Fu Jianzhi's face turned pale in an instant.
Ruan Chen could sense his emotions.
Ruan Chen held the still unconscious young Fu Jianzhi in one arm—so light that it was almost weightless, as if it had no substance.
She thought to herself, "It wasn't this light at first."
Fu Jianzhi, who was actually standing beside her, reached out and grabbed Ruan Chen's hand. He held the girl's thin hand tightly in his palm, as if he was afraid that she would turn into a wisp of smoke and disappear.
Duan Jingfu also saw the two hands clasped tightly and sneered, "She'll die sooner or later. Rather than being erased by the rules of the world, it's better to hand her over to me—at least this body is still here, and you can come and visit every now and then to reminisce about these past years."
Fu Jianzhi's hands began to tremble.
He looked at Ruan Chen with a hoarse voice, "Don't listen to his nonsense, I won't let anything happen to you."
"What do you mean?" Ruan Chen looked back into his deep eyes. "Jian Zhi, what have you been hiding from me?"
“There’s nothing there,” Fu Jianzhi said, emphasizing each word. “Let’s go back to our timeline and resolve your current troubles. Once we’re back, we’ll expose what Duan Jingfu has done, ruin his reputation, and make him spend the rest of his life in prison. That way, he won’t be a threat to your safety anymore, okay?”
His coaxing tone sounded like that of a much more mature adult than Ruan Chen.
He said these words to Duan Jingfu; they were a threat.
“Jianzhi, you’re still so naive—twice now, and you’re still so naive,” Duan Jingfu said with pity in his eyes. “You want everything, but have you ever thought that in the end you might not be able to keep anything? This world will eventually be destroyed, and the people you care about will be wiped out.”
Fu Jianzhi was so strong that he almost crushed Ruan Chen's hand bones.
She finally let out a soft cry of pain, "Jianzhi."
The young Fu Jianzhi in her arms began to feel uneasy again, along with the crumbling world around him.
“Let’s go back first,” Fu Jianzhi said, pulling Ruan Chen into the small white building. “Let’s go back to the Fu family first—and then I will tell you everything.”
At the Fu Family Ancestral Hall, Ruan Chen put little Fu Jianzhi back in his room. When he came out again, the sun was shining brightly outside.
This is her world.
The two strolled side by side in the garden of the old house for a while before Fu Jianzhi finally spoke, "You should know about the Ark, right?"
Ruan Chen replied, "That supercomputer, the one that created Crescent Bay?"
“To be precise, it’s a tear. Crescent Bay is a spacetime rift torn open by the Ark,” Fu Jianzhi said. “The timeline we are in now is the same. The reason why the timelines that should be parallel intersect is because it is a branch that the Ark forcibly tore open on the original timeline.”
He didn't want to tell Ruan Chen all of this.
Although I'll have to say it sooner or later.
Rather than letting Ruan Chen piece together the truth of this world through other channels in the end, Fu Jianzhi preferred to tell her the truth himself.
Fu Jianzhi had pondered how to bring up this topic many times in his mind.
"Then who am I?" Ruan Chen asked the most crucial question, which was also the most fatal to Fu Jianzhi.
"You are you."
Fu Jianzhi answered this question quite decisively.
"The timelines are converging, the two timelines are merging, so who am I?" Ruan Chen stopped and looked at Fu Jianzhi.
Fu Jianzhi smiled wryly, thinking to himself, "She's really clever."
He didn't answer, or perhaps he didn't want to answer, but Ruan Chen knew exactly what the answer was.
If the world she is in now is a branch torn from the main timeline by the Ark, then when the timelines converge, only Ruan Chen from the main timeline will survive, while she will be erased by the laws of the world.
Just like Duan Jingfu said—she will die sooner or later.
"Why did the Ark tear open another timeline?" This was Ruan Chen's third question.
“As you can see, that world’s civilization is on the verge of destruction,” Fu Jianzhi said with a deep and distant look in his eyes. “Humanity used its last resources to make a desperate gamble—we deduced 3,620 possible outcomes, of which 3,619 were fatal, but this was the only one.”
"In the timeline torn open by the Ark, if human civilization can survive that catastrophe, there is a 73% probability that when the timelines converge, a secondary timeline will be chosen to replace the main timeline. In that case, the catastrophe will not happen, and human civilization will naturally survive."
“That’s still not right,” Ruan Chen asked. “If there’s a 73% probability that the timeline we’re in now will become the main timeline, then I…”
Ruan Chen paused, her tone still calm, "Why was I eliminated?"
Fu Jianzhi felt as if his heart was being ripped out piece by piece.
He regretted it.
When he chose to tear open the timeline, he forgot that Ruan Chen on this timeline was also a conscious life, not a cold program generated by a computer.
“Because your weight is too high,” Fu Jianzhi lied. “People with too high weight will be detected by the laws of the world, and the laws will determine that these people will interfere with the convergence process. They will automatically erase the existence of these people.”
"Therefore, once the two timelines converge, those people with excessively high weights will cease to exist."
Fu Jianzhi spoke the lie he had carefully crafted, without looking at Ruan Chen's expression.
The truth is, in the only possible scenario where there is any hope of survival, only Ruan Chen from the secondary timeline will be eliminated—because she is the origin of the catastrophe.
She is the only one who is in danger, as determined by the laws.
Fu Jianzhi learned all this after returning to Jingzhou from Meicheng.
At that time, he gained Zhanlu's approval and, under the guidance of the Martial Arts Research Institute, gradually developed his own mental network. He began to have frequent dreams in which he picked up a girl when he grew up.
The girl in my dream was also named Ruan Chen, like a scarred but still wild kitten.
In the dream, I really liked her and gradually warmed up Ruan Chen, who was initially unapproachable and hostile and wary of everyone.
He especially liked to call her "sister" in a deliberately teasing and affectionate tone.
He fantasized about his future with her, hoping to use the rest of his long life to heal the wounds left on her by the past.
But in his dream, he overlooked the fire of revenge hidden in Ruan Chen's eyes.
She is smart enough, excellent enough, and ruthless enough.
She wanted to perish along with the world.
Later, Fu Jianzhi realized that this was not a dream, and that he was not the only one who knew all this, but also Duan Jingfu, because in the main timeline, tearing apart the timeline was their doing.
"So, do you have a solution to this problem?" The cool voice pulled Fu Jianzhi out of his memories.
Her emotions remained remarkably stable.
Fu Jianzhi wanted to chat with her for a bit, but Ruan Chen spoke up again. Instead, she comforted him first, "Even if we all disappear in the end, we still have to live our lives now, right? We can talk about the future later."
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