Chapter 3: Transmission
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s mind went blank, and for a fleeting moment, she even thought she saw an airbag hurtling towards her face.
The speed at which the airbag was known to be deployed was usually around 300 kilometers per hour. Without a seatbelt, it could easily kill someone as tough as Lu Zhishen[mfn]Lu Zhi-shen (鲁智深) is a fictional character from the classic Chinese novel “Water Margin” (水浒传 – Shuǐhǔzhuàn). He is a central figure in the story, known for his immense strength, loyalty, and rebellious spirit. He is often depicted as a tall and muscular man, making him a fitting metaphor for someone who could withstand a great deal of physical punishment.[/mfn].
In a life-and-death moment, all petty squabbles and jealousy became trivial matters.
And only a single thought occupied Jiang Xiaoyuan’s mind: “I can’t die like this, can I?”
However, after a sharp braking sound, the pain that she had expected did not come. Instead, Jiang Xiaoyuan’s vision suddenly went dark.
The speeding car, the bumpy street, the trees, and the panicked pedestrians… Suddenly, everything vanished from her sight. She felt weightless, as if some mysterious force had detached her from the horrifying scene of the car crashing into the tree.
The speeding car, the bumpy street, the trees, and the panicked pedestrians—suddenly, everything vanished from her sight. She felt weightless, as if some mysterious force had detached her from the horrifying scene of the car crashing into the tree.
Jiang Xiaoyuan then found herself in an unfamiliar setting. There was neither sound nor light; only the frantic beating of her heart and arteries was accompanying her.
Her hands and feet were ice-cold as she stood frozen in her place, her body drenched in cold sweat. After being suspended in this surreal limbo for half a minute, she finally came to her senses in a bewildered state.
Where was she?
What was happening?
Suddenly, she heard a soft cough beside her. The hair on her body stood on end, and she instinctively took a half-step to the side, inadvertently twisting her ankles due to her stiletto heels being eight centimeters.
Before she could further fall and collapse to the ground, a cold hand grabbed her arm. At the same time, Jiang Xiaoyuan met the gaze of the man before her—it was the man clad in black who looked like a mannequin from the coffee shop earlier.
A coin-sized button adorning his collar could be observed emitting a soft white light, casting a soft glow on his face, which seemed as if it were computer-generated.
It was pale, seeming to be devoid of blood.
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s shoulders tensed, and she quickly jerked her arm out of his grip. She cautiously eyed the man in front of her—wondering if he was even a person.
“Please follow me.” As if the black-clothed man was oblivious to Jiang Xiaoyuan’s vigilance for his identity, he proceeded to step forward and start walking ahead on his own.
“What is this place?” Jiang Xiaoyuan suppressed her panic and demanded in a stern voice. “And what is up with you? Who are you?”
“I am the Lighthouse Assistant,” the black-clothed man replied in a monotonous tone before repeating his previous words again. “Please follow me.”
His voice sounded like an automated response from a machine, devoid of emotion and sincerity. In short, he didn’t look like a living being.
Jiang Xiaoyuan crossed her arms before her chest as she remained still in her place, contemplating: “And why should I follow you?”
Since she wasn’t moving, the black-clothed man who identified himself as the Lighthouse Assistant didn’t wait for her either. He continued to walk forward, taking strides with a strange and stiff rhythm while being silent and precise.
So… what exactly was this dark figure?
Could it be a robot? A zombie?
Jiang Xiaoyuan held her breath, letting her imagination run wild for a moment. Somehow, she could almost imagine the black-clothed man turning around the next moment, revealing a ghastly face with bared fangs.
But as the distance between the two of them widened, she was left trembling in fear as she quickly realized that by letting him leave, she was also turning away her only source of light in this place. Jiang Xiaoyuan had never been afraid of the dark before, but now she felt a chilling sensation creeping up from her heart. The darkness here seemed alive, its mouth wide open and ready to swallow her whole in any moment.
Cold sweat seemed to break out on her back. After hesitating for a moment, Jiang Xiaoyuan reluctantly started to follow him.
With each step she took, Jiang Xiaoyuan unconsciously flexed her wrists. She had participated in a Taekwondo club abroad for half a year—though taekwondo itself had degenerated into a show of fists and legs, it never bothered her as her initial intention was to meet handsome men rather than truly learn. Her training throughout those sessions was almost equivalent to doing a few more sets of radio calisthenics[mfn]warm-up exercises performed to music and guidance from radio broadcasts.[/mfn] than others.
Jiang Xiaoyuan tried to recall those flashy but impractical moves her instructor had taught, assessing her chances of taking down the man in front of her.
Just then, a blinding light suddenly pierced Jiang Xiaoyuan’s vision
She saw a straight beam of light sweeping through the vast darkness. The light seemed to emerge from nothing, stretching as far as the eye could see. It was long and straight, sharp and bright. It was as if it had burst from the edge of the world, tearing through the endless darkness before reaching her in an instant.
Instinctively, Jiang Xiaoyuan raised her hands to shield her eyes as the beam of light passed over her before continuing on its path into the unknown.
The Lighthouse Assistant finally spoke again, cutting through the silence that had formed.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, “it’s just the lighthouse beam. Come on.”
At his words, Jiang Xiaoyuan lifted her gaze. However, she found herself frozen a little later—
Before her eyes, there stretched a suspended sky bridge across the boundless darkness as if faintly connected to another dimension. Every step that it contained seemed to float in mid-air, unfolding an endless stream of uncertain futures.
The lighthouse assistant stood on a platform formed by two floating steps, his figure half-turned towards her, extending a beckoning hand. Layers of intricate patterns danced within his eyes, resembling cascading streams flowing light.
Seeing those eyes, Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t help but blurt out, “You… are you human?”
“This is the monitoring station for all parallel spaces in Zone Three,” the lighthouse assistant seemed to ignore her question, speaking down to her, “You understand the concept of ‘parallel space,’ don’t you?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s diploma, adorned with nothing more than a squashed ashtray, offered no solace as confusion etched across her features.
The lighthouse assistant continued, unfazed, “Countless timelines exist parallel to yours, never intersecting… Imagine standing at a crossroads. Every turn you make—forward, left, right, or even backward—creates a distinct series of events, resulting in four parallel spaces, each housing its own iteration of you.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan, who suddenly had four clones, stood speechless in front of her three heads and six arms.
“Each lighthouse manages a certain range of parallel spaces,” the lighthouse assistant explained. “Our lighthouse detected an impending space-time shock in your timeline… akin to an earthquake. I am the monitor for this shock. Due to the fact that you were at the epicenter of the space-time shock when it occurred, you have been temporarily dislodged from your original space-time. This is my fault. I failed to handle it in time. For that, I apologize.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan pinched her hand lightly, half-expecting to awaken from this surreal dream.
How could she possibly have such an incredible dream in a mind filled with ‘eating, drinking, and having fun’ and ‘buying, buying, buying’?
Jiang Xiaoyuan involuntarily followed as she tried to make sense of her scrambled thoughts.
As she ascended the steps, Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t resist stealing a glance backward. The path behind her lay shrouded in darkness, save for the faint glow emanating from the lighthouse assistant’s collar. She had no other souce of guidance.
She had the illusion that she was walking alone, and an inexplicable fear rushed into her heart.
Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t help but ask, “Send me back to my own space-time… Is it okay to send me anywhere? Could I, for instance, return to my childhood?”
The lighthouse assistant, unfazed by her apparent ignorance, responded with solemn clarity: “You may not have fully grasped the concept earlier. Returning to your childhood would create yet another parallel space-time, diverging from the original.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan had never passed math or physics since she was a child, and she felt like she was in the clouds. She always felt like she had forgotten something, yet her thoughts remained tangled in chaos, and couldn’t sort it out for a while.
At the end of the stairs was a huge tower, as if it was about to break through the universe.
Jiang Xiaoyuan swallowed hard and followed the lighthouse assistant into the tower, feeling as if she were Dante descending into the inferno, venturing into the unimaginable.
Inside the lighthouse were scattered lights, appearing to overlap yet not interfere with each other, like a complex three-dimensional chessboard.
The two of them reached the bottom of the tower, where a small platform awaited. Adjacent to the platform was an array of cryptic coordinates.
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s mind buzzed—before her on a platform lay a chair and a steering wheel, unmistakably resembling the cockpit of a car!
Dangling from the rearview mirror hung a familiar trinket, the seatbelt hung quietly to the side, and the airbag was partially deployed, with tiny glass shards suspended in mid-air, like an exact snapshot of a specific moment in time and space.
Jiang Xiaoyuan involuntarily took a step back.
And another.
With a snap of his fingers, the lighthouse assistant activated a mechanism, and suddenly, the lights on the platform brightened, turning it into a stage illuminated by a spotlight, and Jiang Xiaoyuan was the clown that was about to make her debut.
“No…” Jiang Xiaoyuan kept backing away, as if the farther she was from the platform, the safer she would be, her words tumbling out incoherently, “Y-Y-You can’t send me back, I can’t go back!”
The lighthouse assistant replied: “You can’t stay here forever. Swept by the currents of the space-time storm, you will inevitably return to your original space-time coordinates.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan stared at him incredulously, her neck pulsing with fear. “I crashed! Don’t you see? Are you blind? The windshield shattered, I wasn’t wearing my seatbelted! I’ll die! Are you mad?”
The lighthouse assistant remained impassive, his face bathed in a porcelain-like casted by the surrounding lights.
In that moment, he seemed less human and more like a vessel devoid of emotion, a mere shell of existence.
“That implies the you in this space-time was fated to meet this end at this juncture. What’s the issue with that?” he said calmly.
Jiang Xiaoyuan was dumbfounded.
“Is this guy a psychopath?” Jiang Xiaoyuan felt her blood vessels pulsing in her neck, her heart pounding, “This place is madness, and so is he. No, I must escape.”
The lighthouse assistant approached her. “The transmission is about to begin. Please come closer to avoid any transmission errors…”
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s hands trembled violently under her cloak. Suddenly, she lunged forward without warning, slamming her shoulder into the lighthouse assistant and sending him stumbling sideways. Despite his tall and slender appearance, the lighthouse assistant was as light as a sheet of paper. Jiang Xiaoyuan was surprised at how easily she had succeeded. She paused for a moment, but then, with a rare moment of decisiveness, she turned and ran for her life.
Jiang Xiaoyuan, who had always been good at makeup and cosmetics and had never been associated with sports, was suddenly filled with adrenaline, her full potential was unleashed. . She felt as if she had suddenly mastered the art of light kung fu.
But her escape was short-lived. It felt as though invisible hands had ensnared her.
Though her legs propelled her forward in frantic flight, her body resisted, dragged inexorably backward. With each step closer to the brightly illuminated platform and its ominous cockpit, it was as if a gravitational force, akin to a relentless black hole, pursued her, swallowing her whole.
The fierce Jiang Xiaoyuan finally ran out of courage, her entire body overwhelmed by fear. “Wait! Please, I can’t die… Help! I’m only twenty-five. My parents only have one daughter. I can’t die! I still have… Yes, I still have work to do, I still have so much to do. I can’t die in such a senseless place! Help!”
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