Chapter 3294: Untitled   “It’s my fault.”

Seeing the pleading look on the boy’s face, the leader of the Gold Teeth Clan lit another cigarette while shivering. He took a long drag and said, “Your generation is actually much luckier than ours, because you’ve never seen the good days of the past, and you’re already used to the torment of purgatory. You are definitely not like me, tossing and turning every suffocating night, recalling the past, the past, and the past.

“Without gain, there is no loss. Without happiness, there is no pain. Without true life, there is no fear of death. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is a gift. Death is the ultimate peace.

“But now… Kid, you already know it. You will never forget it. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. I think this is good. Really. Thank you, Boss.”

Bai Xiaolu sobbed. “I was—I was too greedy. I wish that I could play ‘Strong Chess’ with Boss in such clean water and peaceful environment every day.”

“Yes. You were too greedy.

Boss Gold Tooth smiled. “That’s impossible.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if time could be reversed and yesterday could reappear?”

Bai Xiaolu said in a trembling voice, “Then, we can replay today over and over again. Whether it is the nuclear war, the desert, or the wasteland outside, we can always hide here and play ‘Strong Chess’. After one game, we can start another. It will always be like this.

“No. It’s more than that. If we can turn back time, maybe we can stop everything, stop the damn nuclear war from breaking out, and stop all the disasters that will destroy peace and mankind from happening! If so, maybe Boss will be able to find your wife and your child, and my mother will not die. She will bring me to my father!”

“You are drunk.”

Boss Gold Tooth’s knuckles were turning pale. He suppressed himself and said, one word after another, “Yesterday will not happen again. Time cannot be reversed. Life is not a game. There is no way to start over after a game.

“Is there really none?”

Bai Xiaolu seemed to be really drunk. Her face and eyes were frighteningly red, as if she were a small animal that had fallen into a trap and was struggling hard. She shouted, “You and my brother are both ‘persons’. Aren’t you two super experts who can manipulate the ‘Four Essential Forces’ and even move mountains and seas to absorb strength from the stars? Why can’t there be a superpower that can reverse time and change everything? Why?”

“Because the mysteries of time are hundreds of times more complicated, obscure, and mysterious than the mysteries of space. According to Yuri’s speculation, unless the four fundamental forces of ‘strong interaction force’, ‘weak interaction force’, ‘electromagnetism force’, and ‘gravity force’ are unified, pushed and enhanced by the ‘power of the heart’, and the ‘Grand Unification Theory’ is fully cracked and grasped, only then can one billionth of the mysteries of time be perceived.

The gold-tooth leader sighed. “That’s impossible. At least, not on Earth.”

“Is it impossible on ‘Earth’?”

Bai Xiaolu grasped the key point keenly. There was an unstoppable sharpness in her eyes. “What do you mean? It is impossible on ‘Earth’. Then, where is it possible?”

“Well…”

Boss Gold Tooth shook his hot head. He hesitated for a moment and said, “Urey is a devil, but he is also an out-and-out genius. He has done a lot of research on the origins of superpowers in Camp X and come up with a lot of interesting speculations. One of them is that he believes that the superpowers come from outer space, or in other words, the depths of the universe. Between the stars, meteoroids brought the superpowers to Earth.

“What?”

Bai Xiaolu’s eyes bulged. She stammered, “A—a meteorite?”

“Exactly. Do you know how a total thermonuclear war broke out?”

“At the beginning of the 21st century, it’s true that the great powers of human civilization collided and rubbed against each other, resulting in a lot of small-scale conflicts and proxy wars. But both sides had enormous nuclear arsenals and missile defense systems. They were in a balance of ‘strategic deterrence’. Nobody wanted to perish together with the other party. A total thermonuclear war might not have broken out so early.

“However, on the eve of the war, a small meteoroid shower broke into the atmosphere and hit the missile defense bases and nuclear arsenals of the superpowers precisely, breaking the balance. Then, the earth was burnt to the ground.

“Urey believed that the balance-breaking meteoroids, or meteoroids that came from the same direction decades ago, brought something extremely special from the depths of the universe and gradually changed the physique and soul of some human beings. Eventually, they reached the threshold and gave birth to ‘persons’, or rather, ‘new human beings’.

“Is there such a thing?”

This was the first time that Bai Xiaolu had heard such a theory. She found it weird no matter how she thought about it. “However, there have been no large-scale meteoroid showers on Earth in the past few decades. How could a few meteoroids hit the nuclear arsenals and the defense centers of the superpowers precisely?”

“Weird, isn’t it?

“Therefore, Yuri is very suspicious that the meteoroids are not natural but some kind of weapon from… another civilization in the depths of the universe, another precise guided weapon of wisdom.

“Urey believed that, since human beings could grasp certain superpowers with the scraps of the meteorites, they might be able to crack the mysteries of the ‘Four fundamental forces’ or even the ‘Grand Unification Theory’ if they traced back to the source of the meteorites and found the wisdom of another civilization in space. Who knows?

“So—”

Bai Xiaolu was suddenly excited and smart. “If we want to reverse time, we have to look for a higher civilization and wisdom at the end of the universe!

“Calm down, kid. Calm down.”

The dominator of the desert tried to comfort the boy. “This is just Yuri’s speculation. It is just nonsense that he spouted in his excitement. Besides, why would you go to the end of the universe?”

“Why is it impossible?”

Looking at the chess pieces on the ground, Bai Xiaolu clutched one of them so hard that it was bleeding. “As long as I can reverse time and save everything, I will endure any pain and be willing to pay any price!”

“It will be a long, long journey.

Boss Gold Tooth looked at Bai Xiaolu with intense pain on his face. He shook his head and said, “Kid, you will lose a lot of things. Maybe everything.”

“Is there anything I can lose?”

Bai Xiaolu looked at her bleeding palm and grinned. “Besides, as long as we go back in time and replay what happened yesterday, everything we lost will be recovered, won’t it?”

…

That night, the boy dreamed again.

This time, it was a dream that was so good that he did not want to wake up.

He dreamed that the thermonuclear war had not broken out yet. The village they lived in was full of flowers, with colorful orchards and farmlands at the foot of the mountain. The air was filled with delicious smells.

He was separated from his brother. His brother was a handsome young man, his sister’s legs were nimble, his mother was not dead, and she was not crazy. The family sat on the hillside for a picnic and watched the people at the foot of the mountain working hard. His mother and his sister sang many songs together, while his brother and he just giggled and drank the sweet and sour fruit wine.

Ah, there was also their father. They had found their father. Their father was a middle-aged man who was as tall and sturdy as a mountain. His face was unshaven, and the smell on his body was a little heavy. He looked a lot like Boss Gold Tooth. Of course, he had black hair, black eyes, and yellow skin. Their father spoke very loudly, and when he laughed, he was very loud. He also taught them to play . He, his brother, and his father played together.

The dream was so beautiful that the boy subconsciously knew that it was not real, but it did not stop the boy from leaving all the laughter and tears in the dream and the good days in the past.

In the end, the dream was about to come to an end.

The sun was setting, making the boy’s shadow look like a black snake.

“You don’t want it to end like this?”

Suddenly, the fuzzy shadow started wriggling like a viper.

“Huh?”

The boy’s eyes widened in shock.

“Do you want all of this to become reality and yesterday to really reappear? Do you want all the happiness and happiness to be endlessly recycled?”

His shadow continued questioning him.

In the dream, everything seemed normal. The boy’s cowardice turned into curiosity. Bai Xiaolu asked, “Who are you?”

The shadow smiled.

For the first time, Bai Xiaolu realized that her shadow could smile, and it was so… weird.

“I am you.”

The shadow said in a low and charming voice, “The you billions of years later.”

“What?”

Bai Xiaolu was dazed. She stammered, “Billions of years later, how can I—how can you—”

“Don’t waste your time.

The shadow said, “You don’t know how many lives I burnt and how many planets I sacrificed in order to send you a message billions of years later. You and I have done a great job over the past billions of years. But if we want to reverse time and restart everything, ‘very good’ is not good enough. We have to do better… Hey, what are you doing exactly? I extinguished billions of stars and paid such a high price just to say a few words to myself billions of years ago, and you didn’t care at all and were distracted?”

“No. I was looking at it.”

Bai Xiaolu asked, “Can’t you see it?”

“It?”

The shadow was dazed. “What is it? I can’t see it. What is it?”

“Vulture.”

Bai Xiaolu stared at what was in front of her and could not help but ask, “You didn’t see such a big vulture with watery eyes?”

“Watery eyes… Very cheap and flirtatious… Vulture?”

The shadow was silent for a moment. Then, its voice suddenly turned sharp and indignant. “What is it doing? Tell me what the wretched vulture is doing!”

“It’s spinning. It seems to be dancing. Ballet dancing.”

Bai Xiaolu replied honestly, “I don’t know the specific script. I’m sorry. I can’t concentrate because of its harassment. What did you say just now? You are the me billions of years later. What are you going to do?”

The shadow was silent for a long, long time.

Then, the dream was shattered by the roaring shadow.

When Bai Xiaolu saw the shadow soar into the sky and swallow the vulture, she felt that she was holding the vulture in a sack and beating it brutally.

“You clingy bastard! You filthy, lowly cockroach! You sneaky germ! You shameless virus! Get lost! Get out of the ‘Time Ripple’!”

It was the voice of the shadow. For some reason, it sounded so angry.

“Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch O

Bai Xiaolu did not know whose voice it was, nor did she want to know.

Just like that, he woke up from his dream in confusion. It felt… weird.

It was supposed to be a pure, bleak, desperate black story.

It was the story of a boy who had lost everything, changed beyond recognition, tried his best to look back but could never look back, and even forgot who he was.

However, everything had changed since Vulture appeared.

It was like a pot of perfectly good hot porridge had been mixed with mouse poop.