Chapter 591: Have You Seen My Nian’er?

    Just as Gu Luoxin predicted, Jin Jiuchi wasn’t one to obediently follow the path laid out before him.

    The floating screen remained in his field of vision akin to a stubborn buzzing mosquito, making its presence known every second and minute of the day, but Jin Jiuchi had now become an expert in ignoring it.

    The options provided by the novice tutorial were as such:

    [Ask any passing person, "Where’s my father?"]

    [Go to the medical lab to fix your arm.]

    [Novice tutorial hint: select option 1. Don’t be willful if you don’t want to die, you punk.]

    In response to the not-so-subtle threat, Jin Jiuchi simply gave a scoff before ignoring it altogether. If the Nightmare knew he was going to be willful, why gave him choices in the first place? The one thing he hated the most was being told what to do!

    And so, Jin Jiuchi sauntered out of the room he had woken up in – which appeared like a bedroom, though he wasn’t sure because he had only given his surroundings a cursory glance – and went on patrol around the house, like a curious husky sniffing its new territory here and there.

    This Cycle was quite strange, he thought.

    Setting everything else aside, the house he was in looked unlike anything he had seen before. It seemed to be constructed entirely of some kind of metal or alloy, looking very futuristic and sophisticated, easily reminding him of the bus officer.

    Speaking of the bus officer, he was also strange.

    Judging from his wings, he was clearly a garuda, and he was the one who said with his own mouth that garudas treated humans with utter contempt, so why did his body bear obvious traces of mechanization, which was the product of human innovation?

    Were it not for the lack of time, Jin Jiuchi would have liked to talk to him some more and, along the way, asked why he was being such a hypocrite. Of course, he did this to gain a deeper understanding of the Cycle!

    Alas, his plan was thwarted when the bus entered the dark tunnel and he lost consciousness in the next second.

    Jin Jiuchi went wherever his feet brought him, like a whimsical butterfly flapping its wings along with the wind.

    Through his short-term observation, he took note of several discoveries, such as how this wasn’t a house but more like a research facility, or how the whole area seemed to be exclusive for him, for he could find no one even after walking for more than twenty minutes.

    How boring.

    The only notable thing he found was a transparent cylindrical capsule with glass doors at the end of the hallway. If he guessed correctly, this should be... an elevator? But where was the button? How was he supposed to operate this thing without pressing the button?! Jin Jiuchi looked left and right, then walked back and forth, but he still couldn’t find anything remotely similar to a button which could led him to other floors.

    Patience, Jin Jiuchi, patience. He took a deep breath in an attempt to suppress the rising urge for violence churning inside him.

    Remember what the bus officer had mentioned? He could not allow others to find out he was an outsider, or in other words, he could not start a ruckus! He tried telling himself that this was a high-level Cycle, and that he should remain cool-headed until he reunited with his teammates but—

    Fuck the rules!

    His self-control crumpled faster than a waste tissue paper soaked in muddy rainwater. With a deep scowl, Jin Jiuchi raised his left arm and was about to punch the glass doors when a crisp ’ding!’ echoed in the air.

    The empty capsule before him slid up to reveal a thin, middle-aged man clad in white lab coat, who showed a stunned expression upon noticing him right on the other side of the door.

    Jin Jiuchi’s eyes brightened and he almost cried out loud in relief. Finally, a living person in this damned place!

    As soon as the glass doors slid open, without even giving the other person a chance to speak, Jin Jiuchi blurted out the question he had been suppressing since the very first second he regained consciousness,

    "Have you seen my Nian’er?!"

    The researcher froze. "...?"

    Jin Jiuchi gestured animatedly. "He’s the prettiest person around here— you should know him the moment you saw him! Wait, that’s not right... what if he’s not even here?" he was stumped by the sudden possibility that crossed his mind. He had been too distraught thinking about his Nian’er that he overlooked how there were three main territories in this Cycle: the sky, the land, and the sea. Jin Jiuchi was pretty sure he was a human, so he should be on land right now.

    But Nian’er... what if he received the role of a siren? Wouldn’t that mean he was currently on the bottom of the sea?!!

    The more Jin Jiuchi thought about it, the more aggrieved he felt, like a clingy husky who woke up only to discover that its owner was gone. Worse still, they hadn’t even boarded the same bus! Counting back, he had not seen his Nian’er for an hour— a whole sixty minutes or thirty six hundred seconds! What a terrifying number!

    The researcher belatedly snapped back to his senses and stepped out of the elevator, watching Jin Jiuchi’s antics in apparent confusion. "...Second Young Master?" he asked gingerly. "Are you okay? Do you feel uncomfortable somewhere? What about your arm?"

    Jin Jiuchi waved his left hand listlessly, too depressed to speak.

    It wasn’t without reason that the novice tutorial gave him the option to ’fix’ his arm— and that was because Jin Jiuchi’s right arm was currently missing. That’s right, he had been walking around only with a single functioning arm all this time, but because it didn’t look like an injury nor was it hurting, he didn’t spare it much thought.

    It’s only a missing arm; what’s the big deal?

    Searching for his beloved jade doll was more important!

    Jin Jiuchi yanked on his hair with frustration, only to realize that the words on the floating screen had changed at some unknown point.

    [Congratulations, you have discovered your identity!

    Name: JJ (outsider)

    Race: Human

    Degree of mechanization: 37%

    Identity: Second son of the Master of the Land

    Current Location: Secret Research Facility

    Mission: Survive for three days.

    The novice tutorial and protection is on. Effective time: seven hours and twenty two minutes]