Chapter 39

Zhou Ziheng’s words made Xia Xiqing begin to doubt the connection between the two rooms. He had previously simply assumed they were part of the same group, but now it was clear that was not the case.

“Is your room blue wallpaper, with a bed, a black wardrobe, a square rug with a small round table on it, a radio on the round table, and a walnut desk?”

Zhou Ziheng, who was in the other room, confirmed, “That’s right. There’s a laptop in the center of the desk, a desk lamp with a white shade on the left, three stacked books, and originally nothing on the right, but now there’s a photo frame.”

Xia Xiqing looked at his own desk, and the arrangement on it matched Zhou Ziheng’s description exactly.

“Try turning on the computer?” Xia Xiqing said, then booted up his laptop. After a brief startup time, a line of text appeared on the screen.

“A password is required to log in.”

Zhou Ziheng saw the same thing.

“What’s the username?” Xia Xiqing stared at the screen and asked.

“love1023.”

Sure enough, it was exactly the same.

There were simply too many inconsistencies. Xia Xiqing sat back in his chair, shifting his gaze from the laptop screen to the photo frame he had just noticed. He realized that the couple in the photo were also wearing blue and red clothing.

He looked down at his own dark blue shirt and, linking it to the clothing of the four of them, suddenly understood the production team’s intentions. It was the same old routine from the previous episode: play the role of the character in whichever room you were in.

But this meant that both he and Zhou Ziheng were playing the role of the male lead in the story. What was the purpose of this repetition? Thinking about this, all the previous inconsistencies came flooding back.

After finding the password, his drawer opened first, and then Zhou Ziheng’s could open. It was also he who placed the photo album on the upper right corner of the table, and then Zhou Ziheng’s photo album suddenly appeared.

This was using these props to暗示 the sequence of events between the two!

“Zhou Ziheng,” Xia Xiqing moved the mouse cursor and looked at the time displayed in the lower left corner of the laptop’s lock screen, “What time is it on your end now?”

“13:10”

The blue light from the screen reflected in Xia Xiqing’s pupils, and the white numbers glowing in the lower left corner were exactly at 13:00.

“I’m ten minutes ahead of you…”

Could it be that he had traveled through time to save the female lead?

He decided to discuss the existing clues with Zhou Ziheng.

“Zhou Ziheng, I think the plot is like this: both of us are playing the male lead. Because his girlfriend died, the male lead feels guilty, and then he used some method to time travel back to before his girlfriend’s sudden heart attack, which is why there’s a time difference between us.”

“So you’re saying you’re ten minutes ahead in time, meaning you traveled back to before the girlfriend’s death? But if that’s the case, why does your diary mention the female lead’s death? If you went back in time, shouldn’t the female lead have been saved?”

“Exactly, that’s a plot hole. The diary should be the male lead’s memory archive. If it explicitly states the female lead’s death, it means she was already dead at 1:00 PM. Both of them are now in a time point after her death.”

Xia Xiqing, whose train of thought had been interrupted, furrowed his brows in deep thought for a moment, then walked over to the round table where the radio was placed. “This story can only be fully understood by combining the male and female protagonists’ storylines. I think we should communicate with the other two people playing the female protagonist.”

“Hmm. Let’s pause for now.” Zhou Ziheng suddenly seemed to remember something. “Then… should we agree on a time for the next call? What if there are new clues?”

Zhou Ziheng didn’t want to hang up on Xia Xiqing. He wanted to chat a little longer, but he also knew that the plot couldn’t be complete if it kept circling around the same character.

Xia Xiqing agreed quickly. “Alright, let’s meet again in half an hour.” After saying that, he turned the blue knob all the way down. There were two knobs next to it, but Xia Xiqing hadn’t figured out the difference between them yet, so he just chose the one labeled “0” and turned it.

As he had expected, turning it revealed a cacophony of background noise. He sighed and stood up. He should have known that signal communication wasn’t that simple. Xia Xiqing only hoped that the two playing the “girlfriend” would communicate with the “boyfriend” sooner so he wouldn’t have to wait too long.

He returned to the desk with the most clues. Xia Xiqing, who had been immersed in the plot setting, suddenly noticed that there seemed to be an oddly shaped shadow on the automatically lit lampshade.

It looked like the projection of a puzzle piece. He tried to remove the lampshade but found it wasn’t that easy, so he reached out to touch the incandescent bulb hidden inside and discovered there was indeed a puzzle piece stuck on it. Xia Xiqing turned his head, his gaze falling on the blank area behind the door, which seemed to fit with the previous piece. He flipped the puzzle piece over and was surprised to find a sentence written on the back.

The letters were too small, so Xia Xiqing stared at the puzzle piece and tried hard to make out the words.

“You’ve been pestering me to tell you my computer password, haven’t you? I wrote the password on the greeting card.”

The computer password was on the greeting card?

Xia Xiqing flipped to the greeting card and read the words on it again.

“The moment I met you was the beginning of the Big Bang. Every particle left me and rushed toward you. After that tiny instant, the universe was truly born.”

Besides this text, the only number on the greeting card was his birthday, October 23rd. His intuition told him that the password couldn’t be that simple, especially since his birthday was already on his account, but Xia Xiqing tried it anyway, and sure enough, it didn’t work.

At that moment, the background noise on the radio suddenly stopped, and a girl’s voice came through.

“Hello? Are you Ziheng or Xiqing?”

It was Ruan Xiao’s voice; they had finally connected. Xia Xiqing responded immediately, “I’m Xia Xiqing, Ruan Xiao. To make a long story short, you should already know that you’re playing the role of the girlfriend, right?”

“Yes, but besides me, Sui Rui should be too.”

“So you’ve been in contact with Si Rui all along?” Xia Xiqing found a pen, flipped to a blank page in his diary, and began to jot down the information Ruan Xiao had mentioned. “Have you discovered anything, like time discrepancies or differences in identity?”

“How should I explain it to you?” Ruan Xiao seemed a bit hesitant on the other end. “I did find a schedule book in the room that recorded some events, but there are many inconsistencies, and I can’t trust whether the events in it are real.”

Xia Xiqing could tell that Ruan Xiao was a bit flustered. To be honest, he was a bit surprised. Ruan Xiao was usually calm and intelligent, with clear thinking. If even she felt flustered, it meant that this situation was truly difficult. “Tell me first, why can’t you believe it?”

“Because the clues Si Rui found record events that are completely different from mine. This is strange. If we are both ‘girlfriends,’ shouldn’t we have the same chain of events?”

“I see,” Xia Xiqing countered, “What if you are the ‘main characters’ from different timelines?”

Ruan Xiao fell silent.

“I saw a book on Chaos Theory in the room, which mentioned the butterfly effect. When you make a choice or change at a certain point in time, it may affect the subsequent series of events. If this script includes the assumption of parallel timelines, the fact that you have different chains of events actually makes sense.”

At this point, Xia Xiqing suddenly realized that if Ruan Xiao and he were from the same timeline, their event chains should overlap, especially the ending. This was one way he could verify the compatibility of timelines.

“Ruan Xiao, what events are recorded in your schedule book?” Xia Xiqing thought about the existence of the ‘killer’ in this game. To eliminate Ruan Xiao’s guard against him, he first explained his own situation: “I recorded mine in diary form. I won’t go into the details of the earlier romantic developments. Let’s just talk about what happened on May 20, 2019. The boyfriend and girlfriend argued, and the girlfriend, out of spite, went to the train station to return to her parents’ home. The male lead turned off his phone, and the female lead suddenly died of a heart attack at the station.”

“Sudden heart attack…”

“Well, that’s what I wrote in my diary. What about you? What’s your chain of events?”

Ruan Xiao was silent for a moment, then said, “It’s similar to yours. The female lead ends up dying.”

Xia Xiqing felt that Ruan Xiao’s tone was a bit off, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Just as he was feeling puzzled, Ruan Xiao asked again, “Xiqing, based on the clues you’ve found so far, did the male lead go out?”

The question came out of nowhere, and Xia Xiqing didn’t catch Ruan Xiao’s underlying meaning. “I’m not sure, because I don’t have enough clues yet. Maybe the male lead went out after the power outage.”

“Alright.” Ruan Xiao could be heard rummaging through things on the other end, then she spoke again, “My radio has two blue knobs and one red knob. Are yours the opposite of mine?”

“That’s right, your red knob has a 0 marked below it.”

“Yours does too,” Ruan Xiao replied. “This should mean that ours are matched pairs.”

“Our knobs have a 0 below them, but Zhou Ziheng and Shang Siru’s knobs don’t have any markings. The production team must have intended to distinguish them this way to indicate that they are matched pairs.” But Xia Xiqing sensed Ruan Xiao’s uncertainty in her words; otherwise, she wouldn’t have used the phrase “should mean.”

Why did she do that?

Could it be that what she said made her suspicious? A true killer wouldn’t carelessly reveal all their information to the other party, because they can’t be sure which piece of information might expose their identity. Doesn’t Ruan Xiao understand that?

Xia Xiqing found it strange. He walked over to the radio and turned the knob for Shang Siru, but there was still static. He then turned the knob for Zhou Ziheng.

“Are you there…” He muttered almost to himself, but to his surprise, he actually received a response.

“Here.” Zhou Ziheng’s voice was firm and steady.

Xia Xiqing was a bit surprised. “Have you been waiting for me?”

“Half an hour has already passed.” Zhou Ziheng paused, then brought the topic back. “Did you just receive any news?”

“Nothing particularly useful.” Xia Xiqing didn’t want to share Ruan Xiao’s unusual behavior with Zhou Ziheng. This time, the killer could be anyone besides himself, including Zhou Ziheng. He was completely confused, and if his words led others to make a misjudgment, the consequences during the vote would be unimaginable.

“Did you open your notebook?”

Upon Zhou Ziheng’s prompting, Xia Xiqing recalled the partially decoded password. “No, it said the password was on the greeting card.”

“Enter 1043.”

As soon as he sat back down at the computer, Xia Xiqing heard Zhou Ziheng directly say the laptop password. If someone else had said it, Xia Xiqing might have been skeptical, but since Zhou Ziheng said it, it must be verified and absolutely certain.

He typed those four numbers on the keyboard and hit enter. Sure enough, the laptop’s password was unlocked.

“Did you deduce it from the phrase on the greeting card?”

“Yes.” Zhou Ziheng explained to him, “From the moment I saw this phrase, I felt that it must contain a clue. First, it compares the encounter to the Big Bang, then it mentions the birth of the universe, and when combined with the second book on the desk earlier, it clearly relates to the origin of the universe.”

Xia Xiqing picked up the second book on the desk and flipped to page 610. “Oh, I see… Zhou, the academic genius, explain it to me.”

Hearing Xia Xiqing’s lighthearted tone, which sounded like teasing, Zhou Ziheng cleared his throat and tried to explain the origin of the universe to him. “In fact, there are many different schools of thought in the physics community regarding the origin of the universe, and the Big Bang theory is one of the more widely accepted ones. Scientists have divided the Big Bang into several stages, but I won’t go into detail here. One of these stages occurred 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang began. During this stage, the universe emerged from the quantum fluctuation background and began to exist independently, so this time point is considered the moment of the universe’s birth.”

So that’s how it is.

In fact, while Zhou Ziheng was explaining, Xia Xiqing had already flipped to the page on the Big Bang theory and found the line with the data.

However, after carefully listening to the science popularization, Xia Xiqing couldn’t help but curve his lips into a smile. Whenever Zhou Ziheng discussed these highly specialized scientific theories, he seemed to transform into a different person, no longer the celebrity everyone admired, nor the innocent and upright young man. He became rational and gentle, evoking an involuntary sense of admiration. This feeling might stem from humanity’s innate reverence for science, transferring emotions from science itself to those who explain and explore it.

If it weren’t for the recording, Xia Xiqing would have really wanted to say something inappropriate to Zhou Ziheng.

[I’ve already imagined the scene of you sleeping with me while explaining physics to me.]

The cold hypothesis of light-years away, the scorching body temperature close enough to touch. Two extreme opposites, like an explosion, creating a stunningly beautiful nebula.

People always say that men who do art are sexy, but why does Xia Xiqing feel that men who do science are the truly sexy ones?

Perhaps, at some level, extreme rationality and extreme sensuality are the same thing.

“What’s wrong? Did you figure it out?”

“Oh, it’s open.” Xia Xiqing replied, then couldn’t help but laugh at himself for his earlier daydreaming. The desktop still displayed that photo of them on the beach.

Suddenly, he noticed a folder on the desktop named [2 Memory Archive].

He clicked on the folder out of curiosity and found an executable file inside. Xia Xiqing clicked on it with a try-it-out mindset, but to his surprise, the computer screen went black. Like anyone who encounters a black screen, Xia Xiqing instinctively pressed the power button, then slammed the laptop shut when there was no response.

Then he suddenly noticed a number—2—stuck on the laptop’s casing.

He quickly made the connection to the diary he had just seen, which had the number 1 on its cover. These numbers must be related in some way.

“Is it working now? Why did it go black?”

Xia Xiqing opened the laptop again and found that the computer seemed to have restarted.

“Wait a minute, I’ll re-enter the password.”

Just as he finished entering the four digits 1043 and was about to press the enter key, he suddenly noticed something unusual and paused with his finger in midair.

The time on the notebook’s lock screen had changed—more precisely, it had reverted to 12:30.

This was all too strange. What did the reversed time signify? Xia Xiqing clicked the enter key, and the desktop appeared as it had a few minutes earlier. However, when he opened the folder named [2 Memory Archive], he found a new text file containing a single sentence.

[We’ve been together for so long, yet she still doesn’t trust me. She keeps bombarding me with calls, it’s utterly unreasonable. I need some alone time; don’t bother me.]

He stared at the folder name for a long time without speaking. The clue marked “No. 2” and the clue marked “No. 1” were not related to the same event, and the events themselves were different.

Earlier, Ruan Xiao had also revealed that Shang Sui and her event chain were different, meaning that the clues they had were not from the same number!

“Was there also a number on the cover of your diary?”

Zhou Ziheng nodded, “There was also a number on the laptop.”

Indeed.

By reasoning this way, finding clues with the same number and integrating the memory archives of the male and female leads could yield the complete plotline.

However, Ruan Xiao’s attitude was unclear, and Xia Xiqing didn’t want to risk sharing his clues lightly, so he thought of Shang Siru, whom he hadn’t contacted yet. In theory, since Shang Siru had already been a killer once, the likelihood of him being an undercover agent again was low. But nothing is certain in this world, especially with such a twisted production team.

Regardless, he must communicate with Shang Siru.

“Zi Heng.”

Every time Xia Xiqing called him that, Zhou Zi Heng felt a bit uneasy, yet also inexplicably happy, as if he were being flattered. He couldn’t help but soften his tone in response, “Hmm, what’s up?”

“I might have to temporarily disconnect our signal. I want to go find Shang Sirui. Is that okay?” Actually, Xia Xiqing didn’t need to ask Zhou Ziheng’s permission. He could have just disconnected it directly, but that would affect his “little angel” persona on the show, and secondly… for some reason, he really felt like doing that would be unfair to Zhou Ziheng.

Zhou Ziheng’s voice changed, the previous gentleness gone, replaced by a deep, muffled tone.

“What’s the problem? It’s not the first time.”

Author’s note: Director: Guys, there’s a limit to your flirting. Zhou Ziheng, can you be any more obvious about your jealousy?

This round is really tough for Xia Xiqing to win. Communication between them can only be done by phone, and they can’t see clues from other rooms. If they can’t get others to talk, that’s fine, but even if they do, it might not be true.

PS: I made some changes to the previous chapter, specifically the labels on the two same-colored knobs on the radio. I had originally written “P” and “N,” but I didn’t think of anything more appropriate at the time, so I chose those two. However, I realized it misled you and diverted your thinking (to put it bluntly, it’s not simply “past” and ‘now’). 233 So I removed the letter labels. Now there are two knobs of the same color, one labeled “0” and the other unlabeled, to distinguish them.