Huang Jinchen reached out to touch the wall. He looked at the floor and determined that there were no traces of renovation. He knew that however great Kou Tong’s magic powers were, he still couldn’t move everything out of the apartment in the time it took to turn your head. 

Huang Jinchen circled the apartment a few times, thinking that Kou Tong must be behind some mirror, watching him, no doubt with a vulgar smile of schadenfreude on his face. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and sat down in a corner. He raised his head to look at the ceiling and found that he had been a little befuddled by beauty. His IQ was falling lower and lower. He had actually let himself be thrown out so obediently. 

Huang Jinchen sat quietly for a while, visualizing—would he grab Kou Tong and spank him, or peel off his clothes and tie him to the bed? 

After fantasizing this and that for a while, he figured that if he went on like this, he would get a nosebleed. At last he felt that his mind was a little more balanced, so Huang Jinchen said to himself, OK, I can begin objective consideration. 

At first glance, this seemed like Kou Tong moving the spatial dimension. 

In the final war with the scientific terrorist organization Utopia, Huang Jinchen himself, the ultimate planted agent, had been a vital figure. Of course he knew what the evil genius had been thinking at the time—he had wanted to move the whole space humanity lived in to another dimension and remake all the rules. 

But right now, he could basically eliminate moving spaces, because Kou Tong, the Projector’s planner, had said that in a stable projection, there could only be one spatial frequency, or else it would be very unstable and easily collapse. 

So the problem had definitely come in from the unexpected additional time axis. 

Kou Tong had used some complex calculation to use the mirrors to stuff in the whole apartment. Of course it wasn’t the mirrors that were effective; what was effective was the little bastard He Xiaozhi, who didn’t want to live. He could by some means link the two time axes and thus thread the needle to fold space. 

Huang Jinchen folded his hands together and silently recited, “Thread the needle…” 

Kou Tong had mentioned “groups.” This is fairly elementary mathematical concept. In ordinary terms, it means a set and a binary operation that compose a particular thing, such that the elements in the set maintain an association according to the operation. Furthermore, each element can be used to find a position corresponding to it through an identity element. Using a definition operation will turn up this magical identity element. 

Simply put, if you said the “group” was a special space, using an identity element and a mathematical operation, you could use each point in it to find a corresponding point; they would fit together seamlessly, no more and no less. 

Huang Jinchen didn’t know this simple but beautiful concept. He only used his intuition to understand what Kou Tong had just done. 

He thought that Kou Tong had used He Xiaozhi as a “thread” to “sew” the little space of the apartment into a closed loop after folding the time axes. So, for someone on the outside, Kou Tong’s house was hidden. 

Extrapolating in accordance with this logic, Huang Jinchen knew that, using He Xiaozhi, two time axes, and a pair of mirrors, could only “sew up.” It would be hard to make something that, like a human heart valve, only opened in one direction—and furthermore, Kou Tong couldn’t keep everyone locked in the house. 

In other words, since he had been able to get out just now, then there must be an invisible door he could use to “go back.” 

Huang Jinchen dusted off his butt and stood up—for him, there was no one in the world who couldn’t be killed, and thus no place he couldn’t infiltrate—never mind that this was a place he had just walked out of and even helped arrange. This lowered the difficulty level several points. 

Huang Jinchen began to pace the apartment. If Kou Tong could by some means see him, he would have found that each step Huang Jinchen took followed the sequence in which he had positioned the mirrors. Just now, under Kou Tong’s orders, they had placed dozens of mirrors in a chaotic bustle of activity. During this, there had been a dozen times when after arranging a mirror, Kou Tong had changed the positions. But Huang Jinchen remembered it all without any error. 

He slowly followed the sequence of mirrors to the last one—in the bathroom. The bathroom had had a mirror to start with. Kou Tong had adjusted its angle. Huang Jinchen tilted his head and examined the wall where there ought to have been a mirror. Then he raised a hand and pressed it to the wall, slowly turning the angle, his gaze looking in the direction his palm was facing. 

His gaze fell on a tap—there ought to have been a sink there. Huang Jinchen breathed a sigh of relief and said to himself, “It’s a good thing you aren’t crude to the highest degree, darling. You haven’t made me flush myself down the toilet.” 

He turned on the tap above the sink. The water flowed, making a small puddle on the floor. Huang Jinchen put his hand under the tap, then took it out, but his palm wasn’t wet at all. 

The puddle slowly grew, reflecting him. Huang Jinchen considered, then stepped in. He stepped into emptiness—he knew he had figured right. 

His vision went dark, then light. In the moment before his pupils adjusted, Huang Jinchen instinctively stuck to the wall, his spine tense, like a wild animal that could pounce at any moment, showing its fangs. The hand that seemed mystical when holding a gun reached half into his pocket. Then he heard clapping and a child’s laughter and finally relaxed. 

Kou Tong was leaning on the bathroom door. Smiling at the timer on his phone, he said, “Six minutes, thirty-five seconds. Master Huang, I’ll be your diehard fan from now on!” 

Huang Jinchen bared his teeth at him in a false smile, thinking, Very good—never mind using me as an experiment and making me go in circles around the apartment, you also time me, and you’re smiling like spring on earth—very good. 

With no sense of danger, Kou Tong said, “I’d heard that Expert Huang was always elusive, able to get into and out of any place. It seems that I’ve done my ‘concealing’ pretty well. When you had seen the process of setting it up, it could still hinder you for over six minutes…” 

“Four and a half,” Huang Jinchen interrupted him. 

Kou Tong blinked. 

Huang Jinchen suddenly stepped forward, came up in front of him, lowered his voice, and said, “I used nearly two minutes of time to think about…” 

His voice became lower and lower until it was nearly a whisper—because he had seen Kou Tong’s mom standing amid a series of fixed mirrors, saying in astonishment, “Why have you put so many mirrors up on the walls?” 

Before Kou Tong could turn his head and spin his mom some lies, Huang Jinchen hugged him around the waist. Kou Tong’s scalp bristled. He instinctively noticed that this bastard had been brought to fever pitch; he was going to make a major play. 

As expected, Kou Tong’s mom’s eyes opened as wide as apricot stones, looking at Huang Jinchen as though watching a panda disco dancing. 

While Huang Jinchen wasn’t really an “er-pang,” he regularly carried a gun over his shoulder, and they were considerably wider than Scholar Kou’s. In this posture, he seemed to have wrapped Kou Tong’s whole form in his embrace. He looked past Kou Tong’s shoulder, using a profound and suffering gaze to meet Kou Tong’s mom’s eyes. As he stealthily competed to suppress Kou Tong’s resistance, he maintained perfect lead actor posture. 

“Auntie,” Huang Jinchen said with deep feeling, “I’m sorry. You’re young and beautiful, but I can’t call you big sister.” 

Kou Tong’s mom opened her mouth, found that it was very hard for her to make an appropriate reaction, then closed it again. 

Kou Tong’s struggles were unsuccessful. He stamped on Huang Jinchen’s heel. “Mom, he’s being hysterical. Ignore him!”

“I’m perfectly clear-headed!” Huang Jinchen transformed into a shouting romantic male lead, using lines out of a novel to put on a melodramatic show. 

“Auntie, I’m sorry. I love him. I’ve restrained myself for a long time and haven’t said anything, but just now, when we were apart for six and a half minutes, I felt that I hadn’t seen him for a lifetime. That feeling, which nearly drove me mad, told me that I had to say it aloud, even if I couldn’t get your approval!” 

Kou Tong’s mom was buffeted by wild winds, like an innocent bystander who had walked into the wrong room and been mistakenly struck by lightning. She said, “…Huh?” 

“I can’t let anyone else have him, because each time he looks at me, he takes a piece of my soul.” Master Huang’s performance was worthy of a subway folk artist. Line after line came out of his mouth. Kou Tong twisted his heel into the back of Huang Jinchen’s leg, making Master Huang’s expression of suffering even more real. “Over time, I’ve felt that it’s become harder and harder to keep my soul in my body. If I don’t see him, there will be nothing left of me but a walking corpse.”

Kou Tong at last pushed him away. Flying into a rage, he said, “Huang Jinchen! Don’t be…” 

He was going to say, Don’t be like that! It’s just a joke, and you’re announcing it to my mom!

Instead of which, Huang Jinchen quickly put a hand over his mouth and clapped the other hand to his bosom. “No… Tongtong, don’t say it, I know you can’t accept me now, I know that you…love only freedom and fun, but can you give me time? Let me take care of you, let me follow you… Even if you love someone else, I…I won’t interfere with your freedom again. If you go out with someone else, I won’t secretly tag along again or suddenly kick down your hotel room door… But let me explain! That time, I really couldn’t control myself…” 

This time, Kou Tong’s mom reacted quickly. She frowned thunderously. “Wait, what hotel are you talking about? Who was he going out with?” 

Kou Tong, looking hard-pressed, glared at Huang Jinchen. He thought, Fine, Er-Pang, now it’s on.

Huang Jinchen lowered his head, seeming deeply grieved. In reality, where no one could see, he was grinning evilly. He thought, Kou Darling, it serves you right. 

Then he adjusted his mental state and raised his head again, once again profoundly emotional and pained. He shook his head and bitterly said, “Auntie, don’t worry, it’s fine. I love him, I love him with my whole soul. For the sake of my soul, I can wait, I can endure. No matter how far he wants to go, it’s all right. Just as long as he remembers me, leaves me a small spot in his heart, and in the future…comes back when he’s tired of playing.” 

Manman ran over and shook Kou Tong’s mom by the arm. Using the wrong generational address, she said, “Auntie, auntie, this is the story of a heartless man and an infatuated woman, isn’t it?” 

Kou Tong blankly said, “Manman, starting today, you can only watch news broadcasts and read the People’s Daily. All cartoons and TV dramas are forbidden. Thank you.” 

Kou Tong’s mom looked at Kou Tong. She took one look at Huang Jinchen and thought that it wouldn’t be right for her not to say something, but her mind was a blank. She didn’t know what to say. So she lowered her head and met Manman’s eyes for a while. At last she turned her head and said, “OK, well, I’ll see whether the congee in the pot is ready.” 

She walked two steps, then retreated. Pointing to Kou Tong, she said, “You, come here. What’s all this about the hotel?”