Kou Tong’s expression short-circuited. He looked at Huang Jinchen, not catching up for a long moment. Huang Jinchen, meanwhile, looked at him with a burning gaze, a heartthrob ready to deliver a couple of Romeo-like lines at any time. 

“…Oh?” Kou Tong asked. 

Huang Jinchen nodded slowly and firmly. 

“There’s no need to pursue.” Kou Tong considered, picked up the control box periodically making noise, changed his shoes, and headed out. “Anything there is to discuss, we’ll consider it in bed.” 

Huang Jinchen: “…” 

He felt that his profound emotions had been profoundly squandered, so he silently followed Kou Tong with his head lowered, wearing a pitiful look of wounded affections. 

Kou Tong was already used to Master Huang going off on a wild tangent from time to time and completely ignored him. All of his attention was on the control box in his hands. One after the other, they left the house that had been closed off and hidden from the space and went up onto the roof. When Kou Tong thought that Huang Jinchen was going to behave, Master Huang glumly asked, “That time in the hotel, didn’t you say that you had a strong principle? The rabbit doesn’t eat next to its warren?” 

Kou Tong said, “Oh. Being flexible is actually another one of my principles.” 

Huang Jinchen grabbed his hair, almost a little perplexed. “Aren’t you supposed to be shocked, then either be shy or awkwardly slam the door and leave? Then shouldn’t I lay on the sweet talk every day, bother you every day, give you gifts every day, send lots of text messages every day asking you whether you’re having a good morning, afternoon, and evening, constantly checking up on what you’ve been eating and drinking, whether you have diarrhea or constipation? Then you’ll slowly be moved, and finally, there’ll be one final push, we’ll be separated by fate, and then have a happy ending, right?” 

For some reason, when they came to the roof, the signal actually became weaker. The originally periodic signal became intermittent, as though the wavebands of many frequencies were mixed together and only came through countless superimposed layers. Kou Tong immediately realized that this tallied with his guess, so he quickly started to record all the signals being received. 

…Of course, as he busied himself, he still took a moment to look at Huang Jinchen with a disbelieving expression and react sincerely to what he had said just now: “Excuse me, are your balls…in good condition?” 

Huang Jinchen thought about it, then frankly said, “They’re all right.” 

Kou Tong, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, asked, “Where did you read that?” 

“In books,” Huang Jinchen said. “Your mom gave them to me.” 

Kou Tong was just setting down the laptop linked to the control box to automatically record the signal. Hearing this, his hand shook, and he nearly dropped the laptop. 

Then he turned his head, looked at Huang Jinchen, considered his diction, then said, “Don’t listen to her. My mom is a divinity. Humanity can no longer restrain her.” 

Huang Jinchen laughed foolishly and drew close, standing next to the crouching Kou Tong and rubbing against him with his shin. He said, “Then can I have a hug?” 

Kou Tong looked at him, opened his arms, and boldly said, “Come on.”

Huang Jinchen threw himself into his embrace, pleasurably experiencing that feeling like an electric shock, as though his hormones had gone severely out of balance. Then he buried his face against Kou Tong’s neck and inhaled deeply. In a muffled voice, he said, “Yeah, that tingles.” 

After hugging for a while, Huang Jinchen was once again unsatisfied. He raised his head and, taking a mile when given an inch, asked, “Then…can I also have a kiss?” 

This time Kou Tong hesitated for a moment, then pushed him away. He said, “Let’s wait on that. I have work to do first. Otherwise we might go too far.” 

Huang Jinchen was very reasonable. He immediately indicated that he understood and accordingly didn’t bother him again. He found a place next to him to sit down. Blown by the cool night breeze, he quietly watched Kou Tong. Suddenly, an indescribable feeling arose in his heart; perhaps the legendary feeling of “the calm of passing time” was like this. 

Then, perhaps the length of the “calm” went on too long and became a little boring. After a while, Huang Jinchen got up to his tricks again. He said, “But I think that a relationship shouldn’t start with going to bed. First we should get a mutual understanding of each other.” 

Kou Tong said, “What is there that you still don’t understand?” 

Huang Jinchen paused, considered, and thought that this was fair. So he said, “Then I’ll tell you about myself…” 

When he finished saying this, he suddenly didn’t know how to continue. Huang Jinchen found that his personal record really wasn’t anything especially complicated. He could skip over the part with the Seed, they both knew about it. After that… it seemed that the decade and more of his life after that could be summed up with the two phrases “following orders” and “killing people.” There really was nothing to say about it. 

He turned it over in his mind. Finally, faced with a lack of words, he forced out, “I like spicy food and don’t like bitter food.” 

“OK.” Kou Tong nodded to show he understood. “My mom’s cooking is fairly bland. Tomorrow I’ll tell her to add a bit of chili sauce.”

Then the two of them stopped simultaneously. After that, each of them began to laugh with a bit of self-mockery.

Huang Jinchen at last recovered from the feeble-minded child state. Pointing to the control box receiving the signal on the ground, he said, “How are you planning to settle this?”

“It’s not very practical to look for the core memory chip,” Kou Tong said. “This signal comes to us through complex overlapping spaces with different penetration frequencies to become the tangled and complicated thing it is here. I can analyze it through the reception, reverse engineer the locus program recorded on the memory chip, and reassemble the control box.” 

Huang Jinchen frowned. “It sounds pretty complicated. How much do you have to go on?”

Kou Tong shrugged. “I’ve never done such a thing. I’m planning to make a model first. It may be possible, or it may not be.” 

“What if it isn’t possible?”

“We’ll try something else,” Kou Tong said lightly. “Don’t worry. With me here, this thing won’t keep us trapped.” 

There was a powerful self-confidence about him. This sustained him no matter what the occasion, letting him quickly adjust his emotional state back to normal. It was almost like the kind of unbelievable nerve that would let a person in the spotlight, with everyone’s eyes on them, sit on the ground and pick his nose. 

Huang Jinchen paused. “Actually, apart from that girl, I don’t think there’s anything bad about being here. If we really are planning to never leave, I can get rid of her…” 

“This space is an equilibrium of seven conscious subjects. If one of the conscious subjects dies, even I don’t know what will happen,” Kou Tong immediately interrupted him. 

Huang Jinchen smiled. “That’s about the only shortcoming this place has—so why are you in such a hurry to get out?”

Kou Tong fell silent. The stars were invisible in the city. There was only reflected light occasionally flitting across his lean face, sweeping over those features that were so likable when assembled together. After a long time, he said, “It must be…because I’m human, too?”

If there was such a place where you could always have your heart’s desire, where the dead could live again, where you could have powers that were unthinkable in real life, where as long as you believed it, you could ascend to the heavens or burrow into the earth, where even power over time and space could be realized…

Except it wasn’t real. 

Every person could be weak. Everyone could indulge in comfort and safety. There would always come a day when they would be eroded by beautiful things that struck right to the heart. They would think, I’m only indulging for a moment, enjoying it for a moment, compromising for a moment—day in and day out…over and over, until they were deceived and swallowed up. 

Kou Tong didn’t say the rest of it aloud, but Huang Jinchen miraculously understood—while he was still clear-headed, he would use this method that was almost like stabbing himself to struggle through every day; before he sank, he had to find a way to leave. 

Huang Jinchen suddenly remembered that small but warm home. After Kou Tong had used He Xiaozhi’s particular methods to “sew up” the space, that “home” increasingly gave a person a sense of security, like sealed swaddling clothes. 

There was an annoying but very comical little girl, an ill-natured but steady old codger, a magical teenager, and a mother who could cook, and he could crowd into a bed with Kou Tong and fool around every day…

If they left, perhaps…that “home” would be gone. 

The “match” would go out.

He involuntarily stuck his hand into his pants pocket. There was a little miniature handgun there. As long as he had a gun, he could shoot that frail box. Huang Jinchen didn’t quite understand what Kou Tong was struggling against. For this experienced quasi-intellectual, life was like a dream; wasn’t it a dream no matter where you dreamed it? Why was it necessary to seek hysterically for reality? Wasn’t it enough to be happy? 

Living…was in fact only performing basic bodily functions. 

But he saw Kou Tong’s expression and in the end took his finger off the trigger. About this, Huang Jinchen very regretfully thought—Forget it, I won’t make it worse for him.

Then, practically at the same time, he had a very subtle feeling—in all the years Huang Jinchen had lived, there had been no one he couldn’t kill if he wanted to kill them. He had always lived practically without restraint. No one had dared to comment…even if perhaps they secretly thought that he was a bit of a moron.

He was very willful, but as long as he accomplished his assignments, no one would dare to manage how he lived. It had always been eat when he was hungry, drink when he was thirsty, do whatever he wanted. 

But he suddenly found that he would actually change for the sake of another person…that he would rather not have his own way so much. 

Even though he knew that the moment he let go of the gun, he had been full of regret and displeasure, he had still thought that it was the right thing to do. 

Huang Jinchen found that it turned out that “forbearance” was never innate. A person who was worth it had to show up before you could learn it. Those with parents who loved them would learn it comparatively early, but someone like him probably had to rely on luck. 

Now, luck had come to him. 

Just then, there was a shriek in the night. Huang Jinchen narrowed his eyes and looked in the direction the sound had come from. A vast expanse of black shadow rose from that direction. Then, as seen from above, the city lights went out one by one. 

“It seems to be the crows.” Kou Tong stood up. In a low voice, he said, “Is it that Magician again?” 

“There’s something else, too.” Huang Jinchen’s vision was better than his. Pointing to the shadow, he said, “There’s also that monster I blinded in one eye… The crows over there are tearing up the power lines.”

Kou Tong frowned. “What is Qin Qin trying to do?”

“Launching a war for the sake of a beauty? Ah, you lovely calamity…” Huang Jinchen blurted out a cheap joke, then turned his head and looked at Kou Tong, at last remembering. “Huh? No, that’s wrong, she wants to steal my man… Shit, it’s like I’m a girl in her bridal sedan. It’s all so new, I don’t know which of them to kill first!”