Those who travel back in time

Chapter 29 Argument

In that instant, Chen Qing realized what had happened when he traveled back to 2018 last time.

At that time, he pretended to hand out flyers at the entrance of Xinyuan Building and waited for Sun Fan. It wasn't until evening that he learned from Qu Wanwan that Zhou Tao was Sun Fan, so he went up to the eighth floor to find Zhou Tao.

At the time, the lights above his head were flickering, and he thought it was a problem with the aging wiring. Now he knows it's because he's traveling through time, which is affecting the lights.

The loud crash he heard in 2018 was caused by his own actions; he accidentally knocked over a trash can while chasing Zhou Tao.

And now, the version of myself who traveled through time last time has been shot!

Chen Qing had no time to chase after Zhou Tao and immediately ran back.

The version of myself who traveled through time last time was shot and returned to 2025, where I was no longer in danger, but Li Mengfei is still here.

Chen Qing didn't even need to walk; he simply leaped from one floor of the stairs to the next, reaching the eighth floor in just a few seconds.

He flung open the stairwell door and rushed into the eighth-floor corridor.

The assassin in the baseball cap stood frozen in place, as if under a spell. His mouth was agape, his gaze fixed blankly on the ground—where only a pool of glaring blood remained, and the person who had been shot was nowhere to be seen.

Clearly, witnessing a living person vanish into thin air right before his eyes was a bizarre and shocking experience for him.

When he heard footsteps, he looked up and saw Chen Qing walking towards him again. He was not just shocked, but also filled with fear.

He had just shot someone who vanished right under his nose and then walked back unharmed!

Is it some kind of ghost?!

"You..." He looked at Chen Qing in disbelief, opened his mouth, but then turned around and ran wildly towards the other end of the corridor, almost rolling and crawling.

Chen Qing originally wanted to chase after him, but then she remembered that Zhou Tao was still in the Xinyuan Building and could fall at any moment, so she turned back to the stairwell.

He didn't hear anyone else passing by in the stairwell, so Zhou Tao obviously didn't come down again.

Chen Qing climbed up the stairs, one floor at a time. After the fourth floor, he reached the top, where there was no more stairs, but an iron door.

Chen Qing reached out to push, only to find that the iron gate's handle had been jammed shut from the outside with a wooden stick, making it impossible to open.

boom!

Chen Qing raised his leg and kicked the iron gate, breaking the wooden stick in the process. He then walked onto the rooftop.

"You, you stay away!" On the rooftop, Zhou Tao, holding a stick, yelled at Chen Qing, "Get away from me!"

"Brother Tao, it's me, Chen Qing." Chen Qing walked towards Zhou Tao.

"You're in cahoots with that assassin!" Zhou Tao stepped back.

"Assassin?"

"Stop pretending! That hitman in the baseball cap, he came at me with a gun, I saw it!"

"Brother Tao, you've got it wrong. There is an assassin, but he's not here to kill you; he's here to kill someone else. I'm not with him."

"Not in cahoots? Yuan Tiangang's men couldn't find me for so long, but the assassins showed up as soon as you arrived, and you still say you're not in cahoots!"

"Yuan Tiangang?" Chen Qing paused, then hurriedly asked, "Who is Yuan Tiangang? Is he related to the serum?"

"You even know about serum, yet you say you're not one of Yuan Tiangang's men." As Zhou Tao spoke, he suddenly stepped on a beer bottle, lost his balance, and stumbled backward until he reached the edge of the rooftop and fell off.

"Brother Tao!" Chen Qing's body transformed into a black lightning bolt as he rushed to the edge of the rooftop, reaching out to grab Zhou Tao, but he was still a step too slow and failed to catch him.

"Is this the truth behind Sun Fan's fall? Or is it because of me?" In the darkness of night, Chen Qing stared blankly downstairs.

If he hadn't traveled through time this time, Zhou Tao might have encountered that baseball cap killer again and run away in fear.

But if he hadn't chased after him to the rooftop, he would never have stepped on the beer bottle and fallen to his death.

It was my own fault that Zhou Tao died!

Chen Qing stood dejectedly in the cold wind, the memories of Zhou Tao's care for her over the past two weeks slowly resurfacing in her mind.

At first, when he learned that the serum was purchased from Sun Fan, he thought he was a ruthless and ambitious man.

But when he traveled through time and space to meet him, he discovered that he was just an office worker struggling to make a living, and a kind-hearted older brother.

This kind of person shouldn't die!

The only consolation is that he did save someone during this time travel; if he hadn't come to 2018, Li Mengfei would definitely have been killed by that gunman.

"Chen Qing, what happened in 2018? How did you almost die?" As soon as he returned to 2044, Fang Xiande couldn't wait to ask.

"Why did I return to 2018 instead of 2017?" Chen Qing asked instead of answering.

"Why do you sound a little angry?" Fang Xiande reached out and picked up his glasses from the table and put them on.

"If I had traveled to 2017 as originally planned, Sun Fan wouldn't have died!" Chen Qing pointed at the time machine. "Wasn't it said that the error of this broken machine would decrease over time? It's a full year off! You call that decreasing error?!"

"Chen Qing, are you blaming me?" Fang Xiande's tone was quite calm. "Do you think that blaming me will absolve you of the guilt for not being able to save Sun Fan? Let me tell you, the time machine is indeed error-free. If the error hadn't been eliminated, how could you have been so precisely 'dropped' into Li Qilin's hospital room after being injured?"

"If there's no error, why am I in 2018 instead of 2017?"

"This isn't a problem with time machines, but with time itself. Let me use the analogy of a river and a boat to explain it to you. Time is still a long river, and your travel through time and space is like sailing a boat on that river. But the river is deep in some places and shallow in others. In the deep places, the boat can pass through without any obstacles, but in the shallow places, the boat will run aground and cannot proceed. That's 2017; that's the 'shallow section,' inaccessible."

"Dr. Fang, someone died because of our time travel, and you seem so calm? So indifferent?"

"My outward calm doesn't mean I'm indifferent to their lives. And, Chen Qing! I must remind you, you've mixed too much personal emotion into this mission! Do you remember what I told you? Whoever you've met in the past, they're all dead. They're like mirages, they don't exist. You should focus on your mission and not invest too much in them..."

"Are they all dead?" Chen Qing interrupted Fang Xiande. "How do you know that? Even if billions of people died in the apocalypse, some humans still survived. Doctor, how do you know that if Sun Fan had survived in 2018, he wouldn't have been one of the survivors?"