“What else?”
Jiang Ran asked back:
“It’s not as if that elementary school kid, in order to save me, specifically threw a pencil down from the mountain, and it just happened to bounce and skip along, just happened to land tip-up, just happened to spring under my neck, and then my head just happened to fall… What kind of god-tier elementary schooler would that be?”
“It might not have been that elementary schooler.”
Qin Feng straightened up.
“It could have been someone else.”
“It wouldn’t matter who it was.”
Jiang Ran raised his hand and hurled the green jujube hard at Qin Feng—
Smack!
Qin Feng also lifted his hand and caught it, closing it in his palm.
“No matter who you swapped in, no one could throw with that kind of accuracy.” Jiang Ran shook his wrist.
“But it’s too much of a coincidence. So much of one that it isn’t normal.”
“What’s not normal about it? As long as the coincidence is big enough, even monkeys can type out the complete works of Shakespeare on a typewriter.”
“That’s impossible.”
Qin Feng rubbed the green jujube and shook his head.
“Theoretically speaking, if you gave monkeys enough time, then randomly striking the keys of a typewriter could indeed produce Shakespeare.”
“But in reality, it can’t be achieved. Even if the monkeys kept typing until the universe was destroyed, they still wouldn’t type out Shakespeare.”
Jiang Ran chuckled.
“Then that only proves the universe doesn’t live long enough.”
“Why have you suddenly stopped believing in science, Qin Feng? That’s what probability is like—”
“[As long as the probability of something happening isn’t zero, then it will definitely happen.]”
Whoosh.
The green jujube flew over and was caught by Jiang Ran again.
“Murphy’s Law,”
Qin Feng said.
Murphy’s Law meant that anything that could go wrong would eventually go wrong. Broadly understood, no matter how small the probability of failure or accident was, it would definitely happen.
Teacher Zhang Yang had covered this point in his general education class.
Since the probability of a child falling, their schoolbag opening, their pencil case popping out and scattering its contents everywhere, a pencil rolling down the mountain, and just happening to bounce beneath someone’s neck was [not zero]…
Then this incident had a probability of occurring.
It was similar to winning the lottery. Even if the probability of winning the jackpot was that small, there would always be someone who lucked into it.
The same applied to everything.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t listen to Teacher Zhang Yang’s lecture.”
Jiang Ran toyed with the green jujube and walked up to the viewing platform again.
“Xiaoxue and I weren’t interested in Teacher Zhang Yang’s general education class in the first place. We only chose it with you because you liked it.”
“Of course I listened.” Qin Feng had no way to refute him.
Indeed, any low-probability event had the possibility of occurring. That was the charm of probability.
It was logical and well-founded.
“Murphy’s Law really is a law that sounds rather sad.”
Jiang Ran continued tossing the jujube.
“Any mistake, accident, failure, or regret that has a chance of happening will happen in the end.”
“But now that we’ve mastered time-space text messages, for us, who can modify history at any time and make up for mistakes, Murphy’s Law no longer applies.”
Smack.
With one final wave of his hand, he caught the green jujube in midair and smiled at Qin Feng.
“Besides, didn’t Teacher Zhang Yang already give Murphy’s Law a reverse derivation in class?”
“Since everything that has a chance of happening will definitely happen…”
Jiang Ran leaned his right arm back, his muscles tensing.
“Then that also means—”
He swung his arm forward with force and hurled the green jujube out—
“[All beautiful things will eventually arrive as well!]”
The green jujube turned into a shooting star across the night.
Thrown from the highest point above this sea, it rushed into the starry sky, parted the clouds and mist, dragged moonlight in its wake, and fell into the silent black sea.
Submerged.
……
The next day, heavy rain fell from the sky.
Cheng Mengxue did not wake up until noon.
She truly had blacked out from drinking, and had no memory at all of what she had said yesterday.
“My last memory… is Qin Feng saying his dream was to do research in a top-tier laboratory. I don’t remember anything that happened after that.”
She scratched her head and looked at Jiang Ran.
“What did you say next? What’s your dream?”
“To become a savior.” Jiang Ran teased her.
“So great!”
“A genius like Einstein.”
“You… can do that?”
“Doraemon.”
“You’re teasing me again!”
Amid the noise and bickering, yesterday’s events were brushed aside.
Jiang Ran and Qin Feng understood each other tacitly, both pretending nothing had happened.
When Cheng Mengxue asked, their story was consistent: she had barely said a few words before her face slammed into a crab shell and she fell asleep.
……
By the time the three of them returned to school, it was already night.
The torrential rain was growing heavier and heavier, with lightning flashing frequently.
“Donghai’s weather really changes at the drop of a hat.”
The three of them braced themselves against the wind with umbrellas and decided to return to the club activity room first to take shelter from the rain.
They arrived at the club activity room.
All three of them were soaked to varying degrees.
After drying themselves with towels, the three made instant noodles and decided to make do with that.
On the small blackboard, the two great unsolved mysteries at present were still written:
[1. What exactly do the mysterious text message and mysterious numbers represent?]
[2. Why is Jiang Ran the only one who possesses memories from the original history, before the worldline changed?]
The first question still seemed impossible to solve at present.
Because after that, they had never received any extra messages, nor any follow-up clues. They could only remain at a standstill.
“So I’ve been saying all along that that mysterious text message was very likely just a simple malfunction.”
Qin Feng blew on his instant noodles.
“A string of meaningless garbled numbers looks far too much like some kind of machine error. It’s even very possible that this error occurred on the telecom operator’s end and had nothing to do with us.”
“Don’t you usually receive inexplicable verification-code text messages sometimes? Time-space text messages have to be transmitted through signal towers in the first place, so it was most likely an accidental signal disturbance that caused that garbled message to appear.”
……
Qin Feng still insisted on the “malfunction theory.”
Because if, according to Jiang Ran’s supposition, it had been a warning of danger… then they had already “ignored the warning” and sent many text messages.
But judging from the present, nothing terrible had occurred.
Everything was very stable.
Everything was very regular.
Everything was very normal.
“If that mysterious text message really was a warning sent by our future selves…”
Qin Feng let out two dry laughs.
“Then with us being this disobedient now, shouldn’t retribution have fallen on us long ago?”
Boom!!!!
A bolt of lightning struck down, followed by a peal of thunder.
The incandescent light flickered several times, then slowly returned to stability.
“You should say a little less.”
Jiang Ran opened the lid of his instant noodles and looked at the rising steam, thinking.
The words were crude, but the reasoning wasn’t.
In fact, what Qin Feng said did make some sense.
Since ignoring the warning would not lead to anything bad happening… then that meant the warning was utterly meaningless. It might not even have been a warning at all, and he had simply been worrying too much.
“Let’s set that question aside for now.”
He stirred his instant noodles with his fork and looked at the second question on the small blackboard.
“Actually, I’ve always been very curious. Is this special constitution of mine really unique to me in the whole world?”
“Although I’ve searched many keywords online and indeed found no relevant information, that doesn’t prove anything… because as long as a person’s brain is normal, they wouldn’t talk about this online. Otherwise, they’d easily get dragged off to a laboratory and sliced up for research.”
“So, is it possible…”
“[That there are actually many other people in the world like me, who can sense changes to the worldline and retain memories of the original worldline?]”
……
Jiang Ran’s words made the temperature in the activity room plummet, and silence descended.
Clang, clang, clang.
The torrential rain and fierce wind battered the windows, making them rattle loudly.
The curtain of rain turned into a sheet of water plastered against the glass, like a monster peering in at its prey.
This was…
A question they had never thought about in detail.
Just as Jiang Ran had said, what if this special constitution was not unique to him?
Qin Feng and Cheng Mengxue looked at each other.
Their brows furrowed one after another.
Once one started thinking about this, it was truly terrifying the more one dwelled on it.
If, in every corner of the world, there were still many people like Jiang Ran, possessing this special constitution…
Then.
Every time the worldline changed, many people would become dizzy and disoriented like Jiang Ran;
Every time the worldline changed, many people would retain memories of the original worldline like Jiang Ran;
That also meant—
If those people paid attention to the lottery, they would notice that after the worldline changed, five additional second-prize winners had appeared!
If there were such a person at Donghai University, they would notice Xu Yan’s death and resurrection!
[Then those people hidden in the dark may have long since detected the trio’s unusual actions!]
Boom!!!!
Another bolt of lightning struck down, illuminating the entire room.
Eyes.
Eyes.
Eyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyeseyes!
Amid the rumbling thunder, hundreds of pairs of Rhein cat eyes lit up, staring at them from every direction.
“We couldn’t be…”
Cheng Mengxue swallowed.
She slowly raised her head and looked at the fleeting gazes of the Rhein cats.
“We couldn’t be… already under someone’s watch, could we?”