Watching the Night Sky

Over the next two days, Yun Jingheng shut himself in his room and went nowhere.

He drew more than a dozen blueprints, scrapped seven or eight of them, and the final draft took up an entire table.

The telescope tube was assembled from a metal framework in four sections, each joint engraved with precise alignment circuits.

He spent two days calculating the focal length, revised it three times, and finally settled on eight hundred millimeters.

The core drove the automatic tracking system. Its circuit design referenced examples from Soul Tool textbooks, but he altered the parameters and raised the sensitivity by a full order of magnitude.

On the afternoon of the third day, he began assembling it.

Xiao Jiu emerged from the Sea of Spirit and lay on the bed, watching him work. "Are you really going to make a telescope?"

Without looking up, Yun Jingheng replied, "Yeah."

"You've made one before?"

Yun Jingheng's hands paused for a moment. "No."

The frame was fitted together section by section, the joints perfectly seamless.

The core was embedded in the base, and the circuits were connected one by one.

The dial was installed in the middle of the telescope tube, every mark carefully calibrated.

He worked slowly and meticulously.

Every component had to be checked again and again, every circuit verified repeatedly as he engraved it.

Watching his movements, Xiao Jiu suddenly felt that he was somewhat different from the Yun Jingheng she usually knew.

Whether he practiced swordsmanship or read, he normally carried an easygoing air of "good enough."

But now, he was different.

His gaze, gestures, and breathing had all changed.

It was as though he had become someone else.

By dusk, the telescope's main structure was complete.

Yun Jingheng set it up before the window, adjusted its angle, then stepped back two paces to look at it.

The telescope tube was silvery white, glimmering faintly in the sunset.

The base was grayish black, standing firmly on the tabletop.

He had carved the numbers on the dial one by one. They were crooked and not particularly attractive.

Yet as he looked at it, he suddenly smiled.

Xiao Jiu asked, "What are you smiling about?"

Yun Jingheng shook his head. "Nothing."

Night fell.

Yun Jingheng sat by the window without turning on the lights.

Moonlight streamed in through the window, falling across his face and the telescope before him.

He did not begin observing right away. He simply sat there, watching the sky.

The weather was excellent tonight.

There were no clouds and no wind. The stars lit up one by one.

In his previous life, he had seen such night skies countless times from a desert observatory.

The Milky Way spread across the heavens like spilled grains of salt.

But this was not that sky.

The positions of the stars were wrong, their brightness was wrong, and even their colors were wrong.

This was the first time since coming to this world that he had seriously observed its night sky.

He leaned toward the eyepiece and began adjusting the focus.

The dial turned little by little, and the telescope tube extended little by little.

The blurred patch of light gradually shrank into a clear round disc.

It was the Moon.

The Moon's surface was completely different from the one in his memories.

There were no lunar seas, no craters, none of the landforms he had known for twenty years.

In their place lay a silvery-white plain, smooth as a mirror, crossed by several dark-gray fissures that twisted and wound across it.

Those cracks were extremely long, stretching from one end of the Moon to the other, as though something had torn it apart and it had later healed.

There were no rises on the plain, no shadows. It was so smooth that it did not resemble the surface of a celestial body at all, but rather a carefully polished silver plate.

Yun Jingheng watched for a long time.

Then he turned the telescope toward the brightest star in the sky.

It was the North Star, yet not the one he knew.

It had a bluish tint, shone more brightly, and was surrounded by a faint halo, as though something revolved around it.

He increased the magnification. The halo expanded into a vague, mist-like structure.

That was not atmospheric interference. It truly existed.

He examined them one by one.

Every star was different. Every one had its own shape, color, and brightness.

Some had rings, some trailed tails, and some alternated between bright and dim as though they were breathing.

He watched for a full two hours, then aimed the telescope at the darkest region of the sky.

There was nothing there.

He did not keep looking.

Straightening up, he turned the telescope around and aimed it at the Moon once more.

The Moon was bright, round, and silent.

As he watched it, he remembered that night in the desert from his previous life. He remembered the rift that had swept everything away, and the dark-green-haired woman he had seen upon waking.

He remembered Yun Ming, Ya Li, Ye Xinglan, and the black-haired girl who had stood in front of him.

He watched for a long time, then softly said, "This place... is actually pretty nice..."

He put away the telescope and closed the window.

Outside, moonlight spilled down, bright and clear.

In the darkness, Cai Yue'er stood in the shadow of a tree, watching the now-closed window.

She had been there for a while, arriving when Yun Jingheng began his observations.

She watched him assemble that pile of components into something she had never seen before. She watched him peer through it for two full hours, then turn it toward the Moon and say those words.

She turned and left.

After taking a few steps, she suddenly stopped and looked in another direction.

Behind a large tree, two figures were furtively peeking out.

Ya Li clung to the trunk while Yun Ming stood behind her. Both stretched their necks toward Yun Jingheng's room.

Cai Yue'er's mouth twitched. Just as she was about to speak, she caught sight of another direction.

Zhuo Shi and Feng Wuyu were crouched behind a flower bed, squeezed together.

Zhuo Shi lowered his voice. "Why are you shoving me?"

Feng Wuyu glared at him. "You're obviously the one shoving me!"

"Bullshit—"

"You're the one full of bullshit—" The two nearly started arguing. Zhuo Shi jabbed him with an elbow, and Feng Wuyu slapped back. The commotion grew louder and louder.

A hand reached over from the side and struck each of them on the head.

Thud.

Thud.

Both of them fell silent at once.

Long Yeyue withdrew her hand and looked at them expressionlessly. "What are you making such a fuss about?"

Zhuo Shi rubbed his head and did not dare speak.

Feng Wuyu rubbed his head too and likewise did not dare speak.

Cai Yue'er walked over, looked at Yun Ming and Ya Li, then at Zhuo Shi and Feng Wuyu, and finally at Long Yeyue.

After a moment of silence, she asked, "Did you all see it?"

No one answered.

Long Yeyue said faintly, "That thing the child made can see places very far away in the sky."

Cai Yue'er nodded. "I know."

Long Yeyue looked at the closed window. "What he said..."

Cai Yue'er fell silent for a moment.

Long Yeyue turned and left. After a few steps, she stopped again. "Go back."

Yun Ming stepped out from behind the tree, with Ya Li at his side.

He glanced toward Yun Jingheng's room. Moonlight shone brightly across the windowsill.

He withdrew his gaze and turned away.

Behind the flower bed, Zhuo Shi and Feng Wuyu were still crouching there, glaring at each other.

"It's all your fault."

"It's your fault." They nearly began arguing again, but remembering the punches from before, they both shut up at the same time.

They stood, dusted the dirt from their clothes, and went their separate ways.