novelraw Chapter 24 Ungrammatical
Chapter 24 Ungrammatical
“Ha?” “Ha?” “Ha?”
All three of them let out a ha at the same time.
They looked at each other.
Ha?
What was that ha supposed to be?
“I understand the first four characters—‘Don’t believe.’”
Qin Feng frowned slightly.
“But this last one… ha… what does it even mean? This is completely ungrammatical.”
Jiang Ran shook his head.
“Or maybe the sentence can be spelled a different way?”But no matter how he adjusted it, none of the other combinations formed a real sentence.
“Let’s go back to the club room first.”
He put his phone away.
“No matter what, coming to Professor Zhang Yang wasn’t a waste. This was a huge gain!”
…
Film Camera Club, club room.
The small blackboard had been wiped completely clean. Now five big characters were written on it again—
[Don’t / believe / ha]
“What the hell is ha?”
Qin Feng asked for the Nth time.
“No idea.”
For the Nth time, Jiang Ran had no idea either. He lifted his head and looked at Cheng Mengxue.
“This kind of sounds like Xiaoxue’s verbal tic.”
When Cheng Mengxue talked, she sometimes liked to tack a “ha” onto the end.
Most of the time, that “ha” didn’t have any concrete meaning. It was just a filler—something that added emphasis, confirmation, or a questioning tone.
The most common ones were:
“I’m going to eat now, ha!”
“I’m starting the countdown, ha!”
“Don’t forget to bring it, ha!”
“Then I’m buying it, ha?”
Huh?
Cheng Mengxue didn’t notice at first.
But after trying it out to herself—
“It’s true!”
She blinked.
“But that’s nothing, right? Lots of people talk like that. Wait—huh…”
She suddenly reacted.
“You’re not saying… this text message was sent by me, someday in the future?”
…
Jiang Ran thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“Probably not. The sender of that text is my phone number. I won’t rule out that you typed it, but I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“Besides, putting aside who sent it, these five characters are completely ungrammatical.”
“‘Don’t believe ha’… It looks like it’s trying to warn us not to believe something, but what exactly is it referring to? How can it just use a single ‘ha’ as a substitute?”
Seeing Qin Feng deep in thought and not speaking, Jiang Ran turned his head.
“Qin Feng, what do you think?”
Qin Feng didn’t answer immediately.
He propped his chin up and paced around the club room.
In the end, he stopped in front of the small blackboard and wrote pinyin above the five characters—
bu / yao / xiang / xin / ha
Then he pointed at that final ha.
“[I think those last two pinyin letters aren’t complete. There has to be more information after them.]”
“For example, this ha could really be hai, or hang, or han… or it could even be ga, gan, gang—all of that is possible.”
On a nine-key keypad, the 4 key contained three letters—GHI. Given pinyin logic, it really could be H… or it could be G.
Jiang Ran nodded. That had been his thought just now as well.
Was it possible that—
That mysterious digit string was only the first segment of the code, and there was a second segment after it?
If there was another mysterious digit string afterward, they could keep pressing on the nine-key keypad and get more characters, more information.
Just as Qin Feng said: that “ha” with unclear meaning might itself be incomplete, with other pinyin letters following it.
“Wow, but Jiang Ran, you’re amazing.”
Cheng Mengxue gave Jiang Ran a thumbs-up.
“When we first got that mysterious text message, you already guessed it was a warning. I didn’t expect you’d actually be right.”
“I wouldn’t say I was right.”
Jiang Ran waved his hand.
“As it stands, even though we cracked the mysterious digits into five characters, we still don’t get any useful information. We can’t confirm whether it’s really a warning.”
“It just tells us not to believe something—but specifically… what is it telling us not to believe?”
“Not the Positron Cannon? Not the time-traveling text messages? Not Worldline Transition theory? Or…”
He looked around, his gaze landing on Cheng Mengxue and Qin Feng.
“[Or is it telling us not to believe each other—not to believe… someone in this club room?]”
“Hey!”
The rice-cooker Rhine Cat came flying in with murderous momentum!
Jiang Ran hurriedly caught it—but the Rhine Cat’s “skullcap” popped open with a POP, and the spacetime-particle Rhine Cat shot out, throwing an uppercut straight into Jiang Ran’s chin.
So strong! There was even a second-stage attack!
“How can you say something like that!”
To be able to throw her most beloved rice-cooker Rhine Cat as a weapon—Cheng Mengxue was clearly furious.
Now she stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at Jiang Ran.
“How can you doubt your own teammates?”
“All this time, everything about the time-traveling texts—we’ve made decisions together and acted together. No one’s hidden anything from anyone. How can you say that!”
“I’m just saying it.”
Jiang Ran grabbed the spacetime-particle Rhine Cat and stuffed it back into the rice-cooker Rhine Cat’s head.
“I’m doing saturated hypothetical coverage. How could I not believe you?”
“If you really want to talk about it, then in those time-traveling text experiments, the one who made the final call was always me. If anyone’s the least trustworthy, then I’m the biggest suspect.”
Qin Feng stepped in again, waving his hands as he stood between them.
“Stop, stop, stop… debate all you want, but don’t get heated.”
“We’re not going to start distrusting each other because of one bizarre text.”
“This text is obviously incomplete. If we get a second mysterious text—if we get a second mysterious digit string—won’t the truth be obvious?”
“No matter how you look at it, it doesn’t seem like it’s trying to make us suspect each other… It’s warning us to jointly watch out for something, for someone.”
“And that last ‘ha’—that ‘ha’—could easily be a lot of things. ‘Han,’ ‘Hang,’ ‘Hai,’ ‘Huan,’ ‘Haven’t’—whatever. It’s way too early to conclude anything.”
Jiang Ran put the rice-cooker Rhine Cat back in place.
“Qin Feng is right. We need more intel.”
He walked to the small blackboard and wiped the writing clean.
“What Professor Zhang Yang said might not be accurate, but at least it gave us a stabilizer.”
“Right now, the urgent priority is getting more intel about the mysterious text message as soon as possible—and figuring out what comes after ‘Don’t believe.’ What the sentence really is.”
He started writing on the small blackboard with a soft scritch scritch scritch.
Qin Feng glanced over.
“Are we continuing to send time-traveling texts?”
“Yes.”
Jiang Ran nodded as he wrote.
“No matter what that text message is trying to warn us about, it at least didn’t warn us about ‘sending time-traveling texts’ itself.”
“In other words, sending time-traveling texts is safe and reliable.”
“And the first mysterious text arrived at the same time as a time-traveling text. If we want to keep receiving mysterious texts, odds are we have to repeat the same process.”
Tap.
He finished the last stroke and let the other two look at the small blackboard—
[Time-Traveling Text Experiment: Phase Two Objectives]
While ensuring safety, continue sending time-traveling texts and see whether we can receive another mysterious text and mysterious digits.
Find a way to crack the mysterious text’s true intent, and clarify the mysterious text’s origin, context, and motive.
…
“The matter of my special constitution can be put aside for now.”
He clapped the chalk dust from his hands and set the chalk down.
“That question probably won’t have an answer in the short term. Let’s put our energy into those two questions first.”
Qin Feng and Cheng Mengxue sat down, both agreeing with Jiang Ran’s plan.
“Then…”
Cheng Mengxue hugged the Rhine Cat.
“What kind of time-traveling text should we send next?”
She tilted her head.
“We’ve already run several experiments, and we’ve made a lot of money off the lottery.”
“So next… can we start sending time-traveling texts that do what we want—texts that make up for regrets, that fix mistakes in the past?”
Jiang Ran smiled slightly.
“The experiment phase is already over, and we’ve mastered how to use time-traveling texts. Going forward, the content can be freer.”
“Of course, it’s not like we can send absolutely anything. We still have to judge together and decide together.”
He leaned back in his chair, looking at the two of them.
“I’m sure all of us, during this time, have thought about what we want to do with time-traveling texts.”
“Then the three of us—one wish each. We’ll take turns making them happen.”
“Who goes first?”