Chapter 15
Chapter 15: The Damned Crows and the Time Paradox
【3:30 PM, Wasteland Boundary. 】
The sun blazed overhead—this was the hottest part of the day in the Savage Realm.
Outside the vehicle, Wang Meng and Liu Yuqing were trudging through the nearby wasteland under the scorching sun, drenched in sweat.
They were trying to locate the entrance to the missing Wheat Field.
"This is bizarre…"
Wang Meng wiped the sweat from his face and plopped down onto a scorching rock.
"We could clearly see the golden field from a few kilometers away when we were driving over."
"How does flooring the accelerator and pulling right up to it turn the whole thing into wasteland?"
"Did the Wheat Field grow legs and run off?"
Liu Yuqing was equally exhausted. She pushed up her glasses. "That shouldn't be it."
"The dead tree with the broken branch that Shishi mentioned is right there—the landmark hasn't changed. The environment has."
"Could it be time-related? But that doesn't add up either—it was daytime when we arrived and we could see the Wheat Field then!"
Wang Meng scratched his head.
Just as the 2 of them were racking their brains with no answer in sight—
The RV door slid open with a hiss.
Yu Shishi had been sitting at the surveillance monitor near the entrance, spacing out, when she suddenly sensed a figure appear behind her and nearly leapt out of her chair in fright.
She turned around and found it was Jiang Nan, fully dressed.
"B-Boss! You're awake!"
Yu Shishi quickly stood up and wrung her hands nervously.
Jiang Nan gave a small nod, said nothing, and walked straight off the vehicle.
A wave of scorching heat hit him immediately.
Seeing Jiang Nan step out, Wang Meng and Liu Yuqing rushed over, both looking guilty.
"Boss… sorry, we're useless."
"We've been searching for ages and still can't find the entrance to the Wheat Field."
"There's nothing here but dirt and grass."
Jiang Nan waved it off to indicate it was fine.
He walked over to the withered old tree and rubbed his chin, scanning the vast empty wasteland…
And the blinding sun hanging overhead.
Something felt off.
He had definitely seen the Wheat Field from several kilometers away earlier.
So why had it vanished the moment they got close?
Was it because the Wheat Field was sentient?—had it sensed the threat of a powerful cheater like him and hidden itself?
Or…
Jiang Nan glanced sideways at a few Mutated Crows circling in the distance.
Had these feathered vermin tipped off the Scarecrow inside and gotten the entrance sealed?
‘No.’
Jiang Nan shook his head and immediately dismissed that idea.
Mutated Crows were intelligent, but they were creatures of chaotic evil.
If they were actually capable of tipping someone off, they would never help the Scarecrow hide.
On the contrary—they would want to lure Jiang Nan inside.
Let him and the Scarecrow tear each other apart so they could reap the benefits.
Since it wasn't a case of 'tailoring the meal to the guest'—
There was only 1 answer left.
Jiang Nan raised his head and squinted at the sun, whose position was slightly off.
Time.
The flow of time here—or rather, the spatial rules governing this place—were different from the outside world.
Only at specific time nodes did the 2 spaces overlap and the entrance open.
Jiang Nan had his answer.
But the question now was: exactly what time could they get in?
And why was the field visible from a distance but not up close?
These details couldn't be figured out by guesswork alone.
He needed to find a "local" to ask.
So Jiang Nan began glancing around with a seemingly casual air.
In reality, his peripheral vision had already locked onto a Mutated Crow perched some distance behind them, craning its neck and spying on the group.
Since it was daytime, this crow lacked the savage aggression it had shown the previous night.
It looked more or less like an ordinary bird—almost a little dopey.
The corner of Jiang Nan's mouth curled up slightly.
‘You'll do.’
He spun around instantly—zero-frame startup!
His right hand shot up, thumb raised, index finger extended, aimed directly at the spying crow!
He didn't activate his Word Spirit—he simply struck that Execution Stance.
Caw?!
The moment the crow saw that gesture, its beady little eyes nearly bulged out of its skull!
This was fear encoded into its very genes!
The mark of the demon that had slaughtered hundreds of its kin the previous night!
'Done for! I've been spotted! I'm about to get my head blown off!'
Under the crushing terror, the crow even forgot to flee. Its body seized up instantly.
Its legs kicked out, its tongue lolled, and it dropped stiff as a board from the shrubbery.
Thwap.
It hit the ground and instinctively began playing dead.
But after 2 seconds—
Hm?
‘Doesn't hurt?’
‘Head still in one piece?’
The crow quietly cracked open 1 eye, ready to seize the moment and flap away—
A large hand clamped around its neck like iron tongs and hoisted it into the air!
Caw! Caw caw!!
‘Let go of me! You monster!’
The crow thrashed wildly, but in Jiang Nan's grip it was as helpless as a little chick.
Just as Jiang Nan had figured—the thing was smart, but not smart enough. It had outsmarted itself.
Jiang Nan held the crow with an expressionless face, pulled out his Notepad, and drew a simple sketch:
A Wheat Field, a Scarecrow, and then a moon.
He shoved the drawing in front of the crow's face, pointed at the picture, then pointed at the sky.
The meaning was obvious: does entry only open at night?
The crow stared at the drawing, a very human-like look of surprise flickering in its eyes.
‘This demon is asking for directions?’
Its eyeballs rolled. It nodded furiously.
Caw caw!
‘Yes yes yes! It's nighttime! Nighttime!’
Jiang Nan nodded, then drew a person on the paper, pointed at the Wheat Field.
Then drew the person beside the Wheat Field, and finally pointed toward the wasteland.
He spread his hands with an expression that said, ‘So what's going on then?’
‘Why do people vanish when they get close to the Wheat Field?’
The crow struggled twice, signaling Jiang Nan to set it on the ground so it could lead the way.
Jiang Nan gave a cold laugh and shot Wang Meng a look.
Wang Meng immediately found a rope and bound the crow's wings tight, then led it on a leash like walking a dog.
Under the crow's guidance, the group made their way to an unremarkable rock sitting at the boundary between the treeline and the wasteland.
There, stuck in the ground, was a small, battered little Scarecrow no bigger than a palm.
The crow picked it up in its beak and held it out to Jiang Nan, its eyes full of cunning and glee.
'Take it! Foolish human!'
'Anyone who touches this thing will be marked by the big one inside! You're dead tonight for sure!'
However.
It had calculated everything except for the fact that this group had an Appraiser.
"Wait! Don't touch it!"
Liu Yuqing cried out, pushed up her glasses, and a flash of blue light swept instantly over the small Scarecrow.
A few seconds later, Liu Yuqing's expression changed.
"Boss! It's a trap!"
She pointed at the little object and rattled off the appraisal information at rapid speed.
【Item】: Watchful Scarecrow
【Type】: Cursed Object
【Information】: An evil medium capable of creating illusory Wheat Field entry nodes, specifically used to invite unfortunate souls to their deaths.
Anyone who touches it will be instantly infected with the highest-grade 【Scarecrow's Gaze】.
Upon entering the Wheat Field, they will be designated as the terrifying Scarecrow's primary kill target—it will not rest until they are dead!
Hearing this, both Wang Meng and Liu Yuqing went pale.
When that crow had carried it over just now, it had also rubbed up against their legs a few times!
Which meant… they'd all been marked!
"Damn it! This feathered bastard set us up!"
Liu Yuqing was shaking with fury. Without thinking, she raised her foot and stomped down hard on the crow that was still quietly congratulating itself!
Caw?!
The crow was stunned.
Before it could react, Wang Meng's size-48 foot came crashing in as well.
"That's what you get for trying to harm people! That's what you get! I'll stomp you flat!"
The 2 of them went at it together and in an instant reduced the wretched crow to a pulpy mess.
After venting, both turned to Jiang Nan with anxious faces:
"Boss… what do we do? We've been infected with that Gaze thing—if we go in tonight won't the Boss monster just chase us down and kill us?"
Jiang Nan looked at the little Scarecrow on the ground, his face showing no trace of panic.
On the contrary, he almost felt like laughing.
Whether or not he had this mark made no difference to him.
He was already planning to go in and dismantle the Scarecrow to use as Camouflage Coating.
If having this mark meant the Boss would come looking for him on its own initiative—that would actually save him the trouble of hunting it down.
‘Works perfectly for me.’
Jiang Nan picked up the little Scarecrow and casually clipped it to his waist, then wrote on the Notepad:
【Get back in the vehicle.】
【Rest up. Wait until midnight.】
……
At the same time.
Inside the Wheat Field, dead silence reigned.
Yang Wei and Guo Shuai were slumped on the ground, eyes bloodshot, minds on the verge of collapse.
They had been walking and walking and walking.
But no matter how far they went, the cursed wheat stretched on in every direction—endlessly.
What devastated them most was…
They had clearly survived the night and held out until sunrise.
But!
The system announcement they had been waiting for in their minds never came!
No Awakening Fruit either! Nothing at all!
It was as if the entire world had forgotten them.
"Why… why can't we get out…?"
Yang Wei clutched his hair, voice hoarse. "Are we already dead? Is this hell?"
Guo Shuai said nothing.
He stared fixedly at the mechanical stopwatch on his wrist—something that had never left his side since the moment he arrived in this world.
The time displayed on the face read: 15:33.
3:30 PM.
Guo Shuai's mind was racing, reconstructing every single time point from the past day and night in his head.
Suddenly.
He burst out laughing like a man gone mad, his whole body trembling.
"Hahahahaha! Lao Yang! I've got it! I've got it!"
"Guo Shuai? Have you lost your mind?" Yang Wei was startled.
Guo Shuai grabbed Yang Wei's shoulders with both hands.
"Time! It's TIME!"
"Lao Yang, do you remember? Yesterday morning around 10:30, the sun set in here!"
"And right now, my watch reads 3:30 in the afternoon—15:30—but what about in here?"
Guo Shuai pointed at the sun that had only just risen.
"In here it's barely dawn! About 7 in the morning!"
"What does that tell us?"
"It tells us the flow of time in here is chaotic! Roughly twice as fast as the outside world, or completely out of sync!"
Yang Wei's head was throbbing trying to follow along.
"But so what? Didn't you already figure that out around 10?"
"Will that monster just let us leave? We haven't even laid eyes on it yet!"
"No! You're missing my point!"
Guo Shuai grabbed a stick in his excitement and began frantically drawing a timeline in the dirt.
"The night we came in, it was around midnight."
"My theory is that at that moment, the time of the 【Real World】 and the 【Wheat Field World】 perfectly aligned!"
"Only at that specific time node does the barrier between the 2 worlds open!"
"We stumbled in purely by dumb luck that night!"
"And if we want to get out…"
Guo Shuai stared hard at the diagram in the dirt.
【Mechanical Watch Time: 6:00, 9:00, 12:00, 15:00, 18:00, 24:00, 6:00.】
【Wheat Field Time: 12:00, 18:00, 24:00, 6:00, 12:00, 24:00, 12:00.】
"We have to wait for the next time overlap!"
"A 2-day cycle—which means midnight of the real world!"
"Tonight at midnight is our only way out!!"
Even Yang Wei, as slow as he was, finally understood after this explanation.
This Wheat Field wasn't a real part of the Savage Realm—it was an independent sub-instance!
Only when the times aligned would the gate open!
"So that means… tonight we can get out?!"
The dull despair in Yang Wei's eyes instantly ignited with an intense will to survive.
"Most likely!"
Guo Shuai nodded firmly, but his expression immediately darkened.
"But… I have a feeling that monster won't let us walk out so easily."
"When the gate opens tonight, that will also be its final window for hunting."
Yang Wei bit down hard, his gaze turning vicious.
"Screw it! We'll fight!"
He dumped every last scrap of food and water from his backpack onto the ground in front of him.
"Eat! Eat everything!"
"Stop rationing! We need to be full to have the strength to run!"
"Tonight—we go all in!"