Chapter 178

Chapter 178

The dinner continued late into the night before the party finally broke up.

On the way home, Wang Zheng noticed Nan Mu turning a small reddish-brown object over and over in his hands. Curious, he asked, “What are you holding?”

“Someone gave it to me. I don’t know what it is,” Nan Mu answered absently.

“Let me see.” Wang Zheng plucked it from his hand, switched on the car’s overhead reading light, and examined it in the dim glow.

“This…” Even Wang Zheng was uncertain. He ventured a guess. “It feels like there’s a chip inside. Is it a flash drive?”

He tossed it back to Nan Mu and warned him, “Who gave it to you? Can you trust them? Be careful. You can’t plug random flash drives into your computer. I’ve heard hackers are incredibly sophisticated now. They install viruses on flash drives, and the instant you connect one to a computer, it automatically downloads the virus without you doing a thing. Accounts, passwords, photographs-they can steal everything…”

===

Nan Mu had drunk some wine that night, so Xu Yang personally drove him home. He watched Nan Mu enter safely and waited until a light came on upstairs before leaving to drive Wang Zheng home.

Nan Mu showered, changed his clothes, and went to the study.

He picked up the “flash drive” and examined it repeatedly. Perhaps it was merely something an employee from the materials team’s office had carelessly misplaced.

He turned on his computer and was about to insert the device when he remembered Wang Zheng’s warning.

The middle-aged man hardly seemed capable of plotting anything, but Nan Mu still hesitated. In the end, he did not plug it in.

Instead, he sent Xu Yang a message asking him to bring over a spare computer with nothing important on it the next day.

After sending the message, Nan Mu opened a drawer and placed the “flash drive” inside.

The drawer contained his important possessions. Resting atop a stack of documents were an exquisite cuff link and a distinctive strip of blue-and-white fabric.

This fabric…

Nan Mu picked up the cloth left behind by the person who had rescued him and lowered his gaze to study it, his cold eyes like blackened ashes.

If the person he saw that day truly was Wen Miao, then didn’t that prove she remained alive in another parallel timeline?

But on closer consideration, the idea contained a clear paradox.

Timelines might run in parallel, but ultimately they had to converge onto a single axis. The two timelines running alongside each other now were simply too different.

Wen Miao remained alive in one, while in the other, she had been murdered long ago.

How could two parallel timelines with such enormous differences eventually become one?

Wouldn’t people in this timeline suddenly discovering that someone long dead in their memories was still alive create a glaring contradiction?

No.

There had to be a flaw in this logic.

A cold gleam crossed Nan Mu’s composed face as his curled fingers tapped rhythmically against the desk.

He needed to start over and approach the question from another direction.

Looking back, a major inconsistency had been present almost from the beginning of his travels through time.

He had never understood it. In his attempt to save Wen Miao, he had personally stabbed Xu Lei. Yet afterward, Xu Lei’s back bore no wound whatsoever.

It was only Nan Mu’s second journey, and he had not yet understood the rules governing how time travel affected events. He therefore had not examined the issue deeply. He merely assumed he could not change other people’s fates, or that he could not inflict tangible harm on someone in the past.
But during his later journeys, he had fallen from a building with Nurse Xiao Ai while protecting Wen Miao, causing the nurse’s death. He had also saved Cheng Jiamin by chance, altering her fate…

These events proved his original deductions wrong.

If he could change other people’s fates, why was Wen Miao the sole exception? He could cause Nurse Xiao Ai’s death, so why couldn’t he harm Xu Lei?

In that instant, an incredible possibility occurred to him-an idea so absurd it seemed impossible.

If he could travel into the past, then Wen Miao’s appearance on the cruise ship last time…

If it had not been caused by overlapping parallel timelines, could Wen Miao have traveled back to 2032 from the future?

The possibility sent his emotions surging, leaving him unable to calm down for a long time.

If Wen Miao could travel through time as well…

Then after his first journey, Xu Lei had not only survived, but even the wound Nan Mu inflicted had vanished. Could that be because someone else returned to the past after him and altered the world he had already changed?

Nan Mu’s heart raced. He sucked in a breath and sprang from his chair, pacing excitedly back and forth through the study.

He sank into thought, recalling the scene from that time.

On his second journey, he encountered Wen Miao in the 308 Biology Research Lab inside Chongjing Building. He had asked why she was there. Wen Miao explained that she had received a letter saying Nan Mu would get into a confrontation there that day, accidentally kill someone, and be sent to prison. The letter urged her to stop him.

The letter appeared extremely old. Its paper had yellowed slightly, and although the address on the envelope was handwritten, some portions had already begun to fade, as if it had been written many years earlier.

Nan Mu had found it strange even then. He could never understand who would fabricate such a lie and send Wen Miao that letter, or what they hoped to achieve.

Now, however, it seemed as if the writer had foreseen everything long in advance and sent Wen Miao there to prevent it.

So the contents of the letter had not been invented. In another timeline, Nan Mu truly had been imprisoned for killing someone.

What exactly had Wen Miao said at the time?

Right. She had said he committed negligent homicide…

If it was negligent homicide rather than attempted murder, then the knife Nan Mu drove into Xu Lei had indeed killed him.

So…

Who had written the letter to Wen Miao? Had their purpose been to change the outcome of Xu Lei’s death?

Who would want to alter Xu Lei’s fate and prevent his death?

Nan Mu’s heartbeat suddenly quickened. This time, he felt only one step away from the truth.

He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, trying to settle his excitement. Every person connected to Xu Lei and Wen Miao flashed continuously through his mind.

Half a minute later, Nan Mu’s eyes snapped open. His pale lids lowered over a gaze as cold and dark as black iron.

A name had surfaced in his mind, a key that would lead him toward the truth hidden in darkness.

It was time to meet this woman.

Meng Ran.