Volume 1 Chapter 3: Space-Time Teleportation

Volume 1 Chapter 3: Space-Time Teleportation

Qin Lun leaned against the wall, his expression calm as he peered through the vent. He was in a single-person cell about ten square meters in size, with alloy steel plates on all four walls. The steel cell door had a single vent the size of a fist. Inside, there was only a small foldable single bed attached to the steel wall and a composite material flush toilet.

Through the vent, Qin Lun could see a row of identical cells far across from him. Only some of these cells housed prisoners. He quickly noticed that most of these prisoners were as quiet and withdrawn as he was, making the entire prison cell area feel extremely silent.

Guards often passed through the corridors of the prison cell area, and occasionally new prisoners joined the ranks of the inmates. Qin Lun had initially thought that his death sentence had been unexpectedly delayed again, and he had been transferred to another prison. But soon, the serial killer dismissed this idea, because the guards who occasionally passed through the prison cell area didn’t look like regular prison guards at all.

These guards wore Federation military uniforms, carried standard-issue Particle Beam Guns, and moved with an undeniable, sharp precision. They were clearly not ordinary prison guards; they seemed more like regular Federation soldiers.

“Clank, clank!” A strange sound echoed through the corridor of the prison cell area.

Qin Lun’s expression shifted slightly. He was very familiar with this sound—it was the footsteps of a Steam Restraint Device. It seemed a heavyweight guest had arrived here.

About a week had passed since Nurse Little Lian injected him with the sedative. During this week, Qin Lun had seen several prisoners wearing Steam Restraint Devices pass through this prison corridor. In other words, it was highly likely that he wasn’t the only serial killer imprisoned in this “prison” controlled by the Federation military.

…

“Finally, I get to see you, the serial killer Qin Lun!”

In a spacious monitoring room, several people in white lab coats were accompanying a handsome young man, watching Qin Lun’s three-dimensional projection. The young man was dressed extravagantly, carried himself arrogantly, and had a faint, mocking smile on his lips. He stood out sharply from the white-coated researchers around him.

Looking at the three-inch projection of Qin Lun, a hint of fanaticism gleamed in the young man’s eyes.

“Arrange it for me. I want to see him in person!”

“Young Master Lin, that… that’s too dangerous!” A middle-aged man in a white coat behind the young man, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, spoke with difficulty. “Don’t be fooled by Qin Lun’s current appearance. He has schizophrenia; there’s another serial killer personality inside him…”

“Enough! I know more about Qin Lun than you do!” The young man waved his hand impatiently, cutting off the middle-aged man. “Hurry up and arrange it! I can’t wait to see him!”

After saying this, the young man grabbed Qin Lun’s “Death Notice,” turned, and left the room, heading straight for the prison cell area. Two bodyguards in black silently followed him.

“Doctor, should we really do this?” A young researcher approached the middle-aged man in the white coat and whispered, “Qin Lun is a Grade S high-risk prisoner. This will violate the base regulations!”

“Allowing Lin Feng into Area 91 already violates base regulations!” The middle-aged doctor adjusted his glasses and said helplessly, “But who asked him to be General Lin’s only son! General Lin is the military representative for Area 91 and controls the base’s funding allocation. We can’t afford to offend him. Notify the guards in the prison cell area: after sedating Qin Lun, fit him with a Steam Restraint Device.”

“Lin Feng usually isn’t this unreasonable when he comes to the base. What’s going on this time?” The young researcher asked, his face full of confusion.

“What do you know! I heard he’s a huge fan of Qin Lun. He’s collected a lot of case files about him. He even bribed police officers to get many of the murder weapons used as evidence out of the Handan Police Department.”

The middle-aged doctor glanced around, then looked at his most valued student and whispered, “Lin Feng and some other young masters from powerful families have organized a death tournament for nobles and wealthy people to watch. Serial killers like Qin Lun are the star players in the tournament.”

“What?” The young researcher shuddered, his eyes showing disbelief. “So, those death row inmates who suddenly died after Lin Feng visited each time… were they…?”

“Shut up! Just understand it; no need to say it out loud. Otherwise, your research work here will be over!” The middle-aged doctor gave his student a stern look.

…

Qin Lun woke up groggily, his mind still slightly dizzy. He tried to move his hands and feet and found his body felt unusually heavy. It seemed he had been fitted with the Steam Restraint Device again, and his movement was restricted; he could only stand still in place.

“Serial Killer Qin Lun!” A handsome face appeared in front of the prisoner.

Lin Feng stared into the clear, pure eyes behind the steel mask. A trace of fanaticism slowly appeared in his gaze. He set aside the “Death Notice” containing Qin Lun’s information and slowly approached the Steam Restraint Device.

“Young Master Lin!” The two bodyguards in black exchanged a look and stepped forward, positioning themselves between the steel monster and Lin Feng.

“Get lost!” Lin Feng angrily pushed the bodyguards in black aside. He spread his arms and embraced the Steam Restraint Device, pressing his face against the steel mask and gently rubbing it. He muttered softly under his breath.

“Your existence is truly amazing. You’re like a natural-born star. I’ve collected everything about you: news, briefings, inside stories… I even bribed police officers to get copies of the crime scene photos. They are my most prized collection!”

The two bodyguards in black uncomfortably turned their heads away. Having followed this young master for so long, they were no longer surprised by some of his strange behaviors. The serial killer was, after all, confined within the Steam Restraint Device and unlikely to cause Lin Feng any real harm.

A sinister smile slowly spread across Lin Feng’s face.

“Those nobles in the club know nothing! They just see you as a murderous fiend. Only I can truly appreciate your ‘performance art.’ You will become my ace, and you will bring me the champion’s glory in the death tournament.”

“Oh, right! I brought you a gift!” Lin Feng patted his forehead, then pulled a small brocade pouch from the inner pocket of his suit. He unwrapped it layer by layer. “Look, I swapped out the murder weapon you used from the evidence room of the Handan Police Department. This item was forged from a meteorite blended with those murder weapons! Isn’t it a piece of art? Beautiful, right?”

Lying quietly inside the brocade pouch was a crescent-shaped black dagger, somewhat resembling a single blade from a pair of scissors. The dagger’s blade was as thick as a paper cutter, and along its spine was a row of sharp serrations, like the fine, sharp teeth in a piranha’s mouth. The handle didn’t have a proper leather grip; instead, there was a steel ring at the end, just large enough to fit a thumb, similar to a ninja’s kunai.

Qin Lun’s murder methods were extremely bloody and cruel, and he used many different tools. The victims’ bodies were often dissected and dismembered. Among the many dismembering tools, the serial killer’s favorite weapons were various single, separated blades from scissors.

The psychological evaluation report submitted to the police noted that this might be because, when his stepparents and the male caretaker at the children’s welfare home were killed, Qin Lun was holding sharp scissor blades. The indelible psychological trauma from his childhood made the single scissor blade become the serial killer’s survival tool and weapon of murder.

Seeing the crescent-shaped blade, the clear eyes behind the steel mask finally showed a flicker of emotion, shimmering with an inexplicable, complex light.

“Don’t worry, Qin Lun, it will definitely belong to you!” Lin Feng nodded with smug satisfaction, rewrapped the black blade, and tucked it back into the inner pocket of his suit.

…

At the same time, on the large screen in the District 91 control center, the spherical region suddenly lit up with large clouds of free-moving particles, which began contracting towards the center. A tiny sun ignited at the core, and the spherical region showed clear signs of spatial collapse.

“General! A space-time rift is about to appear…!” A programmer at the control console shouted nervously.

“How is this possible? The free particles have been dormant all week. How could they suddenly become active?” The white-haired chief engineer of the base on the podium widened his eyes in shock as he watched the scene on the large screen.

“Doctor, how much time do we have left to send prisoners into the space-time rift?” The general beside him asked, his face changing.

“It’s too late, it’s too late…” The elderly chief engineer stared at the large screen and muttered to himself.

“Doctor! The activity level of the free particles has broken the historical record! The spatial field seems to be expanding!”

“What?!” The old doctor and the general were both astonished.

The spherical spatial field was located directly above the District 91 Base. If the spatial field began to expand, the entire base would be in danger.

“Rip!” Before the two base leaders could issue any orders, a pitch-black crack, like the vertical pupil of a monstrous eye, appeared in the spherical region on the control center’s large screen. The vertical pupil slowly stretched open sideways, and an oval, orange-yellow portal appeared before everyone’s eyes.

“What is this thing?” The white-haired old doctor exclaimed in surprise, though his eyes held an unconcealable excitement. For a scientist like him, to learn the truth in the morning, one could die content in the evening! His passion for exploring the mysteries of the universe far outweighed his concern for his own life.

As the Space-Time Portal appeared, the spherical spatial field contracted and then expanded. Its original diameter of just a few hundred meters suddenly increased more than tenfold, enveloping the entire niche-like structure of District 91.

“Whoosh!” The niche-shaped structure representing the Federation’s District 91 experimental base seemed to shrink into a toy as it flew swiftly towards the Space-Time Portal. Even the deeply buried underground parts of the structure were torn out from their foundations, carrying large amounts of soil and rocks, and vanished into the Space-Time Portal.

After devouring everything around it, the Space-Time Portal, resembling a vertical pupil, slowly closed and disappeared from the sky. The expanded spherical spatial field rapidly shrank again, but it didn’t return to its original few hundred meters in diameter. Instead, it contracted directly into a single point and finally vanished without a trace.

A gentle breeze blew through. The spherical spatial field that had existed for centuries in this primeval forest of Huaxia District had finally disappeared. All that remained was a circular crater several kilometers in diameter.

………………………………………..

Inside the niche-style base of Area 91, time seemed frozen. The people in the base remained still in various poses.

As the base passed through the Space-Time Portal, an orange-yellow light swept across the numerous bodies and instruments inside. From most people’s bodies flew out distorted, ghostly human figures. It seemed their souls were being pulled by some force, dragged out of their bodies, and slowly dissipated in the air.

Besides the orange-yellow light within the Space-Time Rift, there were also many orange-yellow fragments that seemed solid, along with a very small number of orange-yellow multifaceted crystals. These fragments came in different sizes and scattered aimlessly in the air, smashing into various objects and turning into powder that spread throughout the base. When the powdered orange-yellow fragments encountered the bodies whose souls had dissipated, they slowly merged into these people.

Apart from the majority whose souls dissipated, there were a very few people in Area 91 who did not experience their souls leaving their bodies. They underwent even more bizarre changes. Parts of these people’s bodies slowly faded, their skin, muscles, and bones becoming crystal clear and transparent, eventually turning into sketch-like figures composed of black lines.

The bodies that turned into sketches did not stop changing. The black lines slowly gathered and contracted, finally turning into small black dots. Then, from the small black dots, they transformed back into human sketches, and within the frame of black lines, various internal organs, bones, muscles, tendons, blood, and skin began to grow, eventually becoming complete humans again.

When the niche-style base of Area 91 returned to normal, those whose souls had dissipated fell to the ground. The modern electronic instruments that had been swept by the orange-yellow light burst into small sparks, and explosions of various sizes echoed throughout the Area 91 base.

…

At that moment, inside Qin Lun’s cell, the Steam Restraint Device standing quietly in the corner of the room also emitted tiny electric sparks on its various components.

“Clang!” The steel component of the Steam Restraint Device’s right arm fell to the ground. A pale-skinned arm slowly rose. The hand with long fingers gripped the Steam Restraint Device on his body, peeling off the steel parts that had lost their magnetic connection piece by piece.

Soon, a calm-faced young man freed himself from the Steam Restraint Device and appeared in the cell…

Qin Lun glanced down at the several bodies lying on the ground, his gaze quickly focusing on the “Death Notice” that Lin Feng had placed to the side. His slender eyebrows raised slightly. The prisoner stepped forward two steps, picked up his own “Death Notice.”

The black-framed “Death Notice” was a thin, tablet-like Optical Computer that stored the prisoner’s information. When a prisoner was sentenced to death by the Federation court, the prison guards would carry this simple Optical Computer, which resembled cardboard, to the cell to read the death sentence. Thus, the prisoners jokingly called it the “Death Notice,” meaning that once this black-framed Optical Computer appeared, the prisoner was as good as on the God of Death’s death list.

The reason Qin Lun noticed the “Death Notice” was because of the strange scenes he had just “seen.”

During the space-time transmission, while most people in the Area 91 base remained still, even their thoughts paused, a very few people’s consciousness remained clear for a period of time. Qin Lun was one of them. After his body was broken down by the orange-yellow light, his soul consciousness instead saw the strange scenes in the cell more clearly.

The stillness of the human bodies, the breakdown and reassembly of his own body…

The electric sparks bursting from the Steam Restraint Device and the cell’s bulletproof fluorescent lights…

An orange-yellow multifaceted crystal hit the “Death Notice” and merged into this simple Optical Computer…

In fact, the many orange-yellow fragments during the space-time transmission were fragments of this world’s laws, while the very few orange-yellow multifaceted crystals were fragments of laws with relatively complete formulas and principles.

The world where the Area 91 niche-style base now resided could not accept the life forms of Earth humans. Except for a few special souls, the souls of most Earth humans dissipated. The bodies they left behind became “lifeless objects.”

The moment the “Death Notice” was touched by Qin Lun, it strangely turned into a black light and merged into his palm.

Qin Lun was slightly stunned. He opened his palm and looked, seeing a small egg-shaped pattern appear on his right palm. The pattern was mostly black, mixed with orange-yellow spots, looking like a peculiar little egg.

Interesting! A strange light flashed in Qin Lun’s eyes. He stood up, stretched, and turned his gaze to the several bodies on the ground. Besides him, the cell contained Lin Feng and his two bodyguards, as well as two Federation soldiers standing guard at the door.

Qin Lun crouched down, pressed two fingers against a bodyguard’s neck, and found his body was already cold with no pulse. However, when checking Lin Feng, he found this young master from a prominent family was still breathing, and his pulse was steady, clearly still alive.

Qin Lun tilted his head, flipped Lin Feng over, reached into the inner pocket of his suit, and pulled out that half-scissor-shaped dagger. He slipped his thumb into the steel ring at the end and held it upside down in his hand.

After obtaining the blade, Qin Lun did not immediately leave the cell. A faint smile appeared on his face as he pressed the blade of the black dagger against Lin Feng’s cheek, gently sliding it.

The young master’s eyelids trembled slightly, and beads of sweat slowly formed on his forehead. Feeling that Qin Lun seemed to be increasing the pressure, he could no longer pretend to be dead and had no choice but to open his eyes with a bitter expression.

“You… are you Qin Lun now, or… or Joey Foster?” Lin Feng stammered.

“You’re awake. Come with me to take a look outside. Something very strange seems to have happened in the prison.” Qin Lun did not answer Lin Feng’s question. Instead, he gave him a gentle smile.

The warm, spring-like feeling in that smile made Lin Feng stare in confusion, his mind in turmoil. Was this the famous Serial Killer known as the “Dissector”?

After startling Lin Feng awake, Qin Lun paid him no further attention. He stood up, walked to the door, and picked up the Particle Beam Guns from beside the two Federation soldiers’ bodies.

“Click, click!” The Particle Beam Guns made empty sounds. Clearly, these modern weapons could not adapt to this world’s physical laws and had lost their function as weapons.

Qin Lun didn’t mind. Although he didn’t yet know what had happened, during the space-time transmission, he had already “seen” these Particle Beam Guns sparking abnormally. This just confirmed his speculation.

Pushing aside the two bodies blocking the door, Qin Lun inserted the blade of the black dagger into the already somewhat twisted and deformed cell door gap, forcing the iron door open with effort.

The cell doors in the Area 91 base all used magnetic locks. Under normal circumstances, the magnetic force of the lock was at least one hundred thousand Newtons, roughly equivalent to over ten thousand kilograms of force, making it impossible for human strength to open. But now the magnetic force had failed, and the weight of the iron door alone wasn’t enough to trap an adult.

Qin Lun leisurely walked out of the cell and for the first time clearly saw the specific conditions of his surrounding environment.

This Prison Cell Area was very large, an oval-shaped duplex. The central area was the atrium of the prison cell area, surrounded by three levels of cells: upper, middle, and lower. Each level had about over forty cells. The cell area he was in was on the top level. The corridor in front of the cells was enclosed by guardrails, about three meters wide.

“Ah!” A terrified scream suddenly came from beside Qin Lun.

Qin Lun turned his head, his clear, pure eyes curiously watching a human standing on the walkway to his right. This person wore a prisoner uniform and should also be a surviving prisoner. But his build was petite, half a head shorter than the medium-height Qin Lun.

This prisoner had a slender figure, delicate features, and a face as tender as a woman’s. The upper part of his prisoner uniform was rolled up a section and tied in a knot at the chest, like a crop top. His waist was wrapped with another prisoner uniform, and with the tight-fitting small-sized prisoner pants below, it looked like an above-the-knee short skirt paired with leggings.

Seeing Qin Lun turn to look at him, the bizarrely dressed prisoner let out a frightened scream, turned, and ran. But he hadn’t run two steps before he tripped over his own feet, falling onto the walkway with a thud. However, he seemed terribly frightened by Qin Lun. After falling, without bothering to get up, he pushed with his feet, scraped his butt along the floor, and scrambled backward repeatedly.

“There’s actually a transvestite locked up here too!” Lin Feng cautiously poked his head out of the cell door, reminding Qin Lun flatteringly from behind, “It looks like he recognizes your identity!”

Transvestite? Qin Lun’s eyes brightened slightly. He had heard other prisoners in Handan Prison mention this term; it seemed to be a very peculiar creature. Various psychology works, like social psychology and cognitive psychology, seemed to have analyses and introductions about them.

Qin Lun slowly walked toward the transvestite on the ground. His movement made this prisoner even more frightened and anxious, looking almost ready to faint. However, Qin Lun only took a few steps before stopping. His gaze went past the transvestite on the ground, looking behind him.

On the walkway behind the transvestite, a burly prisoner was stepping out of his cell. This prisoner was bare-chested, with a stern face, a short beard on his chin, and a noticeable depression on his right brow bone, adding a hint of fierceness to his originally resolute features. The muscles on his upper body were very developed, showing a perfect inverted triangle physique. On his back was a tattoo of a black-winged angel kneeling on one knee.

“Disciple Hansen!” Lin Feng exclaimed in a low voice, nervously moving closer to Qin Lun as if it could give him more sense of security. Without waiting for Qin Lun to speak, he softly began an introduction.

Hansen was born in the Africa region, but he was Caucasian. His parents were medical volunteers for the African Red Cross who died in an explosion incident. At that time, Hansen was taken away by an African mercenary group. From the age of eight, he became a child soldier.

Hansen served as a child mercenary for ten years. From a young age, he was steeped in war and became a cold-blooded killing machine. When that mercenary group was destroyed, Hansen returned to the North America region. Relying on the military skills honed in war, he quickly became a professional assassin. It was said he called himself the Disciple of Satan. During his arrest, the Federation sacrificed over twenty special forces elites.

Another Serial Killer? Qin Lun’s eyes shifted. He suddenly stepped forward, grabbed the walkway’s guardrail, and looked down at the two lower levels of the Prison Cell Area and the central atrium.

Seeing faint, shadowy figures below, about a dozen prisoners appeared. Qin Lun’s eyes lit up, and he revealed a shy smile, the kind a young person often shows in unfamiliar social situations.