The road maintenance station had a telephone.
Qu Rang Na Duo called several acquaintances to ask around, but no one knew where this Jizha Village was. Xie Yi also looked into it, and he said that not only was there no such village here, there was no village called Jizha anywhere in Southern Tibet.
During my call with Xie Yi, he showed no signs of anything unusual. It felt as though I had never traveled through time at all.
Then, when Qu Rang Na Duo had stood his final shift at the Pali road maintenance station, had I already known Xie Yi and joined Unit Nine? I had some doubts about that, but now was not the time to ask.
The most important thing now was to find that middle-aged man and rescue Yin Wuyu.
What puzzled me, though, was that Xie Yi had not asked why I had come to Southern Tibet or why I was looking for a village called Jizha.
Could it be that he was still on the previous timeline, while I was connected to him from this one? I found my brain was no longer enough to process it all.
Even Xie Yi had been unable to find Jizha Village. I began to suspect that the middle-aged man had played me.
But that should not have been the case. If he had not wanted me to find him, there would have been no need for him to leave such a note.
Ying Gou said to me, "Maybe the village existed, but its name was changed? You have to remember, that kid has lived for quite a few years."
I froze for a moment. Thinking about it, that was indeed possible. The middle-aged man looked only forty or fifty, but from the conversation between old man