Once Upon in Nanjing-Chapter 25 - 12: Neighborhood Garden Operation

September 30th, the tritium tubes finally arrived.

Bai Yang headed straight to the Cainiao Station after school to pick them up. He wrapped the delicate tubes in a small brown cardboard box, which, when opened, revealed the two-centimeter long slender glass items within white foam padding and packing paper, emanating a faint green glow in the dark.

The brightness of the four tritium tubes was almost identical. In a pitch-dark room, placing the tubes on a textbook made the surrounding text visible, although one of them seemed slightly dimmer—a possible psychological effect, or maybe it was indeed the tube with the longest usage time.

Bai Yang arranged the four tubes on his desk in order, then took down a small wooden photo frame from the bookshelf, which held a miniature copy of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers," a knock-off of a replica of the original.

Next, he dismantled the frame, removed the plexiglass and the picture inside, and used UV glue to attach the tritium tubes in clockwise order along the inner edge of the frame, one on each side. After gluing, he illuminated them with a UV light to ensure they were firmly attached and wouldn't fall off.

Finally, he swapped the "Sunflowers" for "Hatsune Miku in Stalingrad," carefully reassembling the frame.

Turning off the lights in the room, Bai Yang could clearly see the frame resting on the table, the tritium tubes just bright enough to illuminate Hatsune Miku.

Mission accomplished.

As long as he didn't divulge, nobody would know this was a time indicator; they would simply think it's a framed painting.

Bai Yang stuffed the frame into the time capsule, filled the remaining space with foam packing, and tightened all the bolts with a wrench, shaking it to ensure the contents wouldn't jostle around too much.

Thus far, Bai Yang's Time Slow Delivery project was complete.

Everything was ready; all that was missing was an east wind.

What he had to do next was bury it underground.

On the way back home after retrieving the delivery that evening, Bai Yang had accurately identified potential spots—he found four alternative locations suitable for burying the time capsule.

Bai Yang let out a sigh of relief and flopped onto his bed.

Grinning to himself, he felt deserving of some self-praise for completing this major endeavor.

Awesome!

Awesome!

Niubility!

Bai Yang checked the time on his phone—it was 11:30 pm. He had planned his action for 2 am, so he set his alarm for then. The time capsule and shovel were already tucked under his bed, packed in a backpack... When the time came, he would silently carry the backpack down the stairs and dig a deep hole in the dead of night to bury the time capsule. He named this plan the "Residential Garden Operation," with the key points being stealth! Stealth! And fucking stealth!

If the residential security guard caught him, his good reputation would be ruined.

He'd check in later with BG4MSR and tell her about burying the capsule tonight.

If she was willing to wait, he'd notify her after burying it, probably around 3 am. If she didn't want to wait that late, he could tell her the exact location during tomorrow's communication.

Lying on his bed, Bai Yang watched the seconds tick by on his phone screen, approaching 2 am.

The youth's leg dangled and gently swung next to the bed, beside which sat a bulging black backpack with its zipper unable to fully close, revealing part of the shovel handle.

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[Interview Excerpt - The Arduous Time Slow Delivery:

Why call it Time Slow Delivery instead of Time Express Delivery?

The essence of express delivery is that once the parcel is dispatched, its transit is quicker than you traveling personally. For instance, if you send a parcel from Hangzhou to Shanghai via SF Express or China Post, and it arrives within two days, that's express delivery.

But if you were to carry the parcel yourself, walking along the highway step by step to the destination, arriving concurrently with it, that's not express delivery.

While spatial movement can be accelerated, temporal movement cannot.

When Bai Yang digs a deep pit on the lawn and places the time capsule inside, filling the soil back in, the time flow of the capsule differs not at all from his own; no time tunnel in the pit leads directly to twenty years later, no different speed of movement along the time axis for Bai Yang and the capsule.

Both are advancing in sync. The capsule will remain where it was when Bai Yang checks tomorrow, next year, and even ten years later.

It travels no faster than you; sending it twenty years into the future requires you to invest twenty years of time.

To wait until it reaches its destination is to wait for time immemorial.

In retrospect, from start to finish, Bai Yang unquestionably found his first Time Slow Delivery to be the most difficult. Due to the obscurity of the rules and mechanisms, like a blind man groping an elephant, he exerted much futile effort—even though he considered himself meticulous at the time, taking all conceivable factors into account, avoiding all potential interferences. Nonetheless, he still failed.

The other party found nothing.

He didn't understand why. The only plausible explanation at the time was that Ban Xia was lying. Therefore, following the failure of the first time capsule delivery, Bai Yang's suspicion of Ban Xia reached its zenith.

So, what were you thinking at the time?

This content is taken from fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm.

I asked.

Was Ban Xia lying to you? Playing a trick on you?

The young man sitting opposite pondered for a few seconds, then turned his head towards the window. I couldn't see his eyes, only his nodding affirmation: