Mist

Chapter 55: Who Am I

Zhou Mingxuan didn’t have the will to leave this world and so this world didn’t interfere with him. Everyone in the seventh squad had received an urgent transfer order but it seems that only Zhou Mingxuan had returned to Tianqiong.
There were chaotic sounds of footsteps outside. Tianqiong had dispatched a specialist team and they were currently searching around the nursing home for the cause of the world overlap. Only Zhou Mingxuan knew that the cause was the variable, Chief Wang.

No one in the room moved. Everyone looked at Zhou Mingxuan and Song Qinglan.
Song Qinglan, “Do you think we will let you stay here?”

“Yeah!”
“Old Zhou, are you stupid?”
“This place is just a bubble. I don’t know how to explain it exactly but anyway, Advisor Ji knows. Don’t you believe in Advisor Ji?”

The teammates were all talking in a hurry. They were anxious. It was impossible for them to give up a teammate.

Zhou Mingxuan was silent for a few seconds, “I know.”
He looked at Ji Yushi and asked, “Advisor Ji, Cap Song said in the message that if all of us return to our original reality, this place will restart. It’s like the loop in Ouroboros. Then if I stay, will this reality continue?”

Although Ji Yushi had an artificial face, he was still very easy to distinguish from the rest of the squad.
Despite the face concealing his real expression, he was too empathetic with Zhou Mingxuan’s situation at this moment, so he couldn’t lie.

The teammates all looked at him with hopeful eyes, hoping that he could destroy Zhou Mingxuan’s ridiculous fantasy. Ji Yushi however answered his question truthfully.

He said, “Yes.”

Everyone was speechless.
There was a possibility for this world to continue?

“But,” Ji Yushi spoke calmly and quickly, “if you don’t return, then we will be missing one person when we return to that ‘B’ point. Your friends, comrades, and the rest of the people in your life, everyone would lose you. Tianqiong seventh squad will lose a Zhou Mingxuan and the squad will no longer be complete. This is an even more scary outcome than the team’s scout ‘Old Yu’ getting injured because the guilt from allowing you to stay behind as a result of momentarily feeling soft hearted will follow the rest of the Seventh squad for the rest of their lives.”
Ji Yushi said, “A bubble is just a bubble after all. After that regret of yours is satisfied, it would eventually fade away, but your life won’t. What would you do alone here when the time comes? Unless of course the purpose of your life is just for that one thing.”

Apart from the times when he had to analyse the situation, this was Ji Yushi’s first time speaking so much in front of everyone.
Even Zhou Mingxuan was surprised.

Only Song Qinglan knew where those words came about.
But what Song Qinglan didn’t expect was that the person ‘giving Zhou Mingxuan a hand’ wasn’t him but Ji Yushi.

Ji Yushi had said those words to Zhou Mingxuan but he was in fact also telling himself that. They both had experienced the temptation of this bubble word and he knew how to pull Zhou Mingxuan out.

The sound of the search was getting closer.

Song Qinglan took a step closer and snatched away Zhou Mingxuan’s gun, “Stop those damn useless thoughts of yours. It doesn’t matter whether or not it continues because you don’t belong here. You must go with us, right now, immediately!”

Zhou Mingxuan hesitated, “Cap Song, I….”

Tang Qi walked over, grabbed Zhou Mingxuan’s neck without saying a word, and stuck a small disc behind his ear. A new artificial face covered Zhou Mingxuan’s face and, pushed by the others, Zhou Mingxuan was pushed out the room.
The group of people left in the opposite direction of the people conducting the search. As soon as they left the door, the people conducting the searches called out after them, “What are you doing?! Come and register!”