These white fish evoked a familiar sense of dread in everyone.
"I never thought this kind of fish could be eaten." Wei Dong frowned, instinctively moving away from the oil paper package that smelled of dried pickled fish.
"It is edible. That fat uncle saw me hesitate, and he ate a fish tail on the spot..." Luo Yu still felt lingering fear when he recalled the fat uncle eating the fish tail.
Everyone: "..."
Shao Ling: "Are all the fish in this world like this?"
Luo Yu: "This should be a type of fish unique to the Cold Night Journey, a rather precious ingredient... It's said that this fish is not only delicious, but also has a powerful effect of dispelling cold and warming the body, so you won't feel cold even when you go outside into the icy snow."
"Cold Night Journey, how many Journeys are there in this place?" Cao Youning interjected, "Could someone please
give me a basic introduction to the geography of this place?" The task of explaining fell to Qin Ci again: "Actually, we have some maps and guides in our shared packages. They indicate that there are four Journeys in this world, which are commonly referred to as the 'Four Journeys of the Human World.' These four Journeys have very different climates due to the different amounts of sunlight they receive."
Cao Youning looked at Qin Ci with a hint of admiration, wondering when this person had become so familiar with the basic terrain of this world.
Qin Ci continued, "According to the character settings here, we all come from the Light Journey, which should be the brightest of the four journeys. I don't know what those light sources are, but I do know that the Light Journey is a place that travelers yearn for, known as the 'chosen place of the gods.' The Lamp Journey, although its daytime is not as long as the Light Journey, is still considered the second most habitable inn. Most importantly, there is plenty of fire, so lamps can still illuminate the inn.
The third is the Fluorite Journey, which is relatively dark and cold. There is no fire source there, and the people there rely on the unique fluorite inn for lighting, the same kind of fluorite we use in our homemade projector.
Finally, there is the Cold Night Journey. According to the records, no one lives there. Although it is called a journey, no one has built houses there. It is dark all year round, without any light."
Everyone listened attentively. Before, they only had a vague concept of the four journeys. After listening to Qin Ci's words today, they finally understood the distribution of inns in this world.
"But I noticed that the fat uncle and the others seemed particularly eager to visit the Cold Night Traveler's Inn, saying that there were good things there," Luo Yiran continued. "He said that these white fish were precious goods, in high demand and short supply in other travelers. As for whether the Cold Night Traveler's Inn had any other secrets, he didn't say."
"Is he still eyeing Xin Chun?" Mu Yiran asked.
Luo Yiran nodded: "He said that only spirit dogs can take people to the Cold Night Traveler's Inn, and Xin Chun is a spirit dog."
Xin Chun was very interested in the words "spirit dog." At this moment, she stood upright on all fours, her eyes wide open, as if she were listening to something very important.
"Is he planning to cooperate?" Mu Yiran asked further.
"As expected of my brother-in-law," Luo Yi gave a thumbs up. "That's exactly what he wanted. He knew we definitely wouldn't lend him Xin Chun, so he tried every means to get us to go to Han Ye Travel with them, saying we wouldn't be shortchanged, that Han Ye Travel had good stuff."
Ke Xun glanced at the good stuff on the table—those pickled white fish. He figured no one had the appetite to eat them, so he put them away for the time being. "It's getting late, and everyone's here. Let's eat and talk."
Mai Peng also said, "The film is almost ready, we can look at it in a bit."
"Okay, let's eat first." Ke Xun had already set the table.
But Mai Peng said, "My throat hurts so much, I really can't eat."
This caught Qin Ci's attention. "Your throat hurts? Didn't you have obvious cold symptoms yesterday? Why does your throat hurt now?"
Mai Peng couldn't explain it either; it was indeed a very strange thing.
Qin Ci stepped forward and gestured for Mai Peng to stand by a lamp. "Open your mouth, let me see your throat."
To get a better look, Qin Ci turned on his phone's flashlight and frowned as he observed her for a while. "That's strange. Your tonsils are swollen and red, and you even have some ulcers. This shouldn't be the symptom of a severe cold."
Mai Peng cleared her throat and drank some water, which made her feel a bit better. "Yes, yes, I've never had a cold in this order before."
"Order?" Qin Ci seized on the word. "This seems to be a reverse order."
"Yes, I'm generally quite healthy. I usually recover from a cold in three or four days! The normal order is like this: first day, sore throat; second day, stuffy nose; third day, sneezing and runny nose; by the fourth day, I'm basically recovered."
Qin Ci looked at Mu Yiran, his expression very serious. "Mai Peng is right, this is the normal order of a cold. I think that in Mai Peng's case, the cold is happening in reverse."
"Reverse time?" Many people were shocked. Lu Heng was the first to speak: "Could it be... a kind of time reversal?"
Yes, many people thought so; time in this world was flowing backwards.
"No wonder this place is called the Reverse Journey, and the time is so chaotic. Actually, time here is flowing backwards!" Cao Youning was extremely surprised, and he even forgot to eat.
Zhu Haowen spoke calmly, "This doesn't make sense."
"What logic?" Cao Youning retorted, "My beard is proof! When I first arrived here, I suddenly had a stubble, but this morning when I woke up, it was shorter! Isn't that evidence of time travel?"
"No," Zhu Haowen said expressionlessly, "If time really traveled backward, we wouldn't be able to say all this smoothly, move forward smoothly, eat smoothly… all our actions and everything would be reversed."
Everyone fell silent. After a long pause, Shao Ling said, "He makes sense. Time in this world isn't completely reversed, but there are traces of it flowing backward in some places."
Ke Xun had already pulled Mu Yiran to sit at the table: "Let's eat first. The lights are going out soon. Nobody wants to eat in the dark, right? Let's eat until we have energy to discuss things. We have so many things to do. Let's look at the newly developed film, enlarge and study Bai Yu's four photos. Sit down and eat!"
Since the speculation about time couldn't be fully understood immediately, everyone simply sat down to eat.
As the meal neared its end, the lights went out.
The darkness brought a familiar sense of dread, especially among the newcomers. After all, Xi Shengnan had indeed died the previous night, his body now placed in a coffin and suspended in the cold.
Under the cool light of the fluorescent stone and their cell phones, they cleared the wooden table after dinner and set up the projector.
The "viewing" effect at night was indeed better; the screen appeared particularly bright against the dark wall.
Having become familiar with the technique, Luo Jing and Wei Dong, as usual, were responsible for pulling the film reel in the projector. Their coordination was even more seamless, with no signs of trembling hands.
"This is Xiao Du's film reel; it must contain some scenery from that other world," Wei Dong tried to lighten the mood. "I wonder what the first shot will be."
Du Lingyu remained silent, her eyes fixed on the screen. She knew this was a new reel; she had already cleared the memory from her camera in the real world, so there wouldn't be any trace of the previous ones.
Arriving in this strange world without any hesitation felt like a farewell.
Mai Peng's words triggered her panic. This roll of film only had a dozen or so exposures. Where had the rest gone? Could it be true that time travel was happening? Had her past self used the previous exposures? Then cut them out and developed them? And the remaining dozen or so exposures were put back into the camera?
"Brother-in-law! Haowen! Qin!" Luo Yi's sudden shouts snapped Du Lingyu out of her reverie. She hurriedly looked at the large screen on the wall...
The negative was a bit blurry, but that didn't prevent everyone from recognizing the people on it, because they were quite close to the lens, and they were all familiar faces.
"Because I didn't know what I was about to photograph, I couldn't judge the distance, let alone focus. I could only choose the usual aperture settings based on the shutter speed," Mai Peng explained to everyone. "Following Mu's suggestion, I kept the shutter speed as slow as possible. There's no tripod here, so I could only fix the camera on the table to try and keep it stable."
Ke Xun glanced at the image and felt inexplicably sad, as if his heart had shrunk into a cold, hard lump, and he couldn't recover for a long time.
Ke Xun heard Zhu Haowen's slightly hoarse voice: "What shutter speed was used?"
Mai Peng explained, "We were aiming for the slowest speed, so I used Bulb mode."
"What's Bulb mode?"
"It's manual shutter control. When the shutter speed is longer than 30 seconds, you can choose Bulb mode. It's completely manual control; as long as your finger is on it, you can maintain the exposure for several minutes." Mai Peng said, "Strangely, this camera's shutter speeds after 1/2 second are difficult to use; slower speeds seem to malfunction, so I could only choose Bulb mode. The manual exposure time at the time was about 10 seconds."
Cao Youning said from the side, "Without a shutter release cable and tripod, taking a photo like this in 10 seconds is already quite incredible. We calculated that a 10-second shot might capture a scene from more than ten hours ago, but if you multiply that, it could also capture something from several days ago."
The screen was trembling slightly; it was Wei Dong's hand shaking: "Isn't it..." "I'm a little... I can't take it anymore. Seeing this photo makes me feel terrible, I don't know why."
Because the camera was fixed on the table, it captured the scene from the table to the cabinet. Four people were in the shot. Qin Ci was standing by the table, his facial features were vaguely visible, but they were blurred. Even so, you could still vaguely tell that Qin Ci's expression was not good. Further away was Mu Yiran, standing alone. Because it was a profile shot, his expression was even less clear, but from this blurry profile, you could feel a powerful aura, as if it had solidified the air in the entire inn. The furthest away was Luo Jin, standing by the cabinet, seemingly wrestling with someone. Most of that person's body was outside the frame, so it was impossible to identify who it was.
"That person is me," Wei Dong said.
"Brother Dong, how come you..."
"It's me, my sixth sense."
Luo Jin: "But why are we fighting..."
"I don't know, maybe something big happened..." Wei Dong tried to shake off his suppressed emotions.
The focus on the negative was on Zhu Haowen's face, the closest one. He was sitting at the table, his face the clearest, and he was crying.
Zhu Haowen was expressionless as tears streamed down his face.
Everyone present tried to guess the story behind the photo, but they dared not guess any further.
Finally, Fang Fei broke the silence: "Obviously, this didn't happen a few hours or a dozen hours ago; it must have happened several days ago, or even longer."
"But we weren't here yet..." Du Lingyu said.
"The timeline is confusing; luckily, we were able to take a picture," Fang Fei said. "Something serious must have happened."
Although they couldn't think of anything specific, the distraught appearance of everyone in the photo had already made everyone uneasy.
When everyone instinctively looked for Mu Yiran for reassurance, they found that he had somehow moved to the corner furthest from the screen, as if unwilling or afraid to look at the picture any longer.
Someone clapped their hands softly in the darkness, and finally, everyone's gaze settled on Ke Xun's face.
"Although we don't know what earth-shattering event happened in the photo, it happened in another time, and it has nothing to do with us now," Ke Xun's voice was reassuringly calm. "What if, what if time does reverse, what if we are forced to relive the past? At least we still have a choice."
"What choice?" Du Lingyu asked.
"To find the signature and get out before that terrible thing happens," Ke Xun said. "The past and the future are all illusions; they only provide us with clues, not the facts."