Then came the "boom-boom-boom," a deep, heavy sound, carrying immense power. It was the roar of the water from the sacred waterfall in Yubeng Village crashing against the rocks, the soul-shaking sound of the icy waterfall that they felt as they stood at the bottom of the waterfall.
Finally, there was a clear, slightly muffled "thump." The sound wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear, carrying a sense of finality. Ayu suddenly remembered—it was 1999, a drizzly afternoon, when she was a little girl with pigtails, dropping a postcard written to her future into the green mailbox at the alley entrance, and that was the sound of the postcard sliding to the bottom!
The intermittent camel bells, the roar of the icefall, and the "thump" of the mailbox—three distinct sounds—resonated miraculously within the crystal ball. Their frequencies seemed to be tuned by some force, overlapping and reinforcing each other to create a peculiar rhythm that seemed to transcend time and space.
Just as the three sounds resonated at their strongest, fine patterns suddenly appeared on the smooth surface of the crystal ball.
The patterns were winding and intricate, presenting an ancient and complex design. Ayu's gaze followed the patterns, and her heart clenched again—it was the pattern of a copper lock! It was the pattern of the ancient copper lock on her grandmother's dowry chest! She had touched that lock countless times when she was a child, and she was intimately familiar with every curve and every turn on it.
"How could this be..." Ayu's voice trembled with tears, and she felt her eyes burning. "What on earth happened?"
Zhong Hua stared blankly at the crystal ball, watching the light spots of Qinghai Lake still pulsating slightly in the center of the ball, watching the water flow of Yubeng Waterfall, the star trails of Namtso Lake, and his grandfather's sea chart quietly flowing within it, listening to the resonance of the three sounds, and watching the copper lock patterns of his grandmother's wooden box emerge on the surface.
The waiting room was silent, save for the faint yet clear resonance emanating from inside the crystal ball. Time seemed to fold and intertwine here; past, present, and future, different places, different memories, and different people were all connected in an incredible way by this suddenly appearing crystal ball.
The shimmering light, the color of Qinghai Lake, still danced, like a living heart pumping the blood of memory and time. The water droplets stopped seeping out, but the images and sounds inside the crystal ball seemed to become clearer, more real. Ayu could see the tiny water droplets splashing in the waterfall, could discern the color of a specific star in the sky above Namtso Lake, could make out a blurry annotation on her grandfather's nautical chart, and could even feel the warmth left by her grandmother's fingertips, a warmth that transcended decades, in the patterns of the copper lock.
She and Zhong Hua exchanged a glance, seeing the same shock, confusion, and a faint, unspoken understanding in each other's eyes. Were all those serendipitous encounters during their travels—the letters in the old trunk, the smell of yeast in the bakery, the jigsaw puzzle in the emergency room… those seemingly accidental, symbolic moments—were they not all just coincidences?
The crystal ball seemed to shine even brighter, and the blue of Qinghai Lake seemed to overflow, bathing the entire waiting room in that pure and mysterious color. The resonance of the three sounds also reached a new height; the sounds of camel bells, icefalls, and mailboxes were no longer isolated entities, but merged into a complete symphony about time and memory.
Ayu pressed herself closer to the crystal, the patterns on the bronze lock magnified infinitely before her eyes. She seemed to see her grandmother in her youth, gently stroking the lock with her slender fingers, her eyes filled with both longing and unease for the future. And deep within those patterns, at the center of the resonance of three voices, in the pulsating rhythm of the light spots on the Qinghai Lake, she seemed to sense a calling, a code from a distant time and space, a code of connection and reunion.
This crystal ball, like a giant enigma, like a key, hung before them, shimmering with a mysterious and alluring light, the color of Qinghai Lake. The water droplets on the floor tiles had vanished, but they seemed to have merged into the crystal, into the pulsating light, into the resonant sound, waiting for them to decipher it, to touch the ultimate answers hidden within the folds of time—answers about them, about their ancestors, about those forgotten places and moments. And each pulsation of the Qinghai Lake-colored light seemed to ask: Are you ready?
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