Volume 1, Chapter 32: Overlapping Spacetime
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They were more than four thousand kilometers apart—rather too far for comfort.
“Wait for us. We’ll be there shortly.” Xu Tianhao hurriedly gathered everyone and headed toward Aliyah’s group.
Li Yan’s team and Xu Tianhao’s team boarded the space-time shuttle. In the blink of an eye, they had arrived four thousand kilometers away.
Such a distance was nothing to a space-time shuttle capable of piercing the fabric of space-time and traveling between parallel worlds.
On top of a mountain, snow and wind howled. Aliyah’s group stood in the snow, staring ahead.
The moment Li Yan stepped out of the shuttle, his space-time locator began beeping.
It indicated that the third group was nearby.
Yet apart from the vast expanse of white snow, there was no sign of anyone else.
Xu Tianhao, Yue Chengze, and Aliyah all wore solemn expressions.
“Xu, the third group’s signal is right here, but we can’t find them.” Aliyah looked at the display on her locator, her expression bewildered.
Xu Tianhao glanced around, equally perplexed.
There was clearly a signal. Why couldn’t they see anyone?
Had they been buried in the snow? Or hidden underground? That was impossible.
A space-time locator could not possibly make such a rudimentary error.
They tried contacting the third group, but received no response.
Clearly, none of the three team leaders had ever encountered such a situation before.
As a newcomer, Li Yan was even more completely at a loss.
“Report this to the captain. It’s beyond what we’re capable of handling.” Xu Tianhao quickly reached his conclusion.
However, just as they were reporting the situation to the captain, they suddenly heard voices coming from the third group.
“Be careful. Don’t attack them.”
“Captain, those creatures have already eaten so many people. If we don’t act now, even more will die.”
Yue Chengze hurriedly shouted, “Captain Gu, is that you? Where are you?”
“Old Yue? Where are you?”
“Not good! Leave at once! These dinosaurs have mutated. They’ve been contaminated!”
The signal was abruptly cut off. Yue Chengze tried speaking again, but there was no response.
What had happened?
Everyone was baffled.
Wait—hadn’t the third group just said that the dinosaurs had mutated?
Li Yan instinctively glanced around. Everything was still buried beneath an endless sheet of white snow.
Dinosaurs?
There wasn’t even a bird in sight.
Xu Tianhao had the most experience among them, and his expression darkened. He seemed to have thought of something and turned toward Yue Chengze and Aliyah.
“Surely not. Could something like that really have happened?”
Yue Chengze and Aliyah had apparently realized the same possibility. Both looked grim.
Li Yan was bursting with curiosity and wanted to ask what was happening, but when he saw the unpleasant expressions on all three team leaders’ faces, he forced down his questions.
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“Report this to the captain immediately. This is troublesome. Even the captain may not be able to deal with it. Request reinforcements at once,” Yue Chengze said.
“Understood. I’ll contact the captain. You two search the surroundings. And activate the quantum-space locators.” Xu Tianhao hurriedly contacted the captain.
The quantum-space locator was restricted equipment that only team leaders had permission to use.
Li Yan watched as Yue Chengze and Aliyah each held a quantum-space locator and began setting it up.
Unable to suppress his curiosity any longer, he went over to Wu Xu and asked in a low voice, “Brother Xu, what exactly happened?”
Wu Xu did not look well either, but he still answered Li Yan’s question.
“Space-time overlap. And a very serious one.”
“Space-time overlap?”
Li Yan could not make sense of it.
He quickly used his own space-time locator to search the Order Bureau’s records.
Before long, he found the answer.
The explanation dated back a long way—it was actually recorded in an archive from three hundred years ago.
Space-time overlap, as the name suggested, occurred when the timelines of certain parallel worlds became disordered as they evolved along their respective paths.
In other words, two timelines crossed and became entangled, folding over one another.
As a result, certain objects or living beings from one timeline could cross over into the other.
Put simply, an ordinary modern person might be living his life one moment and find himself transported straight into ancient times the next.
Li Yan thought of a film he had once seen. It was called something like *My Girlfriend Is from Another Time*.
It described exactly this sort of situation.
In theory, such a thing could happen, but the probability was infinitesimally small.
He had never expected to encounter space-time overlap here.
As a liberal arts student, he began to wonder whether he ought to brush up on physics.
“Something’s wrong! Yue, move!”
The quantum-space device in Aliyah’s hand began emitting a violent alarm. Terror spread across her face as she turned and sprinted backward.
It was as though some horrifying creature were chasing her.
At her words, Yue Chengze, Xu Tianhao, and the others all changed expression.
Li Yan knew something disastrous had happened and turned to run.
But it was already too late.
An invisible wave swept rapidly toward them.
Li Yan felt his vision go black, followed by a violent spinning sensation.
“Damn it, I don’t want to die!”
The thought flashed through his mind. He had not lived nearly long enough yet.
But his body was completely beyond his control.
His combat suit and space-time locator began beeping frantically, signaling a malfunction.
“Warning. Warning. Warning…”
With a loud crash, Li Yan felt himself slam heavily into something.
It did not hurt. If anything, it felt somewhat soft.
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He hurriedly shook his head, trying to remain conscious.
When he opened his eyes, he discovered that he seemed to have landed on the body of some creature.
At that moment, a somewhat dazed, enormous head was staring at him.
The creature was massive, with an extraordinarily long neck—far longer than a giraffe’s. Its head, however, was tiny, though it was still enormous compared with Li Yan’s.
It was roughly the size of a bicycle wheel.
Wait…
Didn’t this thing look like a dinosaur?
He felt he had seen this kind of dinosaur somewhere before. Then it came to him: a brontosaurus.
Li Yan was startled. Only then did he realize that he had landed directly on the dinosaur’s back.
The brontosaurus, which had been eating leaves, seemed utterly confused.
How had a tiny creature suddenly appeared on its back?
What had happened?
Its intelligence was insufficient to provide an answer.
Li Yan reacted quickly and hurriedly jumped down from the brontosaurus’s back.
Then every hair on his body stood on end as he cautiously surveyed his surroundings.
He also raised his combat suit to its fifth level of enhancement.
Hmm?
Why did the ground beneath his feet feel sticky and soft?
He looked down and instantly felt his entire world collapse.
He was standing on a huge pile of dinosaur dung.
It looked much like the droppings of a water buffalo, except there was far more of it—a broad, sprawling mass.
Judging by its appearance, the creature must have eaten something disagreeable recently. It had diarrhea.
“Good grief! What the hell!”
Li Yan leaped high into the air.
What kind of situation was this?
He had actually stepped in dinosaur dung.
Perhaps his movements had been too violent, because the dazed brontosaurus let out a strange cry.
Then it began to run.
The other members of the herd received the signal and started running as well.
Thunderous rumbling filled the air.
The ground trembled beneath the pounding feet of those enormous creatures.
Li Yan stared blankly at the scene.
This counted as watching *Jurassic Park* from inside the movie, didn’t it?
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