Chapter 358: Bird and Fish

“We have to celebrate Fang Ze’s return! That way, we can restart our club activities! I’ve been so excited—it’s time for Film Club 2.0!”

With that, Jiang Ran said goodbye to Chi Xiaoguo and walked out the door.

Chi Xiaoguo stood in the room, silently counting to twenty in her head.

Then, on tiptoe, she crept up to the clubroom’s wooden door, pressing her ear against it to listen for footsteps outside.

Hmm…

She couldn’t hear a thing.

“Ahem.”

With the guilty conscience of a sneak, she gently pulled the door open and peeked outside.

Okay.

‘He’s long gone. All clear!’

“Phew…”

She let out a long sigh of relief, turned, and walked over to the bookshelf. She pulled out the book where Jiang Ran had just tucked the photographs.

GULP.

Chi Xiaoguo swallowed hard.

“I… I’m just going to take a peek, that’s all. Yeah. It’s fine.”

It wasn’t clear who she was talking to, or whose permission she’d just received.

Then, she gently opened the book and took out the eight photographs.

She paid no mind to the landscape shots, of course. She pulled out the last two photographs and laid them on the table.

One was of a girl in pink, sitting behind a birthday cake. Her smile, captured amid a backdrop of twinkling lights, was utterly captivating.

The other was a photograph of a birthday card, covered in a script that was both fresh and overflowing with affection.

It was clear that this girl, Nan Xiuxiu, had really been in love with Jiang Ran.

And what’s more, Jiang Ran seemed to feel guilty about Nan Xiuxiu; he’d even admitted that she was a wonderful person.

Chi Xiaoguo found this very strange.

She tilted her head.

She couldn’t make sense of it.

‘If there was nothing wrong with either of them…’

‘…then why did they break up?’

…

「That evening, on the third floor of the cafeteria.」

Jiang Ran, Chi Xiaoguo, and Fang Ze sat around a small table, laughing and chatting happily.

When Fang Ze heard that Teacher Zhang Yang would be returning at the end of the month and was planning a dinner at his home to welcome them, he started laughing for some reason.

“Have you guys read *Harry Potter*?” Fang Ze asked.

“Yeah, we have.”

Jiang Ran nodded.

“Why?”

“Haha, it just reminded me of something funny.”

Fang Ze said with a slight smile,

“You know, in *Harry Potter*, the teachers for the Defense Against the Dark Arts class never last long. They basically all meet a bad end. One shows up, one dies. It’s like they’re a yearly subscription; a new teacher comes every single year to teach the course.”

“It suddenly feels like our little graduate class is a lot like that… Teacher Yan Chonghan hadn’t even taught us for a month before he was shot and killed. Now, Teacher Zhang Yang, who just recovered from a major illness, is stepping in right after him.”

“You don’t think our little graduate seminar is cursed, do you? Are our teachers monthly disposables now? At this rate, something will happen to Teacher Zhang Yang before long, won’t it?”

“Don’t jinx it!”

Jiang Ran quickly cut him off.

‘That’s not something you should joke about!’

‘After all, Teacher Zhang Yang’s future really didn’t look good. In the last future timeline, he was thrown in prison for his research on Quantum Tunneling.’

‘I don’t know if that crisis has been averted this time, but my gut tells me it’s better to stay away from researching things like Quantum Tunneling. Mess with it, and you’re bound to get burned.’

‘Speaking of which…’

‘When I go to the Virtual World to find Cheng Mengxue tonight, maybe I can find a way to look up resident information… I should see if I can find any of the people I know there.’

After dinner, Fang Ze yawned, saying he was going back to sleep.

That was jet lag for you. Jiang Ran wondered what Fang Ze had been so busy with before coming back to the country to be this exhausted.

Jiang Ran and Chi Xiaoguo went straight to the Film Club room to wait until it was time to activate the Positron Cannon.

Inside the room, as if by a silent, mutual agreement, neither of them brought up the photographs or Nan Xiuxiu again.

‘This was one of the things Jiang Ran liked most about Chi Xiaoguo…’

‘She was great at keeping things to herself. Not only was she tight-lipped, but she never pried into other people’s private lives. Being around someone like that was so comfortable.’

After they killed some time scrolling on their phones, the lights in the student clubs building began to go out one by one. The time was 10:45.

Jiang Ran braced his hands on the windowsill and vaulted outside.

‘Now that I know Cheng Mengxue has the Highest Authority in the Virtual World… I need to use that advantage to uncover some secrets today.’

He walked over to the transformer box and looked back at the Film Club window.

“I’m ready!”

“Okay, I’m starting the countdown!”

Chi Xiaoguo took a deep breath, dialed Jiang Ran’s number, and started the countdown. The very instant she finished, the Positron Cannon roared to life, and Jiang Ran timed it perfectly, hitting the answer button on his phone—

WHUM!

WHUM!

WHUM!

Dizziness and vertigo washed over him as the world spun on its axis. He was flying through a temporal vortex, once again hurtling toward the year 2045.

Two seconds later, the discomfort vanished.

Warm sunlight fell on his skin. The aroma of cake filled his nostrils. The clamor of the city buzzed in his ears.

Here, in this Virtual Digital World, twenty years in the future.

Jiang Ran…

…opened his eyes.