Eleven-thirty that night.
Bai Yang was panicking.
For the first time in all these days, the other party hadn’t come online at the scheduled time. There had been no contact for nearly an hour, with no response to calls on channel 14255.
The girl hadn’t come as promised.
This morning, Bai Yang had asked his dad to visit the Red Mountain Forest Zoo. If you wanted to find the most knowledgeable tiger experts in all of Nanjing, they’d be at the zoo. The staff at the lion and tiger enclosure dealt with them daily—they could tell what kind of droppings a tiger would leave just by watching it squat. So his dad had used the pretext of his son wanting an internship at the zoo to get friendly with the keepers. He fully utilized his taxi driver’s talent for smooth-talking, claiming his son was a Nanjing Agricultural University zoology graduate who wanted to work at Red Mountain Zoo after graduation. When the staff heard this, they exclaimed, “Oh, a fellow alumnus? A junior?” And proceeded to share everything they knew.
Bai Yang was also called Zhao Bowen. Old Zhao contacted the animal science professors at Nanjing Forestry University’s School of Environmental Sciences, who reached out to Beijing Forestry’s School of Biology, who then called Harbin to find Northeast Forestry’s Felidae Center. Finally, they all recommended contacting the Chinese Felid Conservation Alliance (CFCA), whose experts enthusiastically set up a conference call with Old Bai.
Zhao Bowen leaned back in amazement: Now this is what you call having friends everywhere!
In just one day, they’d contacted half of China’s felid research experts.
So Bai Yang sat at his desk with a thick stack of materials, ready to give Ban Xia an intensive theoretical knowledge lesson.
At ten-forty in the evening, Bai Yang made his usual call:
“CQ! CQ! CQ! This is BG4MXH, do you copy it? Please respond if you hear me, OVER.”
Usually when Bai Yang released the mic, a girl’s clear voice would pop up on the channel: “BG4MXH! This is BG4MSR!”
But not tonight.
Bai Yang glanced at the alarm clock on his desk, thinking she might have been delayed by something and he should wait a while.
That wait stretched to almost an hour.
Bai Yang’s mental state progressed from puzzled to anxious to panic-stricken.
“CQCQ! BG4MSR? BG4MSR?”
“BG4MSR?”
“BG4MSR?”
This had never happened before—the girl had never been offline for so long. After waiting and waiting with no response, Bai Yang’s heart immediately started racing. He quickly called his dad.
His dad immediately called Wang Ning.
Wang Ning, who had settled into a healthy elderly lifestyle, usually went to bed at eleven. Being jolted awake by Old Bai’s call, he hadn’t even had time to grumble before his expression changed.
He tumbled out of bed, pulled on his pants and jacket, and ran outside.
“Where are you going in the middle of the night?” his wife called after him, having been woken up.
“Something’s happened to that girl!” Wang Ning shouted back.
Girl?
What girl?
Mrs. Wang was stunned, jumping up like a carp breaking the surface.
“Still no message? Can’t get in touch? How long has it been?” The taxi stopped outside the residential complex gates. Wang Ning was on the phone while hastily stuffing money into the driver, pushing open the door, and rushing out, not even hearing the driver calling after him through the lowered window.
“Hey—! Hey—! Come back!”
“Don’t look! Don’t worry about the change! Keep it all, driver!” Wang Ning had already run far ahead, turning back to shout.
The driver stared at his retreating figure disappearing into the night, clutching the bills, somewhat dazed.
“Hey, this… this isn’t enough money.”
“Old Bai, I’m already at your building,” Wang Ning said.
“I see you,” Bai Zhen said, standing on the balcony with his phone. “Is that your wife behind you with the rolling pin?”
“What? My wife—”
At midnight, all was silent except for the brightly lit hall of the Amateur Radio Emergency Command Center for Reversing the Future and Saving the World.
Bai Yang was still calling on the channel.
His heart burning with anxiety.
Every second without contact meant the consequences grew more serious. The endless static in his headphones was like a bottomless pool—his calls were just stones thrown into the water, not creating a single ripple.
But his anxiety was just that—anxiety. Even though his dad had called Uncle Wang over, they couldn’t help at all. Forget about Uncle Wang—even if they gathered everyone in the world into this room, they’d be equally helpless.
“Xiao Yang, don’t worry,” Wang Ning consoled him. “Maybe she’s just asleep. She might have gone to bed early today.”
“No.” Bai Yang shook his head, very anxious. “We had agreed to work tonight. How could she go to sleep?”
“Maybe she was too tired today.”
“Yes, we might be able to contact her tomorrow,” Bai Zhen nodded. “You sitting here worrying won’t help.”
“Impossible,” Bai Yang repeatedly pressed the transmit button on his microphone. “We have to do something. Isn’t there any other way to contact her?”
Faced with this question, both Bai Zhen and Wang Ning could only shrug.
Their meaning was obvious—what other means could there be? The only method was the Icom 725 radio on your desk. It was heaven-sent, a stroke of genius like Nu Wa’s stones to mend the sky or Gong Gong’s rage that toppled Mount Buzhou. Heaven had blessed you with a radio that could break the laws of modern physics and communicate across time—what else could you hope for?
If even it couldn’t do it, then mere mortals were truly helpless.
Bai Yang was helpless.
Bai Zhen was helpless.
Wang Ning was helpless.
All seven billion people in the world were helpless.
Time was like a wall, blocking everything behind it.
What could cross time?
“It’s past midnight, it’s late. Why don’t you go to sleep?” Bai Zhen took out his phone and checked the time. “We’ll keep watch for you.”
“I can’t sleep with you in the room,” Bai Yang refused. “I’ll keep watch myself.”
“But how long will you watch?” Wang Ning asked. “Until two AM? Three? Until dawn?”
“I won’t be able to sleep anyway.”
Bai Yang shooed them out and closed the door tight.
The living room lights were on, with Bai Zhen and Wang Ning sitting on the sofa in silence.
They also didn’t believe BG4MSR had missed their appointment because she was asleep. Survival in the apocalyptic world was difficult and dangerous—it was hard to predict whether accidents or tomorrow would come first.
Had she been attacked by a beast?
If she had been attacked by that Bengal tiger, the outlook was likely grim. At this very moment, the girl’s mutilated body might be being torn apart by the beast, with other small animals coming to share the tiger’s leftovers.
In the room, the radio was still sounding, someone still futilely calling, still waiting for that girl, while downstairs the girl’s hollowed-out, mutilated body might be lying face-up in the grass, being dragged back and forth by a pack of wild dogs, her blood-stained face with wide, lifeless eyes staring at the sky—such cruel and terrifying scenes appeared in both men’s minds.
“Heaven helps the worthy; she should be fine,” Wang Ning suddenly said.
Bai Zhen started, then nodded, “Heaven helps the worthy.”
“Should we go to Jiming Temple tomorrow and light some incense for her?” Wang Ning said. “Ask Buddha for protection.”
“Can Buddha protect someone twenty years in the future?”
Wang Ning wasn’t sure if Buddha could protect someone twenty years in the future—in the apocalypse, Buddha might have trouble protecting himself.
Bai Yang wore his headphones, speaking softly.
“…BG4MSR, I prepared so much material today, just waiting for you to come back so I could teach you everything. Do you know how much effort we put in? I called Uncle Zhao, who called his high school classmate, who called his college classmate, who called his former colleague—we contacted all the top experts in the country.”
“It took a lot of effort to organize all this material, though my dad did most of the work, but if it can’t be used, it was all for nothing.”
“My lady, you’re humanity’s only hope! Heaven gives great responsibility to the chosen one, first tempering their mind and body. You’re destined to save the world—it’s your fate. How can you be defeated by small difficulties? Stand tall! Seven billion people are waiting for you to save them.”
“Transform into light, hero!”
“Kamen Rider! Brand new!”
“Avada Kedavra—!”
“Listen, my lady, my patience has limits. I’ll wait ten more minutes at most. If you’re not here by one AM, I’m going to bed.”
“It’s one AM now, I’ll wait five more minutes at most.”
“It’s five past one, I’ll wait three more minutes at most!”
“Last three seconds!”
“Three!”
“Two!”
“One!”
“Zero point nine! Zero point eight! Zero point seven nine, zero point seven eight, zero point seven seven nine…”
“Please just say one word to me.”
“Anything will do.”
“Tell me you’re still alive.”
Bai Yang slowly slumped down on the desk, staring at the black plastic casing of the microphone in his hand.
“Just say one word to me, is one word so hard? Just one word would be enough.”
“Then I’ll say one word.” As soon as he finished speaking, someone responded in his headphones. Bai Yang froze. “Wow—you finally finished talking you managed to talk to yourself non-stop for over ten minutes that’s amazing amazing first time I’ve seen someone who can talk so much I know you put in a lot of effort to prepare enough materials so thank you and thanks to Uncle Zhao and your dad thanks to your whole family and also I actually came back ten minutes ago but you kept talking non-stop holding down the mic so I couldn’t speak I was just waiting to see when you’d finish but ended up waiting until now big brother you’re truly a heaven-sent genius.”
Bai Yang was stunned.
The other side had rattled off all those words at extremely high speed in one breath, then paused to take another breath.
“That was one sentence, right?”