Chapter 80: Anomalous Time 46 Part 2

The world where Zhang Yunjiang had passed away suddenly without a word, his body still uncremated to this day amid disputes among his children over the inheritance.

Yuan Yuxing didn’t want his old friend lying alone in a freezer at the funeral parlor any longer.

He remembered that his friend had wanted to go out to sea.

He had asked Yu Bai about it too and learned that once time realigned, they would find themselves back aboard that descending golden elevator, as if they had merely dreamed the whole thing right there without ever leaving.

Their consciousnesses had crossed over, but they couldn’t take any person or object from this timespace with them.

Yet there was one thing that had arrived alongside their consciousnesses in this reality that shouldn’t have existed.

Yu Bai had handed that item over to him.

Perhaps it could carry certain messages that weren’t meant to exist across the river of timespace and back into the real world.

The little boy asked nervously, but the elder agreed without hesitation.

“Sure. What kind of homework?”

No sooner had Zhang Yunjiang consented than he watched the boy pull a sheet of paper from his pocket, folded as neatly as a block of tofu. After clearing away the Go board, the child carefully unfolded it and slid it across the table to him.

It was a blank sheet of A4 paper.

“Don’t flip the paper over!” the boy reminded him instinctively before explaining the assignment. “You have to get a grown-up at home to write…”

It truly was a strange piece of homework.

Strange enough to leave anyone helping with it deep in thought.

Seated on his cushion, Zhang Yunjiang took up the pen without refusal.

He lowered his head to study the blank sheet on the Go table, pondering seriously how best to complete the task.

After a long moment of reflection, he finally set pen to paper and began to write. The little boy, who had watched him anxiously, let out a breath of relief.

Yu Hang looked away and wandered over to the chess room door, as if greeting someone.

Zhang Yunjiang guessed it was Little Doctor Yu and the others.

Just like that day when they had eavesdropped outside on Teacher Xie’s Go lesson—the people inside had long sensed the lurkers beyond the door but pretended not to notice.

Today was no different.

Zhang Yunjiang had heard from Yu Bai a couple of days earlier that they would be saying goodbye and leaving come morning. He felt a deep reluctance at the news and had specially instructed the kitchen to prepare an especially lavish farewell dinner the night before.

But back then, he had assumed they were simply heading home from here.

Now, though…

While the little boy at the door remained oblivious, Zhang Yunjiang at the table set down his pen, drew a deep breath, and quietly flipped over the crisp-edged sheet of paper beside him.

He saw four lines of writing.

The blank sheet had been divided into four sections, each bearing a single line.

One: Fulfill Zhang Yunjiang’s last wish.

Two: Can’t stand that Turtle Bastard.

Three: Can’t stand Comrade Xie.

Four: No reason, just wanna have some fun.

As these words met his eyes, Zhang Yunjiang froze in stunned shock.

He couldn’t make sense of the last three lines.

But the first one was clear enough.

He also recognized the bold, vigorous handwriting on the page, full of character and spirit.

It was his old friend’s familiar script.

The very font he had taught him by hand in their distant boyhood days.

Another slip of paper with identical handwriting had always sat on his study desk.

—I had an epiphany! Just wait till I get back in a couple days and thrash you till you’re routed!

The friend who had proclaimed his epiphany never showed up for that rematch. Where on earth had he holed up to study Go?

Yuxing.

…Yu Hang.

It had all felt like a dream—the happiest week of his life.

So this was the secret he hadn’t understood.

By the time Yuan Yuxing finished exchanging a glance with Yu Bai outside the chess room and turned his eyes back inside, a line of spirited writing already graced the sheet on the Go table.

The elder wielding the pen seemed lost in thought as he wrote, his gaze drifting into empty space at times, unfocused, as if dazed in a trance.

At others, it shifted to the red-eyed child across from him.

Yuan Yuxing sat properly on his cushion, waiting in silence.

His posture mirrored the elder’s on the other cushion exactly, as if they shared the same master.

The elder writing the homework often glanced up at him, then suddenly smiled, shook his head, and murmured softly, “How did I never notice?”

Yuan Yuxing hadn’t quite heard or understood. He asked blankly, “What?”

The elder, gazing at the bewildered child, fell silent for a moment without answering. Instead, he turned to look out the window.

Outside lay a world of drifting snowflakes and the pale blue hush of early dawn.

A moment later, he said softly, “Snowy days are so beautiful.”

The man in his seventies watched the heavy flakes of snow—the first in years—while a crystalline gleam of joy danced in his eyes.

“I’d love to have one more snowball fight,” he murmured to himself. “But I’m too old now. I can’t run anymore.”

He was probably destined never to outpace this snow.

That left just one thing he could do.

As he finished the homework, the elder added his signature unprompted and asked the child before him, “Does it need a date? Is today all right?”

“No, no, not today!” Yuan Yuxing shook his head vigorously, his mind racing. “Let me think which day to use…”

He still needed to figure out how to explain to Zhang Yunjiang why it had to be a date from the past.

But the elder across from him didn’t seem interested in any such explanation.

He merely nodded slightly and waited patiently for the boy to decide on the most suitable date.

Soon enough, the elder added the final stroke. He watched as the child across from him swiftly folded up the now-filled sheet—like he was guarding the back side from view.

At the same moment, a short message chime rang from the phone in his pocket.

Zhang Yunjiang paid it no mind. Watching the other’s careful movements, he suddenly spoke up. “I’ve already sneaked a peek at the back.”

The little boy clenched the refolded tofu block in shock. “Huh?”

His panicked gaze plunged in an instant into a vast, gentle sea of warmth.

A faint sigh drifted in on the tide.

“You must have puzzled over that Go game for ages,” the elder sighed softly. “You’ve always been more diligent than me, willing to put in the hard work.”

“Talent was never the most important thing—mindset is. That’s why I’ve often thought since then, if only I’d managed to convince you to come back that year and keep studying under your teacher, how wonderful that would have been.”

If only flowers could bloom again, and people return to their youth—how wonderful that would be.

The elder’s gaze drifted quietly over the Go board beside them, as if that black-and-white game had frozen into eternity.

“But luckily, you had your epiphany and came back to thrash me till I was routed.”

A deep smile colored his final words.

“It’s really wonderful to see you like this again.”

“I have no regrets now.”

Outside the chess room, snow fell in thick, swirling flakes.

It drifted past suddenly misty old eyes.

Past clear young eyes grown faintly damp.

And settled at last into a smooth young palm.

At this moment of parting, Yu Bai lingered in the corridor outside the chess room, reaching out to catch the snowflakes tumbling from the eaves.

The brown-haired young man beside him gazed at the room they had once occupied, imagining the scene unfolding inside. He murmured softly, “That’s great. He got a chance to say goodbye.”

Seeing the dim expression on his face, the black-haired blue-eyed man asked, “Do you want to say goodbye to someone too?”

“No.” He looked away quickly, smiled faintly, and said softly, “…I don’t.”

Everywhere he looked stretched a silver-clad world of snow.

In the beautiful, rustic courtyard stood snowmen of every shape and size.

The most eye-catching was a large white snowball adorned with green leaves.

Thick green leaves from early summer had been dug out from beneath the drifts and pasted onto its surface in wavy arcs.

The winter snowball now bore summer patterns—an obvious, undeniable big watermelon.

It was even decorated with little stars made of snow.

Angular snow stars, clumsy tumbling snow stars…

Before bidding a final farewell to this timespace, Yu Bai’s gaze earnestly traced those precious snow stars, as if etching them deeply into his heart, never to forget.

Until the phone in his pocket suddenly vibrated.

Xie Wufang, whose phone held no contacts, also glanced toward his own pocket as a short chime sounded.

The two men exchanged a look, both wearing expressions of surprise.

Yu Bai pulled out his phone. The screen displayed a newly received text message.

As he lowered his eyes to read the content, a smile quickly curved his gaze, light and cheerful.

[Dear tourist friend, White Snow Stars welcomes you. We wish you a safe and pleasant journey…]

Xie Wufang beside him was also checking the identical message on his own phone.

Yu Bai instinctively explained, “This is a automated text sent to out-of-town numbers based on phone signal location—it’s like that in other cities, at least—”

But as he spoke, he trailed off in a daze, his thoughts scattering like falling snow.

He seemed to have said those exact words before.

…Right here in this timespace.

But not during this entry.

Rather, long ago, in the endless loop where he shuttled alone.

Before leading Xie Wufang to the park to watch chess, he had first called the then-unfamiliar man, trying to lure him out.

The Non-Human on the other end of the line, utterly clueless about the prevalence of scam calls among humans, had hesitated and asked why he knew his name and number.

And so they had chatted about the welcome text.

Xie Wufang had just walked out of the phone shop at that time, having received an almost identical welcome message.

Yet the Xie Wufang of this moment had gotten such a message right after setting up his phone, with no one to explain it to him.

So he looked at Yu Bai, who had suddenly gone still and silent, and asked softly, “Is it different here?”

The exact same question.

Yu Bai snapped back from that indescribable moment of realization and answered earnestly.

“Yeah, in our city, the people in charge of this might be a bit scatterbrained, so local numbers get them occasionally too… like right now.”

But this text had one subtle difference.

In the version every Skystar City resident had seen, it read “Brilliant Stars.” Here, it was “White Snow Stars.”

So Yu Bai thought for a moment and added, “Though, I think this one today might not be a mix-up. Maybe they sent it deliberately to all citizens and visitors.”

“Perhaps because they love this snow that’s been falling for a full week, too.”

This beautiful, merciful snow that cleansed the heavens and earth.

Before Yu Bai’s words, laced with a smile, could fully fade, the snowy white world before them began to shake violently. The familiar surge of dizziness crashed over him.

—This journey was over.

The fantastical loop that began in Brilliant Stars.

The tangible reality that ended in White Snow Stars.

The next second, darkness descended.