When Zhong Hua placed the trajectory of the hot air balloon smoke rings on his phone screen alongside the crayon-drawn train smoke rings on the drawing, that eerie sense of overlap returned—whether it was the number of rings, the arc, or their relative positions, they all seemed to be from the same mold!
“My God…” the engineer murmured, “This is too… too bizarre.”
The construction foreman was also dumbfounded. He had lived most of his life and had never seen such a bizarre "coincidence".
“And here!” Zhong Hua’s gaze was drawn to a mark circled in red on the drawing. Next to the mark were three words: “Moon Street Station”, and next to that was a string of numbers that looked like coordinates.
Zhong Hua was equally adept with numbers. He quickly calculated the latitude and longitude in his mind, or, more directly, he opened the coordinate query function on his phone's map and entered the string of numbers.
The map loads, and a red marker appears on the screen.
Zhong Hua's breathing stopped instantly.
That marker, located on the other side of the city, is no longer "Moon Street" but a bustling commercial district. But Zhong Hua remembers that there used to be an old hospital there, a hospital that still existed when he was born.
Because that's where he was born.
The coordinates of "Moon Street Station" on the drawing were so precise that it was outrageous; it was exactly the longitude of the hospital where he was born!
The buzzing sound seemed to echo in my ears again, this time clearer, with a chilling frequency. It was no longer an external sound, but rather an echo from the depths of my soul.
The volcanic fault lines of Weizhou Island, the smoke rings of hot air balloons in Dunhuang, the longitude coordinates of the hospital where I was born... These seemingly unrelated things appeared in such a bizarre way on a subway planning map from 1978.
What exactly happened?
Who drew this blueprint? How could he know these future scenes and coordinates, even those spanning thousands of miles?
"Oil stains..." Suddenly, the bespectacled engineer exclaimed, pointing to a spot on the drawing.
Everyone looked over and saw that near the red and blue pencil lines on the drawing where Zhong Hua's finger had just traced, a tiny bit of dark yellow oil had actually seeped out! The oil stain seemed to be alive, slowly spreading along the traces of the ink lines.
Chapter Three: Oil Stains, Lakeside, and Ripples of Memory
The oil stain spread slowly but steadily. It followed the "tunnel direction" drawn in red pencil on the drawing—the line that coincided with the fault line of the volcanic rock on Weizhou Island.
At first, everyone thought the blueprints were not stored properly and had been stained with oil, but soon they realized something was wrong.
The paper's color changed where the oil stain had spread; it was no longer a uniform yellow, but rather exhibited varying shades and a water-like texture. Moreover, as the oil stain spread, it even began to outline a shape.
A shape that Zhong Hua was extremely familiar with.
He watched as the oil stain started at one end of the drawing, following the "tunnel" line, first a slight indentation, then a smooth, large arc, followed by several small branches, and finally forming an irregular, teardrop-like outline at the other end of the drawing.
This shape...
Zhong Hua suddenly remembered something. He almost staggered back a step and frantically scrolled through his phone's photo album again. This time, he found a photo taken at Namtso Lake.
It was on the shore of Namtso Lake, a photo he took from above. The highland sunlight was clear and transparent, and the lake water appeared a deep, almost inky blue. The shoreline was winding and beautiful, with unique depressions and undulations, especially at the southern end of the lake, where several peninsula-like extensions were simply unique.
When he placed the photo of the shore of Namtso Lake on his phone next to the outline being "drawn" by oil stains in front of him, the surrounding air seemed to freeze.
Exactly the same.
On the drawing, the shape smudged by the oil stains is exactly the shoreline of Namtso Lake! Absolutely perfect!
The buzzing sound grew louder and louder, no longer a low-frequency resonance, but a sharp, high-frequency sound that seemed to pierce eardrums. The ground also seemed to be vibrating slightly, not from the excavator, but from a regular pulsation coming from deep underground.
The construction team members turned pale with fright and retreated hastily. Only Zhong Hua stood still, his eyes fixed on the mysterious blueprint and the oil stains spreading across it.
His mind was in chaos, a jumble of images, memories, and questions.
The sunset over Qinghai Lake, the icefalls of Yubeng Village, the camel bells of Dunhuang, the starry sky over Namtso Lake... How could all those places he and Ayu had visited together, all the scenery they had seen together, appear one after another on this mysterious map?
The peony patterns embroidered by my mother, the grandfather's clock, the letters in the old wooden box... those old objects that carry the family's memories seem to have some kind of connection with all of this in some mysterious way.
And Ayu... Where is she? If she saw all this, what would she think?
Zhong Hua took out his phone, intending to call A Yu, but found that the signal bars had turned into a red cross. Not only that, the surrounding light seemed to be changing; the once bright construction site was now shrouded in a faint, underground blue light.
The oil stain on the drawing had completely blurred the outline of Namtso Lake and was no longer spreading. Under the blue light, the oil stain even shimmered like the ripples of lake water.
Meanwhile, on that 1978 subway plan, the other lines and symbols began to change. The colors of the red and blue pencils faded, replaced by a more ancient and mysterious glow, as if seeping from the paper fibers.
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