Once We Lived in Nanjing

Ban Xia probably had already grown accustomed to failure.

She slowly pushed the soil back into the pit, leveled it off, and compressed it with her palms, then she knelt on the grass with her head hanging down, propping herself up on her hands, staring blankly at her ten fingers as they sunk into the loose brown soil.

The girl let out a long breath.

The withered yellow weeds caught between her fingers were gently crushed by her, rolled into a small ball in her palm.

She dusted off her hands, stood up from the grass, and brushed her clothes and pants clean. Tonight, the moonlight was very bright. The silent Nanjing was bathed in the cold silver light, the sharp silver rays slicing the night-shrouded city with clear black and white edges. The dark moon hung on the other side of the sky—so called because it was dim, much darker than the white moon, looking up it was a gray disc.

The teacher had warned that one must not go out when the dual moons were in the sky, for the night was dangerous.

The girl stood upright in the moonlight, looking up at the starry sky. The uninhabited city, free from light pollution, saw the bright and profound Galaxy sweep across overhead, reaching beyond grasp to fall below the horizon. She wore a light-colored nightgown that revealed her smooth thighs and arms, with both arms and jet-black hair falling freely and softly, her ten fingers slightly curled.

This young lady's body was actually quite frail. On ordinary days, she summoned strength from deep within her bones to uphold the image of a strong post-apocalyptic survivor, but stripped of her defenses, Ban Xia suddenly became lonesome—she was still just a nineteen-year-old girl; without wielding knives and guns, her hands were much more delicate than those of a grown man.

Under the moonlight, the girl's skin was extremely pale, and from afar, she resembled a faint ghost.

Occasionally, Ban Xia would wonder if perhaps she was indeed a ghost.

She was just a spirit unwilling to leave this world. When everyone else had departed, she alone stubbornly wandered aimlessly through the city.

If those animals were intelligent and could communicate, they might consider her a terrifying ghost. As the water buffalo herds passed through Muxuyuan Street, they would whisper to each other:

"Old Butt, do you know? There's a female spirit in that building over there!"

"Really, Poop Bag? What kind of spirit?"

"She doesn't show up often, but sometimes she appears on the rooftop and then vanishes suddenly."

"Couldn't she be a living person, Poop Bag?"

"All living people are dead, where would they come from? That's a ghost, Old Butt."

"Wow, so scary, let's hurry and go."

"Let's leave after I poop."

Ban Xia spread her hands open towards the moon.

She was still alive.

"Ha!"

The girl yelled loudly and clenched her fist tightly.

At the same time, she imagined the moon exploding.

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"BG4MXH, dear Mr. BG4MXH, I didn't dig up anything, didn't see the time capsule you talked about; the plan failed again, OVER."

Ban Xia sat on the chair, her upper body sprawled on the desk, wearing headphones and holding a hand mic, speaking despondently.

"BG4MSR, that's a good thing, OVER."

The other party replied.

"BG4MXH, why is it a good thing again? OVER."

"BG4MSR, because failure is the mother of success. Through experiments, I am eliminating possibilities one by one. I believe I am getting closer to the truth, OVER."

"What truth?"

"The truth is you're fooling me, sis."

"Hmm—?"

Ban Xia made a sound from her nose, her tone getting higher and higher, her eyebrows raising further and further.

"Alright, let's set aside this truth for the moment, BG4MSR, I have a speculation, but I'm not sure if it's true or not, OVER."

"Tell me, I'm listening."

"Listen carefully, my speculation is: any time capsule that I personally buried is very unlikely to ever reach your hands." A clear, young male voice came through the headset, "Do you understand? I don't know if this is correct, it still needs to be verified, but I have this intuition—that in Time Slow Delivery, as the person sending the package, I absolutely cannot bury it myself, otherwise, delivery will fail, OVER."

Ban Xia pondered for a moment.

"BG4MXH, why would that be? OVER."

"BG4MSR, because given enough time, no one is trustworthy, including myself, OVER."

"Are you saying you would dig it up?"

"It's not just that, you know how despicable human beings are. The more you're not supposed to touch something, the more you want to touch it. The more you're not supposed to think about something, the more you want to think about it. So, the person who buries the time capsule will eventually interfere with it; today I asked Uncle Zhao, and he straightforwardly said to put the capsule somewhere where no one, including himself, could reach it, so I went to buy white glue and poured it into the hole, but as it proved, even glue isn't enough, it can't withstand the interference by yourself or others over the next twenty years."

"Uncle Zhao?"

"That very significant big shot."

"Good, the very significant big shot, what's next?"

"So I further concluded that, relying on my own capabilities, it's very hard to place the time capsule somewhere nobody can reach, unless I take a boat right now and toss the time capsule into the middle of Xuanwu Lake—but then you wouldn't be able to find it, and that's the issue, the location of the buried time capsule needs to ensure you can dig it up. Blindly throwing it far away is pointless, but that way I would inevitably be able to dig it up too, hence, I absolutely must not know the exact location of the time capsule!"

Ban Xia was stunned for a moment.

"You can't know the location?"

"Yes, I can't know the location."

The headset paused, and then the voice continued:

"I feel like this world won't let our plan succeed so easily, somehow, it will set up a lot of obstacles, so we need to deceive it, not let it discover us, but the prerequisite to deceive the world... is to deceive ourselves."

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The next day.

On the last day of the National Day holiday, Bai Yang received the second time capsule and the tritium tube he ordered.

He didn't bother with the time capsule that had been buried and filled with glue; even though he knew that capsule ultimately didn't successfully reach BG4MSR's hands, he didn't go dig it up, his hands were already too itchy.

Let that time capsule be.

In the turmoil and wandering of the next twenty years, where that time capsule will ultimately end up is left to fate.

Bai Yang spent the entire morning installing the tritium tube; this time the picture used was "Ma Baoguo's Surprise Attack on Pearl Harbor."

Next, he duplicated the letter exactly and drew a big smiley face on the back of the paper.

After packing the medicines, letter, and time indicator into the stainless steel capsule, Bai Yang then wrapped the capsule with multiple layers of opaque waterproof plastic, tying it tightly with strings, making it look like a package.

Once everything was ready, Bai Yang took out his phone.

He scrolled through his contacts and then made a call to Yan Zhihan.

"Hello? Brother Yan? Are you free right now? Can you come over and give me a hand?"