“Aww, the elevator was slamd—delivery’s here~”
A cute figure popped into view at the ward doorway.
It was Cheng ngxue.
She was wearing a pale blue dress, carrying a takeout bag as she walked in.
Seeing a familiar face, Jiang Ran finally felt a sliver of safety.
“Why am I in the hospital?”
He asked urgently.
“Did the ti-traveling text ssage send successfully? Did Xu Yan make it?”
“Huh?”
Cheng ngxue froze for a beat.
Then she grinned. “Hehe. So it really is exactly like we predicted. Jiang Ran—you just went through a temporal shift, didn’t you?”
“From your perspective… you sent the text at the club, and the next second you opened your eyes and you were already lying in a hospital ward, right?”
Jiang Ran nodded.
Three days ago, they had already understood the principles behind [ti-traveling text ssages], the patterns governing [temporal shifts], and Jiang Ran’s trait of retaining mories from the original history.
Not to ntion, this “suddenly freaking out because his mories weren’t synced” thing had already happened twice.
So Cheng ngxue imdiately understood what had happened.
“We received the text on March 26, so that text must’ve been sent on March 29—which ans your temporal shift was definitely going to happen on March 29.”
“So today I’ve been staying with you the whole ti, just waiting for the mont you showed up with the mory desync again, so I could explain everything to you right away.”
Cheng ngxue set the takeout on the table, her thinking crystal clear.
“So that’s how it is.”
If everything was still within the rules they understood, there was nothing to be tense about.
“Did Xu Yan make it?” That was what Jiang Ran cared about most.
“Of course!”
Cheng ngxue gave him a thumbs-up.
“We’re incredible! We actually pulled soone back from death! This feeling is so unreal!”
Whew…
Jiang Ran let out a long breath, all the way to his bones, and his heart finally unclenched.
“How about you?”
Cheng ngxue looked at him.
“Sa as before? You only have the mories from before the [ti travel], and you don’t have any mories of the last three days after the jump?”
“Yes. Sa as before.”
He paused.
Then Jiang Ran smiled a little.
“I need to correct one concept. What’s happening to … isn’t actually ti travel.”
“Ti travel in the traditional sense is usually a jump along the ti axis—traveling from the present to the past, or from the present to the future. The kind of thing Hollywood always does.”
Cheng ngxue tilted her head.
“Isn’t it?”
“Not quite.”
Jiang Ran continued.
“Look at my situation—there isn’t any jump along the ti axis. I didn’t go back to the past, and I didn’t go to the future. My ti is continuous.”
“One second I send the text, the next second I appear in the hospital. My location in space changes, but ti doesn’t. It’s still March 29. Along the ti axis I didn’t go anywhere—I only moved in space.”
Cheng ngxue more or less got it.
“Then what do you call your situation?”
“Mm…”
Jiang Ran thought.
He rembered a general education lecture he’d taken before—Professor Zhang Yang’s class on Parallel Worlds and Worldline Theory.
Back then, Professor Zhang had introduced a term that stuck.
“[Worldline Transition].”
Jiang Ran said it softly.
“The ti point doesn’t move, but I cross worldlines. [Worldline Transition] fits that better.”
“When we took that gen-ed class together, Professor Zhang talked about it. You didn’t listen?”
“No.” She said it with her whole chest.
“…Okay.”
Jiang Ran pulled a pair of disposable chopsticks from the bag, snapped them apart, and laid them down—one above the other.
“Let’s say this top chopstick is [Worldline A]. It represents the original history—the worldline where Xu Yan drowns, we argue, and we vote on whether to save her.”
“On March 29 in Worldline A, we send a ti-traveling text ssage back to March 26. From that mont, history begins to change.”
“And that… generates a brand-new historical trajectory, which ans a brand-new worldline is born.”
He wiggled the bottom chopstick.
“This brand-new worldline is [Worldline B]. It represents the altered history—the worldline where we find out in advance, stop the tragedy, save Xu Yan, and I’m lying here in a hospital ward.”
“Ohhh~”
Cheng ngxue’s brain was quick.
“So [that ans, according to this theory, we’re currently in Worldline B.]”
“Exactly.”
Jiang Ran liked people who got it with one hint.
“After we sent that ti-traveling text ssage, the temporal shift happened. The original historical trajectory changed, and Worldline A no longer exists.”
“So in reality, we all jumped from Worldline A to Worldline B—or to put it another way—”
“The spaceti we’re in, as a whole, jumped from Worldline A to Worldline B. You, , this world, the entire universe—everything—shifted over here in terms of spaceti.”
Cheng ngxue nodded.
“I get that. Because the historical trajectory changed, everything that happened in the original Worldline A shouldn’t exist anymore.”
“But that still doesn’t explain your problem—”
“[Why is it that only you, after the worldline changed, still kept the mories from the original Worldline A?]”
Jiang Ran spread his hands.
“Who knows.”
“Forget that for now. Hurry up and tell what happened before this. How did we save Xu Yan? And how did I end up in the hospital?”
Cheng ngxue told Jiang Ran to eat first, then started explaining…
It went like this:
Three days ago—March 26—at 10:00 a.m., Cheng ngxue received the ti-traveling text ssage on her phone, learning that Xu Yan was going to drown.
They moved imdiately. They borrowed a buoyant life jacket from the swimming club, then rushed out of campus and grabbed a taxi to Qing’an Bridge.
The buoyant life jacket was stuffed with air cushions and foam. Even soone who couldn’t swim at all could float easily while wearing it.
Traffic was a bit heavy. By the ti the three of them reached Qing’an Bridge, they ran right into Xu Yan.
They hadn’t even exchanged more than a couple of sentences when children’s cries ca from the rushing river.
Under the bridge, two kids were flailing in the water. They had started drowning upstream and had been swept all the way down—one of them was already unconscious and motionless, the other was still struggling and crying out.
Back then, Xu Yan didn’t hesitate for even a second. She swung a leg over, about to jump into the river to save them.
Luckily, Jiang Ran reacted fast and grabbed her.
The current was fierce. The two kids were about to be carried away. Jiang Ran clenched his teeth, snatched the buoyant life jacket straight out of Cheng ngxue’s hands, climbed over the railing, and jumped into the river.
He’d learned how to swim as a kid. He was decent in the water. Once he was in, he imdiately put on the life jacket and swam toward the children.
The rescue itself wasn’t difficult. Very quickly, he pushed both kids to shore. The child who hadn’t been moving spat up river water after chest compressions and woke up.
You could call it a perfect rescue.
The only person who got hurt…
…was Jiang Ran.
He didn’t even know what had cut him. It was only after he got back on shore that he noticed a gash on his right arm, blood slowly seeping out.
But it wasn’t a big deal—go to the hospital, clean it, put in a few stitches, wrap it up.
“That’s what happened.”
Cheng ngxue finished.
But Jiang Ran raised a question.
“I’m not that fragile. With an injury that small, I wouldn’t need to lie in a hospital ward for three days.”
“No, no.”
Cheng ngxue waved it off.
“We went back to school that day. Today we ca to the hospital specifically to change your dressing. Your wound looks like it got a little infected and inflad, so the doctor told you to lie here and get an IV.”
“Alright.”
At that point, the mory loop closed, and the logic ran clean.
No.
There was still one crucial thing.
“The text ssage.”
Jiang Ran set down his bowl and chopsticks and looked at Cheng ngxue.
“Xiaoxue. This ti, your phone…”
“[Exactly how many text ssages did you receive?]”
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