At four in the morning, Manman scratched at the door like a little cat. 

Kou Tong must have been sound asleep. He rolled over, buried his head in his pillow, and didn’t budge. But Huang Jinchen opened a pair of flashing eyes, just as if he had only been resting all night and hadn’t gone entirely to sleep. 

He turned his head to look at Kou Tong, who had his back to him, then quietly got up and opened the door. Manman was hugging a big doll with one leg dragging on the ground, wearing fluffy pajamas, her face deathly pale in the dim light. Added to her faint expression, it was a little eerie. 

Huang Jinchen closed the door behind him and squatted down. “What’s wrong?” 

Manman rubbed her eyes and said, “I think someone’s coming.” 

Huang Jinchen raised his eyebrows. He knew that this girl was a super radar, so he softly asked, “From which direction?” 

“Over there?” Manman raised her hand and pointed. 

Huang Jinchen glanced up in the direction she was pointing, then roughly stroked her hair. “Got it. Good girl, go to sleep.” 

Manman said, “OK.” 

But her feet didn’t move. Huang Jinchen asked, “What now?” 

Manman earnestly asked him, “Was your confession successful?” 

Huang Jinchen eyebrows went up, feeling that she was once again about to say something shocking. Indeed, Manman said, “So did you two rumple the bedding?” 

Huang Jinchen: “…” 

Manman’s line of sight lowered slightly, pausing strangely on Huang Jinchen’s underbelly. Then she said, “But isn’t rumpling the bedding for making babies?” 

Huang Jinchen felt that he was a mere mortal trembling before the mighty imagination of the divine Manman. He quickly picked up her arm, then half-pulled, half-pushed her to Kou Tong’s mom’s bedroom, pulling her little braid, already rubbed into a mess by her pillow, into a chicken coop. Imploringly, he said, “Enough, little treasure. Wanting a man to have a waist as thin as a willow bough is one thing, but you’ve simply turned it into two men having a child. Your tastes are even more hardcore than that big treasure’s. Go right to sleep, I’m begging you.” 

Manman clung to the doorframe. Not letting him off to the end, she said consolingly, “Though in books it says that a baby grows in its mom’s uterus. You don’t have one, do you?” 

Huang Jinchen looked into her eyes full of the thirst for knowledge and bitterly said, “No, I don’t.” 

“I see.” Manman nodded. Then she tilted her head and considered. She said, “It also says in books that if you can’t have babies, you get ‘set aside.’ So are you going to get ‘set aside’ after this?” 

Huang Jinchen covered her little head with one hand and shoved her through the crack in the door into Kou Tong’s mom’s bedroom. Then he closed the door and said to himself, “Little whelp…” 

The little whelp was truly too frightening. It would be better to be set aside than to raise something like this. 

Then Huang Jinchen shuddered, catching up. 

But why should I be “set aside?” he thought. Fuck…

He silently put his gun on his back and went out, passing through the whole city at a speed and trajectory unimaginable to the deeply sleeping people, like a ghost wandering the human world in the darkest hours before dawn. 

He came to a comparatively tall rooftop and through his telescopic sight looked from a distance in the direction Manman had pointed. This was precisely the direction of the nameless island. There was a big bridge linking it to the mainland, but for some reason, the bridge had suddenly collapsed. There were many cars surrounding it, probably workers investigating the incident. In the ruins of the bridge, a tower had gone up out of nowhere. 

There was a gigantic crown on top of the tower, hanging there ready to fall. There was a small piece of cloud over it, as if coordinating with it; it only took notice of the small space where the tower was, constantly throwing down lighting. Each time, it hit the tip of the tower, turning it into a pillar supporting the sky, like a high quality incense stick. 

The strangest thing was that there were also two people on top of it, a man and a woman, brightly dressed and standing on the “incense stick.” At first glance they seemed like dummies, but Huang Jinchen adjusted his telescopic sight slightly and found that they were actually two moving, living people. 

“Shit,” Huang Jinchen said, “this isn’t an illusion, is it?” 

He remembered the position, planning to go back. But just as he was getting ready to get up, the two people standing on the tower suddenly jumped together from the tip of the tower surrounded by flashing lightning and rolling thunder. The surface of the sea was black, like a huge snare. 

The next day, the morning news reported on the tower that had miraculously arisen. This thing had disappeared before daybreak, and the bridge also seemed intact. The experts on TV asserted that this was a rare mirage appearing in a coastal city. 

The experts were worthy of being experts—in a nutshell, who knew how the repair workers who had raised a hue and cry at the seaside were going to explain the broken bridge they had seen. 

“What you saw last night was the Tower,” said Yao Shuo, examining the data. “This card is supposed to indicate a sudden unexpected event, a drastic change, likely something bad. It makes people uneasy.” 

From next door came Kou Tong’s voice put through a voice changer. After the “reward offering” ad had been published, people had started to call him one after another. Sometimes there seemed to be some merit in what they said, and sometimes it sounded like total nonsense. Kou Tong seemed to have suddenly taken up police work. Each day, he and Huang Jinchen split up and went out several times to verify the information, though up to this point they had come up empty-handed. 

“So…what kind of change does this represent?” He Xiaozhi asked carefully. 

“It may be a signal.” Yao Shuo analyzed, “For example, that girl Kou Tong mentioned might be up to something. According to how they have appeared, we can come to two conclusions now. First, the imagined cards have their own natures. Second, they can’t violate this conscious subject’s orders. Judging from the natures of the cards that spoke to Kou Tong, they may be passive. In other words, they’re likely not of one mind with their master. This is probably a hint the tarot cards are giving us.” 

“You mean that that little girl may be preparing to attack us?” Huang Jinchen asked. 

Yao Shuo took off his reading glasses and nodded. “Right. As for that, soon I’ll be able to give an analysis of the other side’s possible battle strategy according to the information we currently have.” 

“Fine, old chief. Thank you for your hard work.” Kou Tong, having hung up the phone, came in. He picked up his tossed aside jacket and said, “I’m going out. Someone just called and said he’d seen the thing I want to find.” 

Concerning the controller, the explanation Kou Tong had given was that he needed to find a positioning control device that came with the system, with which they could analyze the portion of influence each conscious subject had over the space, then find a way to control the little terrorist girl’s unusual powers. 

He Xiaozhi stuttered, “D-dr. Kou, be careful.” 

Kou Tong smiled at him, then turned and left. 

“I’m also going out,” Huang Jinchen suddenly said to He Xiaozhi after a while had passed. “Send me to see the old man.” 

Though he was always smiling, for some reason, He Xiaozhi was always a little afraid of him. He quickly agreed and uncovered a mirror nailed to the wall with a curtain over it. He closed his eyes and gently touched the edge of the mirror. After a while, Lao Tian’s agritouristy little yard appeared in front of them. 

Since learning that he had this useful point, He Xiaozhi had been practically like a teenager who had found a secret book of martial arts. Earnest people were the most undefeatable. Apart from the basic necessities of life and occasional attacks of hysteria, he spent the rest of his time practicing with mirrors. In only a few days, he had already honed his skills to perfection. Like a real Anywhere Door, he could take people all kinds of places on demand. 

Kou Tong had said, and he probably understood for himself, that this was a path to save himself. As long as a person’s biological instincts hadn’t died out, before the conscious mind could notice, they would unconsciously clutch at that last straw. 

As soon as Huang Jinchen set foot in Lao Tian’s static time axis, the puppy Huanhuan happily came running towards him. It didn’t put on the brakes and bumped into his shin. It yelled “Awoo!” Its front paws left the ground, and it sat back on its butt. 

Huang Jinchen looked at the white-furred puppy and stroked his chin, thinking that while it perhaps wasn’t purebred, it definitely had some Samoyed blood, or else it couldn’t have been so stupid. 

Lao Tian, carrying a big pair of pruning shears over his shoulder, came over. “You’re here? Sit down inside.” 

Huang Jinchen didn’t know how many moments their “several days” had been for him. Or perhaps Lao Tian had forgotten about time. In this eternal crevice, the flow of time had become something meaningless. 

After only a single chance meeting, Huang Jinchen felt as though he and Lao Tian were ordinary neighbors, the sort of neighbors who were very well acquainted, going back and forth to borrow oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar all day, coming to sit with each other for a bit when they had time, amiable and natural. 

Perhaps it was because he was peaceful… Thinking this, Huang Jinchen silently followed Lao Tian into his little log cabin. An instructor had told him once that when a person’s heart truly became peaceful, nothing in the outside world could make his state of mind sway or easily make him feel astonished. 

If a sniper could reach that level of training, he would become a god. 

In legend, 11235 was just such a god, but Huang Jinchen knew that he wasn’t; Lao Tian was. 

When he felt himself spurred on by Lao Tian’s behavior to relax along with him, he knew that he had been influenced by him. 

“Come, sit here.—Huanhuan, don’t bite our visitor’s pant leg.” Lao Tian gently moved Huanhuan’s tail with the tip of his foot, and Huanhuan behaved. It went in a few circles chasing its tail, then settled down at the old man’s feet. “What made you think of coming to see me today?” 

“Well…” Huang Jinchen thought for a long time. He also wasn’t very clear on what had suddenly possessed him to ask He Xiaozhi to send him here. After a while, he said all of a sudden, “Well, I wanted to ask you something. Are you on good terms with your wife?” 

Lao Tian stared. His smile faded a little. Then he softly said, “She passed on before me. She’s waiting for me over there.

“Back then, while we weren’t in an arranged marriage, it wasn’t like young people these days, going all over to meet up. Most people were introduced by family elders or at work,” Lao Tian said. “And there was no question of any particular attachment. When people got married, they didn’t understand anything. Before, when a man was with a woman, they wouldn’t say much to each other. They were rather shy, and there was no question of finding anything out. Then they’d muddle along together, clashing and squabbling every day. As time went on, it was like two stones shoved together, wearing away until you were about the same shape.” 

Huang Jinchen listened seriously. 

Lao Tian smiled. “It was different from how it is for you now. At the time, we were particular about ‘settling down and having a family.’ When we got to a certain age, we would find a wife. Everyone did it. You young people, you have more freedom. If you meet someone to your liking, you get married, and if it doesn’t work out, you divorce. If you don’t want to have a household, then you can just not get married, and no one will think it’s anything out of the ordinary.” 

Huang Jinchen put in, “Being tied to another person for your whole life, the cost of breaking in would be pretty high. People value efficiency now.” 

Lao Tian considered it, then nodded and said, “That’s the reasoning. But, in fact, there are also things to regret.” 

Huang Jinchen turned his head to look at him. Lao Tian said, “In fact, it’s like this. No matter how much you like a person, you still have to spend a period of time getting used to each other. No matter how pleasing a person’s looks are, you have to spend time together, share in all of life’s daily necessities—you like your food salty, I like my food bland, so we argue it out a few times before slowly settling down. Spending your lives together, many young people think it restricts them. But in fact, no one knows without having done it. And even if you have, if you haven’t done it to the end, there are still those who don’t know.” 

He extended an emaciated finger and wiped a water droplet off the wooden table. He said, “Two people have to be together, through wind and rain, through ups and down, even through separations and reunions, for fifty or sixty years. When one person is already in a coffin waiting, you’ll remember, and it’ll seem like your whole life, no matter where you went, during the good and the bad, this old great-grandmother was always mixed up in it. At that point, you’ll understand whether spending your life with her was worth it or not.” 

Having him everywhere for my whole life—Huang Jinchen repeated this to himself, ignoring the words “old great-grandmother.” Then he suddenly said, somewhat at a loss, “Oh, yes, actually, I actually wanted to ask you, is there a person who, when he touches you, makes you feel like your scalp is bristling?” 

Lao Tian blinked. 

Huang Jinchen said, “Not that kind of…going through the motions with a lover, resolving physiological problems sort of thing… All right, I’m sure you haven’t gone through the motions with a lover, but you’re a man, you still must have had some urges sometimes, right? But it’s a little different from physiological stimulation. Of course I know that it’s also an adrenaline rush… It’s just that that rush is split into two stages. The first is an ordinary physiological reaction, and the second is when you realize who the person in front of you is, then you suddenly…”