Siheyuan (traditional courtyard house): Starting with the Korean War, returning home to take charge

The printer spat out the last page, its edges still warm from the machine's internal heat. Sun Xiuying didn't hand the report over; instead, she placed it on the table in front of He Yuzhu, pressing her middle finger along the edge to ensure it was flat. "Huayuan No. 3, the gene lock, and telomere repair technology have been successfully integrated. The new vector is called 'Huayuan·Eternity.' After injection, the body enters a continuous repair state and will not age naturally. Physiological age is locked at the state at the time of injection and will not increase further." She paused for a moment. "Director He, from a biological perspective, after this injection, a person is pulled out of the natural lifespan track."

He Yuzhu opened the report. The last page contained only numbers and graphs, with no explanatory text. He closed the report. "How long will it take for mass vaccination?"

"One year. Active astronauts and researchers will be the first batch, and the rest of the citizens will be sorted by age."

"What if something goes wrong in the middle?"

Sun Xiuying seemed taken aback by the question, pausing for a few seconds. "The safety data in the report is all based on our own samples. No one has ever tried covering such a large scale with all participants. If someone develops an unexpected immune response to the vector, we currently have no alternative plan."

He Yuzhu's finger hovered over the edge of the report cover. "Then let's not treat everyone yet. Expand the first batch to 20,000 people, observe for a month, and then move on to the next batch."

"That would extend the time required for nationwide coverage."

"Extending it is fine. It's better than having problems and then having to deal with it later."

Three days later. Qin Huairu sat at her dressing table in the bedroom, rolling up her left sleeve in front of the mirror. The mark from the third day after the injection should have settled by now. She raised her arm; there were no marks on the inside of her wrist, not even a small patch of redness left from the injection had completely faded. She lowered her sleeve, no longer looking at her own face in the mirror, which she herself hadn't fully adjusted to, and stood up to walk into the courtyard. He Yuzhu sat on a stone bench, a glass of cooled water in front of him. He didn't drink it, just held the glass, as if unaware that he still had something in his hand. Qin Huairu walked over and stood opposite him.

"He Yuzhu, do you still recognize me?"

You haven't changed at all.

"Then why don't you dare look at me?"

He Yuzhu looked up at her face. Their eyes met; the wind blew from above the courtyard wall, bending the top few leaves of the jujube tree, but neither spoke. He Yuzhu put down his cup. Qin Huairu released his hand, her fingertips lingering briefly in his palm before withdrawing.

He Nianhua had been staring at the wormhole waveform in the lab for over an hour. The curve on the screen showed a slight fluctuation today, small in amplitude but stable in frequency, unlike random noise. He pulled up the electromagnetic monitoring data from the Kunlun Mountains; an irregular fluctuation was recorded on the northern slope of the Kunlun Mountains yesterday afternoon. He overlaid the two sets of data; the curve appeared to him as a slowly moving shape, like the last trace left by a pendulum before it stopped. He took out a pencil and drew a line on the back of the graph paper, connecting the coordinates of the northern slope of the Kunlun Mountains and the wormhole. He closed the notebook, without marking the day. He walked to the window; his own face and the glowing edge of the screen behind him were reflected in the windowpane.

The system interface popped up around midnight. There was no sound, no flickering, like a pre-recorded closing statement, playing only after the room had quieted down. He Yuzhu had just finished reading a progress report on the second phase of the Luan Bird Project and looked up from the paper. The line of text appeared in mid-air: "Ultimate Mission: Open a separate page in the family tree, obtain immortality—Completed." He looked at it for a while, not reaching to close it, waiting for the second line to follow. After a few seconds, the second line indeed appeared: "Reward—Dimensional ascension within China, spiritual energy revival." Then came the third line: "Comparison of He surname hosts across all parallel universes—He Yuzhu has the highest completion rate. Civilization Mentor, your journey begins anew here."

He Yuzhu stood up and walked to the window. Below the horizon in the direction of the Kunlun Mountains, a grayish-white light was slowly spreading outwards, like dispersed fog, with neat edges that did not dissipate. He saw its boundary, moving across the Gobi Desert at a uniform speed. As it passed the Chengshan Research Institute where he was located, there was no sound, no change in temperature, just a steady forward movement.

He Nianhua also saw the edge of the light in the lab. He put down his pencil, walked to the window, and saw the light passing through the outer wall of the research institute, illuminating nothing and obstructing no view, like a new base color being fixed. He didn't move. The edge of the light was approaching the glass in front of him, then passing through it, across the surface of his palm, leaving no tactile sensation. He looked down and saw a darkening projection mark on the back of his hand. He didn't know what it was, nor did he record it; he just watched the mark slowly fade, blending back into the surrounding shadows, as if it had never appeared. He turned and walked back to the table, opened the coordinate paper, and wrote on the second page: "Kunlun Mountains direction. Synchronized with wormhole signal. Light leaves no heat when passing through objects. Confirmed not a hallucination." After writing, he closed the notebook, took an iron ruler from the drawer, and placed it where he had just stood. The iron ruler lay flat on the ground, without tilting or shifting. He squatted down, picked it up, put it back in the drawer, and then turned off the light.

When Qin Huairu went inside to retrieve the old porcelain cup, He Yuzhu was still standing by the window, not turning around. He heard her footsteps cross the threshold of the main room, go around the desk behind him, pick up the old porcelain cup, and put it back in its place. He still didn't turn around, but the light flowing from the window into the room, like a door being pushed open, slid along the edge of the table and stopped, remaining on the path it had just swept across, without moving. Qin Huairu stood on the other side of the table, watching the light moving towards her at a constant speed, without asking when it had appeared, nor why it had turned a ninety-degree angle along the corner of the wall and stopped there.

As He Nianhua walked out of the lab, he noticed that the light, after passing through the window at the end of the corridor, didn't shine on the opposite wall. Instead, it curved along the base of the wall and continued along the corridor's direction, as if guided by an unseen channel. He stopped and crouched down. The light passed the edge of his shoe, neither stopping nor accelerating, but simply continuing forward along the corner of the wall. He stood up but didn't chase after it. As the light curved at the end of the corridor, the shadow on the wall was briefly stretched before returning to normal. He Nianhua stood there, looking down at his notebook cover, his gaze fixed on the darkening mark along its edge. He didn't know when it had appeared, nor could he be sure if it would reappear. He did nothing.