There can only be one truth, but now, there were already three possibilities derived.
One: Humans from the previous cycle.
Two: AI from the previous cycle.
Three: Unknown, only knowing it fabricated a false story to muddy the waters and deceive everyone.
Yi Sa listed all three on paper.
She hoped it was one of the first two – after all, she’d killed so many brain cells and put in so much effort to piece together a story. Having it all suddenly overturned, leaving her with nothing, was truly hard to accept.
But what Zong Hang said made sense too – unless they could prove “they” hadn’t lied at all, once there was a possibility of lying, whether it was partial or complete lies became difficult to determine.
She’d thought the dust had settled, but when the cloud of dust cleared, three diverging paths appeared.
Yi Sa remained silent for a while, then crumpled the paper into a ball: regardless of which truth it was, it must be related to her body’s recent abnormalities. She’d been hoping to stay uninvolved, but now it seemed completely impossible to remain an outsider. Zong Hang couldn’t stay uninvolved either; he was just like her – her today was his tomorrow, just a matter of time.
Zong Hang carefully gauged her expression: “Yi Sa, things aren’t right again, are they?”
Yi Sa feigned casualness: “Not necessarily… I’m meeting with Ding Panling to ask about the Drifting Cave situation. If we can figure out the Drifting Cave, things should be mostly sorted out.”
She dialed Ding Panling’s number, but for some reason, there was no answer on the other end, so she had to send a long text message instead.
After going in circles, they suddenly found they might still be at square one – like drawing water with a bamboo basket or seeking fish in trees – nobody would be in a good mood.
Zong Hang was quite dejected too, especially when before bed, he accidentally glimpsed Yi Sa placing a folded small towel at the back of her neck.
This meant the blood was likely her own, she just didn’t want to mention it.
Zong Hang tossed and turned, unable to sleep. By midnight, he got up and just sat silently on the bed.
In bigger cities, even at night, the outside was brightly lit. The hotel curtains’ light-blocking wasn’t great, and the entire room was bathed in the vague yellow streetlight of the deep night.
Yi Sa had already woken up from a sleep cycle when she happened to turn over, her heart skipping a beat.
She saw Zong Hang sitting on the bed like a statue, head lowered, completely motionless.
Yi Sa watched for a while, making sure she wasn’t seeing things: “Zong Hang, why aren’t you sleeping?”
Zong Hang raised his head in confusion.
He’d been sitting for so long that he was slightly dazed, actually feeling like the voice had floated down from heaven. It took him a while to realize it was her: “You’re awake?”
Yi Sa grabbed her phone from beside her pillow to check.
It was almost 3 AM. Ding Panling had replied after 1 AM, setting a time and place to meet, but she’d put her phone on silent before sleeping and hadn’t heard it.
She stuffed the phone under her pillow, crawled from her bed to Zong Hang’s, and didn’t turn on the lights: feeling this brightness was just right – faces weren’t clearly visible, making it private, comfortable, relaxed.
“Missing home?”
“No.”
“Then what are you thinking about?”
Zong Hang lifted his head: “Yi Sa, you won’t be in danger, will you?”
Yi Sa guessed what he was referring to: “What could happen? I just burst blood vessels sometimes, right? Sometimes when blood vessels are too fragile, they break and bleed a little. It’s nothing.”
Zong Hang was half-convinced: “Don’t lie to me.”
Yi Sa wondered: “Do I often lie to you?”
She clasped her hands behind her neck and lay back on the bed. The mattress was soft; the springs inside vibrated, making her body sway slightly.
“Besides, even if something happened to me, it wouldn’t affect you. You’d still eat, sleep, and do whatever you need to do.”
Zong Hang got anxious: “Who says that? I… I’d be very worried.”
Oh, really?
Yi Sa glanced at him sideways. The light was too dim to see clearly; she could only see his silhouette – even his outline showed anxiety and anger.
“Why worry about me? Have I been that good to you? I even sold you for ten dollars back then.”
Zong Hang suddenly laughed.
It’s nice when people have known each other for a long time – many things become memories, and each time they’re mentioned, they bring different emotions.
“Why did you sell me back then? Looking at my face, you can tell I’m a good person.”
Yi Sa said: “Did I see your face? As soon as you dove in, all I saw was your behind. How would I know if you were good or not?”
She patted the bed: “Lie down to talk, aren’t you tired of sitting?”
Can I lie down? Zong Hang’s heart pounded as he hesitated before stiffly lying down on his side.
The distance was just right; he could see her eyes. The mattress was soft, the cotton fabric smooth and warm, the lighting dim, and everything inside and outside quiet. Occasionally, the sound of cars speeding by came from outside – in this world, some people sleep peacefully while others hurry about.
Zong Hang felt he could lie like this forever, become fossilized, and when dug up thousands of years later, people would surely find a fossil overflowing with happiness.
Yi Sa murmured: “Also, I wasn’t in a good mood then…”
She suddenly remembered it was almost the 19th again; she needed to find a way to get some animal anesthetic in the next couple of days.
“Yi Sa, after the Drifting Cave matter is settled, will you go back to Cambodia?”
“Mm, where else would I go?”
“You could come visit my home.”
Always recommends his home, making it sound like an unmissable tourist attraction.
“What’s so fun at your home?”
“There’s a frangipani tree, it’s huge. When it’s full of flowers, it’s especially beautiful. Sitting under the tree eating sugar-coated eggs is comfortable.”
Speaking of this, Zong Hang let out a satisfied sigh.
As a child, he was a quiet kid, not rowdy. When Tong Hong was busy playing mahjong with friends and found him bothersome on the side, she would fry him a plate of sugar-coated eggs.
He would excitedly drag his children’s plastic table and small stool under the frangipani tree, sit properly, and eat one bite at a time.
Those were the most beautiful moments – the tree crown was huge, green shade like an umbrella, with dense goose-yellow frangipani flowers above, and sunlight filtering through the thick foliage, casting shining little coins of light on the ground.
He would run back and forth under the tree, cleaning up broken branches and dead leaves, drawing a big circle around the tree to mark his territory. Neither Tong Hong nor Zong Bisheng could enter.
Tong Hong had read books and roughly understood this was a child’s “territorial consciousness,” so she cooperated by standing outside the circle pretending to knock: “Hang-hang, can Mommy come in?”
“No.”
If no meant no, then so be it. Tong Hong thought it was just that little kids didn’t like playing with adults but later discovered that even when friends came over, Zong Hang wouldn’t let them near his egg tree.
He just liked sitting alone under the tree, smiling foolishly.
This was a precious private treasure he didn’t want to share with others, but now, he wanted to share it with Yi Sa.
That feeling… of wanting you to know all my secrets.
…
He perked up his ears waiting for Yi Sa’s response.
After a long wait, he finally got her vague answer: “Well… I’ll think about it.”
Although the night was dark and no one could see his face, when Zong Hang smiled, he still secretly buried his face in the bedding.
He had taken Jing Xiu’s words to heart and felt he should be braver.
First, set a small goal.
At the latest, no later than under the frangipani tree.
Ding Panling had arranged to meet for breakfast. The restaurant was quite large but not crowded, making it good for discussions.
The three of them occupied a large booth, talking while eating.
They first discussed the Drifting Cave. Ding Panling showed Yi Sa a trajectory map that looked like a flattened spiral: “This is roughly the shape we got when we connected the ground vortexes we found.”
He then marked a triangle at one spot: “We’re focusing on this area now.”
Just looking at the map didn’t reveal much, so Yi Sa got straight to the point: “How often does the Drifting Cave’s ‘ground opening’ occur? And how long does it stay open each time? What if it doesn’t open for years – do we just wait?”
Ding Panling smiled: “I can’t give you a definite answer, I can only tell you our speculations.”
More speculation – of course, with everything unclear now, speculation was all they had.
“We now suspect that the Drifting Cave’s ‘opening’ actually happens quite frequently. The reason it hasn’t been discovered in all these years is due to two factors.”
“First, it’s located in the Three Rivers Source region, which is uninhabited, with no permanent residents. Second, based on the phrase ‘wind striking the stars,’ it probably ‘opens’ at night. Think about it – even if people enter the uninhabited area, they rarely move around at night. Even if they do move at night, they might not happen to encounter it – the probability becomes smaller and smaller, which is why everyone has the misconception that the Drifting Cave is hard to find and opens rarely.”
Yi Sa only focused on the word “frequent”: frequent was good – more occurrences meant more opportunities.
“As for how long it stays open each time… that’s hard to say too. We only know it definitely won’t last until dawn. I discussed this with Changsheng and the others, and we all felt it would be safer to wait there. If there’s a discovery in the next couple of days and by the time we get notified and arrive it’s already closed, we’d miss that opportunity.”
Yi Sa had no objections: “Waiting is waiting, regardless of where… Also, Uncle Panling, what do you think about that inference?”
Ding Panling was just about to address this.
“Your theory about partial lies versus complete lies is quite interesting. Honestly, I had only thought about partial lies before and wondered if we might be dealing with artificial intelligence. I hadn’t considered the possibility of complete lies.”
Really? None of these old hands had thought of it? Zong Hang gained some respect for his intelligence: maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.
“I thought about it until late at night and researched quite a bit. Now I’m inclined to believe: whatever is in the Drifting Cave is neither humans from the previous cycle nor artificial intelligence.”
Yi Sa was startled: “Why?”
Among the three possibilities, they should have equal chances – why did he directly lean toward the last one?
Ding Panling thought for a moment: “Let me first explain a theory called the Singularity Theory. This is a view derived from human technological development history, suggesting that technological development will undergo enormous, nearly infinite progress in a very short time – that’s not hard to understand, right?”
Yi Sa nodded.
Not hard to understand – human inventions and breakthroughs in recent years indeed exceeded the sum of the previous thousands of years, and some believe the real technological explosion is still to come.
“This theory also says that we cannot comprehend the intelligence and technology of the post-human era, just as goldfish cannot understand human civilization – this sentence suddenly reminded me.”
He looked at Zong Hang: “Think back to those scenes that appeared in your mind, the so-called previous cycle, more advanced civilization – those men and women, their clothes, hairstyles, the things they used – were they hard to understand? Were they different from us?”
Zong Hang furrowed his brow, pretending to recall hard.
But it was Yi Sa who was recalling.
No difference – those men and women in offices all looked like career professionals, women with perfect makeup, men in suits and leather shoes, with computers, phones, or paper and pens beside them. The protective suits worn by scientists were also the kind seen in movies. In other words, everything had its counterpart in current society…
Under the cover of the table, she secretly reached out and wrote “no” on Zong Hang’s leg.
Zong Hang swallowed and put on a convincing shocked expression: “No.”
“What about the language they spoke? Which country’s language?”
“Man…Mandarin.”
Ding Panling spoke meaningfully: “Even we dress, style our hair, wear makeup, and speak differently from people in the ’80s and ’90s, yet this supposedly previous civilization had no differences from us – doesn’t that seem strange?”
“Thinking about it now, just hearing the description, the whole story sounds like a third-rate science fiction novel; even with the images added, it’s like a poor sci-fi drama that any film crew could produce.”
Yi Sa lost her appetite: “So I was played for a fool, they made up a story and I treated it like an imperial edict, spreading it everywhere.”
She wanted to curse to vent her anger but held back considering Ding Panling was her elder.
Ding Panling smiled: “No need to be too discouraged, Sa Sa. No one can lie completely without leaving any traces. This setup has already revealed many things.”
Really?
Yi Sa was skeptical: “What did it reveal?”
Ding Panling said: “An illiterate person couldn’t make up a story about previous civilization and artificial intelligence. To use these elements, one must first know about these things, then integrate them, and predict the impact such a story would have. So, the other party is either human…”
How could it be human? The Golden Soup Cave and that whole system didn’t seem like human work at all.
“…or at least possesses intelligence equivalent to humans.”
“Moreover, if it had absolute power, it wouldn’t need to weave such an intricate maze. The more elaborate and forceful the weaving, the more it shows it’s not that capable. So Sa Sa, regardless of what it is, I’m sure it’s also afraid of exposure, afraid of being seen through by us. If it wasn’t afraid, it would have come already.”