Page 4

Huo Baichuan climbed to his feet, kicked several men who were indeed unconscious, and cracked his knuckles impatiently. "What happened?"

Tao Yan shook his head and pointed a wooden stick at one of the men. "When I woke up, he was about to pour limewater into my eyes."

Hearing that, Huo Baichuan went over and gave the man another vicious kick. Then he said, "Pretty much the same for me. When I woke up, a few of them were discussing breaking my legs." Unsurprisingly, Huo Baichuan had kicked them unconscious. But during the fight, he had keenly noticed that something was wrong with his body. His speed and strength were far inferior to before. His body had shrunk, too.

He turned to look at Tao Yan. "You got smaller too!"

Tao Yan looked down at his noticeably shrunken arms and legs and shook his head. "I don't know."

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Neither of them asked why they, who had been rescuing people by the sea, had inexplicably appeared in this dilapidated old courtyard house with their bodies shrunk.

"That whirlpool..." Huo Baichuan trailed off. In an instant, all kinds of transmigration plots from film and television dramas, along with related theories about black holes, flashed through both their minds.

Tao Yan glanced at the groaning men around them and said gravely, "Let's call the police first."

After thinking it over, Huo Baichuan turned and walked out of the room. In the equally decrepit, cluttered courtyard piled with odds and ends, he found several lengths of straw rope and securely tied up the six unconscious men.

At the same time, Tao Yan silently searched the courtyard. The whole place was so bare that there was hardly any furniture. Aside from a few old-fashioned large porcelain jars, chipped bowls, and worn clothes, Tao Yan found little useful information. He did not even find the shirt and slacks he had been wearing before he fell into the water. He only found a calendar in the sole main room with a bed. The date printed on it was June 1990, confirming Tao Yan's suspicion.

Tao Yan walked out of the main room with the calendar and saw Huo Baichuan fiddling with a pile of mechanisms and traps by the courtyard gate.

Noticing Tao Yan's gaze, Huo Baichuan raised a brow. "I'm guessing that since this bunch was ready to break our legs and pour limewater into our eyes, they might be a pack of insane repeat offenders. I'm setting a trap here just in case they've got accomplices who haven't returned yet. Catch them one by one."

Tao Yan said nothing and handed over the calendar. Huo Baichuan lowered his head for a look, then whistled without much surprise. "Looks like we're keeping up with the trend and joining the transmigration army."

After saying that, Huo Baichuan rubbed his chin, slightly curious. "There isn't even a mirror. I wonder what I look like now."

At that, Huo Baichuan paused. He glanced at Tao Yan, who looked only fifteen or sixteen, and repeated with a grin, "You really did get smaller."

Then he glanced at a certain area that all men cared about.

Tao Yan ignored Huo Baichuan. Without a word, he crouched before the six men who had been tied up tightly and reached out to push one of them.

Huo Baichuan stood behind him with a grin, boasting, "Don't waste your effort. They won't wake up for at least half an hour."

That was only because something was wrong with Huo Baichuan's body and his attacks were much weaker than before. Otherwise, with his skills, these people would have been left at least half-crippled. How could they have merely passed out unscathed?

After pondering for a moment, Tao Yan stood up. "We should still go to the police."

"Sure!" Huo Baichuan clasped his hands behind his neck and followed Tao Yan leisurely out of the courtyard. "Shouldn't we get our story straight? We can't exactly tell the police that we traveled from a beach in 2021 to 1990—"

Huo Baichuan looked around. The old alley was long and narrow, with illegally built shacks on both sides, leaving barely enough room for people to pass. There were no recognizable landmarks at all. He whistled. "We don't even know where we are."

Tao Yan considered it. "Once we get to the police station, we don't need to explain what happened to us. We'll just say we were kidnapped by bad people and don't know anything else."

Huo Baichuan raised his brows with interest. "Pretend we have amnesia?" That was a standard trope in trashy idol dramas. He had never expected Tao Yan, this fake straight-laced guy who could not even be bothered opening confession letters from girls during school, to be into that sort of thing.

Tao Yan did not say anything else. Every lie risked being exposed. Better to say nothing than to say too much and make mistakes.

Huo Baichuan waited for a while but got no response from Tao Yan. Unable to resist, he reached out and poked Tao Yan in the back of the head mischievously. "Hey, top student, how about sharing your thoughts on transmigrating?"

Tao Yan had no thoughts to share. He remained silent all the way out of the alley and onto a suddenly bustling street. At the sight of bicycles passing by and old-fashioned buses with cables running over their roofs, he was dazed for a moment.

A scene from old photographs had abruptly appeared before them, its colors vivid and its voices bustling.

As evening approached, Huo Baichuan caught the rich aroma of pan-fried buns from a roadside stall and suddenly felt ravenous. He turned to Tao Yan. "Are you hungry?"

Of course Tao Yan was hungry too. But whenever he was out, he never ate anything with filling. Besides, the two of them did not have a penny on them.

Huo Baichuan sighed. He could only stand before the fragrant stall and ask the vendor where the nearest police station was.

The vendor spoke Mandarin with a heavy southern accent and gestured wildly at Huo Baichuan for quite some time before the two of them managed to half-guess his meaning. Then, with the two pan-fried buns the vendor had given them tucked away, they headed toward the police station. Huo Baichuan peeled the bun skins for Tao Yan and swallowed the fillings himself in two bites.

The people who had found Huo Baichuan and Tao Yan were involved in shady business, so naturally they took care to stay far from places like police stations and public security bureaus. It took the two of them about half an hour to find the police station. After they went in to report the case, said everything they needed to say, and put on every bit of pitifulness they could manage, Huo Baichuan looked at the several red-eyed police officers before them, then at Tao Yan beside him, whose face was deathly pale and lips tightly pressed together—probably another bout of hypoglycemia. Huo Baichuan sighed softly and shamelessly said to one of the policewomen, "Sister, I'm hungry."