Chapter 50 She had no choice but to race against time to escape from Gu Yifeng's steps...

Gu Yifeng was "invited" to the security room by two guards. There were no handcuffs, but there was no room for refusal.

The lights in the security room were cold white, and it had now become a temporary interrogation room for Gu Yifeng.

Once the door was closed, only three people were left in the room.

Gu Yifeng narrowed his gaze slightly and looked at the young man sitting across from him. He was tall and straight, with a stern expression, and was wearing the Bureau's signature black uniform.

It was Lin Yan, the director of the Counter-Terrorism and Special Security Division of the Third Bureau, and the person who had tested him in the lobby earlier.

At this moment, Lin Yan was looking at Gu Yifeng carefully.

Gu Yifeng leaned back in his chair, looking at him calmly, with a faint smile on his lips.

The two men's eyes met, testing each other, waiting for the first confrontation to occur.

*

Next to the experimental chamber, Xu Xiaoyi was stunned: "Isn't this too outrageous?"

"This is beyond outrageous!" Wen Yi pounded the table in anger. "They were supposed to send me to Yuexi Mountain, but instead, they sent me to the outskirts of Yunhu City. The coordinates are hundreds of kilometers off! The time and location are both wrong!"

Xu Xiaoyi held his forehead awkwardly, his tone somewhat self-deprecating, "It seems there's still something wrong with my design."

"This is a huge problem!" Wen Yi helplessly threw up her hands. "I was able to land at the crime scene with such precision that I became a murder suspect."

"It seems you've been through a lot of trouble." Xu Xiaoyi couldn't help laughing, his eyes fell on her, with undercurrents surging in his eyes.

He looked toward the lab—her presence proved that his and his team's years of hard work and effort had paid off. They had endured night after night in this lab. They had struggled, felt lost, and questioned themselves. They had even wondered if they were on the wrong path.

No one knows where the end is.

But now he can be sure that it is all worth it.

"My family is waiting for me. I want to go back to the right time as soon as possible. Director Xu, do you have any ideas?" Wen Yi couldn't help asking.

"I'm afraid it won't work right now." Xu Xiaoyi suppressed his smile. "The 'Time Anchor' can only teleport back about thirty days, and the transmission channel is currently unstable, so the success rate is probably less than 60%."

"Sixty percent?" She frowned. "Isn't that too low?"

"Indeed, we're still improving." He nodded. "Besides, even if you successfully go back thirty days, you haven't returned to your original point in time."

A trace of struggle flashed in Wen Yi's eyes.

Just as the two fell into silence, the communication terminal in the laboratory suddenly lit up.

After Xu Xiaoyi finished checking, his expression suddenly changed.

"What's wrong?" Wen Yi immediately noticed that something was wrong with him.

"The gravitational fluctuations caused by your presence in the laboratory just now..." he whispered, "have been detected by the Seventh Bureau."

"The seventh game?!" Her heart tightened.

"It's Gu Yifeng." He looked up at her, his tone serious, "He has already started investigating this anomaly. I've been notified that the special operations team has set off and is expected to arrive here within an hour."

"...Gu Yifeng?" Wen Yi's voice trembled involuntarily. Why was it him again? He wouldn't let her go in every time and space!

"Yes." Xu Xiaoyi frowned slightly. "He has always been very persistent in cases involving abnormal gravitational fluctuations. Once he discovers your presence, I'm afraid he won't let go easily."

Wen Yi's heartbeat immediately quickened. She knew very well what Gu Yifeng's persistence meant.

"I can't let him discover my existence! His investigation itself could trigger a chain reaction, causing this timeline to split into unstable branches."

Xu Xiaoyi nodded immediately. "That's right. If he continues to investigate further and discovers that you don't exist in this time and space, he might trigger the purge mechanism and erase you from this timeline."

"I must leave as soon as possible and can't make things worse!" Wen Yi stood up with a bang, as if talking to herself, and also as if trying to persuade Xu Xiaoyi.

The two looked at each other in silence.

After a moment, Xu Xiaoyi sighed and said, "I can take you to my house to hide for a while. I live alone and don't have people come over often. As long as he doesn't search my house directly, we should be able to avoid him for a while."

But as soon as he finished speaking, he shook his head: "But that person is Gu Yifeng...it's hard to say."

Xu Xiaoyi looked at her, as if weighing something. Finally, he slowly said, "The only way now..."

"What is it?"

"Although the 'Time Anchor' hasn't been fully debugged yet," Xu Xiaoyi looked down at the console, "if I manually adjust the parameters, with the current energy reserves, I can try a teleportation."

"You mean... can we activate the 'Anchor of Time' again?" Wen Yi slowly opened her eyes, her voice trembling with excitement.

"Yes." He nodded, his tone certain. "Although I'm not completely sure, the core system can be operated briefly once. If successful, it can at least send you to another time and space node—even if it's not your original time point, you can avoid this storm."

Wen Yi was silent for a few seconds, hesitation and guilt appearing in her eyes: "Taking such a big risk...will it cause you a lot of trouble?"

"What are you afraid of?" Xu Xiaoyi chuckled and looked at her gently. "Science doesn't wait until everything is ready before it begins."

"I... don't want to implicate you." Wen Yi said in a low voice.

Xu Xiaoyi operated the terminal and said calmly, "Don't think too much. I just don't want you to be trapped in this time that doesn't belong to you. I also don't want the time travel that the Time Anchor activates for the first time to turn into a disaster."

Wen Yi looked at him, her eyes burning with worry, and nodded slowly: "Okay, let's try it once."

Inside the experimental cabin, there was a faint blue light.

Wen Yi took off her coat, sat in the cabin, and looked at the control console through the small window.

Xu Xiaoyi was setting parameters with his head down, looking focused and calm.

Everything seems to be ready.

Ke Wenyi suddenly felt uneasy.

At this moment, a strange thought suddenly emerged from the depths of my mind:

Why doesn’t Xu Xiaoyi continue to be responsible for the Zero Plan?

Why did Cao Mo replace him?

This is unreasonable.

She frowned, a chaotic stream of thoughts racing through her mind.

She recalled the moment she entered the Zero Laboratory lobby and saw a face flash by on the staff photo wall, with a black frame clearly drawn over the name.

She recalled the three explosions Ye Min mentioned on the day she was treated as a suspect. One of them occurred in Yunhu City in June.

The bombing... She held her forehead and her heartbeat began to speed up.

Countless fragments of memory pieced together a guess that sent chills down her spine.

Could it be...

"Director Xu! Stop!" She stood up suddenly and banged on the cabin window glass. "Listen to me! You can't activate the Time Anchor. There must be something wrong. Stop first! I'm from the future. Trust me!!"

Xu Xiaoyi seemed to sense something and turned to look at her, a faint smile on his face. He shook his head slightly and pointed at his headset, indicating that he couldn't hear what she said.

He made the "sit down" gesture again, as if to reassure her that it was okay.

"It's too late." His lips moved and he muttered to himself, "I can't stop. Keep going."

The transmission slowly started up, the air vibrated, and the alarm sounded.

"No!!" Wen Yi banged on the window desperately, "This experiment will fail! You might die!"

Xu Xiaoyi walked to the small window, still smiling. "When you told me Cao Mo was in charge, I guessed something might have happened to me." His tone was calm, as if he had already accepted his fate. "But I still decided to give it a try."

He was silent for a moment, then whispered, "I have a question... I didn't dare ask just now. Has the crisis at the nuclear power plant finally been resolved?"

Wen Yi was stunned, her throat felt like it was blocked.

That was the result he cared about most. But she had completely messed it up in the first attempt. How was she supposed to tell Xu Xiaoyi about this?

"I..." Her voice choked.

The countdown continues, fifteen seconds left.

Wen Yi took a deep breath and looked him in the eye firmly. "Director Xu, your plan is great. I successfully went back fifteen years and prevented the tragedy from happening."

He looked at her deeply and smiled, as if accepting the words.

No, he wouldn't believe it. The fact that she appeared here in such a dusty state said it all.

"Believe me! Director Xu, believe me!" Wen Yi slammed the window and shouted with all her might, "I promise! The mountains and rivers will be safe, and everything I wish for will come true!"

Xu Xiaoyi glanced at the countdown and saw that there were only ten seconds left.

"Director Xu! Get out of here now! Go!" Wen Yi shouted at the top of her lungs in the cabin.

Xu Xiaoyi shook his head, his eyes fixed on the screen. "I have to manually complete the last few parameter calibrations here." His fingers tapped the keyboard rapidly. "I can't press the transfer button until they all reach the threshold, so I can't leave." He said goodbye to her calmly, "Wen Yi, I wish you a safe journey and hope you find your way back."

Xu Xiaoyi glanced at her and suddenly asked, "Do you know Gu Yifeng? I can tell."

Wen Yi had already burst into tears before she knew it. She nodded, "I know him. We've known each other for many years. I went to find him. He's still waiting for me in the future."

Xu Xiaoyi smiled with relief: "Then go."

The countdown returned to zero and Xu Xiaoyi pressed the transfer button.

The Time Anchor was activated, and the entire laboratory shook violently the moment the transmission started.

[Warning: Energy overload, the space structure is becoming unstable! ]

[Please evacuate immediately! I repeat, please evacuate immediately!]

Wen Yi only felt that a passage behind her suddenly tore open, and a force pulled her down.

She knew that was the way out. But she couldn't let go of Xu Xiaoyi. She couldn't break free, yet she still struggled, trying to get out of this crack.

"Director Xu!" she shouted, and the light in the cabin became brighter, darkness swept in, and consciousness... finally disappeared completely.

"Beep, beep—" the instrument issued a shrill alarm.

The entire laboratory could not withstand the gravitational distortion and began to collapse. Xu Xiaoyi's figure was torn apart by invisible forces in the violent spatial distortion, and he was caught in the collapse.

*

The explosion site was quickly cordoned off by the Seventh Bureau Special Operations Team.

A slender figure quickly stepped into the ruins, followed closely by three people behind him.

"No matter how hard we try, we're still a step too late." Ni Qianfan looked at the devastated scene and shook his head regretfully.

"Boss, at 04:32 this morning, a 1.6-magnitude gravitational distortion occurred, and the wave pattern was similar to the explosion in Yunhe City." Gao Yiyuan reported while holding a tablet.

Ni Qianfan raised his eyebrows: "Again?"

"Teacher Gu, there was only one deceased person at the scene." Ye Min walked across the gravel to Gu Yifeng's side. "The deceased was Xu Xiaoyi, the director of the Zero Lab. Before the explosion, the deceased had called the police to report someone breaking into the lab, but then canceled the alarm himself. No trace of a second person has been found at the scene. The guards have also found no record of any suspicious persons entering or leaving."

Gu Yifeng nodded, his gaze pausing as he swept across the center of the explosion. He slowly approached, squatted, and pulled out a piece of pink cloth from the rubble. The cloth had curled edges and looked like the hem of a woman's coat.

He pinched the piece of fabric, his fingertips tightening slightly.

Was there no second person present? Not necessarily.

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Author's Note: Wen Yi: They're here to arrest people again! I was so scared!

Gu Yifeng: How can the act of looking for my wife to go home be called arrest?

Director: [Sunglasses] Light a cigarette