Yue Shi went to the school again.
At 9:30, a young female teacher stood on the podium, opened her textbook, and began reading the text aloud.
Every lesson in the book had been read countless times. She had even read short pseudo-human novels, covering tropes like womb-veganism, true and false young miss, swapped marriage literature, and dead person literature...
These things weren't exactly suitable for students, but at least they served to soothe their emotions.
However, after so many loops, everything she knew had been completely drained.
Fortunately, this was a school, so there weren't many instances of violent outbursts. After all, the students were used to the boredom of daily classes.
Below the podium, some students were dazed, some were sleeping, and others were secretly looking at their phones.
The student looking at his phone had a much more stable mental state than the others because his device was filled with various web novels. As long as he remembered which chapter he was on just before the loop ended, he could skip directly to that chapter when the loop restarted.
He deliberately slowed his reading speed and sometimes reread sections, finding joy in fictional worlds to kill the boredom. Consequently, he had the best mental state in this infinite loop.
Some citizens were doing okay; though trapped in a loop doing the same things, they were merely bored. Even the most joyful moments became dull when repeated infinitely.
However, some unlucky souls were being subjected to repeated torture.
Yue Shi went to the hospital.
Standing outside an operating room, he saw the shadowless lamp lit within. Doctors and nurses surrounded the operating table, and the patient's abdomen was cut open.
At 9:30, the surgery was exactly halfway through. It was a procedure under local anesthesia, not general anesthesia.
That patient was in the middle of surgery every single loop, leaving him with virtually no power to resist. The doctors and nurses had gone mad and tortured him before. Now, his pupils lacked focus, holding only a profound sense of despair.
Passing by proctology, Yue Shi heard strange groans coming from inside.
A patient had accidentally slipped while showering, happened to sit on a bottle of shower gel, which happened to slide right in, and then happened to get stuck.
The patient had sought medical attention at proctology just in time. At 9:30, they were in the middle of the foreign body removal process, which looked... rather awkward.
...
In the nursing home, an old lady sat in a wheelchair by the window, looking at the sky outside.
Her expression was very peaceful. She had sat in that same spot for an unknown number of loops.
She didn't know why she was sitting there, what was outside, or even who she was.
Because she had dementia.
In such a bizarre world, the senseless were actually happier than the sane.
...
The cemetery.
At 9:30, a young woman stood before a tombstone, holding a bouquet of white chrysanthemums.
She set the flowers down and wiped the dust from the tombstone with a tissue.
“Mom, I’ve come to see you,” she said, her voice soft and gentle as she stood there in a daze.
In the next loop, she was holding the white chrysanthemums again, wiping the dust, and standing in a daze once more.
Even after countless loops, the pain of losing her mother could not be erased.
...
In a secluded alley, a woman with a knife angrily stabbed a young man.
Through the countless loops, she had stabbed him countless times.
The man roared, “I just cheated on you! Do you have to hate me this much? You've killed me so many times, aren't you satisfied yet?!”
The woman shook her head. “I forgot about the cheating long ago. Now, I just hate you purely. I need this hatred to keep my sanity from collapsing, so please, go die one more time.”
...
In an Amber City with only a six-minute loop, ninety-nine percent of the people were in agony, living in misery.
But there were a very few who were somewhat happy in the loop.
For instance, those who were still sleeping in at 9:30, lost in deep sleep.
They were truly lucky. Some worked night shifts and were fast asleep at 9:30 to catch up on rest. They didn't know about the loop, the restarts, or that the city had gone mad.
They were just sleeping, sleeping forever.
Occasionally, someone would be woken up during a loop by a fight downstairs, a neighbor pounding on the door, or a transmigrator being hunted by the entire street.
But after being woken up, the next loop would restart, and they would be back in deep sleep.
To them, the experience of being woken up was just a brief, unpleasant dream. Once the dream ended, they continued to sleep.
In this mad city, they possessed the most luxurious thing of all—ignorance.
...
In a bedroom of a private residence, a young man was curled up under the covers, breathing steadily in a deep sleep.
A glass of water sat on the nightstand, his phone was charging, and his alarm was set for two in the afternoon.
He didn't know that he would never be woken by that alarm. At 9:36:48, everything would restart. His clock would never reach two o'clock.
He didn't have to face this mad world or his own crumbling sanity. He only needed to sleep, and keep sleeping.
His happiness wasn't because of what he possessed, but because of what he didn't know.
...
Over many loops, Yue Shi wandered through the entirety of Amber City.
He had seen those who gradually collapsed in the infinite repetition, and those who gradually became numb.
Love turned into habit in the loop, and habit turned into torture.
Friendship turned into pleasantries, and pleasantries turned into indifference.
Family ties turned into burdens, and burdens turned into resentment.
Whenever a transmigrator arrived, the citizens would show a rare moment of unity, hunting them down to turn them into madmen just like themselves.
...
Yue Shi went to the roof of a skyscraper and looked down at the city.
The spring sunlight made the buildings, streets, and pedestrians look like an exquisite model.
The wind blew his long hair, and the snow leopard cub squatted at his feet. In the distance, people were running, shouting, laughing, and crying. Everything was looping, without end.
Yue Shi wondered if the people in the loop had achieved immortality.
They would never grow old, never get sick, and never truly die.
At the end of every loop, their bodies would return to their initial state.
They were trapped in a time that would never move forward, forever staying in this moment.
“In a sense, the residents here have achieved immortality, haven't they?” Yue Shi mused.
The ghost drifted out from his collar, floating beside him. It remained silent for a long time before criticizing Yue Shi's wild take. “This kind of immortality—would you want it if it were offered to you?”
“Depends on the situation,” Yue Shi said calmly.
The ghost was shocked. “You’ve actually considered this kind of immortality?”
Yue Shi nodded. “If I were about to die, or if I were captured by an enemy and about to face agonizing torture, I might use this kind of loop to escape death or pain.”
The ghost replied, “Uh, you really do value your life.”
Yue Shi simply said, “Nothing is more important than my own existence.”
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