The next day.
Jiang Ran came to the club activity room and pushed open the door.
Over a hundred pairs of eyes glared at him!
“Holy shit!”
Jiang Ran was stunned.
“The Rhine Cats multiplied!”
Before this, there had only been a dozen or so Rhine Cat plushies in the activity room, all brought over by Cheng Mengxue from her dorm.
But now…
The entire activity room had been occupied by Rhine Cats!
Rhine Cat plushies, Rhine Cat cushions, Rhine Cat mugs, Rhine Cat pen holders, Rhine Cat desk lamps, Rhine Cat trash cans, Rhine Cat sofa pads… and so on and so forth.
All kinds of Rhine Cat merchandise filled every corner. It was a full-on invasion by a Rhine Cat army.
“What are you yelling about?”
Cheng Mengxue burrowed out from the pile of Rhine Cats.
“Rhine Cats are plushies. How could they possibly multiply?”
“Well? Well? Doesn’t the activity room feel much cozier now? Being surrounded by Rhine Cats, doesn’t your mood just naturally get better?”
“Not at all.”
Jiang Ran only felt creeped out.
“This must have cost quite a bit, right?”
“Not that much. Most of them are regular models that only cost a few dozen yuan. Only this one was a little expensive…”
Cheng Mengxue walked to the sofa and picked up a round yet square Rhine Cat.
“Look, this is the rice cooker Rhine Cat I’ve always wanted!”
It was a Rhine Cat in the shape of a rice cooker—or perhaps a rice cooker in the shape of a Rhine Cat.
It was so abstract that Jiang Ran couldn’t understand it at all.
“This thing costs three thousand yuan?”
“It’s four thousand now.”
“That’s ridiculous. What kind of idiot would buy this?”
“What do you know? This is a super limited edition personally designed by the creator of Rhine Cat!”
Cheng Mengxue smiled mysteriously.
“And, hehe, do you know… why it’s more expensive than the other limited editions?”
“Because it can cook rice?”
“NONONO~”
Cheng Mengxue hooked her fingers under the forehead of the rice cooker Rhine Cat and, with a pop, pried open the top of its head, taking out a glowing blue sphere from inside.
“Because—ta-da-da-da! Because there’s also a spacetime particle Rhine Cat hidden inside!”
“Hahahaha, you didn’t expect that, did you? There’s another one hidden inside! Buy one, get one free—such a bargain!”
…
Jiang Ran was speechless, yet also wanted to laugh, like some trending reaction meme online.
Was this a design that a carbon-based life-form could come up with?
He was very worried about the mental state of that Rhine Cat creator.
“Isn’t it a genius design?” Cheng Mengxue chased after him, asking with great enthusiasm.
“It’s a design like crap!”
Jiang Ran simply couldn’t understand it.
“What kind of nonsense is this? A rice cooker Rhine Cat… Why isn’t there a microwave Rhine Cat? Do they also have a mini-fridge Rhine Cat?”
“They really do!!”
When Rhine Cats were mentioned, Cheng Mengxue’s eyes filled with stars.
She hurriedly squeezed over and grabbed Jiang Ran’s arm, shaking it hard.
“They really do, hometown buddy! There really is a mini-fridge Rhine Cat! It’s a collaboration with Jask SPACE-T, made to commem—”
“All right, all right, stop there.” Jiang Ran cut off Cheng Mengxue’s endless torrent of words.
Sigh.
It was bad enough that the Rhine Cat army kept expanding in reality. He really didn’t want the Rhine Cat family tree in his mind to keep swelling too.
“You two really are natural enemies. Bickering and making noise every day.”
Qin Feng appeared at the door of the activity room.
“I could hear you clearly from the stairwell.”
“What were you doing this morning?”
Jiang Ran turned around.
“All mysterious. I asked you, and you wouldn’t say.”
“Hehe.”
Qin Feng smiled faintly and flicked out three cruise tickets.
“Look what I bought. The most luxurious ocean cruise in Donghai City. And it’s the top-floor luxury suite, with its own pool and dining room, panoramic sea view.”
“Why’d you buy this?”
For a moment, Jiang Ran wondered if this worldline had secretly jumped without notifying him… Why had all his friends around him become abnormal?
“I’ve noticed that once you two got money, you both got completely carried away.”
“What’s wrong with splurging once in a while?”
Qin Feng shrugged.
“Besides, since it’s a celebration banquet, of course we have to choose a nice place.”
Celebration banquet?
Jiang Ran was puzzled.
“Didn’t you guys already hold a celebration banquet many days ago?”
“Yeah, but you don’t have any memory of it.”
Qin Feng stepped forward and patted Jiang Ran on the shoulder.
“You’re the greatest contributor to everything we’ve achieved today. How could a celebration banquet leave you out?”
“Since you have no memory of it, Xiaoxue and I discussed it… and decided we’d celebrate for you again!”
Only then did Jiang Ran understand what Qin Feng had been doing that morning.
So he had wanted to make up for Jiang Ran’s lost memory of the celebration banquet.
Actually, there was no need…
But.
This was what friends were, wasn’t it?
They always cared about certain casual details, cared about things you yourself hadn’t even realized.
“Now that you mention it, I’ve never been on a cruise ship before,” Jiang Ran said with a smile.
“Me neither.” Cheng Mengxue stood up with a giggle.
“I’ve definitely never been either.” Qin Feng spread his hands.
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Jiang Ran looked at the bright sun outside the window.
“Let’s go!”
Splash—
Water burst up from the swimming pool.
Cheng Mengxue jumped down from the four-meter platform, sending shimmering water splashing onto Jiang Ran and Qin Feng’s heads.
The two sat by the pool and wiped their faces.
“Was that a bomb?”
Qin Feng complained.
“Could the splash have been any bigger?”
“She did well enough just daring to jump.”
Jiang Ran defended her.
“Do you dare jump?”
“Do you?”
“If you dare, I dare.”
“If you dare, I dare too.”
Thirty seconds later.
The two stood one after the other on the four-meter diving platform.
It hadn’t looked like much from below, but once they truly stood on it, they realized four meters was really high.
They were at the pool of the suite on the highest point of the cruise ship, and the diving platform rose another four meters above that… So this was the highest point of the entire cruise ship.
At the same time, it was also the highest point on this stretch of sea.
Jiang Ran stood at the end of the diving board, gazing at the distant line where sky met sea, curving toward the end of the world beneath the shape of the Earth.
Qin Feng stood behind him and looked up at the sky.
“Don’t you feel like this scene is familiar?”
“What are you referring to?”
Jiang Ran turned his head, only to be stopped by two fingers.
They were Qin Feng’s fingers.
Qin Feng had shaped his right hand into a gun and pressed it against Jiang Ran’s forehead.
“Lilith.”
His expression darkened as he said in a low voice,
“Let the sky go dark.”
In the next second, a miracle occurred.
The sunlight around them rapidly dimmed until it vanished, and the entire world lost its source of light!
Jiang Ran raised his head.
Only then did he realize that a drifting dark cloud had just happened to block the sun.
“Heh!”
No wonder Qin Feng had glanced up at the sky just now… He had noticed the dark cloud was about to cover the sun, and on a sudden whim, his inner drama king had taken over.
“Lilith is omnipotent.”
Qin Feng looked into Jiang Ran’s eyes.
This was the script from that very first day, when the two of them had filmed on the rooftop.
The script had been written by Jiang Ran and handed over to the film club to shoot. So… how could anyone be more familiar with the lines than Jiang Ran?
“Omnipotence does not make one a god.”
Playing along with Qin Feng’s performance, Jiang Ran picked up the scene and slowly turned around.
“Only those who control history and manipulate history can be considered gods.”
At this moment, just like that moment.
Now that he possessed spacetime text messages and could freely rewrite history, reciting this line again filled his heart with an entirely different sight.
Just as he had stood at the edge of the rooftop that day, Jiang Ran spread his arms, bathing in the sea breeze atop the diving platform.
“And now, we possess that power. Our lives have only just begun!”
He altered the lines and improvised.
Beneath the boundless blue sky, seagulls cried. The sun emerged from behind the dark clouds, scattering all its radiance down!
“The future is ours!”
He leapt, losing gravity between sky and sea.
“History is ours as well.”