The next day, night, ten-thirty.
The lights in the club activity building gradually went out.
Most of the clubs had already wrapped up their activities. After tidying up, turning off the electrical appliances and lights, they locked their doors and left.
Inside the Film Club, however, the lights were still blazing, with no sign of dispersing.
They were waiting for the early hours of the morning.
According to the Spacetime Text Message User Manual (Version 4.0), the further into the past one wished to send a text message, the greater the power required.
So, to be safe, choosing the dead of night, when all was quiet and no one was using electricity, was the most reliable option.
Jiang Ran stood before the small blackboard, looking at the mysterious string of numbers written on it:
289269426494642.
And the five Chinese characters decoded from that string of numbers:
Do not trust Ha.
……
No one knew what that sentence meant.
They had also been hoping all along to receive a second mysterious text message, so they could fill in the missing latter half of the sentence.
But things did not go as they wished.
That mysterious text message that had appeared so abruptly never had any follow-up.
This sense of the unknown left Jiang Ran deeply uneasy.
He kept feeling that…
Somewhere in the unseen, as if he had missed something, overlooked something.
[But what exactly had he overlooked?]
He could not figure it out. He could not find it.
Right now, he was like a headless fly, unable to find any breakthrough; and the more his thoughts circled around, the dizzier and more muddled he became.
Sigh.
How to put it?
Anything related to spacetime text messages always filled him with worry.
He had enjoyed two rare days of leisure over the past couple of days.
He had even gone drinking and shooting the breeze with Wang Hao for the first time in ages, and had been in quite a good mood.
But today, they were going to send another spacetime text message. That feeling of panic came surging back again, making him pace back and forth in the cramped activity room, unable to calm down.
He raised his head.
There was the entire room stuffed full of the Rhine Cat Army, every pair of eyes reflecting the incandescent light, bright and piercing.
He lowered his head.
There was the positron cannon on the experiment table, poised and ready to fire.
Qin Feng maintained it carefully every day. Its casing had been polished until it gleamed, presenting an absurd impression of being both new and old, as though time had never flowed over it.
It was truly hard to imagine.
The predecessor of the positron cannon had merely been a bulky old monitor manufactured more than twenty years ago.
Who knew what kind of genius the old seniors of the Film Club had possessed back then, to somehow, by a series of strange coincidences, cobble it together and modify it into a “time machine,” then pair it with a transformer distribution box… and send mobile phone text messages into the past.
Everything was such a coincidence.
And yet everything was also so scientific.
Then.
At the end of science + coincidence…
What exactly awaited them?
“It’s about time.”
Qin Feng glanced at his watch:
“It’s past midnight. Let’s get started.”
Qin Feng’s words pulled Jiang Ran back to reality.
He stood up, shook his head, shook off his tangled thoughts, and began to make arrangements.
In truth, there wasn’t much arranging to do.
After so many experiments, every one of them was already familiar with the process; moreover, the time point for this text message had already been decided during the day—
Qin Feng had gone to browse the old appliance market seven days ago;
That circuit control board had been bought nine days ago;
To ensure nothing went wrong, it would be best to add one more day;
So this time, they were going to send the spacetime text message…
To ten days ago.
This was, to date, the spacetime text message sent the farthest into the past. In a way, it could be considered a historic breakthrough.
The setup was the same as before, except the three of them had switched positions.
Cheng Mengxue was responsible for operating the positron cannon, Jiang Ran sat astride the windowsill and counted down, while Qin Feng stood beside the transformer distribution box to send the text message.
Originally, operating the positron cannon had been a technical task.
Thanks to the improvements made some time ago, it could now be operated in foolproof fashion using the knob control panel. There was no difficulty at all.
“The text is ready!” Qin Feng shouted from outside the window.
Jiang Ran turned his head and looked at Cheng Mengxue.
Cheng Mengxue operated the knobs, turning the year, month, and hour scales all to 0, then turned the “day” scale to 10.
This meant that, in a little while, the spacetime text message would be accurately sent to ten days ago:
“The positron cannon is set too!”
Jiang Ran raised his hand:
“Then I’ll start the countdown! When I count to 0, Xiaoxue will activate the positron cannon first, and then Qin Feng will send the text. Everyone ready—”
“5!”
The moonlight was covered by dark clouds, and the entire world dimmed.
Come to think of it, he no longer knew how many times this had happened. Every time it reached the countdown, Jiang Ran always had the illusion that time was slowing down.
Not only did his senses become sharper, his mind also grew more agile; it was like a vulture hunting in the night, able to cast aside all noise and stray thoughts and focus entirely on its prey.
“4!”
Even now, that string of mysterious numbers still made Jiang Ran feel uneasy.
Do not trust Ha…
What exactly were they being told not to trust?
Jiang Ran did not know, nor could he guess.
But.
If he had to speak of his first instinct upon seeing those five characters, then it was Qin Feng.
Do not trust… Qin Feng.
“3!”
Calling out the countdown loudly, Jiang Ran looked toward his close friend standing beside the distribution box.
This was a boy who had lost his father when he was young and endured a miserable childhood.
And yet, for the sake of friendship and trust, he had given up his obsession with bringing his father back to life.
It was truly noble.
Compared to that…
He himself seemed utterly despicable.
Even when Qin Feng had cooperated to this extent, he still harbored suspicion toward this close friend; as the numbers in the countdown continued to decrease, all kinds of unease transformed into a wild beast pounding inside his chest.
“2!”
His gradually accelerating heartbeat made Jiang Ran feel somewhat deprived of oxygen.
Seeing that Qin Feng was about to press the send button outside the window, he felt a wave of dizziness, as if the earth were trembling, the world swaying, and countless terrifying yet abstract images came rushing toward him.
Fish leapt out of the water,
A black sun was reflected in dead, staring pupils,
Black light turned into viscous asphalt; it was boiling mud of the earth, black and red interweaving, the whole world an apocalypse.
A blink.
The earth fell silent and stopped turning.
An eye.
It was an enormous eye, an eye that used the earth as its pupil.
Its magnificent eye socket extended to some unknown place.
“1!”
Another blink.
The enormous eye appeared in the universe. It was boundlessly huge, its pitch-black pupil like a greedy black hole, madly devouring everything around it.
Under the pull of gravity, his viewpoint retreated at the speed of light.
At last… the full appearance of the eye was completely revealed. Terrifying and unexpected—beside that eye, there was actually another eye!
A double blink.
Those were precisely… Qin Feng’s eyes reflecting the moonlight—
“Wait!!!” Jiang Ran shouted.
“Eh? Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh!”
Cheng Mengxue had already gathered her strength and was preparing to activate the positron cannon. Her posture was interrupted by Jiang Ran’s shout, and for a moment she lost her balance, flailing wildly before hurriedly bracing herself against the table to steady her body:
“Jiang Ran! What are you doing!”
She complained loudly:
“You scared me to death! Why aren’t you following the script?”
However.
Jiang Ran did not pay her any attention.
His eyes were fixed straight on Qin Feng beside the distribution box, on the phone at the other party’s fingertips.
Bracing himself against the windowsill, he jumped down.
Moonlight cast a dividing line between the two of them, and Jiang Ran stepped forward through the pale glow.
Step by step.
With quiet, sticky steps, he walked up to Qin Feng and slowly raised his right hand.
“What’s wrong?” Qin Feng asked.
“Qin Feng, can you give me your phone?”
Jiang Ran looked into his eyes:
“I want to confirm… the contents of the text message.”