Chapter 90 - 72: Old Acquaintance
BZZZT!
BZZZT!
BZZZT!
In the final moment before his consciousness faded, all pain and discomfort vanished instantly.
Accompanied by a familiar dizziness and the sensation of the world spinning, Jiang Ran lost all five senses once more.
’Sure enough.’
The temporal displacement reaction had appeared again.
It was exactly as he had hypothesized—
’As long as I die during this "time travel" of unknown reality, it will trigger a temporal displacement, sending me back to 2025.’
「Two seconds later.」
His feet were on solid ground, the sun was warm, and a gentle breeze was blowing.
Jiang Ran opened his eyes again.
"Senior!"
"Senior!"
The same voice came from two different directions.
One came from the window of the Film Club’s activity room, the other from the connected call on the phone in his hand.
"Was the experiment a success this time?"
"Was the experiment a success this time?"
Jiang Ran looked down at the call interface displayed on his phone.
[Call Duration]
[00:03]
[00:04]
[00:05]
...
It was exactly the same as his first "time travel" experience. No matter how much time passed in 2045, only an instant had gone by here in 2025.
Jiang Ran hung up the phone and gave Chi Xiaoguo at the window an "OK" sign.
"Wait for me in the activity room. I’m on my way."
He took the long way around and returned to the Film Club activity room, where he reported the situation to Chi Xiaoguo.
"It’s hard to say if it was a success, but at the very least... I think I’m starting to figure out some patterns."
He didn’t explain in too much detail, simply asking:
"Can we do it again tomorrow morning?"
"Of course!"
Seeing Senior Jiang Ran rally his spirits, a glimmer of light returning to his eyes, Chi Xiaoguo felt both happy and relieved.
"Then I’ll be here at the usual time tomorrow morning!"
After that, Chi Xiaoguo headed to the cafeteria; she had classes that morning.
Speaking of which, it wasn’t just Chi Xiaoguo who had classes. Jiang Ran also had classes to attend at his junior college.
It’s just that with how busy he was now, he had no time to worry about attending them.
Currently, for his junior college classes, either his roommates would answer roll call for him or Wang Hao would attend in his place. In short, he was winging it however he could. And when he couldn’t, he just had to accept being marked absent by the professor. There was nothing else he could do.
Jiang Ran was going all-in, betting his degree on the Positron Cannon.
As long as the Positron Cannon could successfully send the Time SMS and reset the worldline, all his absences at the junior college would be wiped clean, as if they never happened.
But if he ultimately failed to reset the worldline...
"Ahem."
A chill went down Jiang Ran’s spine. He didn’t dare imagine the consequences.
Forget about returning to East Sea University; his junior college would probably bar him from taking his exams due to excessive absences, and he wouldn’t even get his diploma.
"Wait."
He suddenly remembered that junior colleges don’t actually award degree certificates, only graduation diplomas.
But that wasn’t the point.
Skipping class constantly wasn’t a sustainable solution. He had to hurry up and find a way to solve the problem at hand.
After Chi Xiaoguo left, Jiang Ran closed the activity room door and began organizing his thoughts on the small blackboard.
This perfect replication of the May 15th "time travel" event allowed him to summarize a few recurring patterns:
1. As long as a phone call is connected within 0.7 seconds of activating the Positron Cannon, it produces a dizzying reaction similar to a temporal displacement or a Worldline Jump, leading to travel to approximately 10:00 AM on September 17, 2045.
2. Death, for any reason, will once again trigger the buzzing, dizzying reaction, returning me unharmed to the moment of the Positron Cannon’s activation in 2025.
3. The events of September 17, 2045, are fixed and unchanging, unless I deliberately interfere.
From these three points, it wasn’t difficult to reach an obvious conclusion—
’The Positron Cannon has indeed malfunctioned. It’s temporarily unable to send a Time SMS, but by a strange twist of fate, it has developed other functions.’
’There’s only one urgent question that I need to figure out right now.’
Jiang Ran gripped a piece of chalk and wrote emphatically on the blackboard—
"Is the Future World of September 17, 2045, that I traveled to real or fake?"
This question was extremely important.
If he could prove that all this travel, and the Future World, were real, then it would also prove that what the Assassin said was real too.
The Time Travel Machine...
A machine that lets people travel to the past...
Its inventor is at East Sea University...
"If this information is real..."
Jiang Ran muttered to himself.
"That means, even if the Positron Cannon can’t send a Time SMS, I can still use the Time Travel Machine to save Cheng Mengxue!"
In a sense, the principles behind the Time Travel Machine and the Positron Cannon were the same.
According to the Assassin, the Time Travel Machine sends a whole person to the past, allowing them to rewrite history and reshape the worldline as a Time Traveler.
This was very similar to Hollywood blockbusters like *Terminator*, *Back to the Future*, and *12 Monkeys*.
The Positron Cannon couldn’t transport a human body, only a text message back to the past, but it could still achieve the same effect of rewriting history and reshaping the worldline.
It was like finding a path forward just when he thought he was at a dead end.
When he had realized the Positron Cannon had malfunctioned and wasn’t working properly, Jiang Ran had been on the verge of collapse, unable to see any possibility of saving Cheng Mengxue.
But now, he had hope once again.
This was why he had asked Chi Xiaoguo to run another experiment with him tomorrow morning.
’The Assassin has many secrets, and the rumors about the Time Travel Machine are vague and insubstantial... but... anyway, I should first determine whether the narrative of 2045 is real or fake before considering anything else.’
Only after confirming that this "time travel" was real, that he was really seeing the Future World twenty years from now, would the information from the Assassin have any meaning.