Returning to 1949, I decided to hand it over to the state.

Jiang Fan pushed open the bathroom door, panting heavily.

He raised his hand to touch his face, then pinched his thigh hard.

"hiss--!"

It hurts.

I'm really back.

The scene before me was my familiar modern rented room.

The computer screen was still lit, and the express delivery packages on the ground remained untouched.

He strode to the table and grabbed the phone from it.

The screen lit up, the battery level was still full, but the time displayed on the lock screen made his pupils shrink sharply:

【2026年6月1日 14:11】

He remembered clearly that it was a little after 2 p.m. when he opened the package containing the watch.

I actually spent a full three days in the timeline of 1949.

In the real world, not even a minute has passed?

"Time...has been frozen in the real world?"

Jiang Fan felt a chill run down his spine.

This means that the time-travel mechanism of this watch has completely deviated from common sense.

It threw itself into 1949 for a full 72 hours, then pulled itself back to its original state, precisely back to the same millisecond it left in.

Behind that fleeting moment of disorientation in the real world lies the reality of three days and two nights he actually spent.

Only this explanation makes sense.

Then, he looked at his left wrist and tapped the mysterious dial.

no response.

I pressed the edge harder.

Still no response.

"What does this mean? Disposable items, they're ruined after use?"

The thought had barely formed when the dark watch face suddenly lit up.

【00:00:00】

[You may bring one item (not exceeding one cubic meter in volume, and it must not be a living creature)]

What does this mean? Carrying items? Bringing them back to 1949?!

Before Jiang Fan could fully process the shock of those small prints, the zeroed-out numbers on the dial flickered slightly before starting to move again.

【24:00:00】

24-hour countdown!

Again.

Almost at the same instant the countdown reappeared, Jiang Fan felt the edge of the watch face loosen slightly, and the foreign feeling, as if it were growing into his flesh, disappeared.

He immediately tried to lift the watch face by gripping the edge with his fingers, and the watch face came off with a snap.

You should know that before he left 1949, this thing was firmly welded to his wrist, and no matter how he tried to pry it off, it wouldn't budge.

Now that the countdown has reset, this thing can actually be removed.

Jiang Fan finally understood completely.

Twenty-four hours later, the watch will restart the transmission, pulling him back to 1949.

Moreover, this time, he can choose to bring one type of supplies with him!

"You can only bring one item, with a volume not exceeding one cubic meter..."

Jiang Fan placed the watch face on the table, muttering those words to himself.

One cubic meter may not sound like much, but if used properly, the industrial value it can hold is absolutely astronomical.

As for what to bring?

Jiang Fan even chuckled self-deprecatingly:

We can't really bring back a single-soldier rocket launcher, can we?

Not to mention that you can't buy them at all, even if you could, what use would one be if you brought it back with you?

more importantly……

A sudden hesitation arose in Jiang Fan's heart.

His first time travel was a forced and passive situation. He was thrown into 1949 without any preparation and had no choice but to bite the bullet and go with the flow.

But this time, the watch had fallen off.

If we ignore it now, will the time travel be stopped?

As a hardcore science popularization blogger who frequents Bilibili, he has seen too many works with time travel themes.

There is an ironclad rule in all science fiction works—the "butterfly effect" and the "time paradox".

Do not interfere with history lightly.

If you flapped your wings in the past, decades later, it could trigger a storm that could turn the real world upside down.

After a moment's thought, Jiang Fan remembered what he had done before leaving:

He persuaded his great-grandfather to settle in Beijing, leaving behind the complete manufacturing process of gas cylinders for that era, the rudimentary process of extracting liquefied gas from associated gas, and even the precise coordinates of the Daqing Oilfield to Chief Li.

Logically speaking, these things should be enough to propel many things forward by a significant margin.

But the question is, did history really move forward on its own?

If it succeeds, then there will definitely be changes.

Thinking of this, Jiang Fan stood up and walked towards the computer.

He needed to confirm one thing first: whether his three days of work had been in vain.

If there are no gas cylinders, no early discovery of the Daqing Oilfield, and no technical notes left by him in the historical records, then it means that the 1949 year the watch took him to is not actually his timeline.

Going there would be pointless.

But what if those things really left traces...?

Jiang Fan's fingers hovered above the keyboard. After hesitating for two seconds, he typed the first line of search terms:

[1949 Anshan Iron and Steel Group Gas Tank]

The search results were almost empty.

There are a few web pages related to the history of Ansteel's development, which mention Ansteel's resumption of production in 1949 and its support for North Korea in 1950, but they do not mention the words "gas cylinders" at all.

Jiang Fan frowned, then changed to a broader keyword: [When was the gas cylinder invented?]

The first result displayed an encyclopedia entry:

「煤气罐于20世纪60年代初期在欧洲开始民用推广，20世纪70年代末引入中国，80年代初正式进入家庭厨房。」

Jiang Fan's brows furrowed even more.

Late 70s?

Isn't that almost thirty years later than 1949?

He then opened the AI ​​assistant Doubao, which he found particularly useful for writing scripts and organizing materials.

"Doubao, can you check for me whether Anshan Iron and Steel Group manufactured the first batch of civilian gas cylinders in my country in 1949?"

Doubao's reply popped up almost instantly:

"Haha, you're hilarious. Back in 1949, when the People's Republic of China was first established, there weren't even many decent urban gas pipelines in the whole country, let alone gas cylinders. The earliest batch of civilian gas cylinders in our country only started to be gradually promoted after 1978. Ansteel is indeed the cradle of China's steel industry, but they didn't actually invent the gas cylinder."

Jiang Fan, who was leaning back in his gaming chair, sat up straight immediately upon seeing the reply.

1978?!

This isn't right!

He clearly wrote out the entire manufacturing process on the blackboard in the small white building, and Zhou Chunsheng even welded a perfect sample for him on the spot with a welding torch.

Having personally witnessed the formation of that silver-gray can, how could it have only begun to be promoted in 1978?

Jiang Fan's first thought was:

Did Zhou Chunsheng lose the technology? Or is it that no one is pushing it forward?

Or perhaps Zhou Chunsheng simply didn't take it seriously?

Jiang Fan was unwilling to give up, so he immediately opened the Ansteel factory history database and some local chronicles in electronic format.

AI sometimes captures incorrect information; for serious historical research, official documents must be consulted.

"History of Ansteel Gas Cylinders"

"Ansteel's Early Product Development Catalog (1949)"

I clicked the mouse frantically, and dozens of pages of results popped up.

But to Jiang Fan's dismay, most of these were propaganda pieces with grand narratives from recent years, and there was still no mention of gas cylinders.

"It's all just general talk..."

Jiang Fan adopted a more hardcore approach, directly searching professional literature databases.

Finally, while browsing through an electronic scanned copy of "A Collection of Materials on the History of Anshan Iron and Steel Technology Development," he found the following passage in an extremely inconspicuous appendix: