There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

"Yes."

The square-faced young man said calmly, "Due to the Earth's rotation, the stars in the night sky are actually constantly in relative motion, and their positions are constantly changing. What this gentleman has discovered is that the positions of the constellations in the sky have never changed normally. Right, sir?"

The middle-aged man nodded.

"I could see it clearly from the passenger seat. At first, in the western region, the constellations were still moving normally, but they had started to slow down."

“At that time, I didn’t realize there was a problem. It wasn’t until we broke through the fog and I saw the sky again that I found the positions of the constellations had changed very little.”

"As we continued our journey, even though we drove for several hours, the positions of the stars in the sky remained completely unchanged!"

The square-faced young man nodded and explained to the other two.

"Do you understand now? The problem isn't the route. What's been stolen from us is time!"

"From the moment the movement of the stars slowed down, we were caught in an invisible vortex that constantly accelerated the changes in our location."

"When the celestial bodies finally come to a standstill, it can be interpreted as having reached the wrong position. At this point, time has already been manipulated and toyed with by unseen forces, leading us towards an unknown future..."

"You can think of us as a small boat at sea that has fallen into a whirlpool. When we are on the outer edge of the whirlpool, we can still use our meager strength to row the small boat outwards and try to escape."

"However, the vortex's suction force is far greater than our strength, so we will unconsciously move further towards the center of the vortex. At this time, the constellations in the sky will change more and more slowly, because this time vortex has begun to mutate further, and the flow of time will become slower and slower."

"Finally, as we broke through the fog and thought we had escaped the crisis, we had actually arrived at the most dangerous place!"

In everyone's eyes, the surrounding darkness suddenly intensified, almost swallowing up this last piece of pure land, stirring up a monstrous wave in the hearts of the travelers.

What they thought was an escape and struggle was merely the result of their overconfidence. They were trapped at the heart of the anomaly, sinking deeper and deeper...

"Do you... have any evidence?"

The round-faced youth swallowed hard and smelled it.

But his question only earned him a disdainful smile from his companion.

"Do we still need evidence? Isn't our situation clearly illustrated by the metaphor of a whirlpool?"

"The center of the vortex... is still..."

Chapter 69 No One Escapes

A sudden gust of wind blew up the corner of the square-faced young man's clothes, sweeping up the withered branches and fallen leaves in the field, creating dust that blinded everyone.

In the midst of the fierce wind, his voice could still be heard rustling in the wind, as if he were speaking, or perhaps talking to himself.

"We are trapped in a vortex of time, swept up by the chaotic waves of time. With each step forward, we drift further away from our original time."

"As we go deeper, the time we're in has become completely abnormal... What? You want proof?"

His eyes were contemptuous and cold. Everyone present knew that his expression was not a mockery directed at any particular person on the stage, but rather a heartfelt disdain for the bizarre situation that had occurred that night.

Rather than saying he was disgusted by these seemingly bizarre things, it would be more accurate to say he was reflecting on his own behavior—that he had forgotten reason at a crucial moment and failed to see through the truth of the matter.

At one point, he even believed that these things were being manipulated by supernatural beings.

Do you remember the car we encountered?

His companion, a round-faced young man, said in a hoarse voice, "Of course I remember, it's the white car we saw in the parking lot of the original project command center, the one with the same license plate as ours!"

“That’s not a ghost car! Nor is it a car with the same license plate as ours!” he shouted.

His companion asked in bewilderment, "But you were right next to me at the time, and you saw with your own eyes that the license plates matched!"

"Yes...yes...I did panic at the time, and all I could think was that this couldn't be! You can't step into the same river twice!"

"Yes!"

"No... what I subconsciously blocked out might be the real possibility. Think about it, why do we keep running into that parking lot in the thick fog?"

"..."

"Actually, we only encountered the parking lot once, which was the first parking lot we came across. Our timeline started to falter there, forming a deadlock that kept repeating itself in a short period of time."

"So the long driving time we felt was just an illusion within the wrinkles of time. We thought we had driven a great distance, but in the thick fog, we were just endlessly repeating those fifteen minutes... those fifteen minutes when we finally reached the parking lot..."

Jackie's hands suddenly trembled. He remembered; there had indeed been a sense of déjà vu in the thick fog. Because of the fog, he couldn't tell if the scenery around him had changed, but he felt that every fifteen minutes, there would be the same bump on the road, followed by the parking lot sign, and then a corner.

He dismissed this feeling as a hallucination, overwhelmed by the panic he felt at the time...

"And what about that car?" the round-faced youth continued.

"We only encountered the car in the parking lot once, so we only saw it once..."

Which time?

"Every time..."

"No, I'm asking which car you encountered? And why does it have the same license plate as ours?"

The square-faced youth remained silent in response to his companion's question, as if he had encountered a very foolish one. Even the driver, Jackie, couldn't stand it anymore and spoke up.

“Now I’m starting to doubt whether the university’s admission standards are too low… I understand what he means. We did only encounter that car once, and we know it very well, but I just can’t understand this fact…”

The round-faced youth was also surprised. He didn't even have time to chew the biscuit in his mouth. In his daze, he choked and had to drink several mouthfuls of water to swallow it.

But throughout the entire process, his eyes never wavered; he stared intently at the white car that they had relied on for survival and that had carried them at breakneck speed.

"Is...is this the car?"

“That’s right.” His companion sighed. “We all need to use our imaginations. What we’re really seeing is the car we’re in.”

"For some reason, after we entered the parking lot, a new fold appeared in the time vortex, which not only strengthened the time impasse but also caused a period of time to rewind..."

"That short flashback is exactly the part where we drove into the parking lot. Because the time of the folds conflicted with the time we exist in, there was a time illusion of a car constantly entering and leaving the parking lot. You can imagine it as ripples on a calm water surface, where a small external force creates layers of ripples that intersect with each other."

He covered his face and said weakly.

“I should have realized it. But why did things happen so coincidentally? It was my focused attention that caught the license plate, drawing all my attention away, while my companion saw what was happening inside the car…”

"If I saw what was happening inside the car, I would definitely think of the latest theories of quantum mechanics..."

The middle-aged man who had been indifferent on the side suddenly spoke up.

"You mean the theory of continuous observations in the same spacetime?"

"That's right, I'm starting to believe you're the teacher's friend. To put it simply, if time travel were to occur, you would never encounter anything related to yourself. Due to the continuity of the same point in time, if you existed as a past version of yourself, then the past you observe would become a blank."

"That car wasn't empty; it was carrying several of us, all of us, filled with trepidation. It wasn't that the car wasn't parked in the parking lot; it's just that we and our car were already there at that time, so we were simply ignored. All we observed was people coming in and leaving—actions we had already done and actions we were about to do."

"Once the car was no longer under our observation, it immediately returned to normal, and the terrified travelers continued to cycle through this parking lot, reliving their own stories..."

The room fell silent again. The four people were in four different places, and suddenly they all broke out in a cold sweat.

They also considered a possibility.

If they don't break this vicious cycle, they may be trapped in that endless world forever.

That is something far more terrifying than an endless road; it is an endless hell of time.

There is another possibility...

Could it be that they have been unconsciously repeating that time loop for hundreds or thousands of years?

"Then...then...are we safe now?"

Finally, someone asked the question, or perhaps no one asked it at all, but everyone had this question in their minds and started to think about it.

"We should be out. Due to some unknown event, we escaped that increasingly chaotic time loop. But do you think that's the end of it? Do you know why we were able to escape the thick fog in the end?"

He laughed somewhat maniacally.

"It wasn't our effort and perseverance, but a ridiculous coincidence. The thick fog we broke through didn't disappear; it just froze in the vortex of time, and we were trapped in it too, swept into an even deeper abyss..."

Chapter 70 The Greatest Mercy

"This is truly the world's ultimate mercy to us."

The square-faced young man sat down as if he had given up on himself, opened a bag of biscuits and poured them all into his mouth.

"Ignorance is the greatest tolerance the world can show us. If we knew the dangers we were in every moment, the pressure alone would probably kill us with terror."

"We never broke through the fog. The fog still exists, but because time stood still, every water molecule was frozen in absolute freezing, which allowed us to see the road outside again."

"Perhaps it was from that time that we were also fooled by time and thrown into the core of the vortex."

Jackie said in despair, "Then the road we're on from now on? Is it all a lie?"

"Of course not. The path we are walking is still real, but in the absolute stillness of time, we appear in pure time, with obstacles that cannot be crossed by speed at all."

"So we lost control of ourselves in this chaotic vortex of time."

He walked around the car and returned to the starting point, indicating that their route was like this circle, constantly circling, but ultimately returning to the starting point.

"We've actually seen such pathetic creatures before."

He pointed to the way they had come.

"Do you understand about that car that got into trouble alone? That person didn't just leave before we arrived; he may have been gone for a long time."

"The fallacy of time is laid bare before our eyes. Gas station parking lots, roadside houses, places where cars break down. This car, like a foolish pioneer, dances a motionless dance and sings a silent song, walking ahead of us and paving the way for us."

"And this gentleman will always be ahead of us, perhaps by hours, minutes, or even just seconds. He will always be ahead of us."

"No matter how fast we speed up, surpass, or shout, he can only walk in terror, with no predecessors in front of him and no successors behind him, and no one to save him."

"He is a time barrier that we can never reach..."

The square-faced young man spoke softly, feeling immense regret. They had originally thought that if they had arrived sooner, they could have saved this desperate traveler and pulled him out of his solitary journey through the endless forest.

However, the truth is, no matter how fast they walk, this person's fate has already been sealed...

So what about our fate?

Suddenly, the idea popped into everyone's mind again, and it became unstoppable.

A powerful fear gripped everyone's hearts, squeezing out the last drop of blood, delivering the final blow to their minds, which had been numb with astonishment that night.

Will we also be abandoned on an island of time, waiting for those who come after us to trample on our bones and mock our fate?

The square-faced young man sat down with a self-deprecating laugh, resignedly giving up his last struggle.

"I don't know what kind of twists and turns will occur in this time vortex where we are. But we can only hope for the mercy of this time vortex and rely on our luck. Unless we can act at the right time and make the right choices, our fate will be the same, utterly doomed."

"But when will such hope arrive? A few years? A few hundred years? Tens of thousands of years? Or perhaps... the next second?"