Lao Tian was looking at Huang Jinchen with a very peculiar expression. Huanhuan jumped onto a chair and put its two front paws on the table, stuck out its tongue, and also looked at Huang Jinchen with its big, clueless eyes. 

The gazes of the man and the dog pulled Huang Jinchen back from his confusion, and he at last realized that he had done something stupid. 

Then Lao Tian laughed. Huang Jinchen quickly said, “Uncle, just treat it like I was raving in my sleep.”

Lao Tian stroked Huanhuan’s head and said, “My younger son once asked me the same question as you, though that was when he was still an adolescent.” 

The corners of Huang Jinchen’s mouth twitched. He wanted to explain that he actually wasn’t a youth, but then he thought that this would be too stupid to say and make it seem like he was trying to cover up being a virgin, so he held back and said nothing, abandoning himself to hearing this elder’s enlightening remarks. 

Lao Tian said, “There’s an expression from Yuan dynasty theater that I think has some merit. You can hear it out.” 

Huang Jinchen, his face paralyzed, said, “I’m done for. I won’t understand it. I only know ‘Moonlight in front of my bed, two pairs of shoes on the floor¹.’”

“All your life you did not yearn; beginning to yearn, you yearn desperately².”  Lao Tian ignored him, slowly reciting while watching the puppy lose interest in the lost overaged youth Huang Jinchen and start to chew on the tablecloth. “Sometimes, a person will go his whole life without understanding what these words mean. Whether it’s little girls who spend every day longing for romance and love, or people like you who think you’re wise guys because you’ve had experience and don’t believe in the speeches in plays anymore, none of you actually understand what kind of feeling that is.” 

Huang Jinchen thought about it, then said, “I’m not a wise guy. That’s Kou Tong.” 

“I mean that when it comes time to say something, there are people who will never believe that there’s such a thing as one’s heart missing a beat, and there are people who think that there’s such a thing as love at first sight between people. In fact, right and wrong are reversed. If you believe it, but you never meet such a person in your life, then you’ve believed the wrong thing. But if you don’t believe it, and one day there really is a person who makes you feel that you don’t know what to do with yourself, then you’ll understand the meaning of ‘beginning to yearn, you yearn desperately.’” Lao Tian said, “There are some things in this world that are very mysterious. They can’t be explained with your theories, and they’re hard to grasp. You have to taste them yourself to know their flavor. You’ve tasted it now, haven’t you?” 

Huang Jinchen thought that the expression “the old are immoral” had something in it. At least he felt that Lao Tian had hit the nail on the head with him. So he asked, “How do you think this thing happens?” 

“Who knows?” Lao Tian was amused. “Young man, let me ask you. In this life, people have so many medicines and so many health preserving methods to take precaution against all kinds of maladies. There are so many safety measures to take precaution against all kinds of accidents. Why is it that when we cling to life so strictly, are so cautious, there still comes a day when every person dies?” 

Huang Jinchen thought about it, then answered, “All animals have set lifespans, and any machine will also be scrapped after a hundred eighty years.” 

“You can change the parts,” Lao Tian said. “At least, that’s what I used to think. Science and technology are so developed now. I’ve heard that even genes can be casually transplanted, so how much trouble can an organ be? It used to be that organs were transplanted from living bodies, and now there are even man-made ones. Why can’t you just fix whatever’s broken? Couldn’t a person live forever, then?” 

The words “even genes can be casually transplanted” made the smile suddenly vanish from Huang Jinchen’s face. His expression dimmed. The puppy chewing the tablecloth on the other side of the table seemed to sense something. It shivered and gave Huang Jinchen a slightly fearful and probing look, then cried “woo-woo” and jumped into Lao Tian’s arms, not playing anymore. 

“That’s right,” he said in an unusually flat tone, “even genes can be casually transplanted…” 

“But it won’t do. People can’t live forever without growing old.” Lao Tian seemed not to have noticed anything unusual. He continued, “Think about it. Why can the element of carbon compose coal or diamonds, and also compose flesh and blood? Assuming there’s a scientific explanation for that, then why, as luck would have it, can it compose an animal like a human being? There are so many elements in a human body. The elements turn into molecules, then into cells of so many types, and if anything goes wrong, it won’t work. Where did such a big engineering project come from? Even if you knew these things, if someone gave you the same materials, you still couldn’t change them into a person. At most you could build a body, but it wouldn’t be a person…” 

“Dr. Kou says that psychology is actually a branch of physiology. You can discuss this question with him,” Huang Jinchen casually interrupted him, a little impatient. 

Lao Tian took no notice of his rudeness, only looked at him with an expression of near perfect understanding and said, “Psychologists aren’t all-powerful. No expert is all-powerful—because life itself is a miracle.

“You shouldn’t wonder ‘Where did this come from?’ for the same reason you shouldn’t wonder about questions like ‘How did humans evolve?’, ‘Why am I me and not some other person?’, ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’” Finally, Lao Tian concluded, “There’s no meaning in them, because even if there are two time axes, a person can still never find his way back. You’re only the you that you are now.” 

Huang Jinchen’s gaze fixed on Lao Tian. His brows were a little coarse, like thick brush strokes. His gaze seemed to have weight, with a peculiar forcefulness in it that made it hard to raise your head. Huanhuan straightened its neck, the nervous tip of its tail quivering. It gave an out of tune “arf!” But Lao Tian met his eyes with a calm expression—as if he had attained the peak of spiritual cultivation and had nothing to doubt and nothing to dread. 

After a while, Huang Jinchen at last nodded slowly and said, “It does sound reasonable.” 

Then he laughed. “But why do I feel like you’re using a big pile of circular reasoning to put one over on me?” 

Huanhuan tilted its head and looked at his smile, slowly calming down. Its tail stopped quivering, too. Its expression was a little doubtful. Huang Jinchen reached out his arm and patted it on the head. It carefully drew close and sniffed him all over with the tip of its nose, as if deciding whether this was someone it knew. 

When Huang Jinchen got back, he found that Kou Tong was already home. He felt he hadn’t spent much time sitting with the old man, and over here it was already dark. As expected, it was easy to cross in time a little when bouncing back and forth between the two time axes. Kou Tong was just in the study alone, fooling around with a little black box. 

The others didn’t recognize this thing, but Huang Jinchen saw at a glance that this was just like the thing Kou Tong had dug up from under the tree the first time he had entered the big boiler. It was this place’s control box. 

But looking at Kou Tong’s grave expression, he knew that things weren’t going to be so easy. 

“What is it?” Huang Jinchen asked. 

“I don’t know.” Kou Tong opened the lid of the control box and examined it closely. “I found this with an old man who sells second-hand furnishings. I don’t know what’s going on. It seems it was given to him as an old household appliance, but there seems to be something missing… Jinchen, give me a screwdriver.” 

Huang Jinchen gave an affirmative, performed a visual evaluation of the type of screw, picked up a screwdriver from the open toolbox next to him, and passed it over. Kou Tong took it without looking up. He misjudged the distance and grabbed Huang Jinchen’s hand, then groped around for the screwdriver. He pulled twice but couldn’t pull it out of Huang Jinchen’s grasp, so he gave him a doubtful look. 

“Ah… Oh, here.” Huang Jinchen recovered and quickly let go. When Kou Tong wasn’t paying attention, he looked at the place he had accidentally grabbed with a very complicated expression. 

It really is different, Huang Jinchen thought seriously. How can the place he touched feel so different? 

Kou Tong unscrewed the lid of the control box. Inside were wires overlapping with coils and coils linked to microchips. Kou Tong poked around a little and started to frown. “The core memory chip is gone.” 

“Ah. What?” Huang Jinchen was still immersed in that inexplicable problem. His IQ had fallen off. He hadn’t heard anything Kou Tong had said. 

Luckily, Kou Tong was facing a grave problem and didn’t notice Master Huang’s short-circuit. He very carefully took the blueprints from the enciphered strongbox and compared the control box’s components bit by bit.  He investigated once more. Then he twirled the screwdriver in his fingers and dropped it onto the table with a clatter. 

Huang Jinchen sat across from him. Kou Tong pushed aside the topmost wire. “Look, this is the central processor. There are six microchips in all, and the most important one is the core memory chip. It stores all the equations the projection space is generated from. Without that, we have no way of knowing the route we got here by, and we can’t establish contact with outside machinery… Why would it be this piece that’s lost? What the hell.” 

Huang Jinchen forced his attention to focus on this crucial box. “…It probably couldn’t have been taken by someone on purpose. Supposing there was such a person, if they wanted to prevent you from getting the control box, they could have taken the whole thing. It’s not big. There’s no inconvenience in carrying it around.” 

Kou Tong sighed in irritation and leaned back in his chair. He made a fist, and his knuckles cracked—without the core memory chip, even if he was a celestial being, he still wouldn’t be able to calculate the complex formula that had shaped this world, never mind making contact with the outside. He might as well not have the control box. 

If it really was as Huang Jinchen had said, and someone had inadvertently carried the chip off, wouldn’t such a small and fragile thing have been lost? Wouldn’t it have been damaged? Perhaps the person who had taken it was only a very curious youth who had taken it to put into some electric-powered little automobile, then discovered that it gave no reaction and thrown it away. Perhaps… 

“Is there a backup?” Huang Jinchen asked. 

Kou Tong shook his head and feebly said, “This is the backup. The real control box was damaged because I lost my privileges when I was pulled in as a conscious subject.” 

Huang Jinchen also didn’t know what to do—he wasn’t a tech genius, and right now, all of his attention was focused on “something else.” In fact, he wasn’t very worried about whether he could get out or not. 

Kou Tong sat there for a long time thinking it over without being able to come up with any idea. So he took a deep breath and leapt out of his chair. Sweeping away his dejection, he energetically said, “It’s fine, this will sort itself out. At any rate, General Zhong and the others will find out the problem with the Projector sooner or later, and the base’s technicians don’t get paid to sit around doing nothing. I’ll think of something else…” 

He opened the study door and yelled towards the kitchen, “I’m starving! Mom, what’s for dinner?” 

Kou Tong had just been biting his own finger, Huang Jinchen thought silently, watching his figure. After a long period of observation, Huang Jinchen had found that Kou Tong in fact didn’t have any fidgety little gestures. Perhaps because of his area of expertise, his control over his own body language had always been much greater than that of others, until just now. 

The moment Kou Tong had thrown himself back in his chair, Huang Jinchen had seen irrepressible worry on his face. This worry had made him bite his own fingertip until it bled without even noticing. But less than five minutes later, he was once again skipping and jumping. 

Totally heartless, with an extremely high tolerance for attacks… Huang Jinchen sat there copying Kou Tong’s movements just now, gently biting his thumb. He thought in infatuation, Yeah, I like that.