novelraw Chapter 177 Reunion with an Old Acquaintance
Chapter 177 Reunion with an Old Acquaintance
“Wait!”
Jiang Ran took a step back and looked around—
Pedestrians were strolling down the street, children ran past holding lollipops, flying cars streamed through the sky like schools of fish, and the robots worked tirelessly.
Everything was stable.
Everything was proceeding normally.
“Haa…”
Only then did Jiang Ran let out a breath of relief and look across the street.
At the entrance of the cake shop, the beautifully dressed girl was still promoting the freshly baked cakes.
“Today’s new item! Fresh out of the oven! Free tasting! Free tasting!”
Jiang Ran pressed a hand to his forehead, rubbed his temples, and began analyzing the situation.He couldn’t understand why that terrifying scene had appeared just now—
It was as if the whole world had fallen into chaos. Objects crossed through one another like paper cutouts, pedestrians and trees flickered and changed, and even human faces had flattened into texture maps, their pixels stretched long when viewed from the side.
Horrifying.
Bizarre.
Disturbing.
“It was like… when a movie starts lagging because of bad internet, or when a game’s graphics card starts artifacting.”
Just remembering the old woman endlessly flickering through the same boarding motion still made his scalp tingle.
If something like that happened in a game, he would instantly understand—the network had bugged out, or the connection had dropped.
But—
This was the future world of 2045!
[Could it be that this world, like a video game, is fake? Virtual?]
“No.”
Jiang Ran shook his head.
If the 2045 the Positron Cannon sent him to was fake, then what about the prison from before?
Inside that prison with Sang Biao, Hothead, Killer, and Bookworm, this had never once happened.
Every single time, he had been stably kicked back to 2025 at exactly 12:00 noon.
That time window was absolute:
September 17th, 2045, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.
Those two hours were the limit of his existence in the future world.
And just now, all he had done was freeload some food and drink on the street and ride a flying bus. That was nowhere near two hours—at most half an hour, maybe forty minutes.
“If it kicked me back to 2025 early, I could understand that. But after that bizarre phenomenon, why am I still in 2045, only with time rewound back to 10:00 in the morning?”
To be safe, he walked back toward the orange-juice girl.
“Hello, excuse me, what time is it now?”
The girl still didn’t look at a watch or phone. She blinked and answered immediately.
“10:02, sir.”
Mm.
Jiang Ran nodded.
Subtracting the time he had just spent standing there in thought, it was basically confirmed:
After the [black screen] where nothing happened and he couldn’t even think, he had been reset back to 10:00 a.m.
Everything was as before.
As if what had just happened had merely been a daydream, heatstroke, or some hallucination.
“Is this my problem? Or is there something wrong with this future world itself?”
Empty speculation was useless.
Better to test it again in person.
“Sir?”
Seeing Jiang Ran lost in thought, the maid waitress blinked.
“You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind. Would you like a cup of orange juice to help with that?”
Jiang Ran propped his head up and looked at the tray in her hands.
“…Sure.”
He said it softly.
At his current mood, some juice really did seem like the right thing.
The waitress smiled sweetly and took out a huge paper cup, filling it to the brim with orange juice.
This—
Wasn’t this way too generous!?
The friendly service and the thrill of getting something for free instantly calmed Jiang Ran’s nerves by 13.29%, letting him feel the warmth of the sunlight again.
Whatever else could be said, this near-utopian free food and drink really did improve one’s mood.
“Thank you.”
Jiang Ran accepted the oversized cup with both hands and bowed his head in thanks.
The maid waitress giggled at him.
“If you like it, come back anytime for a refill~”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary—thank you so much.”
With such a massive free sample cup and such incredible service, even someone as thick-skinned as Jiang Ran felt a little embarrassed.
If he’d had money in his pocket, he absolutely would have bought something from this shop.
Walking to the edge of the road, Jiang Ran raised the cup and gulped down several mouthfuls.
Delicious!
Still that same crystal-clear, sweet, ultimate perfection!
He had never in his life tasted such flawless juice, something so good he could hardly find any fault in it. It was almost addictive.
More importantly—
The sensation of it going down his throat felt incomparably real.
Not only did the sweet-tart juice stimulate his taste buds, he could also feel the tiny bits of pulp sliding across his tongue, proving the drink’s sincerity and genuine quality.
This cup of juice alone made it hard for Jiang Ran to believe this world was fake.
Even taking ten thousand steps back, 2045 was only twenty years from 2025.
He simply did not believe technology could explode to this degree in twenty years.
“I need to find a way to verify this.”
This time, instead of following the same direction as before, he turned and walked the opposite way.
Unlike the dense snack street across the road, the shops along this street mostly sold various goods.
Coincidentally—
Most of them also had signs advertising partial freebies.
That only made Jiang Ran more cautious.
Could these be scam shops?
Very soon, he spotted a watch store. Walking inside, he asked directly:
“Hello, do you have any free watches?”
“Yes, sir. Over here in the display case—everything inside is available free of charge!”
“Uh… just give me any one. This silver one is fine.”
Jiang Ran pointed at a silver watch in the case.
After confirming three times that payment really wasn’t required, he quickly left the shop and fastened the strap around his wrist.
Seriously—
Why did this somehow feel like stealing?
He touched his stomach and realized something.
Earlier he had clearly eaten and drunk his fill in the snack street.
But now his stomach was hungry again.
That meant the previous [rewind] had not simply moved him back physically by dozens of minutes.
It was a complete and total rollback.
Not only had his whole body returned to the 10:00 position, but all of his bodily states had rewound as well.
“I’m not about to go eat another full round, am I?”
Jiang Ran shook his head.
Forget it.
As impossibly delicious as the food was, business came first. He wasn’t that greedy.
He lifted his wrist and checked the time.
10:21 AM.
It was a digital watch, extremely precise. He had chosen it specifically for that.
As he continued walking through the streets, he felt the city’s sci-fi atmosphere more and more.
No one was using phones.
It was as if they all possessed something far more advanced to replace them.
Take that orange-juice waitress, for example—she wore smart contact lenses.
Probably in her field of vision, a floating interface hovered in front of her eyes, operable through gaze or even brainwaves.
He lifted his head.
The sky was still full of fish-school traffic, countless flying vehicles layered in efficient, orderly streams.
His fingers itched.
He wanted to try it too.
Earlier, he had seen flying motorcycles parked by the roadside, lined up just like the shared bikes common in 2025.
“I wonder if I can just ride one away. Let’s try.”
Since everything on the street was free, surely a shared flying motorcycle wouldn’t charge him either?
After a bit of experimentation—
Sure enough, utopian worlds were wonderful.
These flying motorcycles required no ID, no verification, no scanning.
You just got on and went.
Whoosh—
Jiang Ran twisted the throttle and lifted straight into the air.
The control was unbelievably smooth.
He couldn’t tell whether it was auto-assist or something else, but it felt incredibly comfortable.
Though he was definitely controlling the direction, there was clearly some force subtly correcting the bike’s flight posture, preserving the feeling of personal control while guaranteeing stable and safe navigation.
He pulled the handlebars back, and the flying motorcycle rose gradually into the sky, merging into the aerial traffic stream.
The sensation was magical.
Even in dreams, he had never imagined something this fun.
Along the way he flew over many places, and through countless signs and advertisements he confirmed that this city was still Donghai City—
Only now there wasn’t a single recognizable landmark left.
“Huh? Even the Oriental Pearl is gone…”
From above, Jiang Ran indeed could not spot the iconic tower.
Would the Donghai city government really demolish the Oriental Pearl in twenty years?
No matter how he thought about it, that was impossible.
This world really was strange.
Lately there had been a deadpan joke on Douyin saying that if you drank Mixue in Donghai City, the laser from the Oriental Pearl would vaporize you.
Judging from this, maybe Snow King had teamed up with Luckin Coffee and jointly taken the Oriental Pearl down.
But after circling around, he couldn’t find Mixue or Luckin either.
Though this city was still called Donghai, it had almost nothing in common with the Donghai in his memory.
“Hm?”
Suddenly—
While gliding at low altitude, Jiang Ran spotted a familiar figure!
“Holy shit!”
His shock could only come out as profanity.
There—
Outside the wall of a classical-style building, a fat but sturdy middle-aged man was sneaking around suspiciously.
That familiar silhouette!
That familiar aura!
That familiar feeling!
“Sang Biao!”
Jiang Ran immediately dived down on the flying motorcycle.
Who could have imagined that after such a massive transformation of the future world, he would still run into Sang Biao here?
The warmth of meeting a “fellow townsman” in a foreign land made him slam the throttle all the way, desperate to see him immediately.
Even if the current Sang Biao definitely didn’t know Jiang Ran, Jiang Ran knew him.
Especially in this completely unfamiliar world, Sang Biao was the only familiar face he had.
He had to make contact!
Parking the flying motorcycle, Jiang Ran swung off in one motion and strode forward.
“Sang Biao!”
The rough-looking man froze, then whipped his head around viciously.
“The hell do you mean Sang Biao!? Get lost!”
The moment Jiang Ran saw the man’s face, he smiled.
Messy hair.
Fat double chin.
The mole on the right cheek.
And those fierce, cunning eyes that looked born for prison food.
If this wasn’t Sang Biao from Cell No. 1 in the prison, then who else could it possibly be?
“Sang Biao.”
“The hell did you call me!?”
“No, listen to me—”
Jiang Ran stepped forward and grabbed his arm.
“I—”
Click.
A long hard object jammed into Jiang Ran’s abdomen, and his eyes widened.
“Get lost.”
Sang Biao stared at him and said in a low voice,
“One more damn word and I’ll blow you away.”
…
With a gun pointed at him, Jiang Ran calmed down.
Who would’ve thought that even with the future world completely transformed, Sang Biao would still be this violent and unreasonable?
There was no normal way to communicate.
After thinking about it, he decided to let it go.
He still had important business.
“Alright, alright, big brother, take it easy.”
Jiang Ran raised both hands and slowly retreated to the flying motorcycle, climbing back on.
“Then hurry the hell up and get lost!” Sang Biao roared.
“Why are you rushing me!?”
Jiang Ran clicked his tongue and twisted the throttle.
“Fine, I’m going!”
Suddenly—
The mutation happened again!
The instant his right hand twisted the throttle, the flying motorcycle flickered two meters ahead into the air, then instantly flickered back beneath him, then out again, then back, repeating so rapidly it left afterimages.
Meanwhile Jiang Ran remained frozen in an absurd seated posture, stuck midair and unable to move, forced to watch as the motorcycle kept entering and exiting beneath his body.
This image—
It no longer looked like he was riding the motorcycle.
It looked like the motorcycle was riding him!
Turning his head, he found Sang Biao had already turned into a full-body mosaic, his form breaking into rough color blocks from top to bottom.
“Go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go—”
His voice stuttered like a broken cassette, repeating the same emotionless syllable over and over.
At the same time, the hand holding the gun kept rising and lowering, rising and lowering, rising and lowering—
So fast it looked like a traffic cop directing cars.
Behind him, the classical building played like a fast-forwarded film, disappearing one second, then turning into a bank, then a clock tower, then a skyscraper, then a sculpture, then a fountain.
Jiang Ran turned back and saw his own residual afterimages—his chin, his eyeballs—
Then he looked down and lifted his wrist.
The same movie-lag ghosting effect was there. His arm had stretched into a fan-shaped blur, continuously separating into color blocks.
Grinding his teeth, he stared at the flickering watch.
The overlapping afterimages made the time impossible to read.
Jiang Ran blinked hard.
His own afterimage skin tone covered his vision, but at last he managed to catch the display:
September 17th, 2045, 10:39:11 AM.
Ah!
Everything went black.
He could not feel breathing.
Could not feel heartbeat.
Could not feel anything.
Could not feel his own existence.
He couldn’t even think.
Then—
The world brightened once more.
“Ah!”
He shouted, squinting against the sunlight stabbing into his eyes—
“Sir, would you like to try our new orange juice?”
Behind him, the beautiful maid-outfit waitress approached with a smile.
“It’s free!”