“Huh?” “Huh?” “Huh?”
All three of them let out a “huh” at the same time.
They looked at one another.
Huh?
What was this “ha” supposed to be?
“I understand the first four characters—‘do not believe.’”
Qin Feng frowned slightly.
“But this last one… ha… what on earth does it mean? This is completely ungrammatical, isn’t it?”
Jiang Ran shook his head.
“It’s also possible there’s another way to spell out the sentence?”
But no matter how he adjusted it, none of the other combinations formed a sentence.
“Let’s head back to the club activity room first.”
He put away his phone.
“In any case, this trip to find Teacher Zhang Yang wasn’t wasted. We gained a lot!”
……
Film Club, activity room.
The small blackboard had been wiped completely clean, and five large characters had been written on it anew—
【Do, Not, Believe, Ha】
“What exactly is ‘ha’?”
Qin Feng raised the question for the nth time.
“No idea.”
Jiang Ran gave the answer “no idea” for the nth time, then looked up at Cheng Mengxue.
“It does kind of sound like Xiao Xue’s catchphrase.”
When Cheng Mengxue spoke, she sometimes liked to add a “ha” at the end.
That “ha” often had no real meaning. It was just a particle, giving a sense of reminder, emphasis, confirmation, or question.
For example, the most common ones were:
“I’m going to eat now, ha!”
“I’m starting the countdown, ha!”
“Don’t forget to bring it over, ha!”
“Then I’ll buy it, ha?”
Hm?
Cheng Mengxue hadn’t noticed at first.
But after trying it out to herself, she said:
“It really is!”
She blinked.
“But that’s nothing, right? Don’t lots of people talk like that? Huh, wait…”
She suddenly reacted.
“You’re not trying to say… this text message was actually sent by me on some day in the future, are you?”
……
Jiang Ran thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“Probably not. The sender of this text is my phone number. Though I can’t rule out the possibility that you typed the words, I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“Besides, putting aside who sent it, these five characters are completely ungrammatical.”
“‘Do not believe ha’… It looks like it wants to remind us not to believe something, but what exactly? How did it get replaced by just a ‘ha’?”
Seeing that Qin Feng had been deep in thought and silent the whole time, Jiang Ran turned his head.
“Qin Feng, what do you think?”
Qin Feng did not answer immediately.
He propped his chin in his hand and paced around the activity room.
Finally, he walked up to the small blackboard and wrote the pinyin beneath the five characters—
bu, yao, xiang, xin, ha
Then he pointed at the final “ha.”
“【I think the last two pinyin letters are not complete. There must be more information after them.】”
“For example, this ‘ha’ could actually be ‘hai,’ ‘hang,’ ‘han’… or perhaps even ‘ga,’ ‘gan,’ or ‘gang.’ All of those are possible.”
On a nine-key keypad, the 4 key contained three English letters: GHI. Taking pinyin logic into account, it could indeed be H, but it could also be G.
Jiang Ran nodded. He had been thinking along the same lines just now.
Could it be…
That this string of mysterious numbers was only the first part of the code, and there was still a second part later?
If there was another string of mysterious numbers afterward, then they could continue pressing keys on the nine-key keypad and obtain more Chinese characters, more information.
Just as Qin Feng said, that incomprehensible “ha” might itself be incomplete, with other pinyin letters still to come after it.
“Wow, but Jiang Ran, you’re really amazing.”
Cheng Mengxue gave Jiang Ran a thumbs-up.
“When we first received this mysterious text, you guessed it was a warning message. I didn’t expect you to actually be right.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say I was right.”
Jiang Ran waved his hand.
“At present, although we’ve decoded that string of mysterious numbers into five Chinese characters, we still haven’t obtained any effective information, nor can we determine whether this really is a warning message.”
“It’s only reminding us not to believe something, but specifically… what is it trying to tell us not to believe?”
“Is it telling us not to believe the positron cannon? Not to believe space-time texts? Not to believe the worldline transition theory? Or…”
He looked around, his gaze stopping on Cheng Mengxue and Qin Feng.
“【Or is it telling us not to believe one another? Not to believe… someone in this activity room?】”
“Hey!”
The rice-cooker Rhine Cat came smashing over with murderous momentum!
Jiang Ran hurriedly caught it, but the top of Rhine Cat’s head popped open with a boing, and the space-time particle Rhine Cat inside flew out, landing an uppercut that smashed into Jiang Ran’s chin.
So strong! It even had a second-stage attack!
“How can you talk like that!”
The fact that she was willing to throw her most beloved rice-cooker Rhine Cat as a weapon made it clear that Cheng Mengxue was very angry.
At this moment, she had her hands on her hips, glaring at Jiang Ran.
“How can you suspect your own companions?”
“All this time, regarding things like space-time texts, the three of us have always made decisions together and carried out actions together. None of us has ever hidden anything from the others. How can you say something like that!”
“I was just putting it out there.”
Jiang Ran grabbed the space-time particle Rhine Cat and stuffed it back into the rice-cooker Rhine Cat’s head.
“I was only making an exhaustive hypothesis. How could I possibly not trust you two?”
“If I really had to say it, in the few experiments with space-time texts, the person who made the final decisions was me. If anyone is the most untrustworthy, then I’m the biggest suspect.”
Qin Feng stepped forward again, standing between the two of them and waving his hands.
“Stop, stop, stop… Discussion is discussion. Don’t get worked up.”
“We definitely aren’t going to start suspecting one another over some inexplicable text message.”
“This text message is obviously incomplete. If we can receive a second mysterious text, and a second string of mysterious numbers… then won’t the truth come to light?”
“No matter how you look at it, this doesn’t seem like it’s telling us to suspect each other… but rather reminding us to guard against some thing, or some person, together.”
“That ‘ha’ at the end, that ‘ha,’ could very well be Han, Hang, Hang, Han, hai, and so on… It’s too early to draw a conclusion now.”
Jiang Ran tossed the rice-cooker Rhine Cat back over.
“Qin Feng is right. We still need more intelligence.”
He walked up to the small blackboard and wiped the writing clean.
“What Teacher Zhang Yang said may not necessarily be accurate, but at least it gave us a little reassurance.”
“Our current priority is to obtain more information about the mysterious text as soon as possible, and figure out what comes after ‘do not believe’ as quickly as we can.”
He began writing on the small blackboard with a soft scratch-scratch.
Qin Feng glanced at it.
“We’re going to keep sending space-time texts?”
“Yes.”
Jiang Ran nodded as he wrote.
“No matter what that space-time text is trying to remind us of, at the very least, it didn’t warn us about the act of ‘sending space-time texts.’”
“In other words, sending space-time texts itself is safe and reliable.”
“And the first mysterious text arrived at the same time as the space-time text. If we want to keep receiving mysterious texts, there’s a high chance we need to repeat that process.”
Tap.
After finishing the last stroke, Jiang Ran had the two of them look at the small blackboard—
【Space-Time Text Experiment, Phase Two Objectives】
1. While ensuring safety, continue sending space-time texts and see whether we can receive another mysterious text and mysterious numbers.
2. Find a way to decipher the true intent of the mysterious text, and figure out its origins and motive.
……
“As for my special constitution, we can set that aside for a bit.”
He clapped his hands and put down the chalk.
“We probably won’t get an answer to that question in the short term. Let’s focus our energy on the two problems above first.”
Qin Feng and Cheng Mengxue sat down, both agreeing with Jiang Ran’s plan.
“Then…”
Cheng Mengxue hugged Rhine Cat.
“What kind of space-time texts should we send next?”
She tilted her head.
“Since we’ve already carried out several experiments, and we’ve earned a lot of money through the lottery…”
“Does that mean next, we can send some space-time texts according to our own wishes—to make up for regrets, or correct mistakes from the past?”
Jiang Ran smiled faintly.
“The experimental phase is already over, and we’ve also grasped how to use space-time texts. The content of future texts can indeed be a little freer.”
“Of course, that doesn’t mean we can send just anything. We’ll still need to judge and decide together.”
He sat back down in his chair, leaned against the backrest, and looked at the two people in the room.
“I imagine that during this period, all of you have thought about what you’d like to use space-time texts to do.”
“So then, the three of us will each get one wish, and we’ll take turns making them come true.”
“Who wants to go first?”