The address Qian Duoduo gave Zhao Meiyou was very close to his rental, right in the Thirty-Third District.
Taizhu had once mentioned this location to him: "There’s a famous suspended light rail in the Lower District with an abandoned train sitting on it. You need to walk to the very front of the engine. There, you’ll find a brake lever that only appears on rainy days. And the most important condition is that you can't be wearing underwear when you pull it."
The street where Zhao Meiyou lived was an aerial "hanging street"—originally a light rail line that served as a vital transportation artery during the early days of the Metropolis. The carriages and tracks were massive; after they were abandoned, the residents of the Lower District built a new neighborhood directly onto the tracks, adding illegal layers of sheet-metal housing atop the old train cars.
The rain was still falling. Zhao Meiyou walked with a cigarette dangling from his lips, pulling on his overcoat as he went. He didn't bother with an umbrella; fortunately, the archaeologist's uniform was waterproof. His leather shoes stepped into puddles, splashing up iridescent water.
Qian Duoduo was already waiting for him at the end of the street, where the train engine would have been. Through a nearby carriage window, an elderly woman—an early riser—was moving an electronic osmanthus plant onto her windowsill. Qian Duoduo was helping her lift the pot. Fine steam drifted from a nearby exhaust vent, and an old song, *Flowers in a Mist*, drifted from inside the carriage.
He wasn't using an umbrella either. He leaned over, speaking softly to the old woman as rainwater rolled off his hair.
Zhao Meiyou stubbed out his cigarette and waited for the woman to return inside before stepping forward. "Morning, Brother Qian."
"I saw you coming," Qian Duoduo said. "Why didn't you come over?"
"I stole sausages from that house when I was a kid," Zhao Meiyou smirked. "The old lady holds a grudge. If she sees me, I get the slipper treatment."
Ahead of them was the end of the street, blocked by a red wall. Qian Duoduo stepped forward and brushed away some moss, revealing a red glass-fronted box—a fire hydrant. He opened it, but inside was a handle instead of a sprinkler system.
Zhao Meiyou realized this was the "brake lever" Taizhu had mentioned.
He hesitated. Given the "shameless" entry requirement Taizhu had described, he felt a bit awkward. After a moment, he spoke up. "Brother Qian, a friend told me that the prerequisite for entering this ruin is..."
"This coordinate leads to more than one ruin," Qian Duoduo interrupted. "The one I'm taking you to is different."
With that, he grabbed Zhao Meiyou’s hand and pulled the lever. That familiar sensation of being wrenched away took hold.
When Zhao Meiyou came to, he found himself sitting inside a train carriage.
It was a very old-fashioned steam train. He could hear the whistle from the smokestack and the rhythmic *clack-clack* of wheels on iron rails. Rows of long benches lined the carriage, upholstered in green silk velvet. A small table extended from the side, a white tablecloth set with blooming red camellias.
The window was half-open; the train clearly wasn't moving very fast. The breeze fluttered the gauze curtains.
The air carried the lingering scent of gunpowder after an explosion, mixed with the fragrance of camellias.
The wind blew.
Zhao Meiyou looked out and saw the vast, starry night.
"That’s the NGC 6302 nebula, four thousand light-years from Earth, located in the constellation Scorpius," Qian Duoduo said, noticing his gaze. "It’s the product of a dying star, formed as superheated clouds of gas expand into space."
"It’s also known as the Butterfly Nebula."
In the distance was an extremely hot central star. Its surface, at two hundred and fifty thousand degrees Celsius, blazed with brilliant light. A gilded phantom burned and expanded in silence, like a billion years of good times.
"Where are we?" Zhao Meiyou heard himself ask. "Outer space?"
"I call it the Rum Tunnel," Qian Duoduo said. "These are abilities I borrowed long ago from several other archaeologists: 'Warp,' 'Stitch,' and 'Accelerate.' I tried merging them and found I could stitch certain ruins together, accelerating the flow of time to achieve a warp."
"Finally, I used 'Creation' to build this train. As long as you’re inside, you can traverse ruins without needing physical coordinates back in the Metropolis."
Zhao Meiyou followed the explanation as best he could and pushed the window all the way open. "So this patch of the universe is also a ruin?"
"You could think of it that way, though strictly speaking, it isn't," Qian Duoduo explained. "I think of it more as the background wall for the Rum Tunnel."
"The Rum Tunnel?"
"The tracks this train runs on. It connects various ruins. As for why it’s called 'Rum'... that’s just a personal interest of mine in astronomy."
The scenery outside the window shifted abruptly. Perhaps the flow of time was different; though the train seemed to move slowly, they were hurtling through the cosmos at incredible speeds.
A distant magnetar erupted in flames like the iridescent scales of a butterfly. Amidst a massive molecular cloud, Zhao Meiyou suddenly smelled alcohol.
"That’s Sagittarius B2, a celestial body of gas and dust at the center of the Milky Way." Qian Duoduo reached out the window in a grasping motion. "There’s a massive amount of ethanol here. Billions of liters of alcohol are suspended in this nebula."
He pulled his hand back and opened his palm. The scent in the air intensified. Zhao Meiyou recognized it. "It’s rum."
"Rum and raspberries," Qian Duoduo said with a faint smile. "It smells like rum and raspberries, with a hint of lemon air freshener."
The alcohol was inhaled into his lungs, turning into a thin stream of heat that flowed back down his esophagus and filled his chest. Zhao Meiyou took a breath. "Alright—I get it. The Rum Tunnel. So, what’s the first stop?"
"We’re already here," Qian Duoduo said. "The Jupiter Restaurant."
The "Jupiter Restaurant" was known among archaeologists as Ruin A99. Its danger level fluctuated between high and low. As the name suggested, the ruin was a restaurant.
Located in space.
Specifically, on the rings of Jupiter.
"What is that thing?" Zhao Meiyou watched a multi-limbed creature floating outside the window. It looked like a cross between an octopus and a jellyfish, its transparent head seemingly stuffed with things that looked like glass marbles. "An alien?"
Qian Duoduo snapped his fingers, and a booklet resembling a travel guide appeared in his hand. He flipped to a page. "That’s the Jupiter Restaurant’s promotional mascot. It’s semi-biological, essentially an automatic vending machine."
"Semi-biological? A vending machine?"
Qian Duoduo reached out and touched his fingertip to the octopus's suction cup. The tentacle twitched, drawing a few milliliters of his blood. The red droplets traveled through transparent veins, eventually reaching the head and injecting into one of the glass marbles.
The "mascot" opened its mouth and spat out the dyed marble. Qian Duoduo caught it, cracked it open, and gave half to Zhao Meiyou.
It wasn't a glass marble. Zhao Meiyou watched Qian Duoduo take a bite. A watery glow flowed between his fingers, rich and full of seeds.
It was a pomegranate with a transparent skin.
"A Jupiter Restaurant specialty: the Diamond Pomegranate." Qian Duoduo showed the page in the travel guide to Zhao Meiyou. "Want a taste? It’s not bad."
Jupiter is a gas giant. Its atmosphere contains methane, which eventually turns into diamonds under the influence of powerful lightning. Thus, it rains diamonds on this planet, forming diamond lakes on the "surface."
Zhao Meiyou took a bite. It wasn't very sweet, but it was very refreshing. "Diamond Pomegranates are a Jupiter specialty cultivated by the restaurant, irrigated by diamond rain"—just as the guide said, it tasted like rainwater.
A long queue stretched outside the restaurant. All sorts of spaceships and hover-cars were suspended in the vast vacuum, along with various aberrations traversing the void without any vehicles at all. "Ruin A99 doesn't currently have a permanent archaeologist exploring it," Qian Duoduo said. "Have you had breakfast? We could join the queue."
"Looks interesting." Zhao Meiyou was already chatting through the window with an alien of an unknown species. Miraculously, they could communicate. The creature handed him something that looked like a cigarette. He sniffed it. "There’s no permanent archaeologist here?"
"There used to be. Then I think an Alpha Orionis ate his brain." Qian Duoduo glanced at the cigarette in his hand. "I suggest you don't smoke that. It's toxic."
So that was why Ruin A99’s danger level was so unpredictable.
"The one talking to you is a Drusonian from some planet or other—the pronunciation is too complex, I can't say it." Qian Duoduo closed the travel guide and handed it to Zhao Meiyou. "Drusonians love eating human livers. The cigarette it gave you has an anesthetic effect. On their planet, that tobacco is used as a seasoning. It probably wants to marinate you before it eats you."
As he spoke, he snapped his fingers, and a strangely shaped gun appeared in his hand. "By the same token, Drusonians are quite palatable to human taste buds. They taste like pufferfish belly."
With that, Qian Duoduo leaned out the window and pulled the trigger. The alien who had just been chatting with Zhao Meiyou had its head blown apart in a single shot.
The train rolled past. Qian Duoduo dragged the alien into the carriage and then pulled up to a back door—a sort of takeout window. "Seared on both sides, medium-rare, add parsley and fennel, please." He tossed the stripped alien onto the counter.
A moment later, a takeout set was pushed out. It looked like two mega-burgers and smelled delicious.
Zhao Meiyou watched as Qian Duoduo unwrapped the paper and took a huge bite.
Zhao Meiyou: "Is it good?"
Qian Duoduo: "I'm hungry."
Zhao Meiyou: "Enjoy your meal."
The queue of vehicles waiting for tables at the Jupiter Restaurant was simply too long. Eventually, they decided to head to the next ruin. The train entered a tunnel resembling a wormhole. Viscous, dazzling fragments of star clusters floated around them like liquid mirrors. Qian Duoduo grabbed Zhao Meiyou’s hand as he tried to reach out. "Don't touch anything. The next ruin we’re going to is extremely dangerous."
Before he could finish, the train suddenly banked. They exited the tunnel, and the world outside became deathly silent. Even the sound of the whistle and the tracks vanished. Everything turned black and white, devoid of sound, like an old line-art comic or a silent film. Zhao Meiyou looked out and saw they were deep within a forest.
The sky and the earth seemed soaked in black. Between them grew massive, pure white trees.
Or perhaps they were trees. Zhao Meiyou squinted, realizing the texture was too hard, the surfaces impossibly smooth without any grain.
They weren't made of wood, but of bone.
This was a Skeletal Forest.
No one knew what creatures had died here, or perhaps every life in the world had already perished, even the sky and soil. All that remained were these silent, giant trees, standing like tombstones.
Qian Duoduo produced a pen and paper from somewhere and wrote: *Do not speak.*
Zhao Meiyou realized that his and Qian Duoduo’s bodies seemed to have dissolved into this black-and-white scene, becoming line-art creatures sketched by a dip pen. Were they still alive? Were they already dead? He looked at his hand and suddenly felt something strange.
His hand no longer had the thickness of flesh. It was just a line segment.
The train moved soundlessly. Only the rapidly shifting scenery outside reminded him that their speed was increasing. Qian Duoduo was writing at an incredible speed, yet it was as if a wind were blowing; the words wouldn't stay on the paper. The black ink quickly weathered and blew away. Zhao Meiyou could only barely make out fragments of what he wrote.
*...when the reed fields are devoured... ▅▅▅▅ declaring the end of an era ▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅ using moonlight to make salt eyes ▅▅▅ giant eyes... the last astronaut was ▅▅▅ insect eggs solidified dimensions and ▅▅▅ the snake read the epitaph to the giant ▅▅▅▅▅ No. 631 ▅▅▅▅▅▅ slumber ▅▅▅▅▅ the first line of poetry will never end ▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅*
Zhao Meiyou couldn't understand it. With his level of illiteracy, this crossword puzzle was like a divine script.
Suddenly, a violent gale swept through—or what felt like a gale. Zhao Meiyou realized the scenery outside had vanished. Or rather, the black had vanished, leaving only a piercing white. He could no longer distinguish sky, trees, or earth from the whiteness. That white rapidly eroded everything. He watched as the train carriage was swallowed, then Qian Duoduo’s head, and then presumably himself. His eyes were swallowed too. Was it ultimate light or white darkness? There was no way to know. Everything simply perished in the snow-static of a world without evidence.
...
When he regained consciousness, Zhao Meiyou found they were still sitting in the carriage. The train was traveling through the vast universe, and not far outside the window, he saw a giant.
Well, given the scale of what he could see, the train must have been very far from the giant—far enough that he could see the giant's entire upper body. He couldn't say how large He was. He saw a star, like a diamond hanging by His ear.
The giant was painting.
Perhaps the end of the universe was black and white. Zhao Meiyou studied the painting. The canvas had no end—up, down, left, or right. Even the giant looked like a small child before it. He was painting with a pencil—or at least, in human terms, the tool He used could only be described as a "pencil."
Zhao Meiyou looked at the painting, which was boundless. He suddenly realized—the scene on the canvas was the Skeletal Forest they had just passed through.
"We just came out of that painting," Qian Duoduo said. "That is Ruin S30. You probably noticed; we all became two-dimensional beings inside."
"I feel..." Zhao Meiyou tried to keep his tone steady, but his vocal organs had lost control. The words came out like syllables dancing in the air, reminiscent of distorted music played by a DC motor. "...like~ I’m~ singing—"
"That’s a side effect of Ruin S30. Every archaeologist who comes out carries a few lingering traces." Qian Duoduo thought for a moment, searching for a metaphor. "Imagine you’re a computer host and S30 is an unknown network. After you leave, you’ll find you’ve been installed with programs you’ve never seen before. But these programs aren't complete; they’ll disappear on their own after a while."
Zhao Meiyou continued in that sing-song voice: "What~ did~ you~ write~ in~ the~ ruins~?" After speaking, he couldn't help but press his hand to his forehead, making a gesture to stop.
He began to use sign language: *Why are you okay?*
Qian Duoduo understood sign language and replied, "Because S30 used to be my primary exploration site."
Zhao Meiyou: *Used to be?*
Qian Duoduo looked into the depths of the stars. The train was moving away at high speed; the giant and the canvas were growing smaller. "What Ruin S30 actually is has always been an unsolved mystery in the field. The danger coefficient for exploration is too high, so not many archaeologists have visited. Currently, the best deduction is that a civilization once existed here."
"A lost civilization."
Zhao Meiyou: *How so?*
"That giant—the first archaeologist of Ruin S30 called Him Prometheus," Qian Duoduo said. "In her notes, she recorded a hypothesis: He is a machine created by a civilization."
"For some reason, that civilization either perished or migrated. In any case, there are no traces of biological life left at the civilization's origin. They compressed everything, converted it to 2D, and had the giant record it on an infinite canvas."
"Many top-tier archaeologists have died in Ruin S30. Some were driven mad by something inside; others entered and could never leave." Qian Duoduo looked at Zhao Meiyou. "You should have noticed. For a split second back there, we were 'erased.'"
Zhao Meiyou nodded.
"That is the final method of escape that was discovered. Archaeologists found that when the giant paints, there is one part He constantly revises—the Skeletal Forest we just passed through. When He erases the work, if an archaeologist can be successfully erased along with it, they can escape the ruin."
Zhao Meiyou: *Sounds risky.*
"It is. No one can be sure when He will revise the painting. The flow of time here is bizarre. Some archaeologists who get lost become part of those trees." Qian Duoduo paused, then said, "When I was building the Rum Tunnel, I once got lost."
Zhao Meiyou: *Then how did you get out?*
"...I don't know." A hint of bewilderment appeared in Qian Duoduo’s eyes. He suddenly asked, "Did I say something to you back in the ruin?"
*Yes,* Zhao Meiyou gestured. *But what you said was too profound. I don't know how to sign it.*
Qian Duoduo snapped his fingers, and paper and pen appeared before Zhao Meiyou. "Write it down."
Zhao Meiyou held the pen, his wrist poised, and stopped for a long time.
Qian Duoduo sighed. "You forgot, didn't you? No one can remember..."
Zhao Meiyou hesitantly wrote a few words on the paper.
Qian Duoduo’s voice cut off abruptly. Zhao Meiyou pushed the paper toward him. On it were several disconnected words.
*Astronaut, insect eggs, epitaph, poetry.*
And a large blob of ▅▅▅▅▅ that had been scribbled over until it was unrecognizable.
Qian Duoduo pointed at the ▅▅▅▅▅. "What is this?"
Zhao Meiyou: *I don't know. It’s just that there’s something like that in my head. When I write it out, it looks like this.*
Qian Duoduo clutched the paper, falling into silence.
The giant and the canvas were now too far away to see. Countless planets spun past the window. Finally, Zhao Meiyou reached out and plucked the paper from Qian Duoduo’s hand. "Don't~ think~ about~ it. Too~ much~ thinking~ makes~ you~ short. Headache."
He was almost recovered; his sing-song tone was much better. Qian Duoduo watched as he folded the paper into a plane and tossed it out the window.
A snap of fingers followed. The paper plane turned into a massive hot-air balloon, which rose and then exploded into brilliant fireworks.
"You seem to have gotten one thing wrong." In the hazy, dreamlike light of the fireworks reflecting in the carriage, Qian Duoduo gave a soft laugh.
"Zhao Meiyou, I *am* taller than you."
***
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