Xu Huo frowned at those words, but the young Xu Huo in the memory showed little reaction. He calmly accepted Dr. Zhang's explanation.
Chang Bei asked Dr. Zhang how he had turned the pen back to normal. Xiao Liang and several other children said they wanted to learn too.
Dr. Zhang looked at them, affection filling his eyes, and said gently, "People and things all have their own original trajectories. People go from birth to death, and things from creation to destruction. A trajectory can usually be thought of as a straight line, like a pen."
As he spoke, he demonstrated again how to split the pen in two and then fuse it back together.
"Can a trajectory be changed?" Chang Bei asked.
Dr. Zhang answered yes. Xiao Liang then asked, "Then how can a person's trajectory be changed?"
Dr. Zhang raised a hand to beckon him over and had him face the other children. He placed one hand on Xiao Liang's head, then slowly lifted his arm. Something like a white thread emerged from Xiao Liang's hair and trembled slightly as Dr. Zhang drew it out. Though Xiao Liang's eyes were open, he seemed to have lost consciousness, standing there with a vacant stare.
The thread stretched out thirty centimeters before Dr. Zhang stopped. With his other hand, he gently snipped the thread in the middle. It broke into two pieces, but both still floated above Xiao Liang's head.
Then he conjured another white thread from thin air and attached it to the half connected to Xiao Liang's head.
The whole process took less than ten seconds. But when the white thread returned to Xiao Liang's mind, the person who opened his eyes had changed in a subtle way.
He looked at Xu Huo as if he were a