Chapter 647
Countdown
"Han Zhou...aren't you dead?"
Upon hearing this, Han Zhou's first thought was: Sister Yin is still drunk from last week and hasn't sobered up yet.
But the other person's sadness was real, and their tears were real, so much so that when he was pulled over and slammed into that warm embrace, he even began to seriously doubt whether he was really dead.
Otherwise, why would I have such a bizarre dream?
The future Sister Yin actually hugged him tightly, what else could this be but a dream?
Hot tears dripped onto his head and soaked his shoulders. He could feel the trembling of the body in his arms and understand the grievance of being "deceived and abandoned" by the person he loved, but he still couldn't understand the source of this sorrow.
What on earth is going on...?
Han Zhou remained frozen in Zhong Yin's arms, afraid to move, because if he looked up, he would see the almost desperate look in Zhong Yin's eyes.
He was afraid to see that kind of look in his eyes.
Outside the window, snow was falling heavily, turning the world into a chaotic gray-white. The light from the streetlights pierced through the snow and shone into the room, enveloping the two people in a thin, ethereal veil.
Zhong Yin held her tightly, as if if she let go, the person in her arms would disappear completely from her world, just like the heavy snow.
Time passed in the suffocating embrace until Han Zhou was a little out of breath and tentatively broke free a little.
He took a deep breath, mentally prepared himself, and looked up, only to see Zhong Yin's face as he slept soundly.
How can someone fall asleep like this?
He was taken aback at first, then inexplicably breathed a sigh of relief. In any case, it was almost 2 a.m., and it was time to go to sleep. He could talk about it tomorrow morning.
He called out to Zhong Yin in a low voice, but when she didn't respond, he bent down, picked her up, and carried her into Zhong Ling's room. He carefully placed her on the bed and gently covered her with the blanket.
Just before being cornered, he hesitated for a moment, then carefully pinched the ring on the other person's chest and leaned closer to examine it closely.
"You bastard..."
He was startled by a sudden murmur in his sleep, which made his hand tremble. Fortunately, Zhong Yin did not wake up; he was just frowning and muttering unconsciously.
"You're not allowed to die..."
Honestly, I'm not that easy to die... Han Zhou smiled helplessly and continued to examine the ring in his hand, but when he saw the letters engraved inside the ring, he suddenly froze.
……
"The number you dialed is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."
"The number you dialed is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."
"The number you dialed..."
The wind on the balcony was cold, howling in. Gu Zheng pressed the redial button again and again, but all that came from the receiver was that standard, cold notification tone.
The screen's light gradually dimmed, failing to reflect the girl's expression. The biting wind tousled her hair, but it couldn't disturb her increasingly deep thoughts.
"Guzheng, you're still awake?"
My roommate rubbed her sleepy eyes as she walked out of the dorm. She was startled by the figure on the balcony, then pushed open the glass door and let out a long yawn. "Still thinking about what Zhou Ya said tonight?"
"No," Gu Zheng shook her head, "I just have trouble sleeping."
"You still say no? Besides that Han Zhou, who else could make you so worried?"
My roommate sighed, "Guzheng, I'm not trying to be mean, but misunderstandings are inevitable in relationships. But we're not the leads in an idol drama; we all have mouths. Don't keep things bottled up, just ask and find out..."
"He didn't answer my call," Gu Zheng interrupted her.
"what?"
His roommate was taken aback. "Could it be that he accidentally fell asleep and just forgot to charge his phone?"
Even she herself didn't quite believe this. In this day and age where people are inseparable from their phones, such a thing is almost impossible—but almost doesn't mean absolutely, right?
"Maybe."
Gu Zheng said softly, "I asked his roommate, and he didn't go back to the dorm tonight."
"You even added his roommate?"
"No, I asked another friend, and she and Han Zhou are classmates."
The roommate's heart skipped a beat, realizing the problem seemed a bit serious, and he instinctively tried to change the subject: "Wow, that's really rare... His roommate is actually willing to tell the truth. I heard that boys' dorms are very tight-lipped, and no matter who asks, they'll cover for them..."
Not answering the phone and not coming home at night are obviously taboos between couples. What's more, there are rumors tonight that Han Zhou was seen with another girl wearing a mask and a baseball cap.
"They weren't telling the truth."
Gu Zheng lowered her head slightly and said calmly, "It was because they all said that Han Zhou was in the dormitory that I was sure he wasn't there."
She paused, then murmured softly, "Everyone always likes to team up to lie to me, I'm used to it."
"Oh... how can I get used to this..."
Her roommate didn't know how to respond for a moment, so she could only cautiously say, "Guzheng, something doesn't seem right with you right now..."
"I know."
Gu Zheng did not deny it, but she didn't say much either.
Her roommate wanted to say a few more words, but the balcony was too cold, and she wasn't confident she could comfort Guzheng. She hugged her shoulders and shivered, saying, "Don't overthink it. It's almost two o'clock. Go to sleep. You have class tomorrow morning. Ask him about it yourself tomorrow."
After saying that, he rushed into the bathroom as if he were fleeing.
The balcony returned to silence.
Gu Zheng didn't move. He turned on his phone screen again, looked down at the number he knew by heart, and hovered his thumb over the dial button, not pressing it for a long time.
After a long while, she turned around and went back to her dormitory.
Today is December 24th, Christmas Eve.
To be precise, the time has passed midnight and we have arrived at December 25th—Christmas Day.
Many people couldn't sleep that night.
There are couples who plan to step from Christmas Eve into Christmas Day, children who are innocent and romantic and want to stay up all night to catch Santa Claus, and poor office workers who have to work overtime.
The long-awaited heavy snow and the annual Christmas holiday have destined to make tonight a sleepless night.
Han Zhou was also one of the sleepless ones in this long night.
"Han Zhou...aren't you dead?"
He stared blankly at the ceiling, the words echoing in his ears. At the same time, the two letters on the ring on Zhong Yin's chest were flashing wildly in his mind—
“ZH”.
When choosing couple rings, he asked the shop assistant to engrave the first letters of their names on the two rings. To distinguish them, Zhong Yin's ring was engraved with "HZ", while his ring was engraved with "ZH".
In other words, the ring Zhong Yin was wearing around her neck actually belonged to him.
But that's absolutely impossible.
Han Zhou remembered clearly that he originally wanted to bury his ring in the time capsule, but then he thought that if Sister Yin was really upset because he wasn't wearing a hair tie when they met again, then if he was missing the ring in the future, it might make her angry in the same way. So he chose to wear the ring with him and bring it back to the "present".
In other words, this ring had disappeared from the past, just like the hair tie. But if that's the case, what happened later that caused Zhong Yin to obtain this ring that didn't belong to the past?
Or rather, why did she choose to wear his ring instead of her own?
Is it for commemoration?
But why commemorate it?
After tossing and turning in bed for so long, Han Zhou already had a vague answer in his heart.
If there's any chance that the past Zhong Yin could obtain this ring, it would be when he returns to the past a second time in the future.
He once thought that no matter how many times he went back to the past, he would not be able to change anything, otherwise the timeline in his memory should have changed long ago. But even now, the accident still exists, and Zhong Yin's parents have not come back to life.
But he overlooked one thing.
He has been investigating the details of the accident four years ago, but the time is too long and the information he can collect is pitifully little. He even considered interviewing the survivors of that time, but after a lot of effort, he realized that he was still too optimistic.
When he first saw the news report stating "nearly twenty casualties," his initial thought was that most were survivors. However, after careful investigation, he learned that only two people had actually survived.
Zhong Yin and Zhong Ling.
The explosion was far more terrifying than he had imagined, and the consequences were far more devastating than he had anticipated.
So here's the question: in such a horrific accident with a near-total annihilation rate, why were only the Zhong and Yin sisters the only ones to survive?
Although one of them is "partially deaf" and the other is "partially mute," they are already considered very lucky compared to the people who are forever buried on that highway.
Han Zhou couldn't understand it before, but he understands it now.
There is only one answer—
When he travels back in time again, he hasn't remained unchanged. On the contrary, he changed one thing long ago, or rather, not long after, and only one thing, which is why the timeline remains exactly as it is today.
He saved Zhong Yin and Zhong Ling, who should have died in the accident.
This is undoubtedly exciting news—if he hadn't died in that rescue.
A chill suddenly crept up on him. Han Zhou turned his head and realized that he had forgotten to close the window properly. He got up and desperately closed the window, then looked down and saw the group photo on the desk.
In the photo, the young couple's smiles are either bright or gentle, as if they are silently watching him across time.
"Han Zhou...aren't you dead?"
Those words, spoken with a sob in my voice, echoed in my ears again.
Since he got the status bar, that long-lost feeling of powerlessness surged back into him like a tide.
The last time he felt this way was in a hospital corridor, where the smell of disinfectant was so pungent it made him want to vomit. The doctor looked at him calmly and said that his body wouldn't make it through the winter.
From that day on, he seemed to become a prisoner guarding an hourglass.
Every grain of sand falling is clearly audible, every day I wake up feels like a stroke of luck, and every sunset means I'm one step closer to the abyss.
The feeling of counting down the days until winter ends, of counting down the days until the end of one's life, is unpleasant.
And now, he has started this countdown life again.
"I'm sorry, Uncle and Aunt, it seems I couldn't save you in the end, but I did manage to bring Sister Yin and Xiaoling back to life, although they both have some problems... Will you blame me?"
"I'm so unwilling to accept this. Someone as greedy as me, if I can only save two people in the end, it should mean that this is the result of my best efforts, right?"
"It must be the result of giving it their all..."
He murmured to himself for a long time before returning to bed and continuing to stare blankly at the ceiling.
"But...why am I going to die?"
Zhong Yin wasn't the only one who ignored the ring engraved with "ZH"; he himself did too.
It wasn't until he saw the letters on the ring that he suddenly realized that, since returning to the present, although he remembered everything about the ring, he had completely ignored its existence.
He possesses a photographic memory, which should be impossible, and the fact that this is possible can only mean one thing—
He was also affected by the status bar.
As for why he was affected, he wasn't quite sure. Perhaps it was for protection, perhaps he was also being used as part of historical revisionism, or perhaps it was something else entirely. But whatever the reason, it didn't change one thing—
The day he travels back in time again will be the day he dies.
This is the truth behind the line, "Han Zhou, aren't you dead?"
Han Zhou rubbed his face vigorously.
Trading one life for two, if that's the price of forcibly changing the past, it's actually quite worthwhile.
But he didn't want to die.
I don't want to die at all.
Especially when you know he will die.
But if they don't go back in time to change everything, what will Sister Yin and Senior Sister do?
Will they die?
Han Zhou had considered many possibilities.
Perhaps he didn't die in the past, but returned to the present afterward, and the status bar needed to correct what happened in the past, so his disappearance was changed to death.
Or perhaps he had too many concerns at that time. After all, changing the past is a very difficult thing, and he had to find a way to make everything seem reasonable, so he had to fake his death to escape...
But no matter how he thought about it, he had to admit that he was afraid.
In his memory, he had risked his life three times in his life.
The first time was when he jumped off a cliff from the snow-capped mountain and hugged Mo Yixia.
He was scared at that time, but he gambled that the "hot-blooded youth" could bring him good luck and believed that he would have a chance to survive. Moreover, because the person in front of him was Mo Yixia, he still jumped down.
Fortunately, he won the bet that time.
The second time was when Mo Yixia and the others fell into the water while fishing outside the villa.
He wasn't afraid at that time; rather, it was the bravest moment of his life. After all, with the status bar as a backup, he believed he could save everyone.
And he did indeed save everyone.
The third time was when he went back in time and jumped into the flood to find Xiao Lengqiu.
He was actually quite scared at that time, but considering that the story was still going to continue, he also had the courage to jump into the water.
It was still a close call, but nothing serious happened.
These three desperate attempts, whether gambling on luck or trusting the status bar, all stemmed from the uncertainty of the future.
Since death is not an option, people naturally believe there is a possibility of survival.
Just like crossing a log bridge, the feeling of not knowing there are crocodiles in the river is completely different from knowing the river is full of crocodiles.
But this time...
The river is now teeming with crocodiles, and even the log bridge is gone.
He foresaw his inevitable death. (End of Chapter)