Chapter 103: 103. New Time Traveler
The prisoners were still confined in their cells.
Because Qing Chen still had one important thing left undone:
Early this morning, more than thirty newcomers arrived all at once, and Ye Wan had just finished interrogating each one of them.
This was originally Lu Guangyi’s job, but now, to keep the outside world from knowing that Qing Chen had become a student of Uncle Li Dong, Lu Guangyi too had to stay honestly in the cell.
Ye Wan returned to the dining table and said, “In this batch of newcomers, there seem to be quite a few Time Travelers. Out of 37 people, 5 couldn’t account for their origins in the Outer World. Two tried to bluff their way through, claiming they lived in District 7 of City 18. They could describe any landmark building there, but became vague when it came to their family relations.”
Qing Chen sighed, “Now, Time Travelers have gotten smarter. Once they notice the countdown on their arm, they quickly rely on internet information to fabricate an identity for themselves to avoid being discovered immediately after time traveling.”
By now, various organizations in the Inner World had started to investigate ‘Time Travelers,’ and moreover, most organizations didn’t treat Time Travelers kindly.
For instance, in the two cities controlled by the Jindai Group, Time Travelers were very unlucky.
Since they all traveled from the Island Country, nearly all of them couldn’t speak Mandarin.
One by one, the Time Travelers had been identified and then put under concentrated surveillance.
According to the news, there was now a craze for learning Mandarin in the Outer World’s Island Country, with the cost of a Mandarin class reaching hundreds of thousands of yen.
The situation was similar in the territory of the Deer Island Group, only the Lee family of Deer Island spoke Korean.
Head of the Lee family of Deer Island, Li Bingzhe, and Head of the Li Family of the Central Plains, Li Xiurui, were two completely unrelated clans, with Tong Yun currently in the Central Plains Li Family.
At this moment, Time Travelers, whether in the Outer World or the Inner World, were not very safe.
So much that every Time Traveler acted like they were spies, desperately hiding their identities to avoid fatal danger.
“How are we going to handle these five Time Travelers?” Ye Wan asked, “We could just transfer them directly to another prison.”
Qing Chen thought for a moment, “Bring them to the interrogation room. I’ll ask them some questions one by one; maybe there will be someone we can cooperate with. And since we all lived in the same city in the Outer World, it would be easier to recognize them later.”
The interrogation room was a dull, gray room, its walls made of alloy construction, and the ceiling’s harsh white LED light arrays emitted a blinding brilliance, instilling an unconscious fear in any prisoner within.
On one wall, there was even a large metal one-way mirror embedded.
Qing Chen stood calmly next to it, and from his angle, the mirror was completely transparent, allowing him to see the unsettled Time Travelers inside.
However, this mirror was somewhat different from those in the Outer World.
It also displayed the Time Travelers’ body temperature, heart rate, and breathing frequency, with those fluctuating numbers changing every second.
This was to aid the interrogators in observing the prisoners’ conditions.
Ye Wan brought a Time Traveler into the interrogation room, and Qing Chen laughed the moment he saw the newcomer — wasn’t this Yu Junyi, the study committee member from his class?!
From behind the one-way mirror, using a Breathing Technique to alter his voice, Qing Chen asked, “Name.”
Yu Junyi, sitting on the chair cautiously, said, “Yu Junyi.”
“What was your identity in the Outer World?”
“Officer, I was just an ordinary student there,” Yu Junyi said fearfully, “a high school sophomore.”
He mistook the interrogator for a prison guard because he called him an officer. After all, he couldn’t imagine a scenario where a prisoner was questioning another prisoner.
Qing Chen suddenly asked, “Do you still have other Time Travelers around you?”
Yu Junyi answered, “Yes, there are 6, one is named Nan…”
At this point, Yu Junyi suddenly stopped speaking.
“Why did you stop talking,” Qing Chen asked. He was thinking that the six Yu Junyi mentioned must be Nan Gengchen, Liu Dezhu, Hu Xiaoniu, Wang Yun, Bai Waner, and Zhang Tianzhen.
Indeed, probably only Nan Gengchen believed that he was well hidden…
Yu Junyi answered, “I have no Time Travelers around me, sir.”
“You want to protect them, don’t you? You’re afraid that if you reveal their names, you will expose their identity as Time Travelers?” Qing Chen asked.
Yu Junyi didn’t speak; that was indeed what he thought.
The news in the Outer World these days also said that once Time Travelers exposed their identities, most of them didn’t end well.
Therefore, he didn’t want to implicate his classmates.
Qing Chen asked, “Aren’t you afraid of my harsh interrogation? This is a prison, killing one or two people wouldn’t make any difference.”
Yu Junyi’s mind was racing. He definitely didn’t want to be tortured, and he knew all too well how terrifying that could be, but he also didn’t want to betray his classmates.
Suddenly, Yu Junyi looked up and asked, “May I ask, is this Prison 18?”
Qing Chen calmly replied, “Yes, it is.”
Yu Junyi recalled what Liu Dezhu had bragged about on the bus earlier. The other party had said that Uncle Li Dong here was no different from the Warden, and Liu Dezhu was now a favorite of this big shot!
Moreover, at that time, a classmate had asked Liu Dezhu: Does Uncle Li Dong know you are a Time Traveler?
Liu Dezhu’s answer was: He knows, but he doesn’t care!
At this moment, Yu Junyi clung to a lifeline, “Sir! I am a classmate of Liu Dezhu, one of your own people!”
Lin Xiaoxiao looked towards Qing Chen, and Qing Chen’s expression turned strange…
Honestly, he hadn’t expected such a twist. Just how much had Liu Dezhu bragged about himself to make Yu Junyi think that by just mentioning that guy’s name in this prison, he could get off scot-free…?
Qing Chen pondered for a moment; he suddenly had a new plan.
The status of Liu Dezhu in the prison had always been blown out of proportion by the man himself, which was one-sided.
Now, Qing Chen could find someone to corroborate that for him.
He had Ye Wan take Yu Junyi back to his cell, then summoned four other Time Travelers for interrogation.
However, disappointingly, these remaining four were just ordinary employees of private companies and didn’t have much utility.
“There’s still use in keeping them now. Once I finish up my tasks, I’ll have them transferred to another prison,” Qing Chen told Lin Xiaoxiao.
Lin Xiaoxiao chuckled in response, “I really do want to see the expression on the faces of those people in the Outer World when they one day discover your role in these matters. I wish I could travel through time to see that.”
Qing Chen asked, “By the way, how is Liu Dezhu doing?”
“Oh, this guy has even less backbone than I expected. He was on the verge of breaking down just nine hours in,” Lin Xiaoxiao replied: “I’ll send him back to his previous solitary confinement soon.”
Qing Chen was speechless. If not for his concern that appointing Nan Gengchen as his proxy would bring the young man danger, he would definitely make Liu Dezhu rot in jail.
However, having said that, now that Nan Gengchen knew his true identity, it made him unsuitable to be a proxy because his own identity might be exposed during an interrogation.
It wasn’t that Qing Chen didn’t trust Nan Gengchen, but an interrogation is inherently a cruel affair, and very few could withstand it.
Liu Dezhu, however, was different. Even if someone caught him, they could only learn that someone was still pulling the strings behind the scenes, but couldn’t figure out exactly who.