The repeated disappearances of important figures made the rest of the laboratory staff sense that something was off. However, before they could dwell on it, even more pressing research tasks consumed all their time.
Even Jun Tesi was unable to get Tang Xiao to relax this time. Or rather, Tang Xiao no longer had the luxury to pay attention to anything around him. The atmosphere in the lab returned to its previous cold severity, just as it had been before Jun Tesi arrived.
That day, another argument broke out in the conference room. Even the soundproof walls couldn't fully muffle the noise of fists slamming onto tables. The researchers outside instinctively quieted their movements and glanced toward the meeting room. After half an hour, the door finally opened, and a few physicists stormed out, their faces filled with anger as they loudly voiced their dissatisfaction.
A researcher who had just returned from the restroom had missed the conflict's buildup. Confused, he turned to his colleague and asked, “What happened?”
“Probably a disagreement with Dr. Tang,” a middle-aged researcher whispered. “Dr. Tang has an impressive knowledge base. It’s not just biology—he can even chime in on physics and chemistry. Just now, in their meeting, they were discussing progress. Dr. Tang thought they were too slow, and it led to a heated argument. It didn’t end well.”
The researcher nodded in realization, then asked, “But what does that have to do with Dr. Tang’s knowledge base?”
“We only caught a few words from outside, but it seemed like Dr. Tang said something along the lines of, ‘If they can’t do it, I can do it for them’…”
The researcher hesitated. “Did he really say that? Uh… sounds a bit… That must’ve just been frustration talking, right?”
Even as he said it, he hesitated. It had to be just frustration… right?
After all, since Dr. Xiao and Dr. Feng had disappeared, Tang Xiao had taken over their work. His workload was already inhuman. Just thinking about it made the researcher feel exhausted for him. Surely, he didn’t have the energy to take on another field?
Perhaps he didn’t realize it himself, but the researcher’s first thought was not whether Tang Xiao was capable—it was whether he had enough time.
The middle-aged researcher sighed. “Who knows? Lately, Dr. Tang has been pushing progress like a madman. Honestly, if he had three heads and six arms, I think he’d rather kick all of us out and do it himself.”
Just as those words fell, they saw Tang Xiao standing at the conference room door, looking their way. The two immediately stopped gossiping, lowered their heads, and returned to their work.
Tang Xiao pinched the bridge of his nose. In just a few days, the dark circles under his eyes had returned.
But he still couldn’t stop.
An invisible pressure loomed over him, similar to last time, yet somehow different. If he had known they would disappear, Tang Xiao would rather that this cursed fusion had never happened.
Now, all he could do was repeat the process—research, experiment, adjust. In a way, the lab gossip was right: if he could master a skill like Jun Tesi’s ability to create clones, he would split himself into countless copies without hesitation.
At that moment, the mycelium ring on his wrist tightened slightly. Tang Xiao snapped back to reality and realized that, at some point, Jun Tesi had already appeared in front of him, wrapping his arms around him. “Xiaoxiao, you’re falling back into your old habits again.”
Tang Xiao forced a smile. “Yeah, I can’t help it.”
Maybe it was because of the game system embedded in him, but Tang Xiao had always instinctively tried to solve problems alone. That controlling tendency surfaced so naturally.
He knew today’s argument in the meeting room had happened because he hadn’t been able to hold back from interfering with other experts’ fields, sparking their resentment.
The consecutive disappearances of Dr. Xiao and Dr. Feng had placed immense mental pressure on Tang Xiao. He couldn’t just stand by and watch as one person after another vanished.
“We still have time,” Jun Tesi softly reassured him.
“Really?” Tang Xiao looked at him deeply. “Then tell me—how much time do we have left?”
Jun Tesi opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Seeing his reaction, Tang Xiao more or less got his answer. “If the worlds fully merge, then they’ll never come back, will they?”
Silence.
Tang Xiao sighed and slowly pulled away from Jun Tesi’s embrace. “Let’s go back to the lab. We still have work to do.” With that, Tang Xiao walked ahead, his pace hurried. Jun Tesi followed in silence, his gaze still lingering on Tang Xiao.
As they approached the laboratory, a researcher walked out. “Dr. Tang, the latest data results are in.”
“Let me see.” Tang Xiao’s energy sparked briefly as he took the report. But as he scanned the numbers, his initial anticipation faded, his expression growing dim. Silently, he returned the printed report to the researcher. “We’ll have a meeting this afternoon. Please pass the message along.”
“Understood.”
Jun Tesi didn’t need to see the report to know the results were disappointing. Once the researcher left, Tang Xiao stood in place for a long time, his gaze unfocused. After a while, he finally returned to the lab bench.
But this time, he didn’t immediately dive back into work. He leaned on the table, staring at the surface for a long moment. When he finally heard footsteps behind him, he let out a bitter laugh. “You know… My first instinct just now was to reload my last save.”
Jun Tesi quietly walked up behind him, not responding right away.
Tang Xiao continued as if talking to himself. “Then I remembered—the game system’s save and load functions have long been locked. My second thought… was self-termination, to return to an earlier time point.”
Jun Tesi couldn’t help but interject, “I already neutralized that slow-acting poison you drank.”
“I know. I figured it out after two or three days without any symptoms,” Tang Xiao replied without turning around. “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything stupid. You already told me there’s no going back, and I believe you.”
It was just that… perhaps he had relied on time reversal too many times. The moment this approach failed, his subconscious immediately sought it out.
But now, that trump card was gone. So what did he, as a researcher, have left?
“You still have a brilliant mind and an unyielding determination,” Jun Tesi said. Only then did Tang Xiao realize—he had voiced his thoughts out loud.
“Didn't everyone come through the same way?” Jun Tesi tilted his head in confusion. “Without the ability to rewind time, does that mean Xiaoxiao is no longer a researcher? No longer a genius scientist? Others might not know, but I personally witnessed how you spent countless hours and effort over those three years just to find a way forward.”
“The ability to rewind can be sealed, but don't you still have your own mind?”
Tang Xiao stared blankly at Jun Tesi. “I can't believe there's a day when you actually say something that makes so much sense.”
Jun Tesi: “?”
“But thanks for the reassurance.” Tang Xiao rubbed his face and took a deep breath. “You're right. Now, I'm just standing at the same starting line as every other scientist. Though, sometimes I wonder—if I had another three years…”
All of a sudden, Tang Xiao stopped mid-sentence and lifted his head from his palm. “Three years… Time…?”
Jun Tesi frowned. “What is it?”
Tang Xiao muttered in a daze, “I've rewound time so many times in the game world. Back then, the two worlds hadn't yet overlapped, so my rewinds didn't affect reality. In reality, I lived through about three years.”
“Right now… how old am I?”
Jun Tesi’s brows furrowed even deeper.
“No, no, I can't count myself. What about Xiao Bai? How old is the Xiao Bai in reality? How old is he in the game world? And when did Madam Xiao pass away in the game world?”
Tang Xiao's pupils contracted slightly as he abruptly sat down, opened his laptop, and started searching.
Jun Tesi had no idea what was going on, but he could tell that Tang Xiao was in the middle of a sudden burst of inspiration, so he kept his mouth shut and watched silently.
Tang Xiao was already completely unaware of his surroundings. His mind flashed rapidly through fragments of information, linking clue after clue together.
He had already looked up Xiao Bai's news in the Alliance before. With his current intelligence, he wouldn't forget anything he'd read—he was just confirming it instinctively.
Reconstructing the timeline, Madam Xiao had fallen critically ill at the end of his second year in college. Then, halfway through his third year, the game's main storyline was triggered. Half a year later, Tang Xiao experienced his first rewind. After rewinding for over three years, he was in his final year of graduate school, preparing to graduate.
That was about five years ago.
In the data Tang Xiao pulled up, Madam Xiao had also passed away exactly five years ago.
The timelines matched.
In reality, Xiao Bai was 38 years old this year. In the game world, Dr. Xiao was also 38 years old.
But originally, the game world's timeline was supposed to be ahead of reality. In the game, Madam Xiao had already passed away, while in reality, she had still been alive. It was only later, thanks to technological advancements, that she survived.
Now, however, the years aligned.
Because… he had rewound time.
Tang Xiao stared at the result in a daze. A sudden, uncontrollable shiver ran through his body, and goosebumps erupted all over his skin.
At that moment, research data flashed through his mind. No, the two timelines hadn’t completely merged yet. The Earth's rotation was different—that was the puzzle still stumping all the scientists.
It was like two gears, one of which was still slightly misaligned. But both gears were too finely crafted to be manually adjusted, and world fusion was like forcibly jamming the two together. The recent disasters were caused by the resulting magnetic chaos and crustal disturbances.
According to the research lab's calculations, the current time discrepancy between the two worlds was ten hours.
…He had rewound time 19 times back at school. He hadn’t checked the exact duration back then, but judging by his heartbeat count, it was roughly ten hours.
“No way…” Tang Xiao suddenly clutched his forehead tightly. “That ten-hour discrepancy… was caused by my 19-time reversals?!”
His fingers unconsciously pressed harder, overwhelmed by the shocking realization. He didn't even register the pain, but the next moment, Jun Tesi grabbed his hand.
The silver-haired man’s expression turned serious. “Xiaoxiao, don’t hurt yourself!”
Tang Xiao looked at him in a daze, his eyelashes stained with a trace of blood. Only then did he realize he had pressed too hard, his nails cutting into his forehead.
But he didn’t care about the pain at all. He just stared at Jun Tesi, watching his lips move—but his brain could not process the words.
The world stretched before his eyes. He was in the lab, yet it felt as if he were sitting in his own memory palace, watching scenes rapidly rewind and rewind.
[“Xiaoxiao, that thing is no good! You can't use it! It's trying to kill you!”]
[“So the time you disappeared before… you went to that world?”]
[“Everyone’s personal main quest is different. Some people run businesses in reality but have political main quests in the game… Every player who completed their personal main quest contributed to ‘The War for Humanity’s Survival’.”
“After that war ended, the game interface never assigned another task again.”]
[“The Mbius Mushroom—drifting survivors existing across different dimensions of the universe.”]
[Bai Jun]
[“Time flows differently. To the astronauts on that ship, maybe only a dozen days have passed, but for us, it's been over ten years. Doesn't it feel like a fleeting moment?”]
Finally, he found himself sitting in the audience of an academic lecture, watching a young researcher present their team’s findings.
[“Ancient mushrooms were enormous roughly 480 million years ago… Here are the relevant genetic analysis results. We discovered some very interesting data… After testing, it seems that this ancient mushroom can precisely cut and absorb genetic material…”]
“…So that's how it is,” Tang Xiao stared blankly at Jun Tesi, murmuring, “It didn’t do anything wrong. I was supposed to die at the moment of my staged death. If that had happened, everything that followed wouldn’t have occurred.”
Jun Tesi had said the game system wanted him dead, and that was correct. At that time, his body had disappeared from reality, meaning that in that moment, he had actually entered the battlefield in person—but he hadn't realized it.
He should have died then, completely devoured by Jun Tesi. If things had ended at that moment, he wouldn’t have reversed time at the university, and the two worlds’ timelines would have been perfectly aligned. No, in fact, if he had truly died, Jun Tesi wouldn’t have had any motivation to accelerate the fusion, and the merging of worlds might never have happened at all.
The game system’s goal was humanity’s survival. That was why, after his staged death, it stopped issuing any new missions—because there was no need. But later, it started giving missions again, because his survival had changed things.
“Xiaoxiao?” Jun Tesi had no idea what Tang Xiao was thinking about, but after hearing those words, he instinctively tightened his grip. His first reaction was that Tang Xiao had given up, and had fallen into despair—perhaps even reconsidering the option he had previously rejected.
But the next moment, as he looked into Tang Xiao’s eyes, he dismissed that idea.
That wasn’t the gaze of someone in despair. On the contrary, he was all too familiar with that expression—it was the look Tang Xiao always had when he suddenly figured out the key to clearing a challenge.
Sure enough, in the next instant, Tang Xiao stood up, grabbed Jun Tesi, and rushed out of the lab, nearly bumping into a group of researchers coming in.
“Dr. Tang Xiao? You're not attending the afternoon meeting?”
“You guys handle it!”
Tang Xiao didn’t even look back.
On the way, he briefly explained his deduction to Jun Tesi. “The game system came from the future. Its goal is to save humanity from the disaster caused by the King of Mushroom. I was the most critical piece of its plan. Originally, it wanted me to die at the moment I was devoured by you.”
“From the future? That's impossible,” Jun Tesi said blankly. “Because… if there had been such a massive-scale time rewind, the King of Mushroom, you, and I should have noticed it.”
“The Earth beneath our feet is constantly rotating and orbiting the sun—can you feel it moving?” Tang Xiao asked.
“I can.”
“…Most humans can’t,” Tang Xiao said, exasperated. “Anyway, the reason we didn’t notice such a massive rewind is because it happened in a future or past far beyond our comprehension. We are like humans standing on the Earth, existing in the middle of the timeline, unable to perceive its changes.”
Jun Tesi furrowed his brows. “But even if we know this, what can we do? How does this help with our current situation?”
By now, the two had returned to their dormitory. Tang Xiao took a deep breath, trying to recover from the exertion of running, and then turned to Jun Tesi. “You once told me that your species’ nature could be described using the human concept of a Mbius loop, right?”
“You’re saying this, which means… you’ve grasped the concept of a Mbius loop,” Jun Tesi said. “This Mbius loop doesn’t represent infinite size—it refers to time,” Tang Xiao continued. “You don’t have a grandfather paradox because your kind are higher-dimensional beings. You are the only legitimate time traveler.”
Jun Tesi nodded, acknowledging Tang Xiao’s deduction.
Tang Xiao looked at the game panel in front of him and said, “In that case… since they went to such great lengths to design this setup, they definitely won’t just let things unfold as they are now. We have to find the person behind the system.”
“Where do we find them?”
“At the very beginning—the moment the ancient mushroom first appeared on Earth, 480 million years ago.” Tang Xiao looked at Jun Tesi and smirked. “We’re going to ‘kill the grandfather’ and complete this closed loop.”
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