When Lin Jue finally calmed down a little from Song Hanzhang’s resurrection, they finally had time to talk through what had happened in the past few hours, or rather, the past ten years.
Lin Jue went through what had happened after the two parted, but as he spoke, his face became flushed. He was too embarrassed to speak of his breakdowns after finding Song Hanzhang’s corpse and brushed over it.
Song Hanzhang sat by him and held his hand. “Sorry, to have missed so much about you.”
This guilty apology was sincere. This supposed ‘best method’ was nothing but a long and cruel torture for Lin Jue who knew nothing, forcing him to transform from a normal human to a heartless hunter of the jungle. Even though he did not care for raising a caged bird for admiration and would rather pour his trust into teaching it how to fly, his heart still ached at the scars on its wings when the fledgling in his hands grew into a falcon that withstood the cold and the wind.
It doesn’t matter, I didn’t want you to see, Lin Jue thought and tightened his grip on Song Hanzhang’s hand.
To only want to show their best side to their lover, this feeling was shared.
“Xuezhang, when did you make this plan? Why were you certain that the us from 2012 wouldn’t win?” Lin Jue asked.
Song Hanzhang replied with a seemingly unrelated question. “Do you think the chicken came first, or the egg?”
Lin Jue was dumbfounded. “Ah?”
“Another way to put it is: do you think the cause or the effect came first?”
Lin Jue approached it with experience from daily life and answered immediately, “Of course you need a cause to have an effect.”
Song Hanzhang asked again. “Then do you think it was the failure of 2012 that gave 2022 victory, or the victory of 2022 that forced 2012 into failing? Of these two, which is the cause, and which is the effect?”
Lin Jue opened his mouth. This time, he had truly been confounded. They were both causes, yet they were also both effects: there was no way to discern them.
“First you must understand that the time and space we are part of right now is one without order. It’s not the straight line we assume it to be, with A causing B causing C. That’s not what is happening at all. Here, there is no sequence of cause and effect, they happen simultaneously and exist simultaneously. As we walked towards Time Plaza after the corpse ball and found the Lu Ren from 2022, both cause and effect became destined: that 2022’s Lu Ren would appear in this time and space. If we rashly changed this ‘destiny’, perhaps we would have created a parallel timeline, or have destroyed this one. Regardless, we would have had to bear the burden of your 2022 self’s backlash – don’t forget that there is no box to revive me in 2022, so the you of 2022 needed to take it from the you of 2012. Without a way to fix that conflict between your two selves, I decided the best method would be to create a ‘cause’ for the ‘effect’ of Lu Ren’s 2022 self. Then, the question of ‘who came first’ would be resolved. So long as both cause and effect exist, a perfect loop will be formed.”
Lin Jue felt like his head had blasted off into the clouds. Even though he understood each individual word, together they formed a conclusion that he couldn’t comprehend at all.
“What we did was both the cause and the effect. For example, the you from 2022 killed the you from 2012, the cause that resulted in the you from 2012 turning into the you from 2022. Then you killed the you from 2012. So which one is the cause, and which one is the effect?” Song Hanzhang asked him.
Lin Jue was like a student who had just learnt 1+1 forced to sit through an advanced mathematics exam, his eyes filled with pathetic confusion. “I… I don’t know.”
“They are both the cause, and the effect.” Song Hanzhang looked at his dumb expression and found it adorably funny, so he softened his expression and answered him patiently. “Don’t be tricked by my question. There is no need to judge the cause or effect, because both have already been ‘observed’ by It and become the necessary truth. All that we need to do is connect the cause and effect, such that the cause will definitely result in the effect. As in, allowing the you from 2022 to kill the you from 2012, and allowing the you from 2012 to become the you from 2022.”
Lin Jue stammered, “Then, then… what do we need to do?”
Probably because he looked too pathetic, but Song Hanzhang smiled at him and touched a strand of perked up hair by his ear. “It doesn’t matter, they’re all finished. If you only think it through, you’ll find there are only a few things that need doing.”
At that moment, Lin Jue felt as if he was a poor man who had been told out of the blue, ‘you must save earth from evil and powerful aliens’. Just when he felt it was impossible, they then told him, ‘it’s alright, it doesn’t matter, the earth is safe’.
Even though he knew he must look extremely stupid, Lin Jue gave up on hiding it. Song Hanzhang had already found out within five minutes of meeting him anyways.
So he asked sincerely, “What did you do?”
“I talked to the Lu Ren from 2022, then gave your box to the Lu Ren from 2012 and told him to apply the item he received in round two to your box, ensuring that he would return to the rewards pool after dying. Because the Lu Ren from 2022 appeared in the team fight, it meant that your box which had his soul glued onto it would definitely be chosen by Team 2022, and that Lu Ren would definitely resurrect in Team 2022 and smuggle your box to ten years later as well. The only loss would be my box, but that could be taken from the you from 2012 by the present you. Simple as that.”
Yeah, how easy it was in words, but in the end it was putting oneself at the doors of death then coming back to life. As long as he risked the gamble, he would receive the chance to jump out from this whirlpool-like space-time.
But there was another important thing that he didn’t say, which was the planning of his own death. His death was a necessary part of it all: he had to carefully plan the time of his cessation. If it was too early, Lin Jue would use the corpses of his teammates to resurrect him, resulting in him remaining in Team 2012; if it was too late, there wouldn’t be enough sacrifices, or Lin Jue’s fight with 2022 would end in defeat and the box would end up in Zhang Sijia or Zuo Linyuan’s hands, resulting in him going into a never-ending sleep. His was the most dangerous part of the loop because unlike Lu Ren or Lin Jue, there was no signs to suggest that he would resurrect successfully. He had to trust Lin Jue, whether it was the Lin Jue from 2012, or the Lin Jue from 2022. It was a trust that was never spoken aloud, but could be weighed through the heaviness of his life.
Song Hanzhang had considered: if he didn’t want to wait for the next ten years but wanted Team 2012 to win? It wouldn’t necessarily end in defeat. Maybe this choice would create another parallel space, one where Team 2012 won, but…
But, this would mean that in another space, the them from 2022 would eventually end up dying in this game.
There would be a Lin Jue who would never get to see Song Hanzhang, and a Song Hanzhang who would never wake up from death.
He could imagine what would happen to Lin Jue, and knew all of his weaknesses. Just by standing in front of Lin Jue, he could make him break down. And the Lin Jue who had already lost him once, he would lose his last hope in maddened despair under the hands of another him and a Song Hanzhang who didn’t belong to him, closing his eyes in the darkness before dawn, covered in bruises and scars – he would never see his Song Hanzhang again.
In this game where only one team could win, the losing two only had death as an ending.
Sometimes, Song Hanzhang had this unrealistic greed. He desired happiness, and desired for Song Hanzhang and Lin Jue to achieve happiness. That naive optimism lay hidden in his cold and secular soul. Like how even though he knew he was such a cold person, he still desired to meet someone who would love him, and be loved by him.
He thought he was lucky enough, and he didn’t want to waste this luck, so he let all of them be happy.
Now all he wanted was to take this little beast who had protected him and walk out from this darkness, welcoming the light of dawn in the east.
Even if he had to deal with the devil.
***
Vera’s Notes:
Hello dear readers! Apologies for the missed update last week, here’s a double to make up for it. Our translator Luci was without wifi for a while, so we decided to delay the update to next week. Dear readers, there are three more chapters left in Easter Egg. How exciting…
Vera & Luci Translations 