been time leading to the past? Have we found the way out of the maze?" A Lesser God murmured in confusion.
At this point, even Kubera fell silent. They looked at each other, faintly sensing something wasn't quite right.
This time they didn't move forward again; instead, they changed direction. After walking several steps, they turned again and continued... But no matter which direction they took, the marks they'd left behind seemed to have never existed—ice surface smooth and spotless.
"How is this possible... we completely copied his movements, so why can't we see the marks we carved?" Kubera stood frozen in place.
By this point, even someone as slow as Kubera realized something was wrong. They had walked so far, changed directions so many times, and carved at least a hundred marks, yet they couldn't see any of the marks they'd made no matter which step they took... It was impossible for them to have been walking toward the "past" the entire time.
"Come to think of it, why do I feel like the positions of these nearby icebergs are different from before?" The Lesser God carefully spoke up.
Number 22 was frowning, pondering where the problem might be. Hearing this, he said impatiently:
"Idiot, this is the Antarctic Ice Field—the terrain changes continuously with the climate, so the geography at each point in time naturally differs. The longer the time span crossed, the greater the changes..."
Before he finished speaking, Number 22 seemed to think of something, and his body shuddered violently!
"Ice field... ice field..." Number 22 kept repeating these two words, his face turning deathly pale.
"Damn it... wrong! Everything is wrong!" Number 22 gritted his teeth. "The ground beneath our feet is ice! Ice melts and freezes too quickly. If we carve a mark on it, no matter how deep, it will all recover within a day or two! All the marks we've left are completely无效的!"
Upon hearing these words, thunder seemed to explode in everyone's ears!
They all froze in place.
Ice... no wonder they couldn't see any of the marks they'd left no matter which direction they walked. Because on the ice field, these marks simply couldn't exist for long. It was like dropping stones into the endless ocean to mark a location—the stones sink into the seabed the moment they're dropped, and no one knows where the spot was.
"But... but how did Lin Qiye manage to preserve his marks?!" Kubera stood stunned for a while before asking the most baffling question.
"Everyone was making marks on the ice. Why did his last so long?"
The group fell into confusion.
Number 22 took a deep breath and slowly said:
"Forget it... our only hope now is to find the marks Lin Qiye left. As long as we can find his marks, we can get back on track and won't lose our way."
A Lesser God looked around, a hint of hesitation flashing across his face. "We just came from... which direction?"
The other several people felt a sinking feeling in their hearts and also looked around.
On the barren ice field, only a few icebergs stood scattered, but these icebergs couldn't provide any positional reference—because once they took another step, they would immediately vanish... In the distance, only blurred and inverted light remained.
Within a space of less than a hundred meters, tens of thousands of different moments overlapped together, enough to distort even light.
A hundred meters was the extent of their farthest visibility... but the distance between Lin Qiye's marks and their current position was clearly far greater than that number.
They couldn't find the way back.
"I calculated—we've moved no more than one kilometer from when we left Lin Qiye. Even if our line of sight is blocked by these overlapping moments, if we fly up into the sky, we should easily be able to see." Kubera thought carefully, then a sharp light flashed in his eyes. His form rose into the air!
Seeing this, Number 22's pupils contracted, and he immediately said: "Wait..."
Before the second "wait" could finish, Kubera's form vanished into thin air right above the group—at a height of no more than five meters from them.
In this maze, not only did movement forward, backward, left, and right trigger time shifts... moving upward or downward was the same.
The group waited in place for a long time, but Kubera's form never returned. It seemed that during his flight, he had crossed more than just vertical space. In that case, finding the exact ice patch they were on now was like finding a needle in a haystack.
Originally numbering more than ten people, Divine Desire Paradise now had only three left.
Number 22's expression was so dark it could drip water.
"Ho... Holy Sovereign..." the remaining Chief God swallowed hard. "What do we do next?"
"...What else can we do? Wait to die in place?"
Number 22 gritted his teeth. "Let's go! Pick any direction and keep walking straight!"