Chapter 78

Chapter 78

According to the doctor, the wound on Nan Mu’s abdomen wasn’t deep and hadn’t damaged any internal organs. His condition was primarily caused by shock from excessive blood loss. Fortunately, he had been brought in just in time; otherwise, he truly would have died from hemorrhagic shock.

Qiu Ziyu didn’t dare tell Nan Mu’s parents about his injury and hospitalization, fearing the two elderly people would worry. Consequently, he had to shuttle back and forth between the hospital and his workplace, leaving him utterly exhausted.

Luckily, Yu Jingtong worked at this very hospital and would stop by to check on Nan Mu whenever she had a free moment.

On the third day after Nan Mu’s surgery, Qiu Ziyu received a call from Yu Jingtong saying that Nan Mu had finally woken up. Upon hearing the news, he rushed to the hospital immediately.

As he reached the door of the ward, he heard the voices of Yu Jingtong and Nan Mu speaking inside.

Yu Jingtong was saying, “Doctor Jia hasn’t returned to the country yet… I tried to contact you guys later, but the girl who came to my house with you-her phone has been unreachable until now… I thought you had already given up on the investigation.”

Nan Mu’s voice was a bit hoarse. “No… because of certain events, we were forced to interrupt the investigation, but we never gave up.”

“Then did you eventually find Gu Zhishu?”

“No.”

Yu Jingtong actually knew Gu Zhishu?

Qiu Ziyu stroked his chin. Hearing the ward suddenly fall silent, he reached out and pushed the door open.

“I’m here! Nan Mu, you’re finally awake. You scared the hell out of me!”

Nan Mu was still lying in bed. Seeing Qiu Ziyu arrive, he gave him a small smile. However, since Nan Mu had been relying on a drainage tube and IV fluids for the past few days after surgery, his face was pale and bloodless. That smile made him look like a vampire that had just crawled out of a coffin, giving Qiu Ziyu the creeps.

Yu Jingtong greeted Qiu Ziyu before turning back to Nan Mu. “I’ll be going now; I have a surgery later. We’ll talk more when we have time.”

“Alright.”

The two watched Yu Jingtong leave. Qiu Ziyu impatiently dragged over a chair and sat down hurriedly by the bedside, firing off a string of questions. “What happened to you? Who stabbed you in the waist? It wasn’t Gu Zhishu’s killer, was it? Did you two get into a fight at the crime scene?”

Nan Mu frowned and gestured for Qiu Ziyu to prop his pillow up a bit higher. Only then did he speak slowly. “Do you remember… where I told you to send me?”

Send him where? Qiu Ziyu was completely bewildered. “What do you mean?”

Nan Mu leaned against the pillow and stared at the ceiling. “Back then, do you remember what dates I told you to set for the time travel?”

Qiu Ziyu was puzzled. “Why bring that up all of a sudden? Didn’t we say… April 9th to the 23rd?”

“Exactly.” Nan Mu looked at him with a cold sneer and asked, emphasizing every word, “Then why did I end up going to October 9th through October 23rd instead?”

“That happened?” Qiu Ziyu sat bolt upright instantly, but his mouth was always faster than his brain. “Impossible. Didn’t we double-check the time? Could there be a problem with the equipment? I knew it-a massive machine like that definitely needed more testing. After Wen Xin and the others invented it, they surely didn’t do mass testing. It’s unreliable.”

Nan Mu didn’t say anything, just silently stared at Qiu Ziyu.

Qiu Ziyu felt his skin crawl under the gaze. As he thought it over, a certain memory suddenly flashed in his mind. “You just said you… went to which date?”

“October 9th.”

Qiu Ziyu scratched his head, feeling inexplicably guilty. “I… just remembered something…”
He chuckled awkwardly. “After you… after you left, I did take a look at the device. When I checked it, the display really did seem to show October… but I swear I didn’t touch it! I-I just thought that after the device was used, the time would reset itself or something…”

At this point, Qiu Ziyu also realized what had happened. “So you didn’t see Gu Zhishu? You got this injury back in October? Oh! You were injured trying to save Wen Miao!”

When Nan Mu woke up, he had already received a set of updated memories. Having gone through this once before, he was surprisingly able to calmly accept the fact that he had failed to save Wen Miao.

But in his memory, he had clearly pushed Xiao Ai off the building with him. Why did Wen Miao still die on the night of the 23rd?

“According to your description, the killers should have been Xu Lei and that nurse, Xiao Ai. But since you pulled Xiao Ai off the roof with you, that only leaves Xu Lei. So… is the truth that after you and Xiao Ai fell, Xu Lei rushed over and pushed Wen Miao off?”

Nan Mu shook his head. “But Nurse Lin was there too. How could Xu Lei push someone right in front of Nurse Lin? And why wouldn’t he kill Nurse Lin as well? Right, and Wen Xin-where did Wen Xin go?”

Nan Mu had fallen unconscious at the time, and by the time he regained awareness, he hadn’t seen Wen Xin at all.

“According to the statements, Wen Xin had gone downstairs to call for the ER doctors.” Qiu Ziyu already knew the details of Wen Miao’s case by heart; with a moment’s thought, he recalled all the testimonies. “The only eyewitness was Nurse Lin. Nurse Lin said that Wen Miao and Xiao Ai fell at the same time…”

As Qiu Ziyu spoke, he realized something was wrong. “Since you were there at the scene, why weren’t you mentioned in any of their statements? Could it be… that after you disappear, the memories of you in that world vanish?”

“No, memories don’t vanish. Because when I went back this time, Wen Miao remembered the first time I took her away from the Biology Research Lab.” Nan Mu pondered for a moment. “It’s Wen Xin…”

If Wen Xin was in the ER on the first floor when the incident happened, he very likely witnessed the fall.

Wen Xin would know exactly how many people fell. But for a person who should have hit the ground to vanish into thin air midway… even if he said it, no one would believe him.

If he insisted on that version of events, people might think he had mental issues…

He might have even been turned into a suspect when he wasn’t one originally. Weighing the pros and cons-whether it was to get out of detention or to quickly find out the truth behind Wen Miao’s death-Nan Mu felt that Wen Xin and Nurse Lin had ultimately chosen to erase him, the “non-existent” person, from the record.

Qiu Ziyu had a different perspective. “That doesn’t seem right. If I were Wen Xin, wouldn’t I at least suspect that you and Nurse Lin were working together? Otherwise, how could he convince himself to believe in your sudden disappearance?”

Nan Mu fell silent for a moment. “What if, at the same time he saw me with his own eyes, he suddenly discovered I existed in another place?”

Qiu Ziyu gasped. “You mean…”

Nan Mu nodded. “Given the relationship between Wen Xin, Wen Tangtang, and Wen Miao, once he heard the news of Wen Miao’s fall, there’s a high probability he contacted Wen Tangtang. If my name came up, he would have discovered that at the exact same time, I appeared in two different places and met with both of them.”