Suspicion

The next day, 10:30 PM.

The lights in the club building gradually went out.

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

Inside the Film Club, the lights were still on, with no sign of disbanding.

They were waiting for midnight.

According to the "Spacetime Message User Manual (Version 4.0)", the further back in the past you send a message, the greater the power required.

So, to be safe, they chose midnight, when the world was quiet and no one was using electricity, as the most stable time.

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

289269426494642.

And the five Chinese characters deciphered from this string:

Don't trust it.

No one knew what this sentence meant.

They had been hoping to receive a second mysterious text message to complete the missing latter half of the sentence.

But things didn't go as planned.

That sudden, mysterious text message never had a follow-up.

This sense of the unknown made Jiang Ran uneasy.

He always felt...

That in the grand scheme of things, he had overlooked something, neglected something.

[But what was it that he overlooked?]

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

He felt like a headless fly, unable to break through anywhere, his thoughts becoming more tangled and confused the more he thought about it.

Sigh.

How to put it.

Whenever it came to anything related to spacetime messages, he always felt filled with anxiety.

The past two days had been leisurely.

He had even gone drinking and chatting with Wang Hao, which felt like a long time ago, and he had been in a good mood.

But today, with the need to send another spacetime message, that sense of panic returned, making him pace back and forth in the small activity room, unable to calm down.

He looked up.

The Rhine Cat legion filled the entire room, every pair of eyes reflecting the incandescent light, shining brightly.

He looked down.

On the experimental table, the positron cannon was ready to fire.

Qin Feng meticulously maintained it every day, polishing its casing until it gleamed, giving it an appearance that was both new and old, as if time had never touched it.

It was hard to imagine.

The predecessor of the positron cannon was just a large-backed display monitor produced more than twenty years ago.

He wondered how the senior students of the Film Club back then, with their brilliant minds, had accidentally assembled and modified it into a "time machine", and managed to use it with the transformer distribution box... to send text messages to the past.

Everything was a coincidence.

Everything was also scientific.

So.

What was the ultimate destination of science + coincidence...?

"It's almost time."

Qin Feng checked his watch:

"It's past midnight, let's get ready to start."

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

He stood up, shook his head, clearing away the jumbled thoughts, and began to make arrangements.

In fact, there wasn't much to arrange.

After so many experiments, everyone was very familiar with the process; and the timing for this message transmission had already been decided during the day--

Qin Feng went to the old appliance market 7 days ago;

That circuit control board was bought nine days ago;

To ensure everything goes perfectly, it's best to add another day;

So, this time, they will send a spacetime message...

...to 10 days ago.

This is the furthest spacetime message they've ever sent, a historical breakthrough of sorts.

The setup is the same as always, just with the three of them switching positions.

Cheng Mengxue is in charge of operating the positron cannon, Jiang Ran is perched on the windowsill counting down, and Qin Feng is standing by the transformer distribution box sending the message.

Operating the positron cannon used to be a technical job.

Thanks to the improvements made recently, it can now be operated with a simple knob control board, making it foolproof and completely without difficulty.

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

Jiang Ran turned and looked at Cheng Mengxue.

Cheng Mengxue operated the knobs, setting the year, month, and hour to 0, and then turning the "day" dial to 10.

This meant that the spacetime message would be accurately sent 10 days into the past in a moment:

"The positron cannon is set too!"

Jiang Ran raised his hand:

"Then I'll start the countdown! When I reach 0, Little Xue will activate the positron cannon first, and then Qin Feng will send the message. Everyone ready—"

"5!"

The moonlight was covered by dark clouds, plunging the world into darkness.

Come to think of it, he didn't know how many times this had happened. Every time he counted down, Jiang Ran always had the illusion that time was slowing down.

Not only did his senses sharpen, but his mind became even more agile; like a vulture hunting in the night, he could discard all noise and distractions, focusing solely on his prey.

"4!"

To this day, that mysterious string of numbers still made Jiang Ran uneasy.

Don't trust...

Don't trust what?

Jiang Ran didn't know, nor could he guess.

But.

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

Don't trust... Qin Feng.

"3!"

Shouting the countdown loudly, Jiang Ran looked at his close friend standing by the distribution box.

He was a boy who lost his father at a young age and had a miserable childhood.

But for the sake of friendship and trust, he gave up his obsession with saving his father.

Truly great.

Compared to him...

He himself was utterly despicable.

Even with Qin Feng cooperating to this extent, he still harbored doubts about his close friend; as Cheng Mengxue's countdown numbers dwindled, his unease grew into a beast pounding in his chest.

"2!"

His accelerating heartbeat made Jiang Ran feel somewhat oxygen-deprived.

As Qin Feng was about to press the send button outside the window, he felt a moment of dizziness, as if the earth was trembling, the world was shaking, and countless terrifying, abstract images rushed towards him.

Fish leaping from the water, A black sun reflected in dead pupils, Black light turning into viscous asphalt, the boiling mud of the earth, intermingled black and red, a doomsday scene between heaven and earth.

In the blink of an eye.

The Earth fell silent, ceasing its rotation.

An eye.

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

Its magnificent orbit stretched out into the unknown.

"1!"

Another blink.

The giant eye appeared in the universe, immense, its black pupil like a greedy black hole, voraciously devouring everything around it.

As gravity pulled, the perspective rapidly moved away at light speed.

Finally... the full view of the eyes was revealed. Shocking and unexpected, there was another eye next to the first one!

A double blink.

Those were... Qin Feng's eyes reflecting the moonlight--

"Wait a minute!!!" Jiang Ran shouted.

"Huh? Huh huh huh huh huh!"

Cheng Mengxue had already charged up and was preparing to fire the positron cannon. Her stance was interrupted by Jiang Ran's shout, causing her to lose balance and flail. She quickly grabbed the table to steady herself:

"Jiang Ran! What are you doing!"

She complained loudly:

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

However.

Jiang Ran didn't respond to her.

His eyes were fixed on Qin Feng beside the electrical panel, watching the phone in the other's fingertips.

He braced himself against the windowsill and leaped down.

The moonlight cast a dividing line between the two as Jiang Ran stepped forward into the bright glow.

One step, then another.

He walked with quiet, sticky steps to Qin Feng and slowly raised his right hand.

"What's up?" Qin Feng asked.

"Qin Feng, can I have your phone?"

Jiang Ran looked into his eyes:

"I want to confirm... the content of the text message."