Chapter 154: The enemy of my enemy can be a comrade-in-arms temporarily.
The current time was just 28 minutes away from the point where An Wujiu in Space 99 was on the brink of desperation.
Today was also the day An Wujiu of Space 99 decided to take a desperate gamble.
An Wujiu pointed the light machine gun in his hand at the masked man’s head. His palms were sweating. If this shot hit, he might only have the Evil God as his enemy left, but if it missed or was blocked, Space 0 would definitely find his position and come to kill him.
An Wujiu now only had a sliver of health left. One hit would kill him. He also had no skill cards left that could turn the tide. If he recklessly exposed his position, as Yang Erci said, the opponent might have already anticipated this possibility. He was very likely to die.
To die at the same point in time as his counterpart in Space 99, when his life hung by a thread.
An Wujiu did not believe in fate.
He did not believe that everything he had sacrificed, moving from one space-time to another, sacrificing so many versions of himself, would ultimately lead to a dead end.
His finger touched the trigger, ready to pull it, when suddenly he felt a bullet appear, passing through the gaps in the leaves and hitting Space 0 before him.
An Wujiu’s first thought was of Yang Erci.
She was the only one ambushing from high ground at this time.
The bullet flew towards Space 0, just missing, when suddenly a group of pollutants’ tentacles rose up, surrounding Space 0, using their bodies as shields.
Just as An Wujiu had predicted, the shot was wasted.
This was trouble.
Yang Erci’s position was exposed. Now Space 0 would definitely lead a large group of pollutants to hunt her down.
But An Wujiu, recalling the direction from which the bullet came, suddenly understood why Yang Erci had to fire that shot.
She was trying to draw the tiger away from the mountain, using herself as bait to divert Space 0’s attention, preventing them from besieging the companions who were preparing to rendezvous with Nan Shan and Wu You.
They had only heard from An Wujiu about what happened in the previous cycle, knowing that Russell would come, but the arrival and encirclement by the masked man would definitely catch them off guard.
Yang Erci probably knew that the shot would not hit, but she acted with the resolve to die to protect the others.
Space 0 had already gone after her.
An Wujiu was once again caught in a dilemma. Both Yang Erci and the other companions were very important to him.
But his current health couldn’t afford even a single mistake.
He couldn’t let Yang Erci’s su!c!dal protection be in vain.
When Shen Ti disappeared, Yang Erci hadn’t offered him any comfort. An Wujiu understood because she had also forgotten Shen Ti and did not comprehend how important Shen Ti was to him.
An Wujiu could not deny that he had been despondent over Shen Ti’s disappearance and had even considered giving up.
But Yang Erci’s actions this time restored his former determination.
He understood why, before he left, Yang Erci told him not to act rashly.
She had probably planned her death long ago.
While taking a shortcut back, An Wujiu kept wondering.
Clearly, the life value consumed in the previous two cycles was fixed, about one-eighth each time. Why did his health suddenly drop this time? He had about a quarter of his health left before dying, but after this cycle started, only a sliver remained.
Why did this time neither follow the previous rule of deducting his health nor directly result in death?
Before the last cycle ended, Russell had already pointed out his looping ability, not wanting him to continue looping, so he didn’t kill him.
Russell was a manifestation of the Evil God, the mastermind behind the altar. If he really wanted to stop An Wujiu from disrupting his collective sacrifice plan, he would definitely find a way to kill him.
An Wujiu couldn’t understand. Killing him, a mere human, shouldn’t be difficult.
Could it be that Shen Ti used his death to exchange for An Wujiu’s last cycle?
But as An Wujiu ran, this thought was discarded for being illogical.
Before dying, Shen Ti only awakened the teleportation ability. If he had truly recovered the same abilities as the Evil God, he wouldn’t need to die to exchange for him. They were beings of different dimensions; time was ineffective for him.
Too many questions were stuck here. The only certainty was that An Wujiu couldn’t enter the frontline battlefield now.
When he finally returned, they were still there, just meeting up with Nan Shan and Wu You.
“Wujiu?” Zhong Yirou asked in confusion, “Why are you in such a hurry?”
“Leave quickly,” An Wujiu knew time was running out, “Get out of here. Space 0 is coming with a lot of pollutants.”
Gabriel was a bit scared, “Then… I’ll go start the aircraft!”
“No!” An Wujiu stopped him, “The sound of the aircraft starting is too obvious. Let me think…”
The more urgent it was, the harder it was for him to focus.
After so many cycles with no respite, An Wujiu was on the verge of collapse.
Zhong Yirou added another point, “I forgot to mention earlier; now that we know the masked man is another Wujiu, he might also be able to loop and know that we already know this. Everyone must be careful not to be deceived by him.”
Wu You, who had been on the other side and had never heard An Wujiu talk about previous loops, was somewhat shocked, “What? Another Wujiu?”
“The masked man really is another Wujiu…” Nan Shan murmured that, even though he had guessed based on intuition, he never had any evidence.
Toudou Sakura was a bit anxious, “Hurry up, Wujiu, Russell is almost here.”
Even Zhou Yijue became rare serious, “So now we’re facing enemies on both sides.”
“Don’t rush, Mr. An,” Matsubara Mori calmly said, “It’s indeed very dangerous at this moment. The more anxious we are, the easier it is to make mistakes.”
“Yes, Russell is coming…” An Wujiu suddenly looked up, glanced at Toudou Sakura, then at Zhong Yirou, and murmured, “You’re right…”
His eyes became determined, “I know what to do.”
As the bullet flew towards him, [An Wujiu] sitting on the pollutants considered whether to continue following the people driving up the mountain or to turn around and kill the sniper first.
He knew that the An Wujiu on the other side was very suspicious, after all, he was himself, both of them cunning fellows.
In the 99th space, [An Wujiu] almost killed the 99th An Wujiu, who had ambushed him alone, but the latter set a trap at the last moment and vanished into thin air.
Searching throughout the 99th space, [An Wujiu] couldn’t find him. Eventually, he thought that the other likely used a time-travel card; otherwise, he couldn’t have disappeared directly.
After all, the cards he had, the other probably also had.
All the time-travel cards he got had a restriction: he could only travel to adjacent spaces in the current timeline, which is why he traveled sequentially from the 0th to the 99th space.
Now the 99th An Wujiu probably used such a time card too, which meant he could only go to the 98th or the 0th space.
If it were someone else, they might choose to go to the 0th space at such a time, but An Wujiu, like him, wouldn’t make such conventional decisions.
[An Wujiu] had only one last recall card left, which he had taken by killing someone.
Relying on his understanding of An Wujiu and himself, he finally decided to use this card to come to the 98th space.
But he miscalculated.
From the 0th to the 99th space, he deduced that each subsequent space was later in the timeline, but An Wujiu in each space was basically in the instance, so he calculated the time to travel directly and could usually meet him directly.
But this time he forgot that this An Wujiu was different from the previous ones. The ones who died at his hands were passively waiting for his arrival, while this 99th An Wujiu was actively traveling in the opposite direction.
So he didn’t just travel to the 98th space but went back in the timeline to the moment when An Wujiu participated in the sixth instance, the massacre of Red and Black.
Therefore, the [An Wujiu] from the 99th space, by virtue of the inertia of past 99 travels, did not re-select the travel time on the 98th timeline but traveled directly as usual, ultimately coming to the end of the 98th timeline.
On a unidirectional trajectory, they chose different points in time as travel coordinates, and neither could reverse time.
Thus, after the two time-travel cards took effect, the 0th [An Wujiu] and the 99th [An Wujiu] woke up simultaneously in the past and future of the same space but never met.
Until An Wujiu passed through numerous obstacles and came to October 23rd, the night when the altar fused with reality for the collective sacrifice, the future finally arrived.
[An Wujiu] finally waited for the other self to come along with the timeline.
In his first action, [An Wujiu] ambushed in an abandoned factory, killed his companions, but did not kill An Wujiu directly, knowing that An Wujiu’s time was running out.
No need to kill him; An Wujiu would die due to the time running out on his wrist.
But he did not expect that after An Wujiu’s death, he would return to the starting point.
Recalled.
And the recall trigger seemed to be An Wujiu’s death.
[An Wujiu] knew that killing him was useless, so from the beginning of the recall, he adopted the strategy of destroying him while preparing to deal with the evil god, as he had not yet had the shortcomings of the altar evil god.
But after experiencing so many spaces, he knew Yang Ce had information. He had fought Yang Ce, knowing Yang Ce had a daughter, and had killed his daughter Yang Erci more than once because, in so many spaces, some Yang Erci received the email, some did not, so without it, she had no use.
So [An Wujiu] chose to give up the abandoned factory in the second loop and instead found Yang Erci to ask for the email. When he didn’t get it, he killed her directly.
In each loop, he chose different strategies to drive An Wujiu crazy.
In the last loop, he deliberately arranged for Lilith from the 97th space to assassinate everyone. That Lilith was the most obedient one among all the Liliths, even willing to die for him.
Unfortunately, at that time, he was seriously injured by a guy named Shen Ti on the way.
Otherwise, he really wanted to see the expression of that guy when Lilith fired the shot.
On one side were the useless companions driving up the mountain, and on the other was the person who fired the shot.
[An Wujiu] thought about it.
Previously, the 99th An Wujiu had always been alone. This time, it seemed he had some useless followers, but the situation was pretty much the same for him.
An Wujiu would never allow anyone else to be the sniper. After looping so many times, he must have already known the identity behind this mask.
The only one who would dare to and must kill him with a gun should be An Wujiu himself.
If the current An Wujiu had indeed changed from before, he would probably only arrange for someone like Shen Ti to fire this shot.
Whoever it was among the two of them, they deserved to be killed first, otherwise, there would be endless troubles.
So, he made the decision to turn around and chase in the direction of the bullet.
But halfway through the chase, he felt something was off.
The soil on the mountain was very loose, easily leaving footprints. As he manipulated the pollutants to chase towards the sniper point, the footprints he saw were different from his own.
Slightly smaller than his footprints.
This place was rarely visited, with only this person’s footprints.
No, something’s wrong.
The shooter was a woman.
[An Wujiu] immediately reacted, letting some of the pollutants continue to chase the sniper and finish her off while he went to find the others.
This mountain area was quite large and densely vegetated, making it easy to hide. After some thought, [An Wujiu] decided to spread out the pollutants he had gathered, searching separately. Once any pollutant found someone, he could sense their location and go directly there.
An Wujiu had looped several times; his life points were probably running low.
Kill him, then deal with the evil god.
Loop or parallel world, only he could be the last survivor.
With this thought, he removed his mask, threw it aside, and led the eight pollutants away from there.
While searching, he suddenly heard a noise. Thinking it was someone from An Wujiu’s side, he instinctively had the pollutants cover his body and quickly turned around.
But what he saw was a little girl emitting a faint blue glow all over her body—Noah.
Moments later, a blue light appeared behind her, gradually fading to reveal a human figure.
It was Russell, the CEO of Sha Wen.
Noah slightly opened her mouth, seemingly talking, but it was actually Russell, who hadn’t moved his lips, making the sound.
The voice was that of a middle-aged man, overlapping with that sharp rabbit-like voice.
“So, you were indeed revived.”
Noah’s mouth opened and closed like a puppet controlled by Russell, using ventriloquism to speak for her.
“Impressive, you’ve already awakened such power to control these poor things.” Russell and Noah simultaneously looked at the pollutants beside him.
“What to do?”
The two of them showed a bizarre smile that didn’t seem human.
“Looks like we must kill you, An Wujiu.”
