Mist

Chapter 3: Beginning

Over the next few days, Song Qinglan never saw Ji Yushi.

According to Duan Wen, these past few days Ji Yushi had been attending class with the new students in the morning and would train alone in the personal training rooms in the afternoon. His entire daily schedule would be completely filled. Chief Wang had visited him once and gave him a lot of praise.
In the eyes of the leaders, these civilian workers probably seem like they’re working very hard no matter what they do.

Chief Wang had called Song Qinglan to give him a warning, “Xiao Ji is smart and diligent. When the time comes, you should work as a team. He also has a two-star rating and would reach one star after completing this mission. Don’t think that I don’t know about your intentions to treat him as a flower vase.”
Song Qinglan pretended to not understand, “How could that be?”

The training grounds have personalised training rooms and also a team-based simulated combat system.
Two days before the mission, everyone as usual gathered for team training. After Song Qinglan gathered everyone, he noticed that Ji Yushi was missing, “Old Duan, did you notify him?”

“I thought Li Chun told him yesterday.”
“Fuck, why would I tell him? I haven’t seen him the past few days at all!”
“Alright. He probably went to class again.”

“Tang Qi, you organise the training.”
Song Qinglan decided to personally find him lest Chief Wang blames it on him again.

Leaving the training grounds, Song Qinglan went directly to the new recruitment base.
As the youngest captain, the first combat class for these new students after entering Tianqiong was taught by Song Qinglan. Song Qinglan’s close combat skills managed to beat the students from prestigious schools and those with high self-esteem directly into submission so when his face appeared outside the window, those who were slacking off immediately tensed up.
The specially appointed instructor was still teaching at the front. After a brief glance, Song Qinglan very quickly found the person he was looking for.

Ji Yushi was sitting by the window.

“Space constitutes the universe we are in and time constitutes the universe we know.”

The instructor on stage manipulated a holographic image and drew a colourful arc-shaped line. It was unknown where it started, and the end also faded into nothingness.
Some students sighed with praise.

Ji Yushi had his head down and didn’t seem to have noticed this wonderful presentation.

“Time is like a flowing thread. It allows us to have a past and also a future.”
“The past cannot be changed ——- A person cannot travel back to the past and kill their ancestor. That is the ancestor paradox. Russian scientist Novikov also suggested the principle of self-consistency. It meant that even if people can go back to the past, they cannot change the course of history. Simple put, our present is the final outcome after countless changes.”

Light flickered in the air.
The instructor continued, “So what about the future? More than twenty years ago, our team invented Tianqiong. They discovered that there was more than one timeline.”

The instructor waved their hand and the arc of light in the air changed.
That light suddenly split, bursting into countless fibres that diverged in all directions.

“The Tianqiong’s powerful computing power can calculate countless futures stemming from our present time. With its existence, humanity for the first time became aware of the existence of parallel worlds. Over the past twenty years, various countries across the world have used Tianqiong and have used the Guardians from parallel worlds in the future to successfully prevent 1771 possible terrorist attacks, 542 riots, 6 wars as well as 3 large-scale natural disasters.
…………
As this was explained, various materials played on the screen.