Chapter 257: Chapter 257
Jiang Ye pointed directly at the hourglass:
"See that? There's an extra grain of blood sand inside."
Guan He nodded: "I noticed it in the last cycle. That was caused by my blood."
Jiang Ye continued: "Based on the previous cycle—"
"This grain of blood sand didn't flow into the upper half of the hourglass before the cycle ended."
"In other words, if a normal cycle lasts 180 seconds, with this blood sand, the cycle time becomes 179 seconds."
Guan He nodded in agreement.
But she followed with her own speculation: "If that's the case, then if we turn all 180 grains into blood sand, maybe we can end the cycle?"
That was her thought process.
Jiang Ye had a different perspective. Frowning, he analyzed:
"End the cycle? But what do you think would happen to us if we ended it this way?"
"Haven't you noticed? The first day in our Novice Apartment was unusually long!"
"Were all the subsequent days that long?"
"No! I suspect the Doomsday Apartment's abnormal time was also shortening day by day."
"And then? What happened when the Doomsday Apartment's final day ended? The apartment was destroyed!"
"So I have reason to believe—"
"If we really follow your idea and stain all 180 grains with blood, reducing the cycle time from 180 seconds to 0 seconds..."
"The result might not be breaking free from the time loop, but rather the three of us being destroyed when time runs out!"
Jiang Ye had this thought not just because of his analysis.
There was another important reason—
Earlier, his light clone had heard another self-proclaimed "same kind" being in the underground graveyard's tombstone area say this:
"If the world is a game... then the only currency is time."
Although Lin Ling later said that so-called "same kind" was just his hallucination.
Jiang Ye didn't believe Lin Ling's explanation.
And he remembered those words vividly.
So naturally, he now thought—
If this 3-minute cycle is a test.
Then their chips are those 180 seconds!
Yet now, they've turned 180 seconds into 179...
Guan He pondered this, glancing again at the hourglass, and felt Jiang Ye made sense.
Rashly reducing the cycle time to zero indeed didn't seem wise.
What if when the cycle time reached zero, instead of escaping the loop, they entered a 0-second cycle...
Wouldn't a 0-second cycle mean destruction?
Following Jiang Ye's logic, Guan He had another unsettling thought:
"If what you say is true, then even if we don't add blood to the hourglass, the cycle time will still decrease with each repetition."
"This is our 4th cycle."
"Perhaps by the 10th cycle, or some number, the cycle time will automatically decrease!"
"And if we can't solve this cycle before the time fully runs out..."
"The result would still be time running out and us being destroyed."
Guan He's tone was grave as she spoke these words.
Meanwhile, during their discussion, the 4th cycle was nearing its end!
This time, Jiang Ye attempted a second type of clone fusion.
During the 2nd cycle, he had fused the discarded clone outside the grid to the light clone inside.
This time, he tried fusing the light clone to the clone outside the grid.
The light clone seemed trapped, unable to fuse outward!
A thought flashed through Jiang Ye's mind.
But before he could voice it, the 4th cycle ended.
"Welcome back... my children..."
This time, Jiang Ye didn't hesitate before speaking to Guan He:
"I have a bold idea now, but I need to kill you to verify it."
Guan He's eyelid twitched slightly as she deadpanned: "What a coincidence. I also have an idea that requires killing you to verify."
Jiang Ye thought for a moment, then nodded: "Fine. This cycle you kill me, next cycle I kill you."
Guan He was surprised by his straightforwardness.
After consideration, she suggested: "If we do it now, you'll waste two minutes."
"So let's wait until this cycle is almost over before I kill you. For now, let's analyze some more?"
Jiang Ye nodded, pointing at the hourglass:
"Actually, before you suggested dripping blood on the mirror, I had another thought."
"From our perspective, this hourglass is strange—its sand flows from bottom to top."
"So I was thinking—maybe in this cycle grid we're in, it's not just time that's problematic, but space too?"
"If we could rotate the entire space back to its correct position, moving the hourglass from the mirror's upper right corner to the lower left..."
"Then the sand would flow normally from top to bottom."
"Would time then return to normal?"
This thought came mainly from Jiang Ye's past readings on time theory, which almost always discussed time and space together.
And in analyses of time-space research, one principle was almost always used—the fundamental postulate of special relativity: the principle of the constancy of the speed of light.
Time, space, light...
Also, among the Nomadic Merchant's abilities was an X-tier "Infinite Space-Time."
Clearly combining time and space abilities into one.
Guan He carefully considered this and found Jiang Ye's reasoning plausible.
Her eyes swept across the cycle grid space as she frowned: "But we don't have space manipulation abilities. How would we rotate this inverted space to its correct position?"
At this point, Chen Cang had mostly grasped their situation from their conversation.
He volunteered: "I can try to determine whether this space is truly inverted."
Taking out a compass full of holes, he began adjusting it.
The compass emitted friction sounds, as if containing another smaller compass inside.
As he manipulated it, the holes on the compass shifted.
Finally, all holes aligned with the compass's markings. Chen Cang frowned:
"Either Lu Renjia's analysis was wrong, or my compass can't detect spatial inversion. In any case, its directional readings are the same as in normal space."
Guan He seemed thoughtful, then turned to Jiang Ye:
"The 5th cycle is almost over. Should I do it now?"
Jiang Ye nodded without resistance.
With death, his consciousness ended early.
Directly connecting from the moment of death to the start of the 6th cycle—
"Welcome back... my children..."
Hearing this for the 6th time, it sounded like a curse.
Jiang Ye immediately looked at Guan He: "Well?"
Guan He glanced at Chen Cang and slightly shook her head.
Though she said nothing, Jiang Ye understood—
When she killed him last cycle, there had been no bounty announcement.
So Chen Cang still didn't know he was actually Huang Bo.
And to keep this secret, Guan He couldn't explain.
Deaths in the cycle triggered neither bounty rewards nor clone substitutions.
They weren't real deaths!
As Jiang Ye processed this, Guan He continued:
"However, you didn't see the end of the last cycle. Let me describe it—"
"When the hourglass inverted at the last cycle's end, Chen Cang's compass also moved on its own."
"So your speculation is likely correct—time and space rotate together."
"This cycle I'll let you kill me, but again near the cycle's end."
Jiang Ye's experiment in killing Guan He was to see if killing within this small cycle would trigger the clone-killing-clone effect.
But based on current information, it likely wouldn't.
Because everything in this cycle grid probably wasn't real!
The deaths were fake! The Lightburn was fake!
That's why Chen Cang's death and revival didn't spread Lightburn—
He was never truly infected with real Lightburn!
Jiang Ye's light clone never truly died, hence no bounty was triggered!
The three of them might just be consciousnesses trapped in this Mirror Palace cycle, while their real bodies were elsewhere!
This explained why during his 2nd cycle clone fusion experiment—
While his external clone sensed the discarded clone still fused with it,
By the 3rd cycle, he thought the fusion had ended.
This was probably because the discarded clone was fused with his real body.
While the false body in the cycle was reset at the cycle's start.
So his external clone's perception was correct—
This Mirror Palace cycle wasn't a true cycle.
But a fake cycle simulated through special means!
Jiang Ye couldn't help recalling what the Nomadic Merchant had once told him.
A rather lengthy speech, whose last line was—
"If life cannot wake you, then let reincarnation wake you..."
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