Four-Dimensional Village.
Path of Return entrance.
Gu Gu Gu sat alone before the slowly rotating "black hole."
His expression was indescribable, carrying a trace of sorrow.
A strip of white cloth was tied around his head. Before him sat a low table with a plate of peanuts and a flask of baijiu.
The old man stared blankly at the Path of Return, clicking his tongue and shaking his head. Thinking of that young child, he felt a pang of grief.
With incomparably tragic solemnity, he lifted his wine cup. Remembering that he could not hold his liquor, he tipped his head back and poured the wine behind him.
"Haah."
Gu Gu Gu wiped his mouth.
But the liquor had splashed all over Gu Beijiang.
Gu Beijiang, the Village Chief of Four-Dimensional Village and Gu Fan's father, stood behind the old man. After hesitating for a moment, he asked, "Father, did he really go in?"
The old man let out a long sigh, as though it carried all the stories in his mind and all the desolation of the world.
"Our Four-Dimensional Village had ancestors—time itself is insufficient to describe them."
"Perhaps a hundred years ago, perhaps a thousand years ago, perhaps one second ago."
"They battled in the depths of the universe against evil, powerful enemies."
"How could it have been mere fists, kicks, blades, and swords?"
"Once both sides took their positions, there came only a rain of space."
"That rain fell within the story of an old man nearing the end of his days."
"The listener could not comprehend just how vast that rain was."
"Every raindrop was a collapsing space, a dying star, a scattering galaxy."
"Space was like a book, its pages closing three hundred times."
"Only within the story."
As Gu Gu Gu spoke, he