Future

"This... this is..."

A chill spread through Jiang Ran.

What the hell was going on?

He had absolutely no memory of this string of numbers and had no idea what it meant. It was like gibberish.

He definitely had not sent this bulletin.

But the sender was indeed his name, his phone number...

This was terrifying.

Could there be two of him in this world?

But even if there were two of him, there couldn't possibly be two identical phone numbers!

"I didn't send this bulletin."

Jiang Ran frowned tightly and looked at Qin Feng.

"I sent the first test bulletin, yes, but I didn't send the second one—the string of gibberish-like numbers."

The two locked eyes.

Qin Feng knew Jiang Ran well. He would not joke around at a time like this.

So...

His expression gradually turned grave as well.

"You're serious?"

"I remember it perfectly."

Jiang Ran was certain.

"There's no reason for me to mess with you under these circumstances. This is terrifying, okay? Besides, since it was a test bulletin, one was enough. Why would I send two?"

"The Spacetime Black Hole can only last 0.7 seconds, and the window for sending a Spacetime Bulletin is only 0.7 seconds too. My hands aren't fast enough to send two bulletins in that short a time!"

The three of them fell silent.

An eerie atmosphere gradually settled over the room.

A bulletin from an unknown source,

A string of numbers with an unknown meaning,

And a Spacetime Shift that became more terrifying the more they thought about it,

All instantly wiped away their earlier excitement... burying it beneath a thick layer of anxiety.

"What do we do?"

Qin Feng spoke first, looking at Jiang Ran.

"Could it have been an error during the experiment, or a malfunction in the Positron Cannon I repaired?"

"I think... once I finish repairing the Positron Cannon, we can immediately run another experiment and see whether we receive two bulletins again."

Jiang Ran shook his head.

"I don't think it's that simple."

Unlike the other two, Jiang Ran was the only one who could directly experience the Spacetime Shift.

That uniqueness and special circumstance had left him with an indescribable sense of unease.

"Let's suspend the Spacetime Bulletin experiment for now."

He raised his head.

"To be safe, until we figure out why there was a second bulletin and what that mysterious string of numbers means... we shouldn't conduct any more spacetime experiments."

The next day.

Qin Feng finally repaired the Positron Cannon and set it quietly to one side.

Jiang Ran paced the room endlessly, staring at the numbers on the blackboard as he thought.

289269426494642...

The numbers from that mysterious bulletin had now been written on the small blackboard in chalk as the three tried to uncover their meaning.

Now, [the creation of the Spacetime Black Hole] and [the principles of Spacetime Bulletins] had both been solved, while the ability to [Message the Past] had been completely mastered.

Those achievements should have been a smooth road toward a glorious future for the trio.

Yet this "uninvited" bulletin had become a roadblock, bringing their plans for a brilliant life to a halt.

"It's not an English word."

Cheng Mengxue put down her pen.

"Translating it according to the order of the English alphabet doesn't produce any known word."

Qin Feng shook his head.

"I can't find any pattern from a mathematical standpoint either."

"Do you think it's possible that this string of numbers has no meaning in itself? That it's simply a string of numbers, simply a [password]?"

A password.

Jiang Ran stopped pacing.

A bank vault password?

A safe combination?

The password to some website account?

It wasn't impossible, but if they could not find the lock, what use was a key alone?

Actually.

If it really was some kind of password, Jiang Ran would not have been so worried.

What worried him was...

That this string of numbers was a [warning].

A warning against time travel, against the laws of spacetime, against altering history.

"I think we should conduct another experiment."

Qin Feng suggested again.

"Since the Positron Cannon has been repaired, why not run another verification experiment and see whether this mysterious bulletin was a coincidence or something inevitable?"

"If we want to understand the truth behind these numbers, we should try more and gather more samples. Only then can we analyze them more comprehensively."

"Maybe in the next experiment, we'll receive some clues. Then we can use those clues to crack this code."

Qin Feng's reasoning was scientific.

But...

"What if it produces consequences we can't undo?" Jiang Ran looked at him.

"What consequences are you worried about?"

Qin Feng asked.

"An uncontrollable Spacetime Butterfly Effect?"

"No."

Jiang Ran shook his head.

They had long known that the Spacetime Butterfly Effect was uncontrollable. As the person who experienced Spacetime Shifts most directly, he understood even better the terror of "missing memories," "altered history," and "opening blind boxes."

Still...

Simply Messaging the Past three days ago and changing the history of those three days would not create such a terrifying Butterfly Effect. There was not enough time for "the butterfly's flapping wings" to ferment into "a tornado."

That way of thinking was somewhat arrogant and overconfident.

But judging from the effects of the two Spacetime Bulletins so far, the Butterfly Effect they had caused truly had been negligible.

"I'm worried that these numbers are a warning to us," Jiang Ran said bluntly.

Cheng Mengxue did not understand.

"But who would warn us?"

She looked between the two of them.

"The secret of Spacetime Bulletins, the Positron Cannon, changes to the Worldline—only we know about these things in the entire world. This is a secret shared by the three of us. No one else could know."

"Yes. That's exactly the problem."

This was what Jiang Ran had been worrying about all along.

"We have only just mastered the ability to [Message the Past], and we are still unfamiliar with many of its mechanisms and rules. That's why we can only send bulletins to the fixed point of [three days ago]."

"But given enough time, as Qin Feng gradually researches and develops the Positron Cannon, what if we can break the [three days ago] limit and expand the point in time we send bulletins to... [three weeks ago], [three months ago], or even [three years ago]?"

Qin Feng froze, but he understood immediately.

"You mean..."

"That's right."

Jiang Ran turned around and looked at Cheng Mengxue.

"If that hypothesis is true, then right now, we are the ones receiving the bulletin. And the person who sent us this mysterious bulletin... is in a much more distant future."

"That answers your question perfectly. The secret of the time machine is known only to the three of us, so who could have sent us this warning?"

"The answer is obvious. It was us, three weeks later, three months later, three years later, or even thirty years later."

He raised his head and looked at the round moon hanging high outside the window.

"It's very possible that a future version of us sent this warning."

"A warning to us in the present... not to conduct any more spacetime experiments."