Richard's abnormal behavior immediately caught Karen and Memphis's attention. Karen reached straight out to grab him, while Memphis's figure instantly appeared in front of Richard.
Yet Karen's hand passed straight through Richard, and right after, Richard "crashed" right through Memphis's body.
At this moment, Richard seemed like an apparition, while he continued shouting:
"Slow down, Karen, I'm coming!"
The first interception failed. By the time Karen and Memphis prepared for a second attempt, Richard's figure suddenly vanished.
Had he entered another point in time?
This was Karen's instinctive thought, because earlier Richard was clearly calling out to him, as if another Karen in another time was calling him over.
But then, Karen immediately dismissed the thought from his mind. No, it wasn't time.
Both the captain and Memphis had said that a time sacred relic didn't exist at all. All the bizarre occurrences before them seemed more like a deception, a con designed to make you believe that time here was being sliced apart.
Yet what was the purpose of doing this?
Memphis placed a hand on Karen's shoulder. Karen felt slightly puzzled; although both were wearing masks, their eyes were visible, and Karen did not see the worry of a father for his son in Memphis's gaze.
"This is a deception," Memphis said. "Its sole purpose is to deceive."
With that, Memphis took the initiative to walk over toward Neo.
The other squad members had also noticed the situation here, and quite a few had witnessed the entire process of Richard's disappearance with their own eyes.
Although two members from the other squads had vanished instantly earlier when stepping off the train, the one who disappeared this time was a teammate of their own.
If disaster could strike like this, who would be the next to disappear?
How could they guard against it? How could they resist?
Even the members of the Hound Squad grew sensitive and suspicious when confronted with this situation. If it had been a head-on clash, they wouldn't have felt this way no matter how formidable the opponent.
Neo walked up to Memphis. Memphis repeated his earlier words to Neo: "This is a deception."
"Yes, it's a deception," Neo agreed with a nod. That said, Neo looked toward Karen standing nearby and raised a hand to touch his own mask.
"Look, isn't that Richard?"
Fanny shouted, pointing toward a nearby hillside. Everyone looked over and saw that someone was indeed standing on the crest of the hill. Judging by the attire and build, it looked very much like Richard, who had just vanished.
Richard began sprinting down the slope, waving his hands as he ran. One could see that he was terrified, yet simultaneously thrilled. He wept as he ran, as if he had survived a catastrophe.
Everyone gathered together, waiting for Richard to approach, but no one stepped forward to welcome him.
Karen glanced at Memphis beside him. He noticed that his uncle had appeared far too calm, from when his son "disappeared" earlier to when his son "reappeared" now.
As if sensing Karen's gaze, Memphis turned his head toward Karen and said,
"They grabbed the wrong person."
"What?"
Memphis shook his head, as though taking a deep breath, or perhaps preparing for something.
Richard drew closer and closer, and everyone's expressions grew heavier. They had mentally braced themselves for Richard to run past and phase right through their bodies, just like when he had vanished earlier.
However,
events unfolded beyond what they had anticipated.
"You scared the life out of me, Karen! You really scared the hell out of me, Karen!"
Richard shouted like a sprinter finally crossing the finish line, and then threw himself forward, wrapping Karen in a tight hug.
Karen felt genuine physical contact. Richard didn't vanish. He was solid—very solid. Barring any surprises, the real Richard was back.
Everyone watched in astonishment. They hadn't even recovered from Richard's bizarre disappearance, yet he had simply run back on his own like this?
For a moment, many crowded forward and began feeling Richard all over.
"What are you doing? What is this? Hey, hey, don't touch there! Ah!"
Richard shrieked as a dozen hands patted and groped him. Even though Peige and Fanny's two pairs of women's hands were among them, most belonged to men, and the discomfort was unbearable for him.
"Where did you just go?" Karen asked.
"Me? Just now, I saw you waving at me, telling me the captain and everyone had already pushed forward and asking me to catch up quickly, so I ran after you right away."
"And then?"
"And then... as I was running, I realized you suddenly vanished. I knew things had gone wrong and that I'd been had, so I climbed up that hill to check the surroundings. When I saw you guys were here, I ran right back."
"No other changes?" Fanny asked.
"None, because the time was very short. Right, how much time has passed?" Richard immediately asked. "A few hours?"
"Based on the length of time you described, our time should be equivalent," Fanny replied.
"Huh? Where's that rookie?"
"Where's Memphis?"
"Where did he go?"
Karen also began looking around, discovering that Memphis, who had been standing next to him just moments ago, was gone.
"Is it the rookie's turn to disappear this time?" Fanny said.
"Will he come back quickly too?" Peige asked.
Karen suddenly remembered what Memphis had said to him before vanishing: "They grabbed the wrong person."
"Huh? Did the rookie disappear?" Richard started looking around as well. "He'll probably do what I did and find high ground to confirm your location."
Karen looked at Richard and pressed his lips together.
However, even after everyone finished setting up camp and ate some of their portable rations, the newcomer Memphis still hadn't returned.
The camp had no tents, only blankets and simple shelters erected for cover. Following their usual routine, everyone set up a three-tiered defense: outer perimeter, middle ring, and inner circle, all very methodical.
Yet whether this kind of defense could be effective was something nobody felt confident about.
"Why hasn't the rookie returned yet..."
Richard kept muttering, constantly glancing around. Perhaps this was the bond between father and son; even though Richard didn't know Memphis's true identity, he instinctively worried about him.
"Karen, why do you think I came back, but the rookie still hasn't returned?"
Karen shook his head. He felt he knew the reason, but it wasn't something he could say aloud.
Just then, Wend let out an exclamation: "Where's the captain?"
"Where's the captain?"
"Where is the captain?!"
To the squad members right now, a newcomer vanishing was just a newcomer vanishing, but if the captain also disappeared, it would deal a tremendous blow to their morale.
They had long grown accustomed to following the captain's orders during missions.
"I went ahead to scout the situation and found someone."
Black mist billowed, and from within stepped Neo's figure, followed by a second person—Marlo.
"Marlo, you're back?"
"Hey, Marlo, I thought something had happened to you!"
"I was already calculating how much condolence money to give at your funeral. Good thing you saved me the expense."
Neo said, "I found a certain pattern. My earlier departure was to verify this pattern, and then I used it to find Marlo.
"In truth, Marlo has been staying right where he was all along. He's also been with Kanse and Anthony's squads this whole time. But because we're in different time periods, even though our positions overlapped, we still couldn't see each other."
"Captain, what do you mean?" Gray asked.
"Yes, though you might find this absurd, I must still tell everyone what I've observed and confirmed: we have encountered... time cutting."
Upon hearing that last phrase, Karen snapped his head up to look at the masked captain.
Marlo also spoke: "In my time period, I set up several communication arrays—not for real-time transmission, but delayed transmission, configuring the arrays to activate after thirty minutes, one hour, an hour and a half, and two hours.
"Then, I successfully contacted the captain, and the captain pulled me back to his time period—the one everyone is in right now."
"I... don't understand..." Quincy voiced what many were thinking.
"It doesn't matter if you don't understand. The main thing is that I have found the way to leave this place—the way out." Neo pointed toward Alais Castle. "The exit is actually right at the castle gate, because the castle gate is where everything began, the starting point of this time cutting journey. We must set out from there and then head outward from there; only then can we break free of the constraints of time cutting and walk out successfully.
"Marlo will lead the way in front, and I will bring up the rear. I order you: throw away your watches, and do not look up at the stars. I demand that you hold no concept of time whatsoever.
"You must understand, time originally has no concept; so-called 'time' is merely something we humans gave it. As we advance, you must sense—sense the feeling of water flowing past your bodies.
"If you suddenly find the person ahead of you has vanished, do not panic, because those teammates are right beside you. You only need to use your inner mind to sense the flow rate of time, just like tuning a radio antenna, and you'll be able to see their silhouettes again.
"We don't have much time left. It won't be long before the next time reset. Our supplies are limited, so we must take advantage of this opportunity to break out.
"Some of you may fail, but don't lose heart. Just walk back to the starting point and try to 'swim' out again. More importantly, have faith: believe that some teammates will certainly make it out, and the Church's rescue will surely arrive.
"May the God of Order protect us!
"Move out!"
"It really is time cutting! Karen, do you know what we've run into?" Richard said excitedly to Karen while unclasping his watch and tossing it to the ground. "If this thing, or rather this phenomenon, was discovered by us, once we get out and report the news, we'll definitely receive a massive reward from the Church! Our names might even be written into the Church chronicles!"
Karen glanced at Richard:
*Is that why you were captured and then let go?*
Next, with Marlo leading in front and the captain at the very back, everyone formed a single file and began advancing toward Alais Castle.
Karen intentionally hung back at the very rear of the formation, right ahead of the captain. Seeing this, Richard also deliberately stayed at the tail end to stick with Karen, right in front of him.
After traveling some distance, everyone reached the base of the hill where they had initially taken cover. But this time, they followed the road, bypassing the slope. The gates of Alais Castle lay right ahead.
Marlo stopped at the castle gates. Instead of pushing the gates open, he turned straight around and waved to signal everyone to follow him.
Like schoolchildren in a line, everyone turned around after passing the gate and continued following the column forward.
Karen clearly saw that the teammates who turned around after the gate underwent a change in expression, excitement showing on their faces.
Richard turned around in front of Karen, froze for an instant, and then looked ecstatic before hurrying to catch up with the team ahead.
After Karen turned around, he found a patch of white mist appearing in his vision. The fog wasn't tall, reaching only waist-high, but it could clearly be seen flowing, like a stream made of white mist. Their current direction was "swimming upstream."
This visible "sense of progress" instantly provided tremendous encouragement, almost blatantly announcing that they were on the right path and not far from getting out. No wonder the squad members who turned around earlier all looked so invigorated.
Yet Karen couldn't feel excited. As he walked, he kept tilting his head slightly, trying to sense the captain bringing up the rear behind him.
Finally, after advancing another distance, Karen spoke up:
"Captain, wearing the mask for so long is uncomfortable. I want to take it off."
Neo said,
"Silence. Focus on walking."
"Yes, Captain."
Nodding, Karen drew his Sava-7 pistol.
...
"How is the situation?"
"Under my arrangements and design, Anthony's squad and Kanse's squad—from their captains to their members—already believe they've entered a time rift, and are now responding on their own based on changes in time.
"However, Neo's squad..."
"What about Neo's squad?"
"See for yourself."
"Hmm? Isn't it going well? Wait, why were so many elements added, and two people were even isolated?"
"It couldn't be helped. The quality of this squad is indeed much higher than Anthony's and Kanse's squads. Right from the start, their captain announced to everyone that this wasn't an issue of time.
"Furthermore, someone in the team seemed to have noticed something and kept repeating 'This is a deception,' 'This is a deception.'
"This captain's prestige is too high. His teammates truly obey whatever he says without raising objections, so the baseline tone was nailed down by him from the get-go.
"On top of that, he constantly resisted entering the castle, choosing passivity from the very beginning and denying me the chance to deepen my influence on their consciousnesses. The environmental elements I can utilize in the wild are simply too few; most of my designs are inside the castle. Sigh."
"And then?"
"I isolated Neo on his own, and the one calling it a deception was also isolated by me. There was even a little mishap: I originally targeted him, but somehow, during the first attempt to mark and isolate him, another guy who firmly believed in the time rift was isolated instead. Left with no choice, I had to release him and mark and isolate the other one again."
"Are they relatives?"
"Most likely. Family members serving together in the Whip of Order aren't that rare."
"Still, you really shouldn't have made such a blunder. It severely disrupts the immersion."
"Nothing could be done about it. That isolated member strongly believed in the time rift.
"Besides, I did my best to salvage it. To that end, I even had their captain appear to re-instill the concept of the time rift in them. Only then did things truly get back on track.
"They trust their captain too much.
"Sigh, had I known, I should have isolated their captain right at the beginning."
"It was your own request. Among the three Whip of Order squads, you said you didn't want them all to be mediocre, that one truly exceptional squad had to be chosen. It seems the department handling assignments actually took your request to heart. This squad of Neo's is indeed of much higher caliber."
"It's just one captain plus one member of high caliber, that's all."
"You can't put it that way. As long as a squad's captain is sufficiently outstanding, it's hard for the squad not to be outstanding—not to mention there's more than just the captain this time."
"Still, I truly don't know why the temple decided to restart this project, though I do think the person who designed it was indeed a genius."
"How could a being capable of becoming an evil god be described merely by the word 'genius'?"
"Indeed. That's probably the mindset of an evil god. The great primary gods sought the power of time in the mortal world and found nothing, yet he opened up an entirely new path.
"Do you remember the passage in the project proposal? Supposedly, those are the insights he left behind:
["Time does not exist at all. You cannot find something in reality that does not exist in the first place, and non-existent things can only be sought in non-existent places—such as... human consciousness."]"
"I've always been curious about one thing: back then, did he succeed?"
"He definitely failed. There's no doubt about that."
"Then did he achieve any results? Even a little bit?"
"I think he did."
"You think he did?"
"Because he was suppressed."
"You make... a lot of sense."
"By the way, how much longer will this internal preliminary test run?"
"Ten days. Converted according to our set rate of one consciousness cycle every five hours, it should be forty-eight cycles for them."
"Oh, that must be rough on them."
"Don't worry. Once the test concludes, the Church will grant them generous mission rewards."
"Right, I heard the project was named after that evil god?"
"Yes. 'Project Raniedal.'"
"Oh, heavens! It's over. Looks like Neo's squad is going to end this test early."
"What happened?"
"See for yourself."
...
"Hey, teammates!"
Ahead, all the squad members turned their heads to look at Karen at the very tail of the formation.
As Karen turned around, he drew his Sava-7 pistol, aimed it at the forehead of Captain Neo behind him, and pulled the trigger without hesitation:
*Bang!*
Chapter 237