“Senior?”
Inside the Film Cara Club room, Chi Xiaoguo tilted her head, looking out the window at Jiang Ran.
What was going on?
Why did Senior look like he’d gone stupid?
Like a computer that had crashed—standing there blankly, not moving at all.
“Senior Jiang Ran!”
She took two steps to the window, braced her hands on the sill, and raised her voice:
“Did the experint succeed?!”
Huh?
At the sa ti.
From the phone in Jiang Ran’s right hand ca Nan Xiuxiu’s suspicious voice:
“Jiang Ran? Why do I hear a girl’s voice on your side? Where are you, exactly?!”
Jiang Ran drew a deep breath through his nose.
[Chaos].
The situation right now was truly a complete ss.
His brain was already stuffed full from the chaotic experience just now, and now his left ear was filled with Chi Xiaoguo shouting loudly, while his right ear had Nan Xiuxiu interrogating him over the phone. His head felt like it was about to explode.
In any case—one thing at a ti.
He waved toward Chi Xiaoguo inside the Film Cara Club room.
“Wait a mont. I’ll co find you in a bit.”
Then, holding the phone, he walked off to a more distant spot.
At this mont, the call duration on the screen showed 00:36. A full thirty-six seconds without any response—Nan Xiuxiu’s patience had clearly reached its limit.
“Jiang Ran! Are you mute?!”
“Nan Xiuxiu,” Jiang Ran said in a low voice.
“What?”
On the other end, Nan Xiuxiu beca wary.
“Why are you calling by my full na?”
Jiang Ran sat down on a stone block.
“I rember we agreed just the other day. Did you forget what you promised ?”
Two days ago, inside the archery hall at Donghai Vocational College of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade, Jiang Ran and Nan Xiuxiu had made an agreent: for ten days, she would not disturb him. Not disturbing him ant not contacting him in any way—this had been made very clear at the ti.
Back then, Nan Xiuxiu had been grinding her teeth in anger, but in the end, she had still agreed.
But—
it had only been two days. How had she already broken the promise?
Jiang Ran was very dissatisfied.
“We agreed on ten days. No disturbing . So why are you calling now?”
“Where are you?” Nan Xiuxiu pressed, refusing to let go.
“Donghai University,” Jiang Ran replied.
“The Film Cara Club.”
“Oh, oh, oh…”
The mont she heard “Film Cara Club,” Nan Xiuxiu’s aggressive tone instantly softened.
“Sorry—are you busy with the competition stuff?”
For a mont, Jiang Ran didn’t know how to respond.
That so-called competition project with friends from Donghai University had originally been nothing more than a lie Wang Hao had made up to brush Nan Xiuxiu off.
Unexpectedly, as ti went on, the outline of that lie had grown more and more complete.
“Let’s talk about us.”
Jiang Ran pulled the topic back.
“You not keeping your promise really troubles .”
“Aiya, I already apologized!”
Nan Xiuxiu giggled.
“Just this once! Special circumstances! Just today, okay? Tonight, can you set aside so ti and have a al together with ?”
Jiang Ran frowned.
“I already explained everything to you before. I’m really busy right now. Ten days ans ten days. Can you please stop bothering ?”
“Just one day!”
Nan Xiuxiu kept pushing.
“Just today, okay? Fine—if it delays one day of your break, I’ll make it up to you later. Isn’t that fine? Okay, okay?”
Jiang Ran didn’t answer.
He was genuinely annoyed by Nan Xiuxiu’s habit of casually breaking agreents.
He was already buried under a pile of things he couldn’t deal with, his head feeling twice its normal size… and yet she was still being so unreasonable.
“Jiang Ran?”
Hearing no response, Nan Xiuxiu escalated:
“Then two days! I’ll make it up with two days off, okay?!”
“Three days!”
Nan Xiuxiu gritted her teeth.
“Fine! I’ll ss up just today, and I’ll give you a whole week in return, okay?!”
“After today, I guarantee that for the next half month, I won’t send you a single WeChat ssage or make a single call!”
.
Jiang Ran let out a light laugh.
“I don’t think you can do that. You’re always acting on impulse.”
“I swear!”
Nan Xiuxiu’s voice turned serious.
“This ti I’ll really do it! If… if I break the promise again, then you can ignore forever!”
Sigh…
Jiang Ran let out a helpless breath.
He really wasn’t good at dealing with this kind of girl.
What’s more, Qin Feng’s whereabouts were unknown, Cheng ngxue was already separated by life and death, and the strange dayti hallucination he’d just experienced still sent chills down his spine. Under all that pressure, he still had to deal with Nan Xiuxiu clinging to him like chewing gum—he was honestly getting fed up.
“Why does it absolutely have to be dinner today?”
Jiang Ran asked.
“What kind of al is so important that you’re willing to trade a whole week of vacation for it?”
He genuinely couldn’t understand Nan Xiuxiu’s way of thinking.
When he’d asked for ten days off earlier, she’d been grinding her teeth so hard her veins were popping—clearly furious.
And now, in the blink of an eye, she was offering a one-day-for-seven-days deal just to have dinner with him.
Incomprehensible.
Utterly unreasonable.
“Because…”
After a brief pause, Nan Xiuxiu said softly:
“[Because today is your birthday.]”
Jiang Ran froze.
He swiped down on his phone screen and looked at the calendar—
May 15, 2025.
It really was.
So much had happened recently. The constant pressure and tension had left him so busy and on edge that he hadn’t realized at all…
Today was actually his nineteenth birthday.
So—
the call Nan Xiuxiu had just made,
the fact that she was willing to trade seven days off for one dinner—
it was all just to celebrate his birthday.
He really hadn’t expected that.
Even he himself had forgotten his own birthday, yet Nan Xiuxiu had rembered it.
“All right.”
In an instant, Jiang Ran’s anger vanished without a trace.
He felt a bit regretful.
Earlier, he’d vented his worst temper on this girl—a girl he’d been biased against from their very first eting.
“Hehe~ so that ans you agree!”
Nan Xiuxiu was clearly overjoyed.
“Then it’s settled! I’ll send you the address later—sa villa district as last ti. I rented a whole villa specially! And I’ve already arranged everything—Wang Hao, your roommates, I’ll invite them all!”
“So… you don’t need to worry about anything! Just co over tonight! You have to co!”
After saying that—probably afraid he’d change his mind—Nan Xiuxiu hung up imdiately.
Beep beep.
Two soft tones sounded as the screen dimd.
The lock screen showed the current ti—
May 15, 2025, 07:14 AM.
Inside Jiang Ran.
There was a faint mix of emotions.
He put the phone back into his pocket and headed toward the student activity building.
“Now that Nan Xiuxiu’s matter is settled, it’s ti to deal with Chi Xiaoguo.”
He took a roundabout route.
Entered the student activity building.
Pushed open the Film Cara Club room door.
Chi Xiaoguo had already been waiting inside for quite a while.
“Senior, senior! Did your experint succeed or not?!”
Seeing Jiang Ran walk in, Chi Xiaoguo imdiately rushed up excitedly.
Although she didn’t really understand what kind of experint Jiang Ran had been running, nor what result would count as success—
she was still eager to hear a positive answer.
After all, over this period of ti, she’d seen clearly how Jiang Ran had been running back and forth for the Film Cara Club and the Positron Cannon, all for the sake of good news today.
However—
Jiang Ran smiled helplessly.
“I can’t really say whether it succeeded or not. But judging by the result… it probably didn’t succeed.”
“Ah…”
Chi Xiaoguo’s expression instantly fell.
“Th-this…”
She scratched her head, not knowing what to say.
Jiang Ran stepped forward, looking at the Positron Cannon on the experint table.
“But it’s still too early to draw conclusions. This experint only had an issue with the operation procedure.”
Operation procedure?
Chi Xiaoguo blinked, pointing at herself with her index finger.
“Was it… a problem with how I operated the Positron Cannon?”
“No.”
Jiang Ran shook his head.
“It wasn’t your problem. It was mine.”
He walked up to the experint table, resting his hand on the residual heat of the Positron Cannon.
“Normally, I should have pressed the phone button within the Positron Cannon’s 0.7-second activation window.”
“But… as you just saw, right when I was about to press it, a call suddenly ca in and threw everything into chaos.”
“So in theory, it can’t be considered a failed experint. It was a problem with the experintal procedure.”
On the way over, Jiang Ran had been thinking.
If Nan Xiuxiu’s call hadn’t co in, and he had pressed the ssage send button as planned within those 0.7 seconds—
would everything have gone exactly as he expected?
A temporal shift.
A successful ti-traveling text ssage.
A worldline transition.
And when he opened his eyes again, Cheng ngxue—who had died unexpectedly two years ago—would replace Chi Xiaoguo and appear inside the Film Cara Club room?
If everything went smoothly, there shouldn’t have been much of a problem.
“We’ll need to find ti to redo the experint.”
Jiang Ran turned to Chi Xiaoguo.
“You handled the Positron Cannon perfectly this ti. There were no issues at all. Next ti, don’t count down at this pace—just press the start button, and I’ll handle the rest of the procedure.”
“Mhm, mhm!”
Chi Xiaoguo nodded vigorously.
“Then should we start again now?”
“Not now.”
Jiang Ran demonstrated, tapping the Positron Cannon’s start button a few tis. The mysterious machine responded like a corpse—no reaction at all.
“After each activation, the Positron Cannon needs to be left idle for 20 hours before it can be used again.”
This was a pattern he and Qin Feng had tested many tis on Worldline 0.
Regardless of whether the ti-traveling ssage was successfully sent or not, regardless of any other actions—the Positron Cannon always behaved this way. Once activated, after 0.7 seconds the capacitor would overload and shut the system down, and no operation would work again until it had been left idle for 20 hours.
“Wow, that’s a pretty complex chanism.”
Chi Xiaoguo sighed.
“The Positron Cannon looks so crude and old on the outside. I didn’t expect it to be designed with so much care. Which senior from the Film Cara Club made this thing, anyway?”
“No idea.”
Jiang Ran shook his head.
He’d discussed it with Yan Rui as well. Yan Rui had asked the previous club presidents. All the answers had been the sa triple-question response:
“What Positron Cannon?”
“Where did it co from?”
“The Film Cara Club has sothing like that?”
So—
the history of the Positron Cannon must be extrely old. So old that even recent club presidents didn’t know it existed.
If not for the club’s qualification being revoked this year, forcing Yan Rui to clean out the storage room, this old machine might never have seen the light of day.
“Hm?”
Jiang Ran narrowed his eyes, staring at the Positron Cannon’s power module.
Strange.
He noticed sothing odd—
[this ti, the capacitor hadn’t burst.]
“What’s going on?”
He was a bit at a loss. Carefully, he reached out to touch the black capacitor on the power module…
Tsk.
It was indeed a bit hot.
That must’ve been what burned Chi Xiaoguo earlier.
But the problem was—
according to all previous experints on Worldline 0, once the Positron Cannon was activated, this capacitor should definitely overload, rupture, and burn out. That was why both Qin Feng before and Jiang Ran now had bought large quantities of the sa model capacitor from an old electronics repair shop back ho.
But this ti—
[why hadn’t the capacitor burned out?]
Although it felt warm to the touch, upon closer inspection it looked completely intact. It seed like it wouldn’t even need replacing before the next use.
“So strange.”
Jiang Ran scratched his head.
A malignant bug that even genius Qin Feng couldn’t fix—could it really have been accidentally fixed by him, a half-baked amateur forced into the job?
Highly unlikely.
Jiang Ran was very clear about his own abilities. If Qin Feng couldn’t fix it, he definitely couldn’t. Even a blind cat stumbling onto a dead mouse shouldn’t be possible here.
Forget it.
He’d mark this phenonon down as a question for now.
One data point proved nothing.
Maybe in the next experint it would still blow out. For the mont, it didn’t have much research value.
Chi Xiaoguo circled the Positron Cannon once.
“Twenty hours later… that ans tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
Jiang Ran nodded.
“I don’t know—will it be convenient for you to co back here tomorrow?”
“Of course it will!”
Chi Xiaoguo patted her chest.
“Don’t worry, Senior! Whenever you need my help, I’ll be there at the drop of a hat!”
“Thanks.”
Jiang Ran smiled slightly.
“Then let’s et here again tomorrow—sa ti as today. We’ll do another experint then.”
“OK! No problem!”
Chi Xiaoguo raised her hand high.
“Oh, right—it’s almost ti for breakfast. Senior, are you going to the cafeteria? I’ll treat you to breakfast!”
“Next ti.”
Jiang Ran pointed at his temple.
“There are still so things from the experint just now that I need to think through.”
“All right.”
Chi Xiaoguo walked to the door of the activity room, then turned back.
“Then, Senior—see you tomorrow!”
Just like that, the ever-energetic bundle of sunshine left.
Jiang Ran stood up and closed the door. The Film Cara Club room returned to silence.
Strands of sunlight stread in through the windows, spreading across the table, lying on the sofa, scattering over the floor.
Empty. Still. Nothing there.
Originally, the place had been so packed with hundreds of Rhine Cat plush toys that there wasn’t even room to turn around.
Jiang Ran had more than once been startled by the sharp gazes of those Rhine Cats filling the room.
And now—not a single pair of eyes remained.
He sat back down on the sofa.
Watching the dust motes floating in the air, each tiny particle seed to follow its own unpredictable Brownian motion, with no clear direction.
“What exactly was that strange experience just now?”
Now that he finally had ti to calm down, Jiang Ran carefully recalled that dreamlike journey through ti and space.
Had it been real—or false?
Was the unforgivable Magician truly Qin Feng, or rely a delusion born of his own flashback?
The year 2045 on the electronic clock—was it truly a mont in the future, or just a dying hallucination?
He had clearly been shot in the back of the head—so why, in the blink of an eye, had he returned to 2025?
Everything was chaotic. He needed to organize his thoughts properly.
Jiang Ran stood up, dragged over the small blackboard from the activity room, picked up a stub of chalk, and began writing on it.
“It’s ti…”
“…to summarize.”
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