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Lin Xian returned to Donghai City with Du Yao by his side, guiding her to the research institute he had arranged for her. “Technically, I bought it,” Lin Xian admitted as he led her through the clean, modern facilities, “but everything is officially listed under the institute’s name.” He gestured around the lab. “Director Gao Yan has been really helpful. He made sure that no one can trace this lab back to me or the Rhine Company. Even the funding seems to come from the institute itself.”

Du Yao gave Lin Xian a playful look, tilting her head slightly. “You must be pretty influential, huh?”

Lin Xian chuckled. “Let’s just say Director Gao appreciates my work. He’s helped me more than I expected.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. Next month, the Genius Club would meet again, and he knew Galileo would surely bring up the issue of solving hibernation memory loss. And Einstein? He would likely refuse to answer. Refusal would be as good as admitting the problem was tied to someone in the room.

If Du Yao made a breakthrough and published her results… well, that would make things too obvious. Best to proceed cautiously.

“Funding isn’t an issue here,” Lin Xian continued. “You’ll have everything you need. The whole lab is under your control. You can hire whoever you want, but remember—keep the research focused on the neural field. Don’t touch anything about solving memory loss during hibernation.”

“The notes on the Brain Neural Electric Helmet are quite thorough. Once you fill in the gaps and make a breakthrough, it should be straightforward to build.”

Du Yao nodded, her eyes serious. “Got it. Keep everything confidential. I’ll stick to the plan.”

“Besides,” Lin Xian added, smiling, “I won’t bore you with too many details. Breakthroughs in theory and direction often come from a sudden flash of inspiration, not from piling up resources.” He looked at her meaningfully. “Remember, you were the one who told me that. Newton’s three laws, the law of gravity—all of those came from his flashes of insight. The story about the apple might be exaggerated, but the idea behind it is real.”

“I’ll focus on the neural breakthroughs,” Du Yao replied with a small smile. “Anything else—that’s your responsibility.”

When they finished their tour of the lab, Du Yao leaned against one of the lab benches, her hands resting on the edge, and looked at Lin Xian. “Next year, on Tang Xin’s anniversary, will you come with me to visit her grave? I’d like to bring our results to her and share the good news.”

After all, this was about finishing what Tang Xin had started—filling in the last missing piece of the hibernation puzzle. Tang Xin would be happy, wouldn’t she?

Du Yao sighed, her gaze drifting to the window. “She was always happy, always smiling. I can’t remember her without that smile. She was such a cheerful person.”

“Of course,” Lin Xian promised. “I have a lot to say to Tang Xin, too. We’ll go together on her anniversary.”

It felt like everything was finally falling into place. Thanks to Tang Xin’s invisible hand, Lin Xian had earned Du Yao’s trust quicker than he could have hoped.

In their conversations, Lin Xian realized that what mattered most to Du Yao wasn’t his accomplishments or even Tang Xin’s regard for him—it was the fact that he kept his word. He had avenged Tang Xin and cleared her name. To Du Yao, that made him someone she could trust—someone who kept his promises.

With the research lab fully under Du Yao’s control, Lin Xian took a step back, waiting for her to achieve results. He had prepared himself for changes in the dream, but when he entered the dream, it remained unchanged—still the same stifling, oppressive Eighth Dream. Miss Da Vinci’s Saviour Company still ruled the future with its twisted management style.

No surprise there.

[The anchor point of no return hasn’t formed yet. Temporal elasticity hasn’t been reached, and the future is still in flux.]

He couldn’t let his guard down yet.

Lin Xian narrowed his eyes. He would just have to wait and see how Galileo posed his questions at the next Genius Club meeting, and how Einstein would respond. If anything unexpected happened, he would protect Du Yao at all costs—she was humanity’s only hope of solving the memory loss problem. Ŗ

When Lin Xian returned home, he found a giant dandelion-like fluff ball rolling around by the door.

After a few days away, VV, the Pomeranian, seemed even rounder—a fluffy little sphere.

“How did you get even fatter?” Lin Xian asked, amused.

On the couch, Zhao Ying Jun turned her head, smiling. “Maybe we’ve been feeding her too much lately. More people around to feed her, plus I’ve been home more often, so her feeding schedule’s more consistent.”

“The problem is,” Zhao Ying Jun added, “VV hasn’t shaken her old eating habits. When she was on one meal a day, she gobbled it down like she was starving. So now, well, here we are.”

Lin Xian nudged VV gently with his foot. The little dog, belly bulging, struggled to her feet, waddled over, and gave him a reproachful look.

“You really shouldn’t eat so much,” Lin Xian said seriously. “Your belly’s bigger than a pregnant lady’s.”

“Hey, not fair!” Zhao Ying Jun called him over. “Feel this—I’m in my second trimester, and my belly’s definitely starting to show. The doctor said I’ll start feeling the baby move soon.”

Lin Xian sat down beside her, placing his hand gently on her slightly rounded belly. It really was starting to grow. The feeling filled him with wonder—a sensation that was hard to put into words. Inside there…

There was actually a little life.

A life that, years from now, would grow up, would sit on this very couch with them.

“It’s hard to imagine,” Lin Xian mused. “You and I actually made a living, breathing person.”

“It sounds silly, but it really is incredible,” he continued. “Even with all our advances in science, we can’t artificially create true life. Yet for humans, it’s such a natural thing.”

“Natural, sure,” Zhao Ying Jun laughed softly, “but easy? Maybe for you. Not so much for me. Still, I’m lucky—the morning sickness hasn’t been too bad. Honestly, you just get to sit back and enjoy it all—the company, the baby, the lab. You’re a hands-off manager for life.”

“Is everything set with Du Yao? What’s your next goal?”

Lin Xian leaned back against the couch. “It’s to find Chu An Qing, of course. That’s my final goal—the promise I have to fulfill.”

“But right now, with how things are in the Genius Club, I can’t ask directly about the Millennial Stake or the Universal Constant 42. If I ask, everyone will know what I’m up to.” He sighed. “At the next meeting, I think I’ll ask about solving that future virus on the network—the one that can help bring VV back.”

The Pomeranian perked up at the sound of her name, her fluffy ears twitching as she looked towards Lin Xian, her eyes half-closed as if asking why she had been called.

“Not you,” Lin Xian laughed at the dog, amused. “I was talking about the superintelligent AI, VV. Poor thing must be tired of pretending to be just a cleaning bot.”

Zhao Ying Jun frowned thoughtfully. “Speaking of VV… Didn’t you mention a memory fragment with another VV? A guy with long hair and a beard? It’s strange, you know? In a way, it’s like there are three VVs, and it all started with our little dog.”

She paused, her brows furrowed. “But I still don’t get it. Aren’t the memory fragments limited to her timeline, from 2604 to 2624? If that bearded VV is from your time, how does that even work? Did you somehow travel to the future with a time machine, or did you go into hibernation and wake up six hundred years later?”

Lin Xian shook his head. “Neither of those. First off, the time machine can’t go to the future, so that’s not an option. And as for hibernation, why would I sleep for six hundred years? Even if I did, I doubt I’d end up looking so scruffy.” He gave a small shrug.

“Besides,” he added, “the biggest mystery to me right now is the blue-eyed version of me that appeared in the dream. If my eyes were blue, it means I went through some kind of time warp. But the time machine won’t be built until 2234, and the paradox of temporal rejection makes it impossible for me to have blue eyes and still look like myself.”

“It’s all so contradictory,” he sighed. “Especially when you add in Zhang Yu Qian’s montage-like dreams. None of it makes any sense.”

Zhao Ying Jun looked down, thinking deeply. “I think Zhang Yu Qian’s dream might be connected to what you saw in your dream. At the very least, they’re linked somehow. I can’t believe they’re entirely separate.”

“After all, the Millennial Stake is such a stable thing. For centuries, each Stake looks identical—born and dying at the exact same moment, down to the second,” Zhao Ying Jun continued. “So it makes sense that the Stake’s dreams would be connected too.”

Lin Xian let out a deep breath. “I think so too. But where’s the logic that connects Zhang Yu Qian’s dream to mine?” He suddenly had an idea. It reminded him of those exercises from elementary school—the ones where you had to make a sentence out of a set of words.

Maybe that was worth a shot.

Lin Xian reached under the coffee table and grabbed a pen and paper. He wrote down the keywords from Zhang Yu Qian’s dream and his own dream:

Explosion, white light, mushroom cloud, newspaper, 1952, fire, Einstein, Lin Xian with blue eyes.

“Let’s play a game,” Lin Xian said, smiling at Zhao Ying Jun. “Try to make a sentence using all these keywords. Make it as clear as possible.”

Zhao Ying Jun nodded, catching on. “That could help us think it through.” She stared at the list of words, thought for a few moments, and began. “In 1952, Einstein triggered a massive explosion, creating a huge mushroom cloud and white light. Everything was on fire—newspapers, houses, cities, even Lin Xian, who had blue eyes.”

“Not bad,” Lin Xian chuckled, “but it makes Einstein sound like the villain and me the unfortunate victim.”

Zhao Ying Jun raised an eyebrow. “Well, I know you. You’re not the type to blow up an atomic bomb. Would you really set off a bomb just to destroy a city, or to kill someone, or to achieve some goal?”

“Of course not.” Lin Xian shook his head. “Even if it were a ‘trolley problem’ situation, where success comes with sacrifices, I can’t imagine anyone being important enough to need an atomic bomb to kill them.”

“If someone can be killed with an atomic bomb, they could be taken down by a simple handgun,” he reasoned. “And if they can’t be killed with a handgun, then no bomb—atomic or otherwise—is going to do the trick. In the end, we’re all just flesh and blood. Whether it’s Einstein or Tyson, a gun doesn’t care.”

Zhao Ying Jun nodded, seeing his point. She straightened up, trying again. “A disaster struck—white light, explosions, and fire spread across different timelines—1952, where Einstein lived; some future time with Lin Xian; and the time when Zhang Yu Qian was reading a newspaper. All of it was consumed in the white light.”

“That’s interesting,” Lin Xian said approvingly. “I like the logic. But I’m not sure the white light Zhang Yu Qian saw is the same as the one at 00:42 in my dream. The one in my dream came fast—essentially at the speed of light.”

“When I saw that white light, the world ended in an instant. There wasn’t even a moment to see the aftermath—no fire, no explosions. That’s why I think Zhang Yu Qian’s white light was just that—the light from a mushroom cloud explosion. It didn’t have the destructive power of the one in my dream.”

“Otherwise, how would she even have the chance to see it? At 00:42, the light wiped everything out instantly. There was no ‘next second.\'” He propped his chin on his hand, deep in thought. “Maybe we need to dig deeper. Blue eyes mean time travel. So time travel is an implied keyword—even if we haven’t said it out loud, we have to consider it.”

“So ‘Lin Xian with blue eyes’ could be split into three ideas: time travel, Lin Xian, and no temporal rejection,” Zhao Ying Jun said with a small smile. “Makes sense. You’ve experienced time travel, so you’d know best.”

“Don’t make me do all the guessing,” Lin Xian replied. “Give it a go yourself.”

“Alright.” Zhao Ying Jun closed her eyes. “Let me think.” After a few seconds, images flashed through her mind like a slideshow.

In 1952, Henry Dawson painted Einstein’s portrait. The great physicist looked full of regret and despair, as if asking, “Does humanity have a future?” Zhang Yu Qian spun around with her camera on a lawn. Chu An Qing jumped from 20,000 meters high, holding a spacetime particle trap, wishing everyone goodnight beside the campfire’s warm glow.

The long-haired, bearded man—VV—wielded a blade swiftly, unstoppable, only to pause when faced with a safe’s combination, hesitating at the sight of a young child.

At the Genius Club, an elderly figure wearing an Einstein mask rose from the high platform and pointed a finger to the sky, promising to create a better future for humanity.

An isolated figure—Yellow Finch—turned to smile at the Little Mermaid Statue, before collapsing into Lin Xian’s arms, transforming into blue stardust. A weak and distant hand brushed against his cheek, imploring him not to leave Yu Xi.

Yu Xi, falling back against a powerful temporal assassin, her eyes glimmering faintly blue as she cried, “Daddy!” before rushing toward the assassin with blue eyes, disintegrating into blue snowflakes over Donghai City.

Pushing open the door to Big Cat Face’s room in the Second Dream—walls and ceiling covered in the number 42. No crack or crevice untouched. Each “42” interwoven like a spider’s web, yet not a single line overlapping.

Temporal particles, glowing blue, leaping from one timeline to another, bringing with them energy foreign to this spacetime—hope for a future yet to come.

00:42 in the bathroom, Lin Xian looked up from the mirror, a small smile playing on his lips. He held a finger to his lips in a “shush” gesture, then placed an invitation to the Genius Club on the sink.

All these real and unreal scenes flickered through Zhao Ying Jun’s mind before she slowly opened her eyes.

She looked down at the scattered words on the paper—a chaotic mess with no apparent connection. She spoke softly: “Lin Xian traveled back to 1952, his eyes turning blue. He found a man wearing an Einstein mask and tried to solve the mystery of the Millennial Stake, which led to a temporal explosion as powerful as an atomic bomb. In the white light, everything was reduced to nothingness.”