Mou Xuan stood in front of the whiteboard in the conference room, with traces of marker still on his fingertips from when he had drawn the training plan last night.
The shouts of the psychics doing their morning exercises drifted in from the window, and he crushed the ice crystal clock in his hand - this was his usual action when his time ability was activated.
"Starting tomorrow, we will have cultural classes in the reading room at 7pm every night." Just as he finished speaking, there was a sound of a metal water cup hitting the metal cabinet in the corner.
Propaganda officer Qu leaned on the faded fabric sofa with his legs crossed, the golden trumpet badge on his collar reflecting cold light. "Chief Mou, the current material ration is limited to 1,800 calories per person per day. Do you have the leisure to teach your children to recite Tang poetry?" He poked his finger at the mold that came out of the cracks on the wall. "Last week, Lao Zhou was so hungry that he ate the mutant vines raw, and his intestines were rotten for three meters."
The tip of the pen that Chen Yao was using to sort out the list of supplies scratched the paper with a "click". Scholar Lu was curled up by the window, coughing so hard that his whole body was shaking, and in his arms he was holding tightly the "Translation and Annotation of the Book of Songs" wrapped in seven layers of waterproof cloth.
Mou Xuan noticed that Wu Ernst was hiding behind the door and peeking. He was holding a half-broken piece of chalk in his dirty little hand and drawing crooked oracle bone characters on the cement floor.
"Three months ago, when little Wu had a high fever and was talking nonsense, he was singing the Lotus Picking Ballad that his grandmother taught him." Mou Xuan knocked his knuckles on the rusty projector, shaking off a few grains of old dust. "Last week, before Old Li died, he was chanting the multiplication table that his grandson couldn't memorize."
Propaganda officer Qu stood up suddenly, with veins bulging in his neck: "Then why don't you give the granary key to the opera singer?
Let those with water-related abilities stop purifying water sources and practice calligraphy instead? "The folding chair he kicked over hit the bronze chimes in the corner, making the dusty instrument buzz.
This set of chimes was dug out from the ruins by a single culture enthusiast three days ago. At this moment, he was about to rush over with a red face, but Coach Bai grabbed him by the collar and pushed him back to his seat.
Mou Xuan suddenly laughed, and the ice crystal clock floating in his palm cracked into twelve streams of light.
When everyone opened their eyes again, they found that the leader's military boots were stained with purple snow from the future, and his black tactical uniform was covered with crystal fragments of time.
He pulled out a book wrapped in plastic wrap from his bosom. The words "Archives of the Continuation of Human Civilization in 2075" on the cover still exuded the scent of ink.
"I found this in the ruins of a library thirty years later." When Mou Xuan tore off the plastic wrap, several sheets of yellowed rice paper fell on the conference table.
Wu Tongnong suddenly pounced over and grabbed one of them. On it was a rubbing of the Dunhuang Flying Apsaras, reflecting star-like spots of light in the child's pupils.
When the cultural lover trembled as he picked up another piece of paper, his tears fell on the "Guangling San" score, smudged the ink: "This is... this is the score that Teacher Zhang was still repairing before he died!" He suddenly turned around, pushed open the locker, and took out the dusty erhu. A few grains of rat food rustled out of the sound box.
When the first hoarse piano sound tore through the solidified air, Chen Yao discovered that in the secret pocket of Mou Xuan's tactical vest, there was half a children's watch printed with a cartoon tiger - that was a gift she gave to a child in the future.
The moment Mou Xuan's fingertips brushed across the cracks of the ice crystal clock, ripples suddenly appeared on the mottled white walls of the reading room.
The holographic projection poured out, carrying with it the light and shadow of the next thirty years - the Dunhuang caisson patterns bloomed on the mildew spots, the shadows of the bronze chimes automatically tuned themselves with the twitching strings of the single-culture enthusiasts, and the oracle bone inscriptions scribbled on the ground by Wu Ernst were projected with gilded colors.
"We have to... do it this way!" The single culture enthusiast kicked away the creaking chair and shook out half a roll of damp rice paper from his tactical waist bag.
He dipped his brush in cinnabar made from mutant lizard blood and wrote "天地玄黄" in the mist coughed up by the scholar Lu. The dripping ink even caused the galaxy in the projection to begin to flow.
Chen Yao poked the back of Mou Xuan's hand with the end of a pen, "Did you secretly learn future art when you traveled through time?" The tip of her nose was still stained with wall dust from the arrangement of the venue, and half of a children's watch box was exposed in her tactical backpack.
Purple snow from the future time and space seeped out from the cracks in Mou Xuan's tactical gloves, falling on the ends of her hair and condensing into tiny ice crystals.
Suddenly, there was a "swish" sound from the window. Wu Ernr was holding a metal plate that he had removed from somewhere, and he used a piece of chalk to scrape out the outline of "Lanting Preface" on the rust.
At the child's dirty feet, the projected shadow of Wang Xizhi is completing the strokes of his pen. His skinny mechanical fingers and immature lines overlap to form a strange cultural gene chain.
"I bet three packs of compressed biscuits that Propaganda Officer Qu won't last more than three minutes." Before Chen Yao finished her words, the reflection of the golden trumpet badge shone into the reading room.
Propaganda officer Qu leaned against the door frame with his arms folded, his collar still stained with oil stains from distributing the nutritional paste that morning.
But when the single culture enthusiast suddenly played the broken erhu, the array of chimes in the projection automatically calibrated the pitch, and the magnificent "Guangling San" made the golden trumpet on his chest jingle.
Scholar Lu, wrapped in a yellowed waterproof cloth, suddenly stood up, and the blood foam he coughed up turned into peach blossoms in the projection. "The orioles are singing!" His hoarse chanting awakened the sleeping projection system, and the plants and trees in the Three Hundred Poems Book grew wildly among the moldy wallpaper.
Wu Ernst screamed and tried to grab the virtual water chestnuts, but instead picked up a handful of real, dewy young sprouts - that was the time and space gift that Mou Xuan brought back from the future.
In a supply warehouse late at night, Chen Yao used a pen to pick apart the mutated spider silk entangled in the ancient books.
The cold light of Mou Xuan's tactical dagger flashed across the remaining pages of "Qimin Yaoshu". The scraps of paper floated into the thermos cup and expanded into a holographic cultivation diagram in the hot water. "When did you start saving these?" Chen Yao shook the fragments of time that had settled at the bottom of the cup, and the wall of the cup reflected the ice-blue halo of supernatural power that was flickering in the man's eyes.
"The last time I traveled through time, I saw a child." Mou Xuan turned the faint ice crystal ring on his wrist, "He carved oracle bone characters on the gnawed rat bones, saying that the rats would live forever..." Chen Yao suddenly put the thermos cup on his frostbitten knuckles, and the ticking sound of the children's watch was particularly clear in the silence.
Beneath the two people's overlapping palms, a holographic projection was automatically compiling the classical Chinese of the "Complete Book of Agricultural Administration" into a planting flow chart.
When the morning light pierced through the anti-radiation curtains, Mou Xuan found Wu Ertong curled up in the corner of the reading room and fell asleep.
The child was holding a rusty subway station sign in his arms, and he drew a crooked Dunhuang flying fairy under the "People's Square Station" with a piece of chalk.
The holographic projection automatically played the chanting of "Chu Ci" amid the snoring. The sound waves shook off the dust on the ceiling, but turned into virtual bamboo slips with the scent of ink the moment they touched the ground.
When a single culture enthusiast burst through the door with dark circles under his eyes, holding in his hand a fragment of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" remounted with mutant vine fibers, Mou Xuan was wiping the e-reader he brought back from the future.
Chen Yao suddenly pressed his wrist and said, "Save the power." She unfolded the crumpled base plan and pointed the tip of her pen at the red area in the northwest corner—there was a small library icon drawn there, and the radiation value markings around it were fluctuating strangely.
The holographic projection suddenly sounded an alarm, and an ice-blue light curtain exploded in the room, carrying with it the wind and snow of the next thirty years.
The fragments of time condensed on Mou Xuan's tactical gloves fell off, forming a flickering coordinate in the projection of "Lanting Preface".
Wu Ernst picked up a piece of chalk in a daze and drew a crooked navigation route on the ground. The last stroke perfectly matched the city's underground pipeline network map from twenty years ago.
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