code name
Today is the day when the Maintenance Bureau starts its monthly challenge. Shi Youchen made preparations early and arrived at the venue in advance.
He was currently inside a simulation room. The simulated environment he was importing was the vast glacier layer of the far north of Area 3. The boundless glacial surface was pure, without a trace of impurities. Beneath the azure sky, the surroundings were enveloped in pure white.
Under Shi Youchen's feet was a transparent ice surface, covered with a light layer of snow, as if to hide any creatures that might suddenly appear at any time.
The ice could crumble at any moment, and anyone standing on it could fall into the abyss, becoming nothing more than food. The seemingly distant glaciers surrounding them also harbor hidden dangers, potentially leading to sudden landslides.
This was the perfect place for Shi Youchen to train his "precognition." Precognition required him to channel energy into himself, integrating it with the surrounding natural energy and sensing its changes. This allowed him to perceive a future node on the current timeline and see the scene at that node.
The most crucial part of prediction is to recycle the energy that you have drawn out into your body according to the original timeline after sensing these things, and go back to the starting moment.
Only when these steps are linked together and matched precisely can Shi Youchen predict the future with the most accuracy. If any step goes wrong, all he can "see" is chaos.
"..." Shi Youchen stood at the center of the glacier and closed his eyes. All around him was silent, but in his ears he could hear a distant echo like the roar of a whale.
When 07 entered, he saw Shi Youchen buried beneath the rolling snow. He squatted beside the bulging snow pile and pulled away a palm-sized piece, revealing the upper half of Shi Youchen's face.
The scene in the simulation room was fake, but the physical sensation was infinitely close to reality, so Shi Youchen's whole body felt as if he was really buried in a pile of snow, and he began to tremble uncontrollably.
"Wrong again?" 07 stood up and looked down at the pair of black pupils with a contemptuous and sarcastic smile.
Shi Youchen's eyes were bright, with a clear distinction between the pupils and the whites of his eyes. Due to the physical discomfort, his eyelashes drooped, and the snowflakes hanging on his eyebrows melted, turning into a thread of icy air that penetrated into his temples.
And there was only three words written in his eyes: "unwilling".
07 waved his hand to turn off the simulation switch, and the surrounding scene changed in an instant. He reached out and pulled Shi Youchen, who was lying on the floor, up, asking, "What went wrong this time?" Because their abilities were essentially the same, and Shi Youchen's current abilities were roughly at the level of 07's twenty years ago, whenever he encountered such a situation, Shi Youchen would seek his advice.
"I heard the echo of the whale's roar and saw cracks beginning to appear on the glacier's surface, so I immediately left the ice." Shi Youchen felt his body temperature rise a little and began to review and reflect on his failure. "But I didn't see clearly that it was actually the giant whale under the glacier that collided with the submerged ice, which caused all those things."
"Then you ran down the river and got run over." 07 summed it up for him.
Shi Youchen nodded silently and said, "How can I see everything clearly?" He knew that with 07's level, he would definitely be able to do it.
"If you must, there are two ways."
"The first is to increase your own total energy, releasing more to merge with the surrounding energy changes."
"As for the second option, when you see that moment, stop time. That way, you'll have more time to explore the whole picture." 07 changed the subject, "But stopping time isn't that simple. It's completely different from the 'time freeze' you've experienced before."
"Do you want to learn?" The corners of 07's mouth curled up quietly where Shi Youchen couldn't see.
Shi Youchen's voice was as indifferent as ever, but firm: "Yes."
"Win today's challenge and qualify for a code name, and I'll teach you."
...
Two hours later, the referee excitedly announced, "Red Team wins! This is this young contestant's 100th victory! Let us congratulate him on receiving his own codename and officially joining the ranks of the Maintenance Bureau's elite from today!"
All the audience in the venue cheered in unison for another person with superpowers who was about to take the world by storm.
Shi Youchen was led by the bunny girl to the small dark room at the back, where 07 had been waiting for a long time.
"I'm here, you can go now." 07 dismissed the others with a barely perceptible smile, then turned to Shi Youchen and said, "Have you decided on a code name?"
Shi Youchen pressed his earlobe back, and the pure white mask covering his face shattered into a veil of light, revealing his pale face. The last few battles today hadn't been easy; he'd actually suffered internal injuries, but he simply didn't have the energy to recover.
In order to finish the process as quickly as possible, he still chose to force himself to get here first, and he had no time to think about any code name.
"It doesn't matter. I don't work for the Maintenance Bureau. Operation code names and the like don't mean anything to me."
07 opened the door for him and said meaningfully, "That's not necessarily true. Nothing is absolute in this world. Maybe it will be useful in other places in the future."
"..." Shi Youchen couldn't resist and didn't want to argue with him, so he immediately slipped into the small dark room. 07 looked at the door that automatically disappeared after closing, muttering softly, "Crow... huh? It's quite suitable indeed."
In order to go back to heal his wounds as soon as possible and to avoid the nagging 07, Shi Youchen chose to enter the small dark room without any preparation. After entering, he found that it was not really pitch black.
A red light suddenly lit up on the wall directly opposite, instantly illuminating the small space like a crime scene.
There were about a dozen masks hanging on the wall, each with a different pattern.
At this time, Shi Youchen heard someone talking in his ear: "Pick one from the wall and put it on." He instinctively turned to the right in the direction where the voice came from, but the voice suddenly floated to the left, "The code name must be written in blood on the inside of the mask, otherwise you can't leave this space." After that, the voice disappeared completely.
But no one appeared by Shi Youchen's side from beginning to end.
There was a sudden spasm and pain in the side of his waist. Shi Youchen covered it with his palm and felt a warm sensation. There was blood.
Then he didn't want to stay here any longer, so he glanced at all the masks hanging on the wall, picked up the one closest to him, scribbled a few words on the inside corner of the mask with the blood on his palm, and then put it on his face.
The moment he put on the mask, Shi Youchen seemed to sink into the endless sea. He lost all his energy and slowly fell down, closing his eyes in a drowsy state.
...
...
...
"This is too ugly." Morrill held Shi Youchen's mask in his hand, looked at it over and over again, and then complained mercilessly with an expression of disgust.
Shi Youchen didn't expect that he would lose consciousness after putting on the mask. When he woke up, he was already in the room, and the mask was lying quietly beside his hand.
"What's this pattern? A wild bird with wings, pitch black?" Mollier pondered for a long time, but couldn't figure out what was painted on the mask. At this moment, 07 pushed the door open, took the mask from Mollier's hand, and turned it over to examine the inside.
"TID?" These three letters were formed by dark brown bloodstains on the inner corners of the mask. "What does it mean?" He asked the still somewhat weak owner of the mask.
Shi Youchen recalled some past events and some people he hadn't seen in ages. "It doesn't have much meaning. When I was in elementary school, there was a cartoon I loved watching. I admired the protagonist so much that I gave myself a name that resembled him."
Later, when his grandmother noticed that his name was written on every textbook, she jokingly asked if he wanted to become as famous as KID. The then-young Shi Youchen curiously asked his grandmother, "KID is amazing! There's no place he dares not go, no one he dares not face. Can I be like him?"
It seems that it’s no use... Now Shi Youchen can only think so bitterly.
"Ah? So what? What kind of animal is this?" Morrill hasn't accumulated enough wins in the challenge, so he is not qualified to have his own mask and code name.
Although she is not interested in this.
07 finally explained her confusion: "It's a crow."
Molly said "Oh" and then had a new question for Shi Youchen: "Why did you choose this? What else do you have?"
Shi Youchen closed his eyes and replied helplessly, "I didn't see clearly. I just picked it up. This one is closest to me."
"Okay." Morrill gestured with his hands on his face a few times and said, "Next time I must choose the best-looking one, and the code name must also be one that sounds cool."
07 returned the mask to Shi Youchen, gave a perfunctory "hmm" and left. Before leaving, he didn't forget to say: "You can win 100 games first."
Molly looked at the direction he left, then stared at Shi Youchen with wide eyes and said, "He's mocking me, isn't he?"
"He actually mocked me! It's all his fault that he's always nowhere to be found, and he doesn't teach me anything. I started late, so how can I improve? If I don't become more capable, how can I do things for him?" The more she thought about it, the more aggrieved she felt. She asked Shi Youchen, "Don't you agree?"
Shi Youchen still had his eyes closed, but he said mercilessly, "This really isn't his problem. If you want to improve, you have to rely on yourself. Just work harder."
I thought Shi Youchen and I were from the same generation, had known each other for so many years, and had experienced so many things together, so he should be on my side no matter what. So what was the point of him being born in 2007?
I didn't expect the other party to react like this.
Morrill was really speechless: "You...you are not his apprentice! Why are you speaking in his favor even though Bikong is more supportive!" After saying that, he left angrily and went to the simulation room for training.
"..." Shi Youchen opened his eyes, was stunned for two seconds, then took the mask beside him and held it against his face. Through the eye holes, he saw a complete fluorite on the ceiling.
Morrill's words had reminded him of this. 07 had saved him and returned him to the Maintenance Bureau, and had shown him goodwill so many times, both overtly and covertly.
It is not difficult to guess from the fact that he rescued Xiaowei that 07 had already set his sights on Shi Youchen when he was still on a mission in Area 5, even before Area 8, or perhaps even earlier.
Could it be that he wants to take me as his apprentice...
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