June 4th, Friday, 4:35pm.
Beiquan, Wei Fuyuan, and Tian Raisean arrived in Xuanmen Village, which had been abandoned for a long time.
Wei Fuyuan parked his car at the entrance of the village—the same place where the search and rescue team found the two empty cars left by the teachers and students of the photography department.
After confirming that there were no traces of missing teachers and students in the village, the search and rescue team evacuated Xuanmen Village in the afternoon, but after a large-scale search, the abandoned village that was already dilapidated became even more dilapidated and messy.
Before it was completely dark, Beiquan and the three decided to go around the village to observe the environment.
Xuanmen Village is built along the river valley, facing the water in the east and the mountains in the west. If you look down from above, the whole village will form a long and narrow "J" shape from south to north, and the tail of the "J" in the north is hooked. It is the cemetery where the villagers buried the remains of the dead.
Xuanmen Village used to make a living by planting and gathering, and the population at its peak was only two or three hundred people.
In the past 20 to 30 years, a large number of young and middle-aged laborers have left the village, leaving only the elderly, women and children in the village, which has gradually become depressed. In the end, due to problems such as water supply, electricity consumption and road conditions, the whole village was relocated to more than 100 kilometers by the government. In the plain area at the foot of the mountain outside, only the deserted village that no one cares about is left.
According to the information obtained by Beiquan, Xuanmen Village has a total of 72 large and small houses. The search and rescue team has inspected them one by one, and there are 34 that are still in good condition.
Eight teachers and students from the Photography Department of Fengxing University chose two rooms for the night at the head of Xuanmen Village, which is the top of the "J" character.
Beiquan decided to take a look at the two houses where the teachers and students lived.
"These houses must be dozens or hundreds of years old?"
Wei Fuyuan looked around as he walked.
"Every room looks like a dilapidated house, even more broken than your 'Santu River'... The weather forecast says it will rain tonight, so there will be water leaks in the house, right?"
"Comrade Xiaowei, you are too squeamish, you can't do this!"
Tian Jiaxing was holding his precious cup, his two short legs jumped upside down very fast, and he trotted all the way, and he could even keep up with the pace of the two long legs that were over 1.8 meters tall.
"Look at me, I usually eat and drink dew when I practice, and get drenched in the sun and rain! You can still cover your head with a tile now, but when there's a little rain in the room, you'll be screaming and screaming, what a formality!"
Wei Fuyuan said in his heart that you, a Tian Qicheng Jing, of course prefer the open air, or else you wouldn't live on the rooftop every day.
But he didn't bother to bother with an 800-year-old naive kid, so he simply reached out and picked up the collar of Tian Ra's back coat, lifted him up, and tucked it under his arm, "Speaking adults, don't interrupt children!"
The two—or in other words, the kung fu of one person and one demon bickering, Beiquan and the others have come to the door of the two residential houses where the teachers and students of the photography department lived.
The two small courtyards are adjacent to each other, and both are private houses with a concave-shaped structure common in the mountainous area of southern Henan, but because they are located in the south facing north, the positions of the east and west sides are reversed.
Compared with the abandoned houses that collapsed and only had broken tiles and crumbling walls, the two adjacent courtyards are relatively well preserved because of their higher positions and their backing against the cliffs to shield them from wind and rain, except for the east wing of the one on the left. Except for the obvious collapse of the roof, the other rooms can be accommodated if they are cleaned up.
The two small courtyards are wide open, and there are fresh and messy footprints stepped on by the search and rescue team.
Beiquan didn't go in directly, but first let Guanhu Suying out and let him search the village by himself.
Then he waved to Wei Fuyuan and Tian for a salary increase, motioning them to follow, then turned and entered the small courtyard on the left.
Different from the spooky and mysterious deserted village that Wei Fuyuan imagined like the scene of a ghost movie, it was not dark at this time, and the sun was shining in the sky at the beginning of June.
The yard was littered with old furniture that could not be removed, and the plastic products used for packaging and broken packaging bags were scattered everywhere.
When Wei Fuyuan was walking through the front yard, he accidentally stepped on a broken mat and splashed sewage, leaving a large patch of slippery and sticky mud marks on his Martin boots. Some of the little excitement that was eager to try, suddenly lost interest.
Probably because the teachers and students of the photography department cleaned up, the house is much cleaner than the courtyard. The floor and some furniture that can still be used have been wiped down, but the search and rescue team has already found all the things that belonged to the students. After taking it away, what Beiquan and the others could find was only rubbish such as leftover food.
"What are we looking for?"
Wei Fuyuan adorned Beiquan behind Beiquan like a tail, watching him go around the house, fumbling here and there, but he just couldn't figure out what he was trying to do.
"Even the professional search and rescue team has been withdrawn. We can't find the missing person here, right?"
Seeing that the sky was getting darker and darker outside, Wei Fuyuan finally couldn't hold back his curiosity and asked:
"Those people should no longer be in the village, right?"
Beiquan straightened his waist and shook his head at Wei Fuyuan.
"No, those students and teachers are still in this village and haven't left since the beginning."
He paused, then said:
"I mean, if they're not dead yet."
Wei Fuyuan only felt a chill crawling across his back, and said thank you very much, this supplement is so timely!
"You said they were still in the village?"
Young Master Wei looked around, as if subconsciously wanting to confirm Beiquan's judgment:
"But there are only so many broken houses in the village, where else can they hide?"
"They are indeed still in Xuanmen Village."
Beiquan replied: "But not the 'now' Xuanmen Village."
He deliberately put an emphasis on the word "now".
Wei Fuyuan: "What do you mean?"
Beiquan smiled at him:
"Have you heard of 'fragment space'?"
Poor Young Master Wei, a four-year-old young man studying business, how could he have heard of these nonsense
He shook his head aggrievedly, and felt like a primary school chicken who was asked by the teacher but couldn't answer anything.
"The so-called debris space is a cycle of space-time formed by some kind of chance."
Beiquan picked up a bottle of mineral water left by the student as an example.
"You can think of Fragment Space as this bottle in my hand."
Beiquan shook the bottle gently, and there was still about one-third of the water in the bottle.
"The body of the bottle is the 'shell' of the debris space, and its size determines the size of the 'space' that can be accommodated inside. The water inside is the 'time' it contains."
Wei Fuyuan said "oh", his expression still very dazed.
"The size of the 'bottle' determines how much space it can hold. I understand..."
he asked:
"But what about the 'time' represented by the water inside?"
In Wei Fuyuan's concept, time is like a flowing river, rushing to the sea and not returning, it can only keep going forward, so it is impossible to understand how it can be contained in a "container".
Beiquan smiled slightly:
"Because the time in the debris space is fixed."
He explained:
"It's a constant repetition of time, and if you're in it, it's not surprising that you've been spending the same amount of time — maybe a day, or a month, or even a year and a half."
Beiquan shook the mineral water bottle in his hand harder, "It depends on how much 'water' is in the 'bottle'."
Wei Fuyuan suddenly realized:
"Isn't this "Tomorrow ○ Fate"!"
In all kinds of hard and soft science fiction novels, movies and TV series, time loops are not uncommon, and Wei Fuyuan has also seen two or three of them.
The old "Groundhog Day" and the new "Death Day × Le", the core setting is that the protagonist repeatedly experiences the same period of time, and tries his best to change his final ending in repeated cycles.
"So, what do you mean, those teachers and students who are missing are just like Tom, repeating the same period over and over again somewhere?"
"You can understand that."
Beiquan hadn't seen "Fate of Tomorrow" and didn't know who Tom was, so he just smiled inexplicably and changed the subject.
"So, what we need to determine now is where exactly is the entrance to that fragmented space."
He ordered the cap of the mineral water bottle:
"Then try to get in and fish people out."
Wei Fuyuan: "...It sounds very dangerous..."
He murmured in a low voice:
"...doesn't that really trap us in it?"
Tian Zaixian, who was following the two, stepped on Wei Fuyuan's vamp:
"Bah, bah, there's nothing wrong with the words of the child! There's nothing wrong with the words of the child!"
The child puffed up his face and cursed angrily:
"Don't you know the idiom 'a word becomes a prophecy'? You can talk nonsense in such a dark place!?"
Although Tian Jiaxing is round and slightly fatter, it is still the normal weight that a three-year-old baby should have. To Wei Fuyuan, stepping on it is just painless, but Young Master Wei is still very unconvinced. :
"I'm just telling the truth!"
He stared at the slightly slender mouth of the mineral water bottle in Beiquan's hand and argued:
"Before taking an adventure, you always have to make a record in advance, right?"
This time, Beiquan agreed with Wei Fuyuan:
"Xiao Wei is right."
He frowned, rubbed the mineral water bottle with his fingertips, and muttered to himself:
"This time in the fragmented space... I always feel... there seems to be something wrong... "
At this moment, a white shadow quickly entered through the wall and got to Beiquan's feet.
It was Guanhu Suying who came back.
The little fox circled around Beiquan's calf a few times, then jumped onto the shoulder of the master with a "swoosh", and rubbed against his cheek a few times, as if he was doing a communication that only the two of them could understand.
"It turned out to be so?"
Beiquan frowned deeply.
"…If even the ghost is not in the village, it would be even more interesting."
The author has something to say: the manually coded movies are "Edge of Tomorrow", "Groundhog Day" and "Happy Death Day" XDDD~