Chapter 96: Not Optimistic
Perhaps, if I can connect all these trivial ten-second fragments together, we can piece together a relatively complete sequence and get a clear glimpse of the future.
Song Yuqing prayed silently.
Xiaoyi was part of the second group scheduled to enter the theater. Noticing that Song Yuqing looked visibly tense, the young girl couldn’t help but feel a wave of nervous anxiety wash over herself as well.
“Manager… is there a price to pay for peeking into the future?”
Song Yuqing blinked, caught off guard. “Probably not, right?” After all, Master Fu had never mentioned any side effects.
“Actually, yes,” Master Fu’s voice suddenly echoed in her mind. “Every time someone watches the future, the timeline accelerates. The actual event will occur ten seconds sooner.”
Song Yuqing’s jaw dropped. Why the hell didn’t you tell me that before?! she cursed silently, gritting her teeth.
“Well, you never asked~” Master Fu muttered defensively. “Besides, I have a million things to manage. Cut me some slack, sometimes I just forget…”
If Master Fu possessed a physical form and was standing in front of her right now, Song Yuqing would have punched him dead in the face. Xiaoyi watched her manager suddenly fall deathly silent, grinding her teeth in a quiet fury, and instinctively took two cautious steps back.
The automatic doors slid open with a soft hiss, and the first group of moviegoers filed out, looking completely bewildered.
“Man, I feel like we just got ripped off…” “Yeah, I didn’t understand a single thing on that screen.” “Can we go back in and watch it again?”
Song Yuqing had fully expected this exact reaction. “Why don’t you describe what you saw?”
“How do I even put it into words?” The first group of survivors rubbed their chins, trying to process the footage.
They were combat espers from Base 9, and they explained that the screen had displayed their home base warped and shattered like a scattered jigsaw puzzle. More specifically, the structures looked like blurred, fading fragments that were actively dissolving into nothingness. To make matters worse, the imagery only lasted for five seconds; the remaining five seconds were pure, oppressive blackness accompanied by a strange, low buzzing sound.
“Take your time to think it over,” the second group of guests urged impatiently, crowding the threshold. “We’re heading in to take our turn!”
Just as the automatic doors began to glide shut, Xiaoyi suddenly darted out of the line. She hesitated for a fraction of a second, then lifted her head to look at Song Yuqing. “Manager, is it possible for me to watch a screening completely alone?”
Song Yuqing paused. True, maybe changing the variable from a group of five to a single viewer will trigger a different projection.
Thinking of this, she gave a firm nod. “Go ahead.”
“Wait, what about us? Can we watch individually too?” the third group of guests asked expectantly.
“In that case, we want to go back in one by one too!” the first group chorused, raising their hands.
As Song Yuqing wavered, Master Fu grumbled sharply in her ear, warning her not to run a deficit and tank the store’s profit margins. She found it incredibly hypocritical of him to lecture her about financial losses, considering the system itself was usually the one forcing her into terrible business deals.
Seeing that the manager didn’t immediately agree, Xiaoyi flushed with embarrassment, realizing she had set an awkward precedent. “Never mind, I’ll just go in with the group…”
“It’s fine,” Song Yuqing cut in. “But I can only allow two people to watch solo today. Xiaoyi will take the first slot, and the rest of you can decide who gets the second one.”
“Deal!” The members of the third group immediately huddled into a tight circle, whispering fiercely as they debated who should represent them.
At that moment, the doors whirred open again, and the second group of travelers stumbled out of the dark. Pure panic was written all over their faces.
“We… we saw a massive horde of zombies completely surrounding Base 35,” one of them gasped.
Song Yuqing’s heart took a violent leap. “A mutant siege at Base 35?!” She pressed for details. “What happened next? Did the walls hold?”
The travelers shook their heads helplessly. The clip had cut to black right there; that was the entire vision.
“Alright, next group up!”
While the third group remained locked in their huddle, Xiaoyi plucked up her courage, stepped through the threshold, and let the automatic doors seal her inside the private theater.
While they waited for the young girl to emerge, the third group finally selected their solo viewer. It was a middle-aged woman, her face etched with exhaustion and her temples heavily streaked with gray hair.
“She’ll take the slot,” the group leader announced. They were seasoned zombie hunters from Base 30, and the woman they had chosen ran their squad’s logistics and supply unit.
“I need to see it because… I need to find my daughter,” the woman murmured. She clenched her hands into tight fists, her eyes ringed with a thick, watery red.
Song Yuqing didn’t pry any further. She simply offered a gentle, empathetic nod. In her heart, she had no way of knowing whether the theater would actually grant a desperate mother a glimpse of her missing child.
The theater doors slid open, filling the corridor with bright light.
A few moments passed, but Xiaoyi didn’t step out.
“Xiaoyi! Come on out, it’s our turn!” the members of the third group called into the dark room.
Song Yuqing stepped past them into the theater and froze. Xiaoyi was curled up tightly in the center seat, her shoulders shaking violently as tears streamed down her face.
“Oh my gosh, what’s wrong?” The travelers rushed inside, swarming the chair to comfort her and help wipe her face.
“What did you see in there?” Song Yuqing squeezed through the crowd, kneeling beside the chair to gently stroke the girl’s trembling back.
“I… I…” Xiaoyi choked on a sob, her voice cracking with pure terror. “I saw my cousin. A man… he murdered her.”
A suffocating, horrified silence fell over the small room.
“Who is your cousin?” one of the hunters asked softly. “Can we find her and warn her?”
“Ruan… Ruan Fanfan.”
Boom.
It felt as though a bomb had detonated inside Song Yuqing’s brain. “Ruan Fanfan?!”
How could it be her? And how could she possibly be killed by a man?
Song Yuqing forced a massive, ragged breath into her lungs, fighting with every ounce of her willpower to maintain a fragile composure. “Xiaoyi, listen to me. What did the man look like? How exactly did he kill her?”
“I… I couldn’t see his face,” Xiaoyi wept, clutching her head. “It was just a massive, terrifying shadow of a man. A thick, thorny vine erupted straight out of his shadow and wrapped tightly around her throat… it constricted her until she completely stopped moving.”
Song Yuqing’s stomach dropped into a bottomless void. A thorny vine. Who else could that possibly be but Zhang Lei?
Her hands curled into tight, white-knuckled fists. How was she supposed to warn Ruan Fanfan? She didn’t even have a single lead on where the wood-type mutant was currently located.
Gently pulling the weeping girl into her arms, Song Yuqing guided her out of the theater. But as she crossed the threshold, she abruptly froze, Master Fu’s warning echoing through her mind with terrifying clarity: Every time someone watches the future, the timeline accelerates. The actual event will occur ten seconds sooner.
She looked down at the girl. “Xiaoyi, do you know where your cousin is right now?”
Xiaoyi wiped her eyes, nodding automatically before freezing and shaking her head in a daze. The last time she had laid eyes on Ruan Fanfan was during the raid at Base 35, where she had watched her cousin willingly stand alongside those dangerous rogues.
“Can you tell me everything you know about what happened between you two?” Song Yuqing asked, gently brushing a stray lock of hair away from the girl’s tear-stained face. “Trust me. I am your cousin’s closest friend in this world.”
Just as Song Yuqing was about to lead Xiaoyi downstairs to the privacy of her bedroom, the door to the theater slid open again. The third group had finished their collective screening and were shuffling out onto the landing.
“What did your screen show?” the survivors from the first and second groups asked, rushing forward.
The members of the third group kept their heads lowered, maintaining a grim, heavy silence.
“Come on, speak up! What happened?”
After a long, agonizing pause, one of the logistics officers spoke up, her voice incredibly weak. “We saw Base 30.”
“And? What else?”
The members of the third group silently shook their heads. They had only seen a static, unmoving shot of Base 30’s exterior structure. There was absolutely no other visual data on the screen.
“That’s it?” The onlookers from Base 9 and Base 35 looked completely baffled, unable to comprehend why a simple shot of a base would leave a veteran squad looking so utterly broken.
Song Yuqing, however, caught the subtle shift in their expressions. “Did you smell or hear something while the video was playing?”
The logistics officer looked up, her eyes wide with lingering horror. “Yes… the overwhelming stench of copper blood. And the sound of thousands of people screaming in agony.”
The three separate groups correspond directly to three separate survival bases, Song Yuqing realized, her grip tightening instinctively around Xiaoyi’s small hand. The future provided by this theater isn’t a single, objective timeline. It’s a localized warning system.
“Manager… what does all of this mean?” Xiaoyi whispered, trembling.
Song Yuqing let out a hollow, bitter chuckle, her shoulders slumping as she shrugged helplessly. “It means… things are looking exceptionally bad.”
