novelraw Chapter 3 Attempt
Chapter 3 Attempt
Was this phenomenon an accident… or something that could be reproduced?
Jiang Ran immediately picked up his phone and sent Cheng Mengxue five texts, then sent Qin Feng five as well.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep—five notification tones.
Qin Feng lifted his phone and stared at Jiang Ran from half a step away.
“Are you sick or something?”
At the same time, Cheng Mengxue sent a confused WeChat message, asking why Jiang Ran had just sent her five texts in a row—numbers one through five, perfectly sequential.
So… it failed.
Jiang Ran frowned.
Or rather, perhaps being able to receive a text normally was what was normal—what was reasonable.
“Could it be that only the content of that one text just now… can travel through time?”He tried again, retyping the sentence exactly—
“Hello. If you found this phone, please contact XXXXXXX. Thank you very much!”
—and sending it by SMS to both of them.
Beep.
Qin Feng’s phone chimed again;
Xiaoxue sent an exasperated reaction sticker.
At that point, Jiang Ran had nothing left to try.
He’d thought he’d stumbled onto some superpower—【sending texts to the past】—and that wealth and glory would be within reach…
But as things stood, it looked like a completely unrepeatable fluke, to the point that it made him doubt himself.
Had his memory glitched?
Heatstroke?
A waking dream?
Still half-asleep?
And yet… everything had felt so real.
“Hey—hey—hey!”
Qin Feng finally couldn’t take it anymore. He jabbed an elbow into Jiang Ran’s side.
“If something’s up, say it! You’ve been standing here like a mute, silently firing off texts—do you have any idea how creepy that is?”
“If you’ve got trouble, spit it out. We can think of a solution together!”
Jiang Ran sighed.
“Let’s meet up with Xiaoxue first.”
“I want to take a good look at her phone.”
…
Half an hour later, on the second floor of a milk-tea shop, in a corner booth.
Qin Feng looked at Cheng Mengxue.
“Do you believe him?”
“I don’t,” Cheng Mengxue said, shaking her head.
Jiang Ran spread his hands.
“I don’t either. Forget you two—I don’t even believe it myself.”
“No matter how you slice it, 【a text sent today being delivered three days ago】 is just too absurd—too sci-fi.”
“And just now we tried all kinds of variations. Not once did it work. Not a single text disappeared or got sent into the past… every message behaved normally.”
“I even wondered if I’d gotten heat-dizzy, or if my memory had malfunctioned.”
“But—there’s one thing I can’t explain.”
He took Cheng Mengxue’s phone and pinched the Rhine Cat charm hanging from the bottom.
“Qin Feng. Do you know what this Rhine Cat is?”
Qin Feng shook his head.
“Looks like an astronaut cat.”
Jiang Ran turned to Cheng Mengxue.
“Xiaoxue—did you ever explain this particular Rhine Cat to us?”
“No.”
Cheng Mengxue shook her head too.
“You two have zero interest in Rhine Cat. Talking to you about it would be like playing the lute to a cow—just a waste of breath.”
Then, suddenly, she blinked.
“You wouldn’t…?”
“Yes. I know.”
Jiang Ran stared at the number printed on the charm’s belly.
“This is the Rhine Cat collab with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. They only released 4,200. It’s incredibly rare.”
“Wow!”
Cheng Mengxue’s eyes sparkled.
“You actually did your homework!”
“How could I have…”
Jiang Ran waved a hand.
“You told me that yourself—out loud. Of course you don’t remember it now.”
“This isn’t exactly ironclad proof, but you two know me. There’s no way I would’ve looked it up online. I have zero interest in Rhine Cat, and I don’t even think it’s that cute.”
“So I’m saying… maybe this isn’t as simple as it looks. Maybe I didn’t have some weird waking dream at all. Maybe something really did happen—a kind of temporal butterfly effect—and that text really was sent into the past!”
Qin Feng thought for two seconds.
Then he nodded.
“Yeah. You wouldn’t be that bored.”
“But compared to a time-traveling text—and the 【temporal shift】 it supposedly triggered—I’m more curious about something else.”
He lifted his head and fixed his gaze on Jiang Ran’s eyes.
“【Why are you the only one who remembers the world before the shift?】”
“Logically, I was standing right there with you… no—by your account, the three of us were standing together. But neither of us has that memory at all.”
…
Jiang Ran fell silent.
For no clear reason, his mind flashed back to those arrogant lines from the film shoot that afternoon—
“As long as you go back to the past and change all of this… everything can start over.”
“Omnipotent still isn’t godhood. Only the one who controls history—who manipulates history—can be called a god!”
“You’ll never defeat me in history. Because in this game that runs along the river of time…”
“I am history!”
Thunk.
Jiang Ran set his milk tea down and leaned back into the chair.
“I don’t know.”
He shook his head lightly.
“More than either of you, I want the answer.”
That was the truth—and it was what unsettled him most.
Neither Qin Feng nor Cheng Mengxue had any memory from before the shift.
Jiang Ran was the opposite: he retained the memory of before the shift, yet had no memory of the new history after it… so many changes—things that no longer matched the original timeline—had to be explained to him by other people after the fact.
It was an unsteady feeling. A profoundly unsafe feeling.
“But you did change history,” Qin Feng said. “Just like what you wrote in your script.”
The three of them had known each other long enough that Qin Feng could read Jiang Ran’s thoughts at a glance. He smiled faintly.
“Three days ago, after Xiaoxue got that text, she treated it like a prank—but it still made her nervous about losing her phone.”
“So she kept patting her pockets and checking it all day without even noticing. That’s why, when she went shopping yesterday afternoon, she didn’t lose it.”
Phew…
Cheng Mengxue let out a long breath, then giggled.
“Either way, because of that inexplicable text, I didn’t lose my phone—or my Rhine Cat! That’s a major merit on your record!”
“Next time something like that happens, send me a few lottery numbers too~ Then we can get rich overnight!”
“I’d love to,” Jiang Ran said, caught between laughter and helplessness.
If he really had the power to text the past, who wouldn’t want to make up for regrets, seize chances, and carve out a perfect life?
But right now, he had no clue.
Still…
It was far too early to give up.
From the perspective of physics: any experiment that can succeed once—if you understand the principle—can succeed a second time.
“Tomorrow afternoon, same time, let’s try again.”
He glanced at his screen.
“In my memory, the text was sent at six-oh-five.”
“It’s very possible that only texts sent at that specific moment can cross time and reach the past.”
“Desperate people grasp at straws,” Cheng Mengxue mocked.
“Don’t put it like that.”
Qin Feng took a sip of milk tea.
“A lot of scientific experiments are empirical, especially before you know why something worked. In that stage… strictly recreating every action, every step—even every little superstitious gesture—can actually be the most effective approach.”
…
The next day—six p.m.
The three of them returned to the same spot where the text had been sent.
This was the main path from the library to the cafeteria. Beside it stood a massive 【transformer distribution box】—a full three meters tall, with a constant electrical hum you could hear as you got close.
Behind the box was the student activity building, where faint shouts and laughter drifted out.
“Yesterday, I sent it right here.”
Jiang Ran took his exact position, then directed the other two like a stage manager.
“Xiaoxue, come closer—stand next to me. Qin Feng, you stand here—angle yourself a bit. And my phone’s orientation… was facing this way.”
Yes.
It really was grasping at straws.
But they did everything they could to achieve a perfect recreation from every angle.
The text had already been prepared in advance—word for word, not a single character different.
And he’d even downloaded an SMS-bombing app: once he pressed the button, it would fire messages at Cheng Mengxue’s phone at a rate of one per second.
Qin Feng raised his wrist and watched his watch as he counted down.
“Ten seconds. Five seconds. Three—two—one—send!”
Jiang Ran stared at the sunset that looked exactly like yesterday’s, and slammed his thumb down on the send button—