They sat on the railing of the arched bridge, just as they had back then.
Chen Ping'an suddenly said, "I once heard of an utterly inconceivable conjecture. It said that the world of heaven and earth we inhabit has actually cycled through countless repetitions, each one an unchanged replay."
"All living beings and dead things lie within a single calamity. When the calamity rises, heaven and earth are born; when it falls, heaven and earth perish. Then it begins anew, cycling over and over without the slightest deviation. As for how many years one such calamity lasts, there are differing accounts—some say thirty thousand years, others a hundred thousand, perhaps even longer. That was why later generations came to speak of 'unable to escape a calamity.' The sages of old had already exposed it; they simply could not see through it."
"Could that really be true?"
She quietly listened to Chen Ping'an. Only after he asked did she smile and say, "Not a bad idea. Novel and interesting. But it has strayed ten thousand miles from the question and gone wildly wrong."
Chen Ping'an let out a breath and softly said, "Good, then."
Otherwise, every word and deed of a person, the entire course of one's life; from the vast, boundless movement of stars beyond the heavens to the flourishing and withering of grass and trees upon the earth, even the path of every single snowflake falling to the ground—if all were predetermined, then what was this present life, this present self, supposed to mean?
She smiled and asked, "Was this conjecture derived from the sayings 'spirits are never wrong' and 'fate is made in heaven'?"
Chen Ping'an rose to his feet, walked along the railing, and slowly threw punches. Smiling, he said, "Worrying that the sky might fall. I