Chapter 270: Cycle
Humans are not plants or trees; who can be without emotion.
Under An Qin’s long-term companionship, even Fang Mu, who was extremely obtuse about emotions, was moved by her kindness and gentleness.
The reason An Qin saved Fang Mu was partly due to coincidence; her home was just nearby the alley where he collapsed, and she happened to pass by.
But the reason An Qin decided to persistently and meticulously care for Fang Mu was that his unintentionally revealed literary attainment deeply attracted this literary female university student in her early twenties. Plus, Fang Mu himself had a gentle temper and handsome appearance, which continuously increased An Qin’s goodwill toward him. Over two or three days, she fell into the web of love.
Initially, Fang Mu felt only gratitude toward An Qin for saving his life, with no excessive emotions. His spirit had not yet recovered from the terrifying and bizarre encounter in the cave. Moreover, when he discovered he had traveled to June 1991, he was shocked beyond measure.
Why did he travel through time, and why did he come here?
Could the plots in those fantasy novels really exist in reality?
How should the spacetime paradox be explained when it happens to him?
Fang Mu felt his head was extremely chaotic. In confusion and bewilderment, he often zoned out. Those bizarre memory scenes devoured his reason at all times. Whenever that happened, he could only recall the house in the woods; that magical small shop was the only place that truly made him feel at ease. Unconsciously, he would murmur unclearly: “Forest… house… small dwelling in the woods.”
This unintentionally helped him avoid explaining his identity. Everyone just thought he had been robbed and then beaten, injuring his head, losing part of his memory, and leaving his memory in chaos.
On the day Fang Mu awakened, when the law enforcement officer came to inquire and investigate, it happened to be the day his consciousness was most chaotic. When the law enforcement officer asked for Fang Mu’s name, unable to hear clearly and since Fang Mu needed to provide an identity to continue hospitalization and treatment, An Qin vaguely heard “Fang” and “Lin,” and thus arbitrarily assigned him the name “Fang Lin.”
By the time Fang Mu reacted to the name and became clear-headed, the law enforcement officer had already recorded it. Fang Mu was somewhat speechless but still complied without changing it, accepting this name.
Fang Lin and Fang Mu; the similarity between the two names was only that each added one radical to the original name. Said to be coincidence, it actually felt more like something fated.
Fang Mu’s dazed state actually lasted only about a day. The next day, he recovered a lot, at least enough to communicate normally with An Qin.
“Where is my nail hammer?” Fang Mu anxiously asked after awakening.
An Qin smiled and said: “So that was your thing? I saw you clutching them when you collapsed and thought they were some important weapon evidence. They’re temporarily taken by the law enforcement officer for investigation. Since it’s your thing, just mention it to them when they come to ask you questions again.”
Fang Mu felt somewhat helpless upon hearing this but understood.
Who would treat a pair of nail hammers like treasures? Even construction site workers tossed them around casually.
An Qin was very curious about Fang Mu’s experience. Fang Mu couldn’t explain his real experience to her and could only play along, saying he was robbed, his head was now very chaotic, and his words were half true, half false.
In this era, it was easy for a person to obtain a false identity, of course, only relative to decades later.
Fang Mu also spent half a year running around to finally piece together and forge his identity as “Fang Lin.”
In this half year, many changes happened to him, including falling in love with An Qin.
His original intention was not to have too much involvement with An Qin. This poor woman would suffer major upheaval in her family over the next twenty-plus years because of meeting him; it could be called family destroyed and people dead, a catastrophe.
But even though Fang Mu once used the harshest and most insulting words and actions to force her away, for some reason An Qin remained devoted to him, ultimately leaving Fang Mu helpless.
On the evening Fang Mu met An Qin’s parents, the kind and gentle parents took a liking to him that very night and hoped he would become their son-in-law.
That day, perhaps due to drinking a lot of alcohol, or maybe opening his heart and saying many things to An Qin’s parents—Fang Mu couldn’t remember exactly what—but borrowing the atmosphere, Fang Mu inexplicably solemnly proposed to An Qin that night, successfully turning her into his real wife.
Is the future really unchangeable? Fang Mu had thought this alone at night more than once.
If a person’s time is linear… then since he could live in this past era, it proves the theory holds.
Because any slightest deviation in the future would mean he wouldn’t be the current Fang Mu.
He would soon have a son and daughter with his wife. The son would be dismembered by villains after growing up, and his heart would save his young self. Then, as an adult at work, he would repay the kindness by meeting the daughter living a miserable life. After her death, he would discover the secret under the dark side of this world from her, encounter bizarre terror events, come to this past era, marry An Qin… cycling endlessly.
This despair, where one could see the end at a glance yet not see the end, made every day extremely difficult for Fang Mu. He couldn’t pour out the secret weighing on him to others; it was like carrying a huge mountain.
He needed an outlet, so he started writing a diary to vent his emotions.
At the same time, harboring a sliver of hope: what if his guess was wrong, time wasn’t linear, fate could be changed, and his future self, reading the diary, made even a tiny change—then perhaps everything could still be saved.
The fate of his wife, children, and his wife’s parents’ tragic later years… all had a chance to change.
Thus, Fang Mu started writing a diary, using disorganized text in a stream-of-consciousness style to record the thing that impressed him most each day.
On the evening he recorded his second diary entry, the long-missed toad chirp clearly entered his ears, finally awakening the fear deeply hidden in the depths of his mind.
Because his cave experience was too profoundly impressive, he was especially sensitive to the sounds he heard there. He was absolutely certain the toad chirp that night was the same kind he heard in the cave.
Those guys, smelling “the scent on him,” had come.
Crossing spacetime, coming from afar.
