Boom boom boom!
As Quantum finished counting down, sky-rocking and earth-shattering explosions were heard, and a mushroom cloud rose into the atmosphere.
The whole psychiatric hospital was razed to the ground.
A second before the explosion, Yun Zhonghe glared furiously at Patient Nine. Although he did not say a word, the look in his eyes had already spoken for him.
"Quantum, are you crazy? If you knew beforehand that this catastrophe was coming, why didn't you try to stop it?"
"Director? What is the most important principle a man should hold onto?"
"Happiness?"
"No! It is that we should never interfere with the causal chain! What is meant to happen should happen, or else, there will be a butterfly effect."
"I–"
The handsome and fit Director Yun Zhonghe, together with every soul in the mental hospital, was crushed to pieces and died.
"And the blurry image of that future that I saw was way too beautiful…" Patient Nine whispered to himself.
The moment when the earth-shaking explosion happened, twenty-nine spirits suddenly entered Yun Zhonghe's body before they turned into ashes.
***
An unknown amount of time passed. It felt like a split second, but it also felt like countless dimensions and ages had passed. Yun Zhonghe slowly regained consciousness.
He didn't open his eyes, but all his senses had come back to him.
He was dead and smashed to pieces, wasn't he? How was he still alive?
Where… where was this place? The atmosphere was kind of depressing, and a sinister sensation seemed to hang over Yun Zhonghe.
There were many people present in the vicinity, but Yun Zhonghe's surroundings were dead silent. Despite that, a sense of restlessness and anticipation seemed to weigh across him.
Yun Zhonghe used all of his energy to open his eyes. He was greeted by an unbelievable sight.
Whoosh!
Arms were raised and a blade was dropped. Blood splashed in all directions. A head was separated from the neck and rolled onto the floor.
The brutal and bloody scene occurred less than three meters in front of Yun Zhonghe. The warm blood even splashed right onto his face.
There wasn't enough time for Yun Zhonghe to react.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
The executioners raised their hands and then lowered their blades. They had already chopped off three heads, one head per second on average.
This was a strange ancient world, and, to his surprise, he found himself in… an execution ground. They were performing beheadings?!
As the director of the special psychiatric hospital, Yun Zhonghe had seen a great deal. He reached the conclusion, almost instantly, that he had traveled through time.
But where had he traveled to? Which dynasty? Who was he? Why would he travel through time?
He did not have the answers to any of those questions.
The special psychiatric hospital had exploded, and he had time-traveled, but what about all the others in the hospital? What happened to the twenty-nine nutjobs?
Dozens of questions and hundreds of ideas appeared in Yun Zhonghe's mind in a flash.
However, he set aside those distracting thoughts.
It would soon be his turn to be decapitated. He had somehow traveled through time to become a prisoner on death row.
Scores of prisoners were kneeling on the execution ground. A new person was beheaded every second.
There were only thirteen prisoners before Yun Zhonghe, which meant he had thirteen seconds before it was his turn to be beheaded.
He had to save himself. He had to save himself.
He had to find a way to save his own *ss in thirteen seconds, or his head and body would soon be parted.
The situation made Yun Zhonghe's hair stand on end like the fur of a frightened cat.
The prospect of imminent death had put him in a very strange mental state. One part of his mind was freaking out, while another part of his brain was playing a comic dialogue, "I Want to Time-Travel" by Guo Degang.
In the comic dialogue, Old Guo was the most hapless time traveler. His spirit entered the body of Li Lianying who was about to die; the body of He Shen who was about to be executed; the body of one of the six generals who was to be killed by Guan Yu after overcoming five obstacles; and the body of Zhang Zuolin who was on board the Huanggutun train.
How similar were those experiences to Yun Zhonghe's current situation!
Another five seconds had passed while he was lost in his silly thoughts. Yun Zhonghe almost burst into laughter when he recalled that comic dialogue of Old Guo's.
Hahaha, that was an interesting one, so hilarious!
Nevertheless, he quickly turned his thoughts away from the comic dialogue. "Pay attention to what's going on right now. I'm about to die, and I'm thinking about a comic dialogue? It is indeed what someone from a psychiatric hospital would do. But I, the hospital director, am not that crazy, am I? What is happening to me?" he thought.
"Is it because of the time-traveling that I, Yun Zhonghe, have become a nutjob?"
Yun Zhonghe was trying very hard to think.
He had to save himself, he had to, he had to …
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…
The beheading went on, one head per second on average. There were still five seconds before Yun Zhonghe's decapitation.
"What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?" he thought with panic.
"I, Yun Zhonghe, am a genius. A top student. A wife-seducer. I have had affairs with many men's wives, and yet I have no way to save myself?"
"What crimes did the owner of this body commit? Something bad enough to be sentenced to death by beheading?!"
Soon enough, Yun Zhonghe concluded that saving himself would be difficult as hell.
First of all, there was a rag in his mouth, so he couldn't talk his way out. He had a sack over his head, so he couldn't show off his one and only handsome face. Finally, his hands were tied, so he couldn't use any gestures to express himself."
Four more seconds… Three more seconds before his beheading.
Even if he was a genius, he had no hope of saving himself from that kind of situation.
He was doomed!
Totally doomed!
Yun Zhonghe was about to become the most miserable time-traveler ever. He only had thirteen seconds to live after traveling through time.
He couldn't speak or move. Saving himself in three seconds given the circumstances would be harder than going to heaven!
Three, two, one!
Whoosh!
As the arms were raised and the blade fell, the prisoner on his left, who was only a half-meter away from him, was beheaded.
Yun Zhonghe could feel the warmth of the blood spraying over his face. He was covered in the rain of red.
It was finally Yun Zhonghe's turn!
The executioner was standing behind him. The man raised the blade of death and aimed it at Yun Zhonghe's neck.
He was on the verge of having his head chopped off and becoming the shortest-lived time-traveler in history.
However, right at that moment, surprise crept onto Yun Zhonghe's face, then turned into a smile.
He discovered that he didn't have to save himself anymore.
He heard the executioner's internal monologue: "I'm not allowed to kill this Adonis!"
The executioner was standing behind him, and Yun Zhonghe could not see him. The man was only thinking to himself without making any sound, but his internal monologue still appeared in Yun Zhonghe's mind. "I'm not allowed to kill this Adonis!"
Mind-reading!
He had Patient Sixteen's mind-reading skills?! How did that special ability get into Yun
Zhonghe? Had he been possessed by the mental health patient after time-traveling?
Whoosh!
At that moment, the executioner's blade of death suddenly fell on him.
Yun Zhonghe blacked out, and his whole body collapsed and sprawled across the floor. He lost consciousness right away.
***
Another unknown amount of time passed, and Yun Zhonghe woke up slowly.
He was currently in a prison cell, tied on a torture rack. Three guillotine blades, each weighing more than a hundred catty,* were hanging above him.
Once the order was given, the three guillotines would slam into his flesh and hack him into four pieces.
A pair of eyes like those of an eagle were fixed on him now.
The eyes were so scary and sharp that the face of the owner was completely ignored.
Yun Zhonghe instinctively tried to read the man's mind, only to find out that his eyes were as quiet as the water in an old well, as if he had neither any emotion nor any expression. He must have been some ancient master.
"Yun Zhonghe, all the others were decapitated, and you are the only one who survived. Do you know why?" asked the owner of the eyes.
Yun Zhonghe shook his head.
"Once I give the order, you will be chopped into four pieces. Do you want to live?"
Yun Zhonghe nodded.
The man said in a level voice, "You do want to live? That's great. Tell me why I should spare your life."
Yun Zhonghe was developing sentimental emotions. His face was stern, and he cried out as tears welled up in his eyes, "Father!"
The man's jaw dropped.
Yun Zhonghe then said solemnly, "How about that? I take you, the bad guy, as my father, and you spare my life."
*About 130 pounds.