Suspicion

The next evening, at ten-thirty.

The lights in the club activity building gradually went out.

Most clubs had finished their activities. They tidied up, turned off the appliances and lights, locked the doors, and left.

The Film Club was still brightly lit, with no sign of calling it a night.

They were waiting for midnight.

According to the Spacetime Message User Manual (Version 4.0), the farther back in time they sent a message, the more power it required.

So, to be safe, the most reliable time to send it was in the small hours, when the night was quiet and no one was using electricity.

Jiang Ran stood in front of the small blackboard, looking at the string of mysterious numbers written on it:

289269426494642.

And the five Chinese characters decoded from those numbers:

Don't trust it.

No one knew what that sentence meant.

They had also been hoping to receive a second mysterious message, so they could fill in the missing half of the sentence.

But things hadn't gone as they hoped.

That mysterious message had appeared out of nowhere, and there had never been a follow-up.

The uncertainty made Jiang Ran deeply uneasy.

He kept feeling...

As if, somehow, they'd overlooked something.

But what had they overlooked?

He couldn't figure it out. He couldn't find it.

Right now, he was like a headless fly with nowhere to go, and the more he turned things over in his mind, the more confused he became.

Sigh.

How could he put it?

Whenever it came to anything related to the Spacetime Bulletin, he was always filled with worry.

He'd had two easy days recently.

He'd even had a drink with Wang Hao and talked about all sorts of things for the first time in ages. He'd been in a great mood.

But now they had to send a Spacetime Bulletin again, and that same sense of dread had returned. He paced back and forth in the cramped activity room, unable to settle down.

He looked up.

The Rhine Cat army filled the entire room. Every pair of eyes gleamed brightly in the fluorescent light.

He looked down.

The Positron Cannon sat ready to fire on the workbench.

Qin Feng took good care of it every day, polishing its casing until it gleamed. It looked both new and old at once, as if time had never passed over it.

It was hard to imagine.

The Positron Cannon had once been nothing more than a bulky CRT monitor manufactured over twenty years ago.

Who knew how the Film Club's old seniors had managed it? Through some stroke of genius and coincidence, they'd pieced it together into a "time machine," then hooked it up to a transformer distribution box... and used it to send text messages to the past.

It was all a coincidence.

And yet it was all scientific.

So.

Where would science and coincidence ultimately lead...?

"About time."

Qin Feng checked his watch.

"It's past midnight. Let's get started."

Qin Feng's words brought Jiang Ran back to reality.

He stood up, shook his head to clear his jumbled thoughts, and began giving instructions.

In truth, there wasn't much to arrange.

After so many experiments, everyone knew the process by heart. Besides, they'd already decided during the day when to send this message—

Qin Feng had visited the secondhand appliance market seven days ago.

The circuit control board had been bought nine days ago.

To be absolutely certain, they'd better add one more day.

So this time, they would send the Spacetime Bulletin...

ten days into the past.

It was the farthest back they'd ever sent one—a historic breakthrough of sorts.

The setup was the same as before; only their positions had changed.

Cheng Mengxue would operate the Positron Cannon, Jiang Ran would sit on the windowsill and count down, and Qin Feng would stand by the transformer distribution box and send the message.

Operating the Positron Cannon had originally required technical skill.

Thanks to the improvements they'd made recently, the dial control panel now made it simple enough for anyone to use. It wasn't difficult at all.

"The message is ready!" Qin Feng called from outside the window.

Jiang Ran turned to look at Cheng Mengxue.

Cheng Mengxue adjusted the dials, setting the year, month, and hour to zero, then turning the day dial to ten.

That meant the Spacetime Bulletin would be sent precisely ten days into the past.

"The Positron Cannon is ready too!"

Jiang Ran raised his hand.

"Then I'll start counting down! When I reach zero, Little Xue, you activate the Positron Cannon first, then Qin Feng sends the message. Is everyone ready—"

"Five!"

Clouds covered the moon, plunging the whole world into darkness.

He'd lost count of how many times they'd done this. Every time he counted down, Jiang Ran had the strange feeling that time was slowing.

Not only did his senses sharpen, his mind grew keener too. It was as if he were a vulture hunting in the night, able to shut out every distraction and focus entirely on its prey.

"Four!"

Even now, those mysterious numbers still made Jiang Ran uneasy.

Don't trust it...

What were they being told not to trust?

Jiang Ran didn't know. He couldn't even guess.

But...

If he had to name his first instinct upon seeing those five characters, it was Qin Feng.

Don't trust... Qin Feng.

"Three!"

As he shouted the countdown, Jiang Ran looked at his close friend standing beside the distribution box.

He was a boy who'd lost his father at a young age and suffered a miserable childhood.

But for the sake of friendship and trust, he'd given up on his obsession with bringing his father back to life.

That was truly admirable.

By comparison...

Jiang Ran seemed despicable.

Even after Qin Feng had gone so far to cooperate with him, he still harbored suspicions about his friend. As Cheng Mengxue counted down, his unease surged through his chest like a beast.

"Two!"

His heart was beating faster and faster, making Jiang Ran feel short of breath.

Qin Feng was about to press the send button outside the window. Jiang Ran felt dazed, as if the earth were trembling and the world swaying, while countless terrifying, surreal images rushed toward him.

Fish leapt from the water,

their dead eyes reflecting a black sun.

Black light turned into viscous asphalt—the boiling mud of the earth, streaked with black and red. The world was gripped by the apocalypse.

He blinked.

The earth fell silent, its rotation halted.

An eye.

It was a gigantic eye, with the Earth as its pupil.

Its vast socket reached into the unknown.

"One!"

He blinked again.

The gigantic eye appeared in space, immense beyond measure. Its pitch-black pupil was like a ravenous black hole, greedily devouring everything around it.

Under the pull of gravity, his point of view raced away at the speed of light.

At last... the whole eye came into view. It was horrifying and unexpected: there was another eye beside it!

A double blink.

Those were... Qin Feng's eyes, reflecting the moonlight—

"Wait!!!" Jiang Ran shouted.

"Huh? Huhhh?!"

Cheng Mengxue had already tensed herself to activate the Positron Cannon. Jiang Ran's shout interrupted her, making her lose her balance and flail around. She hurriedly grabbed the table to steady herself.

"Jiang Ran! What are you doing?"

She complained loudly.

"You scared me to death! Why didn't you stick to the plan?"

But...

Jiang Ran didn't respond.

His eyes were fixed on Qin Feng beside the distribution box, on the phone in his friend's hand.

He braced himself against the windowsill and jumped down.

Moonlight cast a dividing line between them as Jiang Ran walked forward beneath its pale glow.

Step by step.

With quiet, heavy steps, he came to stand in front of Qin Feng, then slowly raised his right hand.

"What's wrong?" Qin Feng asked.

"Qin Feng, can you give me your phone?"

Jiang Ran looked him in the eyes.

"I want to check... what the message says."