What happens in one second on Earth?
A cheetah can run 28 meters across the grassland;
The bee will flap its wings 270 times;
The film was shown at 24 frames per second.
It has driven 300,000 kilometers.
If they could see everything on Earth right now, they would see the slowest slow-motion footage ever seen:
A cheetah chases a gazelle across the grassland at a pace slower than a snail. Normally, a snail can reach a speed of 8.5 meters per hour when crawling at full speed, while it would take the cheetah twelve hours to run 28 meters, meaning it is only a quarter of the snail's speed.
It takes a bee more than two minutes to flap its wings, which is slower than your computer booting up. What's even more frustrating is movies, which show two frames per hour. This means that when you're sitting in a movie theater and a frame freezes on the screen, you can leisurely go to the restroom, buy a Coke, play a couple of rounds of claw machine games with your extra coins, and then return to your seat to wait patiently, because the next frame won't appear for half an hour.
We all know that the speed of light is the fastest speed, reaching 300,000 kilometers per second, making its movement impossible for the naked eye to perceive. However, looking out from the Spacetime Deep Well, the speed of light suddenly decreases by more than 40,000 times, becoming close to the first cosmic velocity, approximately 7.8 kilometers per second. A beam of light emitted from the Sun would take more than 200 days to reach Earth, and the naked eye could see it moving forward like a rocket. Due to the wave properties of light, we could also see swathes of sunlight surging towards Earth like ocean waves.
Of course, all of this is just imagination, because they can't see the Earth.
The sky was filled with a dense array of stars, and four faint Sun above the stars.
Everyone knows what twenty-one seconds means—if Earth were somewhere in the starry sky above, relative to them, Earth would be as if it had been subjected to a time-stopping spell, with Earth and everything on it in a near-static state.
But what's truly terrifying now isn't the static Solar System, but rather those trapped in the Spacetime Deep Well. The stillness of the Solar System is merely their perception; the true stillness lies within themselves, within this damned Spacetime Stasis Zone.
They will grow old here. People on Earth might just sleep in late or play games all night in an internet cafe, and they'll die of old age.
The Crow stretched out its claws and counted numbers:
"Quack, last time one second passed, Madam said it was 10 to 12 hours. Now twenty-one seconds have passed, so that means... twenty-one multiplied by 10 or 12... Quack, should I multiply by 10 or 12?... 21 multiplied by 10 and then divided by 24... Quack, no, no, multiplying by 12 is simpler. Multiplying by 12 and then dividing by 24 is equivalent to multiplying by one-half. Guagua, I'm so smart... Uh... what was it again... Quack... Let's try again..." It stretched out its paw again, "Twenty-one multiplied by 12 and then divided by 24..."
Qingmu said, "No need to calculate, it's ten days."
The Crow tapped his head with its claw in annoyance and said, "Hey, remember your persona. You're a block of wood, a block of wood that doesn't even know how many zeros are in three million. Blocks of wood can't do arithmetic."
It stretched out its paw and calculated a few more times. "Quack, thank goodness you got it wrong, or your persona would be ruined! It's ten and a half days, not ten days. You underestimated by half a day. Remember not to try to do such advanced math problems in front of a smart bird next time!"
The argument between the Crow and Qingmu about mathematics added a touch of liveliness to the dull atmosphere, and smiles appeared on people's faces; life seemed to have become interesting again. However, the Boss Coal's next words immediately made the air heavy again. He said:
"Ribbit, so Redbeard and the others have been missing for almost ten days now. If they were on the ship, even if they weren't dead to begin with, they'd be starving to death by now!"
The expressions on people's faces darkened; they had given up hope of finding Petru and Ivan.
Qingmu, however, felt that something was amiss, and that there was something he should have remembered but hadn't.
Mrs. Larry thought of Petru —the bearded man she had met in the most complicated and unspeakable circumstances, who had been very caring towards her all the way, and she could feel his warm heart and the tenderness emanating from him.
It's hard to say she wasn't moved by him. For a moment, her heart melted, like chocolate under the July Sun. Yet she always maintained a firm distance from him, because she knew that both of them harbored their own buried emotions, like dormant volcanoes, erupting only for another person, not for each other.
But now, if I'm destined to grow old and die in this foreign land, why not accept this warmth?
She felt a pang of regret. Why did this thought only arise when Petru was missing and had almost no hope of survival? If she had opened her heart sooner, perhaps things would have been different. Even in death, she would have had no regrets.
But how difficult this must be for her!
She leaned against the railing, silently gazing at the lake, tears welling in her eyes.
"Madam, what's wrong? Madam!"
Alice saw it and was very surprised. She had never seen the lady shed tears, not even when Mr. Yeger died.
"It's nothing, my eyes are just tired," Mrs. Larry said.
Just when people were in despair, footsteps suddenly came from the direction of the bridge. The hatch of the command room opened, Ivan walked out first, followed closely by Petru, whose red hair and beard looked unusually flamboyant in the gloomy sky.
People were stunned, wondering how they had suddenly reappeared. Petru and Ivan seemed equally surprised, looking at everyone and asking:
"Hey, why are you all back on the ship?"
People were all watching them. The situation was so bizarre that no one could speak.
Petru said, "Oh, we searched the whole ship and couldn't find Ronald Cohen's body. I said Ivan must have moved it; it's in the pile of bodies. If you don't believe me, we can go and search there."
Ivan said, "It must have been you who moved it. If I had, I wouldn't have forgotten."
Petru waved the broken half of the Soul of Fire in his hand and said, "Whatever, it's not here anyway, it must have been moved. Hey guys, let's go light a fire!"
He noticed that people were motionless, and their gazes were somewhat strange, especially Mrs. Larry, whose face looked unwell and appeared to have been crying.
Petru, unaware of what had happened, hurried over and cautiously asked Mrs. Larry, "Madam, what's wrong? Who bullied you?" He then turned back to glare at the others, "What the hell is going on! I've never seen Madam cry before, who bullied her!?"
He was furious, and looked genuinely angry; even his mustache was bristling.
But no one answered him. If anyone had to say who had bullied Mrs. Larry, it was himself!
Mrs. Larry suddenly turned Petru around to face her, grabbed his arms with both hands, looked him straight in the eye, and asked:
" Petru, do you want to marry me? Tell me, do you love me?"
Petru was taken aback, wondering why the lady would suddenly ask such a question. He realized that he had only gone down to the cabin for a stroll with Ivan, and now everyone seemed different!
The muscles in his face twitched, his beard twitched up and down, and his chest heaved violently, as if he had just done a thousand push-ups.
After a fierce struggle, he finally mustered his courage, stared wide-eyed at his wife, puffed out his chest, and said, "That's right, my wife, I love you! I want to marry you!"
"Then let's get married!" the lady said.