“Clang!!”
A violent explosion shattered the tranquility of the Warm Children's Welfare Home.
The seemingly sturdy gate was brutally destroyed by Yue Shi.
Flying wood splinters vanished into thin air before they could even hit the ground.
Yue Shi had pulled them directly into his extra-dimensional space.
“In the blue sky, within the Silver River... there is a little white boat...”
The eerie, ethereal nursery rhyme still echoed through the corridors of the welfare home.
Yue Shi didn't even bother to spare it a glance.
Buzz!
The space within the corridor rippled with visible waves.
In the next second, the old broadcast speaker hanging on the wall, along with the section of wall around it, abruptly vanished.
This was only the beginning.
The welfare home had just met its strictest father.
Wherever Yue Shi passed, the walls on both sides, the floor beneath his feet, the ceiling above his head...
All matter was churned and disintegrated by the terrifying power of space.
Then, it was swallowed by the extra-dimensional space.
Vibrant murals, scattered children's toys, crooked tables and chairs—everything was disappearing.
The Ghost floated in mid-air, and Huang Fengjing stood with his mouth agape, watching Yue Shi violently dismantle the entire building. His mind couldn't quite process it.
“What is he doing?” Huang Fengjing instinctively leaned closer to the Ghost, his voice trembling.
“I thought he would use some high-level, sophisticated method to break the time loop.”
“But he’s just doing... this?”
The Ghost, however, found it perfectly normal. “For Yue Shi, destroying the problem itself along with the environment that created it is the most sophisticated method.”
Earlier, they had discovered that the interior of the extra-dimensional space seemed unaffected by the external time loop.
This was a key breakthrough.
Huang Fengjing had assumed Yue Shi would use this to set up a clever plan or find a loop node to interfere with.
Who could have guessed his solution would be so simple and crude?
“Since the extra-dimensional space might not be affected by the loop, I’ll just put everything here inside it.”
Yue Shi’s tone was nonchalant, and he truly had the power to back it up.
He wasn't just talking.
Starting from the loop's beginning, the withered yellow straw on the road, the gang of losers who tried to rob him, the abandoned houses along the way, and even the soil beneath his feet were excavated and stuffed into the extra-dimensional space.
This wasn't exploring a supernatural domain; it was a zeroing-out operation against the domain itself.
Seeing Yue Shi destroy his way toward the basement, Huang Fengjing couldn't help but swallow hard and mutter, “Did something set him off? He seems a bit crazy.”
The Ghost replied calmly, “This is just his normal state when facing trouble.”
Yue Shi wasn't acting without thought.
In the previous loop, he had taken the diary from the basement.
After the time reset, that diary remained in his extra-dimensional space.
Combined with the decrease in the amount of bread, he hypothesized that items entering the extra-dimensional space might break free from the loop.
But there was still a question: in this loop, would an identical diary refresh in the basement?
If not, that would be the best-case scenario.
If it did, things would get much more complicated.
What kind of paradox would be caused by two identical original diaries from the same space-time?
Just thinking about it made one’s skin crawl.
With Yue Shi's intelligence, he couldn't figure it out at all.
When faced with something he couldn't understand, he resorted to violence.
Fortunately, when Yue Shi stepped into the familiar basement again, his gaze met the same metal operating table and the scattered instruments on the cart.
But the place where the diary should have been was empty.
The diary had not refreshed!
Yue Shi felt relieved; this was a sure win.
He didn't stop for a second, his eyes immediately locking onto the shadowless lamp that had previously caused the anomaly.
The moment the lamp lit up was a node in the loop.
With a wave of his hand, the shadowless lamp and the ceiling structure holding it vanished.
Next was everything else in the basement.
The operating table, the instrument cart, the rusted equipment, the dirty floor—everything visible was stuffed into his extra-dimensional space.
It was as if he intended to erase everything completely.
An invisible pressure began to permeate the air, though Huang Fengjing and the Ghost felt nothing.
Yue Shi, however, knew that the familiar time node—the moment the loop restarted—was imminent!
“No more time!”
In the next instant, Huang Fengjing witnessed a sight he would never forget.
Centering on Yue Shi, countless fine, twisted spatial rifts abruptly appeared, spreading frantically in all directions like black lightning!
These spatial rifts did nothing but churn violently, interfering with the surrounding space itself!
The entire area where the welfare home stood became like a shattered mirror or a lake surface disturbed by a stone. Light and shadow distorted, the sense of direction was lost, and even the concept of distance became blurred.
Huang Fengjing stood in the safe zone behind Yue Shi, shivering.
He could no longer understand what Yue Shi was doing.
The scene was heart-stopping.
Unlike the Ghost’s trust in Yue Shi, Huang Fengjing was extremely anxious and couldn't help but ask, “Boss, what on earth are you doing?”
“Do you know about special relativity?” Yue Shi asked back.
“Huh???”
Huang Fengjing was stunned, his mind going blank.
Special relativity?
Is this the time for an academic discussion?
But before he could express more confusion...
The restart node of the time loop arrived.
But this time, the expected scene reset did not occur.
Perhaps it was because a massive amount of base matter in the supernatural domain had been forcibly removed.
Or perhaps the surrounding spatial structure was being frantically interfered with.
The balance maintaining the loop was broken.
Restart failed.
They didn't return to the starting point, and Huang Fengjing didn't rub his stomach and say he was hungry.
Everything around them—the ruins of the welfare home, the distorted space, and even the ground beneath their feet—was swallowed by endless chaos in an instant.
Like rolling thick smoke sweeping in, the three were placed in a gray void in the blink of an eye.
Chaos was everywhere—above, below, left, and right—with only shifting light and shadow.
Strange sounds whistled past their ears, sounding as if they came from different space-time dimensions.
In this unknown place, even thought became sluggish.
The Ghost and Huang Fengjing both felt a heavy sense of crisis stemming from biological instinct.
Time and space lost their meaning here.
An unknown amount of time passed—perhaps an instant, perhaps an eternity.
The surrounding chaos began to slowly subside, the distorted light and shadow stabilized, and the strange sounds gradually faded.
The scenery became clear again.
The three finally saw the sight before them.
The original welfare home, along with that abandoned town, was gone.
A massive plant stood, connecting heaven and earth.
The base of the plant was pale and swollen, with three thick woody vines tightly entwined, spiraling upward and piercing into the sky until they were out of sight.
From the main trunk, countless branch vines spread out, and hanging densely upon them were innumerable people.
It was like a tree laden with fruit.
Some of those people had their eyes tightly shut, their faces contorted in extreme pain.
Others stared with hollow eyes, silently gazing into the void.
The clothes on some were still intact, suggesting they had only recently been hung up.
For others, their bodies had already fused with the vines, with tiny tendrils wrapping around their limbs and torso, burrowing deep into their flesh.
As a breeze blew past, the massive plant swayed slightly, its leaves rustling.
A faint, sweet, and metallic scent of decay drifted through the air, making one want to gag.
Occasionally, withered giant flowers drifted down from above, but they dissipated into nothingness before hitting the ground.
Huang Fengjing clearly saw that in the center of those giant flowers, where the stamens should have been, a distorted and pained human face was embedded.
As the flower dissipated, the face also turned into void.
A normal person seeing such a hellish scene should have felt horror and dread.
But at this moment, Huang Fengjing’s eyes were somewhat dazed.
He took a deep breath, and as the foul, decaying scent entered his nostrils, he actually detected a strange sweetness.
So he greedily took a few more breaths, a look of intoxication appearing on his face.
“Is this... the Life Vine?”
Yue Shi was incredibly impressed. Such a magnificent and sinister plant suited his aesthetic perfectly.
His heart couldn't help but beat a few pulses faster.
He cautiously walked toward the giant vine step by step.
As if sensing the approach of an uninvited guest, the pale, swollen base of the giant vine suddenly squirmed.
Next, a piece of bark bulged and stretched, rapidly forming a massive flower bud.
The bud bloomed in an instant, its petals unfurling to reveal an eerie vermillion interior.
Finally, it blossomed into a huge, deformed flower.
At the center of the flower sat a figure.
It was a humanoid elf form, exquisite and beautifully proportioned, with skin that was pale and translucent, surrounded by a faint shimmer.
The Life Vine, Usumu!
Usumu held a sandglass in her hands.
The sandglass had an ancient design and was made of an unknown material; the sand inside was crystal clear, like stars in the sky, shimmering with a mysterious luster.
However, at this moment, those starlight grains defied gravity, remaining stationary in the upper half of the sandglass, having stopped flowing.
Looking closely, the base of the sandglass had already grown into Usumu’s palms, flesh and object fused together, inseparable.
She raised her pupil-less, entirely green eyes to look at Yue Shi, her voice calm and devoid of emotion.
“Truly impressive. To break through the temporal seal so easily and find this place.”
Yue Shi stopped, his gaze firmly focused on that strange sandglass.
“A time loop is indeed unsolvable for most people, but I’m not most people.”
Usumu said helplessly, “I didn't expect spatial abilities to be able to interfere with time.”
Yue Shi’s lips curled into a smirk. “Then you should read more. Time and space are fundamentally an inseparable whole.”
“Space-time is a unity; space is the form of existence, and time is the form of expression.”
The redundant knowledge The Resonant Daoist had crammed into him not long ago happened to come in handy now.
It was perfect for showing off.
Usumu listened with total confusion, her eyes vacant. She had no idea what Yue Shi was talking about.
Yue Shi didn't bother explaining further, his gaze still glued to the sandglass. He had an instinctive, powerful urge to possess it.
It was a sacrifice!
He observed the environment while quietly closing the distance.
Usumu sighed. “I was ignorant. I had heard long ago that you were proficient in spatial abilities, so I thought I could use time to counter and trap you.”
She previously only knew that abilities capable of interfering with time were extremely rare and world-shaking.
She naturally assumed that the status of 'time' was higher than 'space,' even reigning supreme over all laws.
The predicament of a time loop was basically unsolvable.
Because those caught in it would constantly lose their memories; every loop, they would repeat the same choices.
If they couldn't find an anomaly the first time, they wouldn't notice it the hundredth or thousandth time without their memories; they would simply be trapped in the loop forever.
But Yue Shi possessed incredibly powerful spatial abilities.
Originally, every time loop was supposed to be exactly the same.
But the interior of Yue Shi's extra-dimensional space was not interfered with by the loop and wouldn't reset along with it.
The existence of the extra-dimensional space was equivalent to forcibly inserting a constantly changing external variable into a precisely running closed program.
This caused subtle deviations in every loop.
Furthermore, Yue Shi possessed the ability to anticipate, seeing the future one second ahead, which was an overlapping state of every loop, allowing him to interfere with the time loop as well.
With double variable interference, the time loop naturally collapsed.
Usumu wasn't sure if the theory of 'Space-Time Unity' was correct, and she didn't really want to admit she was illiterate.
Yue Shi, however, asked her, “From your tone, it sounds like you knew I was coming and were well-acquainted with my abilities, so you set a trap specifically for me in advance?”
Usumu chuckled. “The sub-bodies I spread out have dealt with you. You should be familiar with them.”
“The moment you approached, I knew you were here.”
“Moreover, naturally, I would pay more attention to someone the Divine Tree is interested in.”
“The Divine Tree? You mean the Tree of Truth? Why is it interested in me?”
Yue Shi continued to probe while secretly shifting his position relative to Usumu.
“Why should I tell you?” Usumu stroked the sandglass in her hand, her smile fading as her gaze became dangerous.
“Information has always been the most precious commodity, and you’ve come here seemingly with ill intent toward me.”
“A person with ill intent toward me shouldn't expect to get it for free!”
“Oh, congratulations, you guessed right. I definitely have ill intent toward you.”
As the words fell, Yue Shi had already teleported in front of the giant flower where Usumu sat, his movements fast as lightning, his target being the sandglass in her hand.
But Usumu’s reaction wasn't slow either. The petals quickly closed, wrapping around and swallowing her.
She vanished into the flower.
Yue Shi missed; the massive vermillion flower withered completely in his hands.
“This is my home field; you actually dare to make a move? Aren't you afraid I’ll kill you and hang you on the tree!”
In a higher branch of the vine, another massive red flower bloomed, and Usumu’s figure emerged from it, her voice fierce.
Yue Shi looked up, smiling brightly. “Strike while you're down!”
“You manipulated the time loop, but I forcibly broke it. You must have paid a significant price, haven't you?”
“If you really could manipulate time at will, why bother with so much talk? The moment you saw me, you would have attacked!”
Usumu’s face darkened, but then Yue Shi suddenly softened his tone, his face full of sincerity.
“Give me that sandglass, and I’ll stop giving you trouble. How about it?”
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