In the next room.
The laptop on the old wooden desk displayed the script that was being revised. The mouse cursor flickered after a half-written line, but no new words were added for a long time.
Jiang Que returned to the table with a cup of freshly brewed instant coffee and sat down. After putting the cup down, he was about to continue typing when he suddenly noticed that the screen of the silent mobile phone next to him lit up.
He took the phone and unlocked it, and found a small red circle on WeChat. He clicked on it with a little confusion.
He has only a handful of WeChat contacts, and he is in the habit of deleting chat records at will, like a manual version of self-destructing messages, so his chat list is unusually empty.
At this moment, a single unread message stood out from the empty list:
[Song Yecheng: Are you desperate?]
Jiang Que: “…” What the hell?
He first clicked into the dialog box to confirm that there was no context, then stared at the four words back and forth for more than half a minute. A series of speculations such as "Is he drunk?" and "Wrong person?" flashed through his mind. Finally, he hesitantly clicked on the input box with his finger suspended.
[Jiang Que:? ]
In the next room.
Song Yecheng looked at the expected question mark and could almost imagine Jiang Que's confused inner thoughts as he pressed the keyboard. He couldn't help but chuckle as if he had succeeded in a prank, and replied without hesitation:
[Song Yecheng: Doesn't your book say that gods are the product of despair?]
The words were still so baffling, but Jiang Que instantly understood his underlying meaning. What's the difference between your so-called book-traveling and the stories of ghosts and gods? Since gods are the product of despair, does that mean you're also despairing?
I have to say that this approach is actually quite clever, asking him a question based on what he wrote, even with a hint of irony.
But Jiang Que's expression calmed down instead. He didn't expect Song Yecheng to change his opinion in such a short time, so he replied slowly:
[Jiang Que: From the perspective of book transmigration, Bai Ye Ling, like you, is just a character in my book. When I was writing about this character's life and his works, I had no idea that I would one day be transmigrated into this book and become him. Therefore, the words in "Dust" can only represent my perspective before I experienced transmigration. And there are many things in this world that you simply won't believe before you experience them firsthand.]
Song Yecheng: "..."
He actually explained it seriously?
He read this passage over and over again, and after sorting out the logical relationship, he couldn't help but feel a sense of "He is indeed worthy of being a writer" - even the sophistry can be so logically clear, how can he be so gifted.
Since he knew it was sophistry, Song Yecheng didn't really want to argue, but just asked like Jiang Taigong fishing:
[Song Yecheng: When did you come here? ]
Jiang Que couldn't help but sneer. He knew what Song Yecheng was trying to foreshadow. If he had answered before the publication of "Dust", he would definitely have asked, "Why didn't you change that sentence for him?" So he replied frankly:
【Jiang Que: Last year.】
Seeing this point, Song Yecheng's typing hand couldn't help but pause. He wanted to ask, "Then how do you explain learning painting with your father and supporting Jiangbei?" But then he thought that this question could be answered with "I am the author, so I know the character's experience", so there was no point in asking, so he said instead:
Song Yecheng: So why did you write that online novel and tell me about the book you traveled through? Aren't you afraid that changing the plot will trigger a butterfly effect and cause irreversible consequences?
This was the only thing he knew about the subject of "traveling through a book" and he thought he had grasped the key points pretty well. However, he didn't expect Jiang Que, who was sitting across from him, to be completely undeterred by his question:
[Jiang Que: How do you know I changed the plot and it's not in the original text?]
Song Yecheng was stunned for a long time, and finally figured out the meaning of this sentence -
If Jiang Que originally wrote a book about traveling through a book, and the character "Bai Ye Ling" in the book was the person whose soul traveled through the author, then the plot of "after traveling through the book, the author wrote online novel spoilers as a prophet, and revealed the fact that he traveled through the book to the protagonist Song Yecheng in the book" might have been the original plot, rather than Jiang Que's misbehavior after "traveling through the book".
After sorting out this logic, Song Yecheng's mind began to echo with the story of "Once upon a time there was a mountain, in the mountain there was a temple, in the temple there was an old monk, the old monk told the young monk that there was a mountain once upon a time". Thinking about it, he felt both amused and sad:
[Song Yecheng: Teacher Bai, are you nesting dolls?]
Staring at this sarcastic question, Jiang Que himself was actually a little amused. He didn't know how the conversation had led to the current situation. It seemed that answering "yes" or "no" was not appropriate.
The conversation came to a standstill.
One second, two seconds.
One minute, two minutes.
Just when Jiang Que was about to exit the chat box, a new message suddenly popped up:
[Song Yecheng: Okay, so Mr. Bai, can you tell me what the next plot is? ]
Jiang Que hesitated for a moment, then opened the input box again.
In the next room.
Seeing that Jiang Que's status finally changed to "typing", Song Yecheng actually breathed a sigh of relief - his original intention of sending a message to Jiang Que was just to tease him casually, and he didn't mean to make a big deal out of it or be aggressive. He didn't expect Jiang Que to explain the book-traveling seriously, and he didn't expect that the conversation would reach a dead end.
Seeing that the other party didn't respond for a long time, he guessed that Jiang Que was really at a loss for words, so he simply gave him a way out.
The input status was intermittent. Song Yecheng waited and waited until several minutes had passed. He thought he would receive another long speech, but to his surprise, it was only five short words:
【Jiang Que: It’s not the right time yet.】
Song Yecheng sneered and shook his head.
[Song Yecheng: Okay, then please let me know in advance when you arrive so I can witness the miracle.]
【Jiang Que: Okay.】
Song Yecheng didn't reply any further.
Jiang Que stared at the last word he wrote for a while, then returned to the chat list and pulled the dialog box to the left, ready to activate the self-destructing function as usual.
However, just before he was about to click delete, he paused, hesitated for a moment, returned to the dialog box, and clicked on the avatar to enter Song Yecheng's circle of friends.
In fact, he had already browsed Song Yecheng's circle of friends last night and found that although there was a lot of content, most of it was work-related, similar to what he publicly posted on Weibo. He didn't see many daily life posts from beginning to end.
However, when I look at it today, it is different from yesterday.
Just now, Song Yecheng posted a private blessing with the keyword "Pearl Wedding" and the blessing was directed to his parents. A photo was also posted below.
The moment he saw the photo, Jiang Que's breathing paused slightly. After a while, he slowly lowered his finger and opened it.
In the photo, the couple snuggled intimately in front of the camera, with bouquets, cakes and flickering candlelight behind them. There was a candle with the number "30" on the cake, and there were many scattered petals around it, looking warm and sweet.
Jiang Que stared at the photo without blinking, moving his fingers to enlarge it little by little, until the entire background was hidden, leaving only the smiling faces of the couple.
Obviously, both of them are already nearly sixty years old, but Jiang Que seemed to see them from more than ten years ago through the photos——
At that younger age, they sat gently and kindly before my eyes, speaking softly, their eyes warm and loving.
The old environment failed to affect their delicate faces, and the dim light failed to conceal their elegant temperament. Instead, it made them look even brighter, like a bright light that accidentally entered a black and white movie.
They were so close at that time, yet as if there was an invisible chasm between them, so... out of reach.
Jiang Que stared at the face in the photo quietly. He didn't know how long it took before his distant thoughts gradually drifted back.
He blinked slowly, breathed a sigh of relief, lowered his finger to shrink the picture, and exited the circle of friends.
Putting down his phone, he sat in front of the computer for a while, then raised his hand and moved the mouse to shrink the document he was editing on the screen, and opened a folder that was full of things.
There are more than a dozen subfolders in this folder, all named after years, from 2020 this year to 2019 and 2018 last year, and then arranged step by step down to the earliest sixteen years ago - 2004.
Each folder contains countless pictures, videos, and documents from that year, which are classified into different categories, and Jiang Que knows all of them by heart.
He moved his mouse and clicked into the folder named "2004", selected the "Video" category, then chose the shorter of the two videos that appeared in the window and clicked play.
It was an awards ceremony.
It was a video of the movie that Song Yecheng starred in when he was twelve and won an award abroad.
On the gorgeous and dazzling podium, the young Song Yecheng stood beside Zhuang Yan, who was holding the trophy. He was wearing an exquisitely tailored haute couture suit, with a polite and appropriate smile on his handsome face, as if he was a nobleman who had just walked out of an oil painting.
After Zhuang Yan finished his acceptance speech, the microphone was naturally pushed towards him. Facing the gazes of the guests from all over the world and countless cameras, he leaned close to the microphone and said gently and solemnly in fluent English: "May light always find its way to crack into the darkness, which in turn, be open to ept the brightness. (May all the light in this world shine into the darkness, and darkness is willing to accept light.)" [1]
A tide of applause rang out throughout the hall, and countless flash lights flashed in all directions.
In the close-up shot that is clear enough to see all the details, Song Yecheng's eyes are full of the sincerity and honesty of a young man, like the ripples on the sparkling lake, and like the bright stars in the distant sky on that midsummer night.
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