novelraw Chapter 12 Butterfly
Chapter 12 Butterfly
The vote came back: two in favor, one against.
The plan to save Yan Rui with time-traveling text messages…
began.
“First, we need to make one thing clear: the secret of time-traveling text messages can only ever be known by the three of us.”
“Therefore, we can’t send the text to Senior Yan Rui. We can only go save her ourselves.”
Inside the club room, Qin Feng wrote on the small blackboard:
“This rescue operation isn’t difficult. As long as we stop the two kids from falling in ahead of time, or stop Yan Rui from jumping in to save them, or lie in wait with a life ring and life jacket… and so on. There are lots of methods.”
Jiang Ran and Cheng Mengxue nodded.
Yes.
As far as the action itself went, there really was no difficulty at all.Time-traveling text messages were that kind of miraculous, powerful “cheat”—if you could leak precise future information to your past self, what regret couldn’t you patch up?
Only…
Jiang Ran looked at the blackboard, now wiped clean, and said nothing.
He was still worried about that string of mysterious digits.
But when he thought about it carefully, what Qin Feng said also made sense.
What was the point of daydreaming with zero clues?
Better to run one more experiment within the range of temporal butterfly effects they could still accept—see whether they would receive that second text again, or whether any other clues would appear.
“It’s best to give our past selves clear instructions.”
Jiang Ran pointed at his watch.
“Because we’re short on time. The place where Yan Rui drowned is a forty-minute drive from campus. After our past selves receive the text, they might not have much time to prepare.”
Cheng Mengxue agreed strongly.
“Time-traveling text messages can only be sent three days back. Considering timing error before and after, we have to send it right now.”
“If we keep dragging it out… we really might lose our chance to save Big Sister.”
“Then let’s begin.”
Jiang Ran stood.
“The more time we give our past selves, the more hope we have of saving her.”
The operation began.
Same setup as before: Jiang Ran would send the text outside by the transformer distribution box, Qin Feng would start the Positron Cannon, and Cheng Mengxue would straddle the windowsill to synchronize the timing.
As Jiang Ran drafted the text, he walked out of the student activity building and around to the transformer distribution box.
“Please note: this is a time-traveling text message…”
He described everything as clearly as he could, and soon the message was finished:
[This is a time-traveling text message from three days in the future. Act immediately.
Yan Rui will drown and die at noon on March 26. Cause of death: jumping into the river to save children who fell in. Location: near Qing’an Bridge. Change the original history and avert the tragedy.]
Good. That would do.
Time, place, chain of cause and effect—everything was clearly stated.
Their past selves weren’t idiots. They’d know what to do.
Of course.
The main reason…
was that a single text message could only send up to seventy characters. If you exceeded that, it would automatically split into multiple messages.
Jiang Ran wasn’t sure whether split messages could still be sent successfully. At a moment like this, it wasn’t worth taking that risk…
What if it failed?
“The text is ready!”
He shouted to Cheng Mengxue.
Then he moved as close to the transformer distribution box as he could.
Qin Feng’s theory was that the spacetime black hole was extremely tiny, with limited gravity.
If the phone was too far from the spacetime black hole when it sent the message, the radio wave might not be absorbed—and then the across-time transmission simply wouldn’t happen.
In short—
A human life was on the line.
Make it as close to foolproof as possible.
Qin Feng connected the Positron Cannon to the power supply, adjusted its direction with painstaking care, and aimed the “barrel” at the distribution box outside the window. He flashed an OK sign.
“I’m ready too. I can start anytime.”
“Okay!”
Cheng Mengxue received the signal and raised her right hand to gesture to both of them.
“Then I’ll start the countdown! When I hit zero, Qin Feng starts the Positron Cannon first, and then Jiang Ran sends the text immediately!”
The exact same words.
Jiang Ran felt as if spacetime itself had slipped slightly out of alignment.
But it made sense.
For him—someone who retained memories from before the temporal shift—this was already the second time-traveling text experiment.
But for Qin Feng and Cheng Mengxue on the current worldline, this was the first.
“Five!”
Cheng Mengxue began the countdown.
A light breeze stirred willow branches against the back of Jiang Ran’s neck. The distribution box’s zzzzt of current filled his ears.
“Four!”
Jiang Ran stared at the message—sixty-five characters.
He’d never sent one this long before.
He’d also never attempted anything this insane.
“Three!”
This wasn’t a coincidence, and it wasn’t a test.
This was their unprecedented act—
using the power of time-traveling text messages
to bring a person back from death.
“Two!”
Could they save her?
Could they really?
Jiang Ran suddenly felt tense, his palms sweating.
And would something go wrong?
“One!”
He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.
That ukiyo-e-like hallucination surfaced again in his mind.
The sun fell in the east,
new shoots shrank back into branches,
spilled water flowed upstream,
starlight extinguished into nothing—
“Zero!”
Qin Feng started the Positron Cannon. A roar came through!
Jiang Ran forced his fingertip down—pressed send.
Buzz!
Buzz!
Buzz!
The familiar vertigo of inversion hit him.
In an instant the world flipped. His senses dropped out;
he couldn’t feel gravity anymore.
Good.
In the haze of dizziness, Jiang Ran understood: the temporal shift arrived right on schedule.
Which meant the message had successfully been sent back, and established history had changed.
Once he opened his eyes again…
it would be a new history, a new worldline.
“Ah—!”
Two seconds later, every trace of discomfort vanished.
Jiang Ran slowly opened his eyes—
Huh?
He sucked in a sharp breath.
Where was this?
A white ceiling. White sheets. A bright window. The stinging smell of alcohol. An IV stand next to him.
“This is… a hospital room?”
He blinked, and quickly confirmed it.
Yes.
This was a hospital ward. He was lying on a bed, hooked up to a drip.
What the hell—
He jerked upright.
A tearing pain shot through his right arm, but he couldn’t spare a second for it.
Why was he in a hospital?
Just now, when he sent the text, he’d been at Donghai University—outside the club room window.
So how did a moment of vertigo later, opening his eyes—
turn into being “teleported” into a hospital?
“No.”
Suddenly, a terrifying, uncontrollable word flashed through his mind—
[temporal butterfly effect].
In that instant, he understood: the text he’d sent three days into the past had triggered an unforeseen temporal butterfly effect, violently rerouting the track of history.
In the original March 29 history, he really had been at Donghai University.
But after that time-traveling text was sent, history between March 26 and March 29 changed… and in the new trajectory, the March 29 version of him was lying in a hospital bed.
Hah…
The ward’s air-conditioning breeze poured down the back of his neck—like, somewhere in the unseen, a spacetime butterfly had flicked its wings, and the gradually brewing tornado had swallowed him whole.
“What exactly… happened?”