4: Chapter 4 The Surprise of the Time Difference

"It's not a dream!"

Jiang Lin slumped in his chair like a puddle of mud, muttering to himself.

The kind of cold that burrowed from skin into muscle, from muscle into bone, and finally settled down in his bone marrow—he remembered all of it.

The feeling of being driven mad and frantic with hunger due to not eating for a long time was still fresh in his memory.

...

It was too real.

So real that even though the familiar smell of printer ink lingered at the tip of his nose right now, and even though the warm yellow light emitted by the desk lamp was steadily baking his cheeks, he could still feel sweat oozing out from the fine pores on his back, converging into a thin stream of water that trickled all the way down the depression of his spine, only to be stopped by the waistband of his pants.

But the magical thing was that, apart from the psychological lingering fear violently churning in his memory, his physical condition was astonishingly good.

It was just like in the online games he often played, when a character was on the verge of death and suddenly triggered a super-armor bug; not only did the health bar stop dropping, but the backend program refreshed it with a single click, directly restoring his state to full.

He wasn't cold anymore.

His hands and feet, which had been nearly numb from the Wasteland night wind, were now coursing with vibrant warmth.

He wasn't hungry anymore.

The cramping pain in his stomach, as if a fire was burning inside, vanished without a trace.

His throat, which had been so dry it was practically smoking and made even swallowing saliva carry a heavy, bloody taste, also miraculously regained its original moisture.

Jiang Lin suddenly remembered something, reached out to grab the left pant leg of his school uniform, and rolled the fabric upward.

When searching for a water source, he had tripped over a bump on the ground, scraping off a large patch of skin on his knee.

Now, he rolled his pant leg up above his knee.

He pressed his fingertip onto it.

Smooth and intact.

The contour of his kneecap protruded slightly beneath the skin, the surface of which was covered with a thin layer of almost transparent fuzz.

He pressed down firmly; the soft tissue beneath the patella sank slightly, then bounced back after he released it.

There was no pain, no damage, not even a single scar.

In that damn Wasteland World, all of the Physics damage and physiological consumption were left over there.

Not a single bit was brought back.

Jiang Lin turned his head somewhat stiffly, staring blankly at the alarm clock on the corner of the table.

Before crossing over, which was the exact second before the countdown hit zero, he clearly remembered glancing at the time in a rush.

Exactly six o'clock in the morning.

Then his vision went dark, and he stood on that dark red land.

How long had he stayed over there?

From dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn, and then enduring a little more than half a day.

At least thirty-six hours, right?

But now.

On the clock face of the alarm clock, the second hand ticked along.

The minute hand had moved away from the twelve o'clock position just a little bit, having just crossed the first small grid.

The hour hand stopped at the six o'clock mark, leaning slightly to one side.

One minute past six.

That is to say, he had endured thirty-six hours of terror over there, while only one minute had passed on this side.

A huge sense of absurdity, like a heavy hammer, smashed fiercely against Jiang Lin's forehead.

This wasn't right.

This was completely wrong.

Time didn't work this way.

Einstein's theory of relativity states that time and space are one, and the flow rate of time depends on the gravitational field and movement speed of the observer.

If you stay near a huge black hole for a period of time, more time will pass on Earth.

If you fly a circle on a spaceship close to the speed of light and come back, decades might have already passed on Earth.

But Jiang Lin was very sure that no relativistic effect existed between the Wasteland World and Earth.

Because he hadn't been packed into a spaceship and accelerated close to the speed of light, nor had he been thrown into the gravitational field next to a black hole.

His vision just went dark, and then he appeared on another piece of land.

This was more like a spatial teleportation.

Being forcibly transferred from one spatial coordinate to another spatial coordinate.

The relationship between time and space was distorted during this process by some mechanism he didn't understand.

No, it wasn't distorted.

It was elongated.

Or rather, compressed.

Every hour, every minute, and every second he experienced in the Wasteland was genuine.

The cold was real, the hunger was real, the thirst was real, the fear was real.

His consciousness completely experienced every second of those thirty-six hours.

His body completely endured every cold wind, every stomach spasm, and every dry heave during those thirty-six hours.

Those experiences were not discounted, not fast-forwarded, and not compressed into a one-minute condensed version.

But when he returned to the Real World, only sixty seconds had passed here.

What did this mean?

Jiang Lin's pupils shrank slightly.

Following closely behind was an electric shock-like shivering sensation.

Starting from the tailbone, all the way up along the tailbone, passing through the lumbar vertebrae, thoracic vertebrae, cervical vertebrae, ascending all the way along the central canal of the spinal cord, and exploding at the back of the head.

Exploding into a dense patch of goosebumps.

The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

The scalp on top of his head tightened.

It wasn't fear.

Definitely not fear.

Jiang Lin swallowed hard.

For a high school senior, what was the most lacking thing?

It was time.

He lacked talent, and he was naturally slow at learning things.

It took other people ten minutes to memorize twenty English words, but it took him thirty minutes.

It took other people one look at an example to understand the problem-solving approach of an analytic geometry problem, but he needed to look at it five times, sometimes ten times.

Other people could finish a set of math test papers in two hours during evening self-study, but he would still have three big questions left blank when the class ending bell rang.

It wasn't that he didn't work hard; his brain just didn't spin that fast.

Information was inputted from the eyes, completing the whole set of processes of decoding, understanding, storing, and establishing neural connections in the brain; his hardware configuration was half a beat slower than others.

And yet there were so many subjects.

Chinese, mathematics, English, Physics, chemistry, biology—six subjects, every single one of which had endless test papers to finish and endless knowledge points to memorize.

The formulas of Physics, the equations of chemistry, the cell structures of biology, the dictation of ancient Chinese poems in Chinese, the words and grammar of English, and the question types and techniques of mathematics.

Time needed to be invested on every single front, and on every single front he was running a deficit.

But time was fair, the same for everyone: twenty-four hours a day, sixty minutes an hour, sixty seconds a minute.

No matter how much you squeezed, you couldn't squeeze out a twenty-fifth hour.

While others were sleeping, he was memorizing words; while others were playing basketball and dating, he was deriving formulas.

He split the ten-minute break between classes into three three-minute intervals, compressed his mealtime to five minutes, and compressed his sleep to six hours.

The dark blue bruises under his eye sockets became heavier day by day.

But even so, he still couldn't catch up to those people with good brains.

How could this kind of battle be fought?

There was no way to fight it.

But what about now?

Jiang Lin swallowed hard.

In the upper right corner of his vision.

[29:23:58:12]

The same format, the same frequency, and the same position as the previous thirty-day countdown.

That string of numbers, the thirty-day countdown, had started a new round of ticking.

Well, but this wasn't important.

The important thing was that if the pattern didn't change, twenty-nine days later, there was a high probability that he would be dragged into that Wasteland World once again.

Jiang Lin had seen the concept of a Time Room in a certain web novel.

That novel was about a protagonist entering a certain different space to cultivate, where the flow rate of time inside was much, much slower than outside.

Cultivating inside for a year, while only a day passed outside.

At that time, he thought this setting was cool, but it was just feeling cool; it was stuffed into a certain corner of his brain along with countless web novel tropes, gathering a layer of dust.

Now that layer of dust was violently blown away.

If the flow rate of time in the Wasteland really had a sixty-to-one ratio with the Real World, then as long as he could survive in the Wasteland, the longer he lived, the more extra time he would possess compared to others.

"I am a clumsy bird."

Jiang Lin suddenly gave a short laugh.

"But right now, I seem to have more flight time than others."

Outside the window, the sky was beginning to brighten.

Lights in several windows lit up successively in the residential building opposite; looking from afar, they were like several stars opening their eyes in the darkness.

This city was waking up.

Jiang Lin picked up a new ballpoint pen, raised his hand, and wrote down three words on a draft notebook.

Cold protection.

If the next crossing was still at that position, still in the same Wasteland, and under the same climatic conditions, he had to bring warming things over.

The school uniform was too thin; the polyester fabric couldn't block that level of low temperature.

He needed thicker clothing, and things that could protect his ears and fingers.

Water and heat.

In the Wasteland, from beginning to end he didn't ingest any effective moisture and heat.

The grayish-black liquid in the puddle was a diluted mineral acid solution, and taking a sip burned his entire oral cavity.

Thirty-six hours, not a single drop of water entered, not a single grain of rice entered.

If the teleportation mechanism hadn't reset his physiological state upon returning, he would probably be lying in the hospital's emergency room right now due to dehydration and hypoglycemia.

Next time, he couldn't go empty-handed.

The pen tip drew a horizontal line below the four characters of water and heat, and then wrote down the third word.

Test papers.

When he finished writing these two words, the corners of his mouth twitched.

A high school senior's first reaction upon being teleported to the Wasteland World was cold, hunger, thirst, and fear.

The second reaction was—bringing test papers.

Saying it out loud would probably be treated as a madman.

But he was serious.

If the time flow rate in the Wasteland compared to time in the Real World was 2160:1, wouldn't he be able to gain a lot of extra time with every single crossing?

Those times not used for grinding problems—could it be that they were used to squatting under the roots of broken walls and counting sand?

He circled these three words, drew a brace next to them, and wrote a single character: Prepare.

Preparation.

In the next twenty-nine days, he needed to prepare for the next crossing.

Jiang Lin put down the ballpoint pen, raised his head, and his line of sight fell on the half-open wardrobe in the corner of the bedroom.

The wardrobe was an old-fashioned three-door wooden cabinet, with a full-length mirror set into the middle door.

The mirror reflected his upper body.

His filthy school uniform, his hair sticking up in a few strands from not sleeping all night, and the dark blue bruises under his eye sockets didn't look as heavy in the warm yellow light, but could still be seen if looked at closely.

His gaze moved away from himself in the mirror and began to scan the entire bedroom.

Desk, desk lamp, alarm clock, pen container, books, test papers, draft notebook...

The blue plastic slippers on his feet were still there.

Behind the door.

The schoolbag was hanging there, bulging, stuffed with the textbooks and test papers brought back from school yesterday.

On the windowsill.

Several magazines, an empty mineral water bottle, and a pot of green dill placed by his mom last week.

The leaves of the green dill were a bit withered, slightly yellowing at the edges; it was time to water them.

Jiang Lin looked over these things one by one.

Like a person about to go on a distant trip checking their luggage checklist.

Every time he looked at an item, he categorized it in his mind.

What could be brought over, what couldn't be brought over, and what needed to be modified before it could be brought over.