Lin Zhongqi? Brainless fans?
Le Jing's mind flashed through Cao Wanying's previous words like lightning: "My friend is the strangest Japanese I have ever met. I don't know why he has always hated his Japanese identity and always dreamed of joining the Chinese nationality and becoming a Chinese. Unfortunately, his parents didn't agree, so he gave up."
So...is it what he thought?
That's not right. If he was a time traveler like him, why would he call out his other alias? Or was his words just a test?
Could it be... ?
It’s better to try it out first.
"Lin Zhongqi?" Le Jing glanced at Cao Wanying and asked in confusion, "Did you find the wrong person as your friend? I am not Lin Zhongqi."
"What does it mean to have brain-dead fans?"
After a brief moment of stunned silence, Cao Wanying also asked suspiciously: "What are you talking about? Didn't you say you wanted to see the night watchman? Why did you call him Lin Zhongqi when I called him over?"
The Japanese boy's eyes flashed with panic as he let the cat out of the bag, but he managed to calm down in the face of Le Jing and Cao Wanying's suspicious gazes, and laughed dryly: "It was a slip of the tongue, sorry, I was distracted thinking about the latest plot of "Rise of Dynasties" before, and I was too excited to see Mr. Night Watchman, so I accidentally called the wrong name. As for the brainless fan... this was also a slip of the tongue, my Chinese is still not very good..."
Le Jing coldly watched the young Japanese man's frantic explanation. When he finished speaking, he nodded and asked with a smile, "What should I call you?"
The Japanese boy was stunned for a moment, then he realized that he had not introduced himself yet, and quickly bowed deeply, and said: "Excuse me, my name is Nakamura Ryota, and I am currently studying at Qilin Middle School. Ever since I saw your "Fengtian Secret Chamber Murder Case" in the newspaper, I have admired you very much, so I asked Miss Cao Wanying to help introduce me. I hope you will forgive me if I am being intrusive." Qilin Middle School is also a famous school in Peking, a bit far from Kaiming Middle School.
This Japanese boy speaks fluent Chinese, but his words and expressions are full of Japanese euphemisms and his words and sentences are in line with Japanese habits. Even if this boy is a time traveler from China, his thinking has been assimilated by Japan.
And...I've admired him since "The Fengtian Murder Case"? That's quite a long time. "The Fengtian Murder Case" was first published in a newspaper in the Northeast. Could it be that he had also lived in the Northeast before?
"No, no, you're too polite. I'm very happy to meet a Japanese reader..." Le Jing greeted him while asking questions calmly.
So he knew that Nakamura Ryota and Cao Wanying knew each other because of their fathers' communication. Cao Wanying's father was a classmate of Nakamura Ryota's father when he went to study in Japan, so Nakamura Ryota came to China alone to study and stayed at Cao Wanying's house.
He also noticed the strange look in Nakamura Ryota's eyes when he was looking at him.
Indeed, Ryota Nakamura admires him very much, which can be seen clearly from his expression and actions.
It's just that it's too much.
He looked at him as if he were admiring a sculpture of a great man displayed in a museum.
It was clearly just the first time they met, but he seemed to know him very well. The occasional familiarity revealed in the boy's expression was too strange.
All of this seemed to reflect his judgment.
This young man is most likely a time traveler, coming from the future after he changed history.
The legendary self-correction of history did not work, and history was really changed by him.
Of course, it is also possible that when he traveled back to this era, this era had already been divided into independent parallel worlds. His actions would only change the future of this parallel world and would have no effect on his original world.
All of this is just his guess, and the specific details still need to be answered by Ryota Nakamura himself.
So Le Jing invited Nakamura Ryota: "It's getting late, do you want to go to a nearby restaurant for dinner? We can have a good chat."
Nakamura Ryota was so excited that his face turned red. He nodded desperately and said incoherently: "Okay, okay, if it's not too much trouble, I'd be happy to do it."
…
…
This was truly a feast where both the host and the guests had a blast. Le Jing and Nakamura Ryota chatted and laughed, talking about everything under the sun, and the atmosphere was very lively.
Taking advantage of the good atmosphere, Le Jing calmly began to discuss the plot of "Rise of Dynasties" with Ryota Nakamura.
Le Jing smiled nonchalantly and said, "Dahua is really in turmoil. Natural disasters have been continuous, and the people are living in misery. Now even the emperor has been captured by the wild barbarians. I don't know if Xu Wangmu can rescue the emperor."
Nakamura Ryota unconsciously followed Le Jing's words and said: "Of course it can be done. In my opinion, Xu Wangmu..."
He originally wanted to talk about this topic, but when he saw Le Jing unable to hide his shocked smile, he subconsciously felt something was wrong, and his brain, which had been paralyzed by the harmonious atmosphere at the table, suddenly regained consciousness.
Thinking about Le Jing's question just now, his face turned pale.
The handsome young man opposite him put away his shock and asked in a calm voice, "I haven't written this plot yet, how did you know about it?"
Ryota Nakamura's face was as pale as paper and he didn't know what to say.
"I felt strange when you first called me Lin Zhongqi. Everyone in the world only knows that I am the night watchman, but no one knows that I am Lin Zhongqi. You, a Japanese, asked me to call me Lin Zhongqi as soon as we met... Although you said it was a slip of the tongue, do I look like a fool?"
The young man narrowed his eyes, the assessment and thought in his eyes made his scalp tingle. "And the more I get along with you, the more I feel that your attitude towards me is weird. It's only the first time we meet, but you seem to know me very well. The way you look at me is not like you are looking at a favorite author, but rather like you are admiring an antique in a museum."
As if thinking of something interesting, the young man leaned his arms against the table, his hands intertwined to support his chin, and looked at him with amber eyes full of interest: "I am getting more and more confused, so I cheated you on a whim. The plot I just mentioned is not even written in the outline, it only exists in my mind. How did you know that the wild barbarians captured the emperor?"
Nakamura Ryota was speechless.
He stared at the smiling boy in front of him with almost horror, his brain racing, but he couldn't come up with any credible explanation.
He suddenly remembered a post he had seen on a forum in his previous life by a netizen:
"I'm really fed up with those time-travel authors. In order to make the protagonist recruit followers and change history, they launch an attack on the intelligence of all the celebrities at that time, and write all those celebrities with high IQs as noobs who are even more stupid than the protagonist.
To be honest, these people are just ordinary people in modern times, and some of them haven't even finished college. How can they have the confidence to play with those top people with their mediocre skills? Logically speaking, all the emperors and civil and military officials who have left their names in history are the top elites of the society at that time. Many of them are equivalent to the president, prime minister, chairman of the military commission and other national and vice-national senior officials. If you can kill them, you would have played politics in modern times. Why are you still a loser?"
When Ryota Nakamura saw this post, he was indignant and said to the netizen who posted it, "If you can do it, then do it. If you can't, then stop talking." But now he regrets it so much that his liver turns green!
He regretted not taking this post seriously earlier! Then he wouldn't have tried to get close to Li Jingran by overestimating his own abilities!
How could he forget that this man's debut novel was a mystery novel! This meant that Li Jingran was extremely meticulous and good at reasoning! He was probably a walking Sherlock Holmes!
This way he wouldn't reveal his true colors as easily as he did today, and he would experience firsthand what it means to be suppressed in terms of intelligence.
"Do you know that in England, there is a writer named Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote a crime-solving novel called The Sign of the Four, in which the protagonist Sherlock Holmes said this," Le Jing smiled and said in a standard British accent in the panic expression of the Japanese boy: 'When you have eliminated the impossibles, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'. "
“Translated into Chinese, that sentence means: When you eliminate all impossibilities, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth.”
"So can I guess..." Nakamura Ryota opened his eyes wide, watching the boy's lips open and close, and whispered his biggest secret: "Are you from the future?"
This is what is called a bolt of thunder. Ryota Nakamura was stunned by the boy's words.
He looked at the boy with a horrified and terrified expression, as if he was staring at some terrifying monster.
"So, can you tell me? Is my guess right?"
"I don't understand what you are saying..." Nakamura Ryota's weak struggle seemed particularly pale and powerless in the boy's clear eyes that seemed to see through everything. He stared at the boy who was smiling silently for a moment, and suddenly dropped his shoulders, as if he had given up all struggles.
"Your reasoning is correct." He covered his face with his hands, his voice dry: "I am indeed from the future."
This is good, he told himself, this man is so smart, he will definitely be able to give the answer to the question he has been looking for.
“Can you listen to my life?”
"Of course, I've been curious about this for a long time."
Then an old soul who had been wandering for a long time told Le Jing a very long story.
…
…
If you could travel through time, where would you like to go?
Tyrannical Qin? Powerful Han? Flourishing Tang? Literary Song? Barbarian Yuan? Strong Ming? Qing?
Or... the one that makes people burst into tears and can't bear to finish reading, where every moment is filled with humiliation, and every inch of the mountains and rivers is soaked in blood, the Republic of China?
When Song Zhonghua was taking history class in middle school, modern history was the chapter he was most reluctant to read.
Whenever he read about someone signing some humiliating treaty somewhere, he would get so angry that he wished he could travel back in time and beat those people to death.
Whenever he saw the numerous crimes committed by the Japanese army on Chinese soil, he would, like most angry young people, clamor to kill all the Japanese.
So many, many years later, when Song Zhonghua recalled these vague past events, he smiled bitterly and couldn't help but sigh that fate was a cruel thing.
At that time, he was no longer called Song Zhonghua, and the vast 9.6 million square kilometers of land had nothing to do with him.
His name is Ryota Nakamura.
A typical Japanese name.
Born into a typical Japanese middle-class family.
His father is a factory owner, his mother is a full-time housewife, he has an older sister and a younger brother. In the eyes of outsiders, this is a happiest family of five.
If Ryota Nakamura had no memories of his previous life, he might have been a happy Japanese.
But there are no ifs in the world.
Song Zhonghua has always lived in Nakamura Ryota's heart, making him unable to sleep at night, making him unable to eat or sleep, and causing him great pain.
He clearly understood what kind of unspeakable crimes his motherland in this life would commit against his motherland in his previous life.
He once believed that all Japanese people deserved to die.
He has now become one of the damned Japanese.
When the September 18th Incident occurred in 1931, he was only 21 years old.
He was only 27 years old when the Marco Polo Bridge Incident occurred in 1937.
One day, when he reaches the appropriate age, he will be forced to join the military. He will point the gun at his compatriots in his previous life and commit numerous crimes on the land of his previous life's homeland.
In his previous life, Song Zhonghua was a naive young man. He believed that if he traveled back in time, he could use his advantage of predicting the future to change history and accomplish great things.
The soul of Nakamura Ryota in this life is already desolate. He is just a man, not a god.
As long as humans still have ambitions, as long as Japan still has a dream of becoming a great power, as long as China continues to be weak... then that national war is inevitable. In the end, even if it is not Japan, it will be the armies of other countries that step into China's land. Because, if you lag behind, you will be beaten.
Then, even if it is not him, his family, his friends, his classmates, his neighbors, and even every stranger he meets on the road, may become a battlefield executioner who kills countless people.
Ryota Nakamura once thought about committing suicide.
He chose to hang himself.
When he kicked off the stool and felt the pain of suffocation, he suddenly regretted it. He didn't want to die, he wanted to live!
After opening my eyes from the long darkness, what came into view were my parents' faces that had aged ten years overnight, and the surprised and worried expressions of my elder sister and younger brother.
...If he had no previous life, what a happy man he would have been.
For him, knowing the future is not a golden finger, but a terrible curse.
Death was just too painful. He had done nothing wrong, so why did he commit suicide?
It was also through this opportunity that he began to reflect on his fifteen years of life as Ryota Nakamura.
Confused, entangled, self-critical, and self-loathing.
This is the life of Ryota Nakamura.
He didn't dare to die, but he didn't want to live either.
It was at this time that he suddenly thought of Li Jingran.
Nakamura Ryota looked at Le Jing with a complicated expression, and said quietly: "Anyone who has attended junior high school in the future..."
"Let's skip this point." Le Jing interrupted him, "I don't want to know my future. It is precisely because of the unknown that the future has infinite possibilities and can make people full of expectations. So don't tell me about my future, just like don't tell me the ending of a book I haven't finished reading."
"I take it, then, that you came to me for advice? You want to know what you should do?"
Nakamura Ryota nodded silently. This question had troubled him for fifteen years.
"You just need to do what you think is right." A century ago, the forefather answered him firmly: "If the sky is dark, then survive in the dark; if making a sound is dangerous, then keep silent; if you feel that you are unable to shine, then curl up in the corner. But don't get used to the darkness and defend it; don't be proud of your own mediocrity; don't mock those who are braver and more passionate than you. We can be humble like dust, but we cannot be twisted like maggots." [Note ①]
The author has something to say:
①This is what Ji Ye, the director of Phoenix TV, said. Because my writing skills are limited, I really can't think of anything better and more appropriate than this, so this paragraph is set as the protagonist's words in this article. But remember, these words were said by Ji Ye!
Have you heard of the banality of evil? The banality of evil is a philosophical term that refers to the thoughtless and irresponsible crimes committed under the ideological machine. It is an evil that eliminates one's own thoughts, unconditionally obeys orders, and abandons the right to personal judgment.
The Jewish Holocaust, the massacres committed by the Japanese army in China, and the ten-year catastrophe in our country are all manifestations of the banality of evil.
Under the banality of evil, you will find that a beautiful neighbor can also become a bloodless executioner, and a friendly friend can also be a cold-blooded killer. With my limited knowledge, I can only think of Li Ye's words as a response to the banality of evil.
And... there is no anti-Japanese plot in the Republic of China chapter. If I dare to write it, Jinjiang will lock me up. So I created the character Song Zhonghua, and through him, I slightly mentioned the future national war.
PS I'm sorry that this chapter has an anti-theft chapter, which has caused you a bad reading experience, so I wrote an extra thousand words for this replacement chapter as compensation for readers who mistakenly bought the anti-theft chapter~
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
