novelraw Chapter 13 Worldline Transition
Chapter 13 Worldline Transition
“Aww, the elevator was slammed—delivery’s here~”
A cute figure popped into view at the ward doorway.
It was Cheng Mengxue.
She was wearing a pale blue dress, carrying a takeout bag as she walked in.
Seeing a familiar face, Jiang Ran finally felt a sliver of safety.
“Why am I in the hospital?”
He asked urgently.
“Did the time-traveling text message send successfully? Did Xu Yan make it?”
“Huh?”
Cheng Mengxue froze for a beat.Then she grinned. “Hehe. So it really is exactly like we predicted. Jiang Ran—you just went through a temporal shift, didn’t you?”
“From your perspective… you sent the text at the club, and the next second you opened your eyes and you were already lying in a hospital ward, right?”
Jiang Ran nodded.
Three days ago, they had already understood the principles behind [time-traveling text messages], the patterns governing [temporal shifts], and Jiang Ran’s trait of retaining memories from the original history.
Not to mention, this “suddenly freaking out because his memories weren’t synced” thing had already happened twice.
So Cheng Mengxue immediately understood what had happened.
“We received the text on March 26, so that text must’ve been sent on March 29—which means your temporal shift was definitely going to happen on March 29.”
“So today I’ve been staying with you the whole time, just waiting for the moment you showed up with the memory desync again, so I could explain everything to you right away.”
Cheng Mengxue set the takeout on the table, her thinking crystal clear.
“So that’s how it is.”
If everything was still within the rules they understood, there was nothing to be tense about.
“Did Xu Yan make it?” That was what Jiang Ran cared about most.
“Of course!”
Cheng Mengxue gave him a thumbs-up.
“We’re incredible! We actually pulled someone back from death! This feeling is so unreal!”
Whew…
Jiang Ran let out a long breath, all the way to his bones, and his heart finally unclenched.
“How about you?”
Cheng Mengxue looked at him.
“Same as before? You only have the memories from before the [time travel], and you don’t have any memories of the last three days after the jump?”
“Yes. Same as before.”
He paused.
Then Jiang Ran smiled a little.
“I need to correct one concept. What’s happening to me… isn’t actually time travel.”
“Time travel in the traditional sense is usually a jump along the time axis—traveling from the present to the past, or from the present to the future. The kind of thing Hollywood always does.”
Cheng Mengxue tilted her head.
“Isn’t it?”
“Not quite.”
Jiang Ran continued.
“Look at my situation—there isn’t any jump along the time axis. I didn’t go back to the past, and I didn’t go to the future. My time is continuous.”
“One second I send the text, the next second I appear in the hospital. My location in space changes, but time doesn’t. It’s still March 29. Along the time axis I didn’t go anywhere—I only moved in space.”
Cheng Mengxue more or less got it.
“Then what do you call your situation?”
“Mm…”
Jiang Ran thought.
He remembered a general education lecture he’d taken before—Professor Zhang Yang’s class on Parallel Worlds and Worldline Theory.
Back then, Professor Zhang had introduced a term that stuck.
“[Worldline Transition].”
Jiang Ran said it softly.
“The time point doesn’t move, but I cross worldlines. [Worldline Transition] fits that better.”
“When we took that gen-ed class together, Professor Zhang talked about it. You didn’t listen?”
“No.” She said it with her whole chest.
“…Okay.”
Jiang Ran pulled a pair of disposable chopsticks from the bag, snapped them apart, and laid them down—one above the other.
“Let’s say this top chopstick is [Worldline A]. It represents the original history—the worldline where Xu Yan drowns, we argue, and we vote on whether to save her.”
“On March 29 in Worldline A, we send a time-traveling text message back to March 26. From that moment, history begins to change.”
“And that… generates a brand-new historical trajectory, which means a brand-new worldline is born.”
He wiggled the bottom chopstick.
“This brand-new worldline is [Worldline B]. It represents the altered history—the worldline where we find out in advance, stop the tragedy, save Xu Yan, and I’m lying here in a hospital ward.”
“Ohhh~”
Cheng Mengxue’s brain was quick.
“So [that means, according to this theory, we’re currently in Worldline B.]”
“Exactly.”
Jiang Ran liked people who got it with one hint.
“After we sent that time-traveling text message, the temporal shift happened. The original historical trajectory changed, and Worldline A no longer exists.”
“So in reality, we all jumped from Worldline A to Worldline B—or to put it another way—”
“The spacetime we’re in, as a whole, jumped from Worldline A to Worldline B. You, me, this world, the entire universe—everything—shifted over here in terms of spacetime.”
Cheng Mengxue nodded.
“I get that. Because the historical trajectory changed, everything that happened in the original Worldline A shouldn’t exist anymore.”
“But that still doesn’t explain your problem—”
“[Why is it that only you, after the worldline changed, still kept the memories from the original Worldline A?]”
Jiang Ran spread his hands.
“Who knows.”
“Forget that for now. Hurry up and tell me what happened before this. How did we save Xu Yan? And how did I end up in the hospital?”
Cheng Mengxue told Jiang Ran to eat first, then started explaining…
It went like this:
Three days ago—March 26—at 10:00 a.m., Cheng Mengxue received the time-traveling text message on her phone, learning that Xu Yan was going to drown.
They moved immediately. They borrowed a buoyant life jacket from the swimming club, then rushed out of campus and grabbed a taxi to Qing’an Bridge.
The buoyant life jacket was stuffed with air cushions and foam. Even someone who couldn’t swim at all could float easily while wearing it.
Traffic was a bit heavy. By the time the three of them reached Qing’an Bridge, they ran right into Xu Yan.
They hadn’t even exchanged more than a couple of sentences when children’s cries came from the rushing river.
Under the bridge, two kids were flailing in the water. They had started drowning upstream and had been swept all the way down—one of them was already unconscious and motionless, the other was still struggling and crying out.
Back then, Xu Yan didn’t hesitate for even a second. She swung a leg over, about to jump into the river to save them.
Luckily, Jiang Ran reacted fast and grabbed her.
The current was fierce. The two kids were about to be carried away. Jiang Ran clenched his teeth, snatched the buoyant life jacket straight out of Cheng Mengxue’s hands, climbed over the railing, and jumped into the river.
He’d learned how to swim as a kid. He was decent in the water. Once he was in, he immediately put on the life jacket and swam toward the children.
The rescue itself wasn’t difficult. Very quickly, he pushed both kids to shore. The child who hadn’t been moving spat up river water after chest compressions and woke up.
You could call it a perfect rescue.
The only person who got hurt…
…was Jiang Ran.
He didn’t even know what had cut him. It was only after he got back on shore that he noticed a gash on his right arm, blood slowly seeping out.
But it wasn’t a big deal—go to the hospital, clean it, put in a few stitches, wrap it up.
“That’s what happened.”
Cheng Mengxue finished.
But Jiang Ran raised a question.
“I’m not that fragile. With an injury that small, I wouldn’t need to lie in a hospital ward for three days.”
“No, no.”
Cheng Mengxue waved it off.
“We went back to school that day. Today we came to the hospital specifically to change your dressing. Your wound looks like it got a little infected and inflamed, so the doctor told you to lie here and get an IV.”
“Alright.”
At that point, the memory loop closed, and the logic ran clean.
No.
There was still one crucial thing.
“The text message.”
Jiang Ran set down his bowl and chopsticks and looked at Cheng Mengxue.
“Xiaoxue. This time, your phone…”
“[Exactly how many text messages did you receive?]”