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Yan Qiao Qiao pulled her Rhine Cat mask down over her face again and leaped back into the play area, chasing and wrestling with the group of children like she had no care in the world.

Meanwhile, Zhao Ying Jun carefully placed her own Rhine Cat mask into her handbag, draping Yan Qiao Qiao’s jacket over her arm as she walked over to Lin Xian. Together, they stood watching as Yan Qiao Qiao darted around the field, her laughter echoing across the grassy expanse.

Lin Xian turned to Zhao Ying Jun, his brow furrowing slightly.

“I’ve been thinking… how are we going to tell Qiao Qiao the truth?” His voice was calm, but there was an undercurrent of concern.

“I think about that a lot too,” Zhao Ying Jun replied, folding her arms. She sighed softly, her breath escaping in a long, thoughtful exhale.

“Sometimes,” she continued, “I feel like it wouldn’t be such a big deal, like we could just tell her casually. But… we’re adults. We forget how big things can seem to children.”

She paused for a moment, her eyes following Qiao Qiao’s movements. “From our perspective, it might seem like no big deal, but it could be overwhelming if we look at it through Qiao Qiao’s eyes. Right now, she’s so full of joy, so full of life… I’m worried that if we tell her too suddenly, it might shake her up.”

She glanced at Lin Xian as if weighing her words carefully. “We can handle shocking news. We’ve been through a lot. Our view of the world is much broader. But for Qiao Qiao… her world is still so small. I don’t know if she can handle hearing the truth.”

Lin Xian flipped the Rhine Cat mask in his hand, gazing at the smiling face and the two little eye holes.

Rhine Cat.

Rhine Village.

His thoughts drifted to Zheng Xiang Yue—the hundred-year-old “little girl” who had fled from Mars to Earth, determined to rebuild her lost home. Back then, Lin Xian had hesitated, unsure whether revealing her real memories would destroy the happiness she had built from her rewritten past.

But after hearing Old Man Wei Sheng Jin’s story, Lin Xian had come to a realization.

“No one has the right to choose which memories someone else keeps or loses.”

And now, the same situation faced them with Yan Qiao Qiao.

Could they keep the truth from her forever?

Of course not.

Lin Xian and Zhao Ying Jun knew the truth about Qiao Qiao’s origins, and treating their biological daughter as a little sister wasn’t difficult for them.

But for Qiao Qiao…

In her eyes, she was an orphan.

An unwanted orphan.

An orphan abandoned by her parents.

Even though she never voiced it aloud, Lin Xian could see that Qiao Qiao carried a deep longing—a longing for her real parents. Her amnesia had not erased that desire. If anything, it had intensified it.

There was no plan to hide the truth from Qiao Qiao forever. But Zhao Ying Jun’s concerns were valid.

A child’s world is so much more fragile than an adult’s.

“We’ll go slow,” Lin Xian said thoughtfully, glancing down at the date displayed on his smartwatch.

“Her memory and her life have only just settled. What if we wait until July?” he suggested. “It might be a shock at first, but we’ll be there to help her through it.”

Zhao Ying Jun nodded, a soft smile playing at the corner of her lips.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” she said gently. “And who knows? Maybe she’ll even be happy. She already adores us, and she seems so content with the way things are.”

“Yeah,” Lin Xian agreed. “She does.”

The two of them fell into a comfortable silence, watching as Yan Qiao Qiao, fierce and fearless, charged across the field like a miniature warrior, knocking down her playmates one by one with joyful shrieks.

For a long while, they said nothing, but there was an unspoken understanding between them.

Even though Qiao Qiao had arrived in their lives unexpectedly, she had quickly become their shared joy. Yet beneath that joy, there was an unbroken, fragile barrier between Lin Xian and Zhao Ying Jun—something neither of them had openly acknowledged.

Zhao Ying Jun respected Lin Xian’s secret mission, knowing that there were parts of his life he couldn’t share with her. At the same time, Lin Xian was trying to protect Zhao Ying Jun from the dangers he would face on July 7th—a day that loomed ominously over his life.

Yes, July 7th was a critical date.

And no matter what happened after that day, Lin Xian had decided that he wouldn’t keep anything hidden from Zhao Ying Jun anymore.

…

Later that afternoon, Zhao Ying Jun had to head to MX Company for work, taking Qiao Qiao along with her. Meanwhile, Lin Xian got into a private car bound for Donghai University. He needed to return the time-space clock to Liu Feng.

When he arrived, Liu Feng was waiting for him, eyes already scanning the numbers on the clock’s surface.

His brow furrowed.

“The changes are significant… but it’s exactly what we predicted. No matter how much the numbers shift, it always increases by multiples of 0.0000042.”

He glanced at Lin Xian, his expression curious.

“But what caused the shift this time? Do you know?”

Lin Xian nodded solemnly.

“Someone died,” he said. Then, as if realizing that his words didn’t quite capture the gravity of the situation, he added, “A very powerful person—a person who existed as a digital life form.”

Liu Feng looked up from the clock, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

“Digital life form? I always thought that was something out of science fiction. Has someone actually figured out how to make that real? If they have, that’s… astonishing. In some ways, I’d say creating digital life is as hard as building a time machine.”

Liu Feng stood up, pacing as he continued, “But they’re different kinds of difficult. The fact that the time-space clock shows such a drastic shift means that this digital life must’ve had a significant impact on the timeline, both in the past and the future.”

“Normally,” he went on, “the death of an individual, even hundreds of individuals, wouldn’t cause such a shift. Time is incredibly resilient—our experiments have proven that. The butterfly effect isn’t as sensitive as people like to imagine.”

He picked up a piece of chalk and walked over to a nearby blackboard, drawing four parallel lines. The bottom three lines were close together, only five or six centimeters apart, but the top line was much farther away, separated by at least thirty or forty centimeters.

Tapping the lowest line, Liu Feng explained, “This is the 0.0000000 timeline, the one we first calibrated with the time-space clock. The next line marks when Elon Musk destroyed the entangled-state time-space particles, which shifted us to the 0.0000042 timeline.”

“After that, when you went to the Science Institute and established the Rhine Second Lab, the timeline shifted again to 0.0000084. And now, because of the digital life form’s death, we’ve jumped all the way to 0.0000336.”

“Logically speaking,” Liu Feng said, his tone serious, “such a massive change should mean that the future world is dramatically different, right? Otherwise, how can we explain this increase in the time-space curvature?”

Lin Xian had been mulling over that very question on his way to the university.

“I don’t think the degree of time-space curvature changes necessarily reflects how big the change in the future world will be,” Lin Xian said slowly, his brow furrowing.

“For instance, when the timeline shifted from 0.0000000 to 0.0000042, from a human perspective, the changes were monumental—more than we could ever predict. Yet the curvature only increased by the tiniest increment: 0.0000042.”

“But then,” he continued, “when the timeline moved from the Fifth Dream to the Sixth Dream, the change didn’t seem nearly as significant, yet it was still marked by the same small shift of 0.0000042. It feels like there’s a contradiction.”

Lin Xian raised a finger, signaling his theory.

“I think there are two possible explanations.”

He paused, letting the weight of his words hang in the air.

“First, it’s possible that the time-space coordinates don’t follow a logical or linear order. In other words, just because two coordinates are close together doesn’t mean the changes between them are small or similar.”

Lin Xian raised his second finger, signaling that he had more to say.

“Secondly, the time-space coordinates might indeed be ordered, but the scale of curvature shifts and the changes they bring to the future world aren’t measured by our human perspective.”

He leaned forward as if trying to explain a concept that seemed just out of reach. “Let me give you an example. From a human perspective, the extinction of humanity on Earth would seem like a massive change, right? It would feel like an enormous shift in time-space curvature.”

“But from the perspective of Earth itself?” Lin Xian paused, letting his words sink in. “Is it really that big of a deal? I don’t think so. Humans weren’t the first inhabitants of this planet, and we certainly won’t be the last. From Earth’s point of view, the disappearance of humanity wouldn’t be much more than scratching an itch. The mountains and rivers would still be here, just without us.”

Lin Xian sat back in his chair, his brow furrowed in thought. “So, the real question is… how do we measure the scale of time-space curvature shifts? What’s the reference point? How do we figure out what counts as a major change versus a minor one?”

His words hung in the air, and Liu Feng, who had been listening intently, fell into deep thought, his eyes narrowing as he considered the implications.

After a long silence, Liu Feng pressed his lips together and looked up, his gaze sharp and focused.

“I think your first explanation is definitely wrong,” he said bluntly. “Everything we know about the universe and time-space suggests that it’s orderly, simple, and elegant. The larger the shift in time-space curvature, the more the worldline deviates from its original course.”

“But your second point…” Liu Feng trailed off, rubbing his chin. “Who’s observing the changes? What’s the reference point we’re using?”

He began pacing again, his voice picking up speed. “For humanity, our leap from the primitive era to the information age was a huge transformation. But for Earth? That change barely scratched the surface of the planet’s resources. Can it really be considered a massive shift? I’d call it minor, at best.”

Liu Feng stopped, turning to face Lin Xian. “Think about it. If Earth’s temperature rose by five degrees, is that a major or minor change? If the oxygen levels increased by five percent, would that be a big deal? For Earth, these are minor adjustments. But for the creatures living on Earth? It could be a life-altering event.”

He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “Lin Xian, you’ve given me something important to think about. How do we define the scale of time-space curvature changes?”

“One thing is clear, though,” he said, his tone serious. “We can’t rely on the human perspective. Humanity isn’t special in the vastness of time and space. We’re not qualified to be the reference point.”

“But as for what the correct measure is… I have no idea.” He sighed, his shoulders slumping slightly. “This touches on some of the deepest rules and laws of the universe—rules we haven’t even begun to fully understand, like the ‘Laws of Time and Space.’”

Liu Feng walked over to the experiment table, tapping the time-space clock that still displayed the number 0.0000336.

“First, we need to figure out how much the future of this worldline has changed compared to the previous one. Only then can we start making more accurate judgments and conclusions.”

Lin Xian nodded in agreement. He appreciated Liu Feng’s methodical approach.

Today, Lin Xian had only intended to find out the third question of the Genius Club exam, then catch up on some much-needed sleep before visiting the Seventh Dream again. But then, Zhao Ying Jun’s phone call delayed everything.

He made a mental note to take care of it all later tonight once he got home.

“Oh, by the way,” Lin Xian suddenly remembered, turning to Liu Feng. “Do you have any recollection of the name ‘Du Yao’? When I mentioned Nangong Meng Jie earlier, you recognized her instantly. Du Yao is supposed to be a genius neuroscientist. Have you heard of her?”

Liu Feng shook his head without hesitation. “Nope. The name doesn’t ring any bells. If she’s as brilliant as you say, I should’ve heard of her. Neuroscience… well, I’m not too familiar with that field. It’s not exactly one where results come easily.”

He folded his arms, his gaze thoughtful. “Fields like that usually depend on the flashes of genius from a few key individuals. You can’t just throw a bunch of ordinary scientists at the problem and expect to make progress. The whole idea of ‘quantitative change leading to qualitative change’ doesn’t really apply there.”

Liu Feng leaned against the table, tapping his fingers on its surface. “You should ask Nangong Meng Jie about this. Her status and connections in the academic world are far better than mine. If this Du Yao is as talented as you say, Nangong Meng Jie would likely know about her. After all, she works at the National Academy of Sciences and was mentored by Director Gao Yan.”

Lin Xian sighed, shaking his head as he pulled up a chair. “I already asked her about this about a week ago. When the equipment and personnel for Rhine’s Second Laboratory in Donghai City were set up, I met with Nangong Meng Jie. She told me she had never heard of Du Yao. She even reached out to her contacts in neuroscience both domestically and internationally, and none of them had heard of her either.”

He paused, then added, “I have to admit, Nangong Meng Jie is incredibly capable. Sharp, efficient, a natural leader. Director Gao Yan made a wise choice in her. Under her management, Rhine Second Lab is already researching micro-nuclear batteries. They’re aiming to produce a prototype by the end of the year, with a market-ready product within the next year.”

Lin Xian smiled slightly. “When that happens, Rhine’s cash flow will skyrocket. After that, no matter what research we pursue, funding won’t be an issue.”

“My plan is to have Rhine’s First Laboratory focus on cracking the mysteries of Universal Constants, time-space particles, and time machines. Then, we’ll establish Rhine’s Third Laboratory to tackle the brain-neural electroshock helmet and the problem of memory loss during hibernation.”

He sighed again, running a hand through his hair. “But the problem is, we can’t make any progress on the brain-neural electroshock helmet research without Du Yao’s key breakthroughs… and I have no idea where to find her now.”

As Lin Xian spoke, he realized that Liu Feng, who had been standing next to him, had disappeared.

“Where did he go?” Lin Xian muttered, turning his head.

He spotted Liu Feng silently pacing near the blackboard, staring intently at the arithmetic sequence he had written earlier.

“…Really?” Lin Xian felt exasperated. “I’m talking to you, are you even listening?”

Suddenly, Bang!

Liu Feng grabbed the chalkboard eraser and smacked it in the blank space between the names “Yan Qiao Qiao (14 years old)” and “Chu An Qing (20 years old).”

“There is only one truth!” he declared dramatically, his voice booming.

Lin Xian couldn’t help but chuckle. “Are you a comedian now? Do you need a pair of reflective glasses to complete the look?”

But Liu Feng’s expression remained deadly serious. “An arithmetic sequence is absolute.”

He pointed at the sequence on the board. “According to the logic of the sequence, Du Yao should only be 17 years old right now. She might not have even graduated from high school yet! How could she possibly be a top neuroscientist?”

Liu Feng tapped his finger against the blackboard again, his excitement growing. “Maybe in ten or twenty years, she’ll make a breakthrough in neuroscience. But since you’re asking about her now, I’d say she’s about to appear in our lab any day now!”

Lin Xian laughed, rising from his chair and heading toward the door. “Goodbye, comedian.”

…

When Lin Xian arrived home, it was still early, just a little past six in the evening. The house was quiet, bathed in the soft light of the setting sun. He placed the Rhine Cat Mask on the coffee table, its familiar, playful expression staring back at him.

After a brief pause, Lin Xian made his way to the wardrobe, retrieving the laptop containing the VV source code. He hesitated for a moment before deciding to keep it hidden a bit longer. He placed it carefully inside and closed the door.

“You’ll have to wait a little longer,” he murmured to the laptop, a half-smile tugging at his lips. “Once I figure out how to deal with that super virus from the future, you won’t have to pretend to be a clueless AI anymore.”

He sighed, leaning against the wardrobe. “I hope you’re doing a good job cleaning Zhao Ying Jun’s office. Make sure you clean it properly, alright?”

As an artificial intelligence, VV had a remarkable ability that set it apart from the digital lifeform Turing. VV could split itself and exist in multiple places simultaneously. Shutting down the laptop didn’t affect the cleaning robot that VV was operating in Zhao Ying Jun’s office—it was still running smoothly, cleaning every nook and cranny.

The two instances of VV were independent but part of the same whole, able to split and merge at will. That was the beauty of AI.

Now that Turing was truly gone, Lin Xian felt a wave of relief wash over him as if a weight had been lifted. For so long, Turing’s presence had been like a shadow looming over him, watching his every move. But now, those watchful eyes were gone forever.

To ensure Turing’s complete and irreversible demise, Lin Xian had tested numerous methods in the Sixth Dream. After countless attempts, he confirmed that the three security lock codes were indeed the key to permanently erasing Turing.

Looking back on it all, Lin Xian couldn’t help but reflect…

The grudge between Kevin Walker and Turing had finally come full circle. Turing had used his immense power to kill Kevin Walker, but in the end, it was Kevin’s security lock codes that helped Lin Xian destroy Turing.

It felt like poetic justice.

“Doing good deeds is always best,” Lin Xian said quietly to himself. “Good deeds bring good returns, and bad deeds… well, they have their own consequences.”

Now, at last, no one was bothering him. No more lurking threats or omnipresent eyes watching his every move.

It was time to focus on the third question from the Genius Club.

Lin Xian pulled out his phone and the gold badge engraved with the Genius Club’s emblem. He placed the badge against the back of his phone.

Beep beep.

A soft sound came from the NFC device as it detected the signal. The browser automatically opened, rapidly jumping from page to page, its contents flashing in a blur.

Lin Xian watched the pages flicker across the screen, his curiosity growing with each passing second.

What would the final question be?

Logically, the third question should be the most challenging one yet, right?

But Lin Xian wasn’t so sure. After all, Elon Musk had once said that as long as someone obtained their invitation through “conventional” means, the three exam questions were meant to be easy points.

Too bad Lin Xian’s invitation had been… well, not exactly obtained by the book.

In the end, he would have to make up for it somehow.

Thinking back, the second question—performing a great historical correction—hadn’t been particularly difficult. It simply required the correction to be “as significant as possible.” Lin Xian had gone to extreme lengths to answer it, even sacrificing a Genius Club member. But in hindsight, he realized that not everyone would need to go that far.

“If every Genius Club member had to do what I did, the club would have run out of members by now,” Lin Xian thought with a wry smile.

Still, Turing had been too dangerous, both to others and to himself. Eliminating him early had been the wisest decision.

Lin Xian reflected briefly on the first two questions.

The first tested his knowledge of time and space.

The second focused on history.

So, what would the third question be about?

Suddenly, the screen stopped flashing, landing on a page with a black background and white text.

At the top of the page, the text read “3/3,” indicating that he had passed the second question and was now qualified to face the third and final one.

Lin Xian leaned forward, anticipation coursing through him.

But what he saw next surprised him.

Unlike the first fill-in-the-blank question or the short answer format of the second, the third question was…

A multiple-choice question.

Lin Xian blinked in surprise. He had expected something far more complex for the final test. Could it really be this simple?

In bold white letters on the black background, the question appeared:

“Does humanity have a future?”

That was it. Just one simple question.

Below it were two gray buttons:

YES and NO.

Lin Xian tried scrolling up or down to see if there were any more hints or context, but the page wouldn’t budge. It seemed this was all there was to the question.

“That’s too easy,” he thought, suddenly feeling uncertain.

Sometimes, the simpler a question seemed, the harder it was to answer.

What should he choose?

“Does humanity have a future?”

He stared at the question, remembering a painting he had seen twice before, once in the Donghai Exhibition Hall and again at Einstein’s home in Princeton—a painting titled “The Sorrowful Einstein.”

Both times, he had viewed the painting with Chu An Qing. The first time, in Donghai, he had explained its significance to her.

“Einstein believed that his famous equation, the mass-energy equivalence, had opened Pandora’s box,” Lin Xian had told her. “By unlocking the secrets of nuclear energy, humanity gained the power to create nuclear weapons, which led to the deaths of millions.”

“But Einstein’s worries didn’t end there. He constantly fretted about humanity’s future, asking himself, ‘Does humanity have a future?’ He feared that the next global war would unleash countless nuclear weapons, causing the extinction of humankind and the collapse of civilization.”

“In 1952, realist painter Henry Dawson met with Einstein in Brooklyn and painted this portrait—‘The Sorrowful Einstein.’”

That was how Lin Xian had explained it to Chu An Qing.

Later, Angelica told him that there were actually eight original copies of the painting, all created by Henry Dawson himself. Each one contained a different set of hidden codes.

One of those paintings still sat gathering dust in the Donghai University lab. The code embedded in that particular version had proven to be infamously difficult to crack.

Both Liu Feng and VV had tried, but neither had any success. In the end, they gave up.

Lin Xian hadn’t expected that the third question from the Genius Club would be connected to Einstein’s late-life worries and the painting “The Sorrowful Einstein.”

By 1952, Einstein had been consumed by regret, depression, guilt, and self-blame. His overwhelming emotions left him both mentally and physically exhausted, fragile and frail.

“Does humanity have a future?”

This was Einstein’s heartfelt question to himself. He never found a definitive answer, but his worries and doubts spoke volumes. It was clear—Einstein wasn’t optimistic about humanity’s future. In fact, he was full of despair.

Now, standing in the year 2024, Lin Xian revisited this question. To him, Einstein’s concerns seemed a bit exaggerated.

Yes, nuclear weapons were terrifying. But after Einstein’s death, hydrogen bombs—far more powerful than atomic bombs—were created. Yet, to this day, no hydrogen bomb has ever been used in warfare. And since World War II, no atomic bomb has been dropped again.

Ironically, the existence of nuclear deterrence had brought about the longest period of global peace in human history.

It was hard to say whether Einstein and the Manhattan Project were heroes or villains of human civilization. After all, the final judgment hadn’t been made yet.

“So, what should I choose for this question?”

Lin Xian’s eyes shifted between the YES and NO buttons.

He realized that this was, at its core, a subjective question. Whether someone chose YES or NO, both answers could be correct, depending on their personal stance and worldview.

“So, this is about choosing my perspective?” Lin Xian thought. “Am I an optimist or a pessimist?”

Lin Xian wasn’t entirely sure what the Genius Club’s intention was in making this their final question. What was the purpose behind it?

Still, he trusted his instincts. Lin Xian had never been one to lose hope in humanity’s future.

Even if you asked him a thousand times or a million times…

Lin Xian would always believe with unwavering certainty that humanity has a future.

Without hesitation, he pressed the YES button.

Click.

This time, the webpage emitted a soft, clear sound. Instead of flashing through endless pages as it had before, a new text box immediately appeared on the screen.

In bold white letters against the black background, the second half of the third question appeared:

“What kind of future is the best future?”