Chapter 1845
by 林方方Chapter 1845 The Lost No. 22
The moonlight spilled over the boundless ice field, and in this snow-white world, several figures were cautiously moving forward.
Gubiro was about to carve a number on the ice beneath his feet, but just as he was halfway through, 22’s voice suddenly rang out:
“Wait.”
“What is it, Holy Lord?” Gubiro raised his head in confusion.
22 used the [King’s Sword] to scratch out the half-written number and said solemnly:
“We can’t use characters that others can understand at a glance, otherwise all these markings we make might ultimately benefit someone else… We need to use symbols that only we can understand to mark time.”
Everyone suddenly realized.
“Then what symbols should we use?”
22 pondered for a moment, then began drawing on the ground, “Let’s agree that this symbol represents 1, this one represents 2, this one represents…”
The members of [Divine Paradise] gathered around, carefully learning 22’s self-created symbols. After they had committed these symbols to memory, they couldn’t help but applaud.
“As expected of the Holy Lord, truly far-sighted!”
“Yes, now we can understand his symbols, but he can’t understand ours! We also outnumber him, giving us all the advantages!”
“Commander Lin from Great Xia is nothing special after all.”
“…”
Amid their flattery, 22 forcefully carved a self-created “0” symbol on the ice with his sword, then calmly said:
“Let’s go.”
Everyone took a step forward, and after arriving at another space-time, they looked back to find that the previous symbol had completely disappeared.
“I know! It’s because the time we’re in now is earlier than before,” Gubiro clapped his hands, excitedly answering first.
“Such a simple thing, did you really need to point that out?” another High God rolled his eyes at him.
22 carved a “-1” on the ground and continued forward.
When they looked back again, they still couldn’t see either symbol.
“The time here is even earlier,” Gubiro confidently stated again.
Following the same method, they left another mark and continued forward, walking several steps in succession, but each time they looked back, they couldn’t see any trace of their marks.
“Strange… how is it that all along our path, we’ve only been traveling to times in the past? Have we found the way out of the maze?” a Lesser God muttered in confusion.
At this point, even Gubiro fell silent. They looked at each other, vaguely feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
This time, instead of moving forward, they changed direction, walking several steps before turning again and continuing… but no matter which way they went, the marks they had left previously seemed to have never existed, and the ice surface remained perfectly smooth.
“How can this be… we completely mimicked his actions, so why can’t we see the marks we carved?” Gubiro stood frozen in place.
By this point, even someone as slow as Gubiro realized something was wrong. They had walked so far and changed direction so many times, leaving at least a hundred marks, but with each step they couldn’t see any of their previous markings… They couldn’t possibly be continuously walking toward the “past,” could they?
“Come to think of it, doesn’t it seem like the positions of these nearby ice mountains are different from before?” a Lesser God cautiously spoke up.
22, who had been frowning in thought about what went wrong, heard this and responded irritably:
“Fool, this is the Antarctic ice field. The terrain changes constantly with the climate. Of course each time period has different terrain. The greater the time span crossed, the greater the changes…”
Before he could finish, 22 seemed to realize something and his body suddenly jolted!
“Ice field… ice field…” 22 repeated these words, his face instantly turning pale.
“Holy Lord, what have you discovered?” Gubiro asked.
“Damn it… wrong! It’s all wrong!!” 22 said through gritted teeth. “What’s beneath our feet is ice! Ice melts and freezes too quickly. Any mark we leave on it, no matter how deep, will completely heal within a day or two! All the marks we’ve left are completely useless!”
Hearing this, it was as if thunder had struck in everyone’s ears!
They all stood frozen in place.
Ice… no wonder they couldn’t see any of their previous marks no matter which direction they walked. These marks simply couldn’t last long on the ice field. It was like trying to mark locations by throwing stones into the vast ocean – the stones sink to the bottom as soon as they’re thrown, and who knows where they landed?
“But… but how did Lin Qiye manage to make his marks last?” After a long pause, Gubiro asked the most perplexing question.
“We’re all leaving marks on the ice layer, so why did his last so long?”
Everyone fell into bewilderment.
22 took a deep breath and slowly said:
“Forget it… our only hope now is to go back and find the marks left by Lin Qiye. If we can find his marks, we can get back on track and avoid getting lost.”
A Lesser God looked around, his expression showing hesitation. “Which direction did we come from just now?”
The others felt their hearts sink as they too looked around.
On the desolate ice field, only a few ice mountains stood scattered, but these mountains couldn’t provide any directional guidance because as soon as they took another step, the mountains would immediately disappear… Further away, there was nothing but blurry, inverted light.
Within a space of just a hundred meters, thousands of different time periods were stacked together, enough to distort even light itself.
A hundred meters was the furthest they could see… but the distance between them and Lin Qiye’s marks was clearly much greater than this number.
They couldn’t find their way back.
“I’ve calculated that since leaving Lin Qiye, we’ve moved less than a kilometer at most. Even if our vision is blocked by these overlapping time periods, if we fly up, we should easily be able to see,” Gubiro thought seriously for a moment, then his eyes flashed with inspiration as he soared upward!
Seeing this, 22’s eyes narrowed and he immediately called out: “Wait…”
Before the second “wait” could leave his mouth, Gubiro’s figure vanished into thin air directly above them, at a height of no more than five meters.
In this maze, not only did moving forward, backward, left, or right trigger time shifts… moving up or down did the same.
Everyone waited at the original spot for a long time, but Gubiro never returned. It seemed that during his flight, he had traversed more than just vertical space. Now, trying to find the ice surface where everyone was currently standing would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
[Divine Paradise], which originally had more than a dozen people, now had only three left.
22’s face was so dark it could drip water.
“Ho-Holy Lord…” the remaining High God swallowed hard. “What do we do now?”
“…What else can we do? Wait here to die?”
22 said through gritted teeth, “Go! Pick any direction and keep walking!”