Chapter 79: The elite puppy

Translator: Abo Dammen

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Case Five: The Law of Causality 

After receiving He Yixun’s call saying he was tied up with work, Xu Pei didn’t overthink it initially. His first reaction was that official business shouldn’t be delayed; waiting for the next thunderstorm was fine.

But right after hanging up, he felt something was off.

Someone willing to be a whistleblower was indeed a major breakthrough, but it didn’t seem that urgent that He Yixun had to handle it personally. 

Wasn’t he the one feeling unwell, suffering more with each passing day? Was that really less important than cracking a case? And he thought He Yixun loved him deeply…

The more he thought about it, the more wrong it felt.

Xu Pei tried calling He Yixun back, but the calls never connected again.

——– 

“Where is this?”

Xu Pei swallowed his curses, letting He Yixun lead him to a guest room on the upper deck. For some reason, the huge plane was empty. A strange suicide note lay on the desk in the guest room. Before he could read the note’s contents, He Yixun, who was beside him, opened the wardrobe and pulled out a suitcase. “I’ll explain later. Change your clothes first.”

In the room, not only had the body vanished into thin air, but even the bloodstains had disappeared, leaving only a knife behind.

The body disappearing could be attributed to someone hiding it, and the bloodstains vanishing could only mean the two Xu Peis created a conflict, and the spacetime automatically corrected itself. 

As He Yixun suspected, the elite Xu Pei’s suitcase was in the wardrobe. Unfortunately, it had a combination lock.

“This is your own suitcase. Do you know the password?” He Yixun asked.

Xu Pei was baffled. “My own suitcase?”

Since arriving, He Yixun had been in a constant state of busyness, making Xu Pei feel a bit tense too. Although he had many questions, he crouched by the suitcase and, following intuition, dialed a set of numbers. A click sounded, and the suitcase opened, revealing some clothes and personal items. 

Using his own commonly used password to open a strange suitcase felt incredibly eerie.

“That’s weird,” Xu Pei asked, “How is this my suitcase?”

He Yixun took out a suit carrier from the wardrobe, removed a three-piece suit, and handed it to Xu Pei. “There’s another you in this spacetime. He was just murdered, right there at the desk. After you arrived, his body disappeared. Now you need to impersonate him and find the killer.”

Xu Pei was completely dumbfounded. “What??” 

“Also, Zhen Li is here too.”

His CPU short-circuited completely.

While Xu Pei changed clothes, He Yixun briefed him on the events of this timeline. Xu Pei was even more shocked. “You’re saying I used Zhen Li to develop the super inhibitor?”

“It’s called a stabilizer here,” He Yixun said, tying Xu Pei’s tie but feeling something was missing. 

Rummaging through the suitcase, he found a spare pair of glasses. He put them on Xu Pei’s nose bridge. Now it felt right.

The well-tailored suit accentuated Xu Pei’s tall, straight figure. The cold glint of the lenses hid his thick eyelashes, adding a touch of aloof authority.

However, taking off his sweater had messed up a lock of hair on top of his head, making it suddenly stick up. It had an incongruously playful look, like a fox’s tail peeking out.

This wasn’t the elite Xu Pei, nor was it Xu Puppy. 

This was the elite puppy.

He felt a sudden, inappropriate urge.

“Whoa,” Xu Pei said, his vision overly sharp. He quickly took off the glasses and blinked hard. “How dedicated to work was the ‘me’ here? The prescription is so strong.”

Wearing them made him dizzy instead. Xu Pei simply hung the glasses from his neck using the chain and asked He Yixun, “Where is everyone else on the plane?” 

He Yixun shelved his untimely thoughts. “They went to the equipment level to look for your body.”

“What should I say later?”

“Only Zhan Gao and I entered the room to see the body. He didn’t look carefully, only read the suicide note. Just pretend you passed out.”

Xu Pei nodded, leaned against the desk, and started reading the suicide note. Researching the super inhibitor was something he had always wanted to do. He never imagined another version of himself had already achieved it, only to meet such an end. It was truly lamentable. 

“So Zhen Li has been here for five years?” Xu Pei asked.

“Longer. He’s probably been trying to prevent your death all along.”

The equipment level below the deck must be quite large, as the group had been down there for a long time without returning. He Yixun found paper and a pen, drew a long timeline on the paper, and marked a point near the beginning, labeling it ‘Age 10’. “According to Zhen Li, this is the original spacetime. You died at age ten here.”

Xu Pei was confused. “But I didn’t die.” 

He Yixun extended a vertical line down from that point and drew another horizontal timeline branching out. “It’s not that you didn’t die; you returned to a split spacetime—let’s call it Spacetime 1. The ‘you’ in the original spacetime died in the car accident. You lived in Spacetime 1 until you were 30.”

He marked another point on the second timeline, labeling it ‘Age 30’. “Lab explosion. You died again here. So—”

He continued drawing from the ‘Age 30’ point, pulling out a third timeline. “Spacetime 2 split off here. Now, the ‘you’ in both the original spacetime and Spacetime 1 are dead. You lived in Spacetime 2 until Zhan Gao announced the engagement, and you were murdered by Mo Xin.”

He Yixun put down the pen at this point. 

“In short, you thought you were living in a single spacetime all along, but actually, every time you encountered death, you traveled back to a newly split parallel spacetime. In the original spacetime, you did die.”

Xu Pei slowly began to understand. “You’re saying, for the car accident, the lab explosion, and being attacked by Mo Xin, I actually died in each case?”

“Yes,” He Yixun nodded. “You can think of it as one event splitting into two spacetimes. In one spacetime, you die. In the other, you survive because you traveled.”

That made it much easier to comprehend. 

“Then when we fell off the bridge, a new spacetime should have split too. How did we end up here?”

“I suspect Zhen Li disrupted the timeline. He must have visited many spacetimes and knows all the causes of your death, so he’s been trying to influence your choices.

“For example, knowing you would face the lab explosion at 30, he might have had you change jobs early to avoid that timeline. But it seems even on this timeline, you still couldn’t escape.”

Xu Pei suddenly thought of another possibility. “Wouldn’t the ‘me’ who died here also travel through time?” 

“Uncertain,” said He Yixun. “The time with Mo Xin, I saved you. The other two times were accidents, not murders. So…”

For both accidents, no one witnessed the entire process. Even if Xu Pei disappeared and returned, it wouldn’t cause memory conflicts for others.

But murder is different. The killer would confirm Xu Pei’s death. Since the killer is involved in the whole process, unless both travel together, Xu Pei traveling alone wouldn’t be feasible.

“But the body vanishing into thin air just happened, which totally defies scientific principles,” Xu Pei said, privately hoping this other version of himself he never met could survive. “What if there’s a bug in the current timeline?” 

“Mm,” He Yixun said. “It’s not impossible.”

Sporadic footsteps sounded outside the door, mixed with the casual conversation of Zhan Gao and the others.

Mo Xin: “So creepy, how could a body just vanish into thin air?”

Qiu Wei: “Someone must be playing tricks.” 

Zhan Gao: “We should have checked if he was really dead earlier.”

A sudden scream pierced the air. Sun Yamei, who was at the front, had seen Xu Pei in the room. The others quickly gathered, all looking as if they’d seen a ghost. Only Zhen Li was surprised for a moment before his eyes showed understanding. He had recognized that this was a different Xu Pei.

“You’re not dead?” Zhan Gao looked Xu Pei up and down, as if doubting his own memory.

“Just passed out,” Xu Pei said, perching the glasses on the bridge of his nose, slightly tucking his chin, and looking over the rims at the people by the door with an affected air. “Someone knocked me out and stabbed me in the heart with a knife, but not very hard. It’s just a superficial wound.” 

—He wondered if his imitation was convincing.

“Did you see who knocked you out?” Sun Yamei asked.

“No,” Xu Pei said, putting the glasses down and speaking unhurriedly. “But it must be someone on this plane.”

“Wait, wasn’t there a lot of blood on the floor just now?” Mo Xin said, puzzled. “That didn’t look like a superficial wound.” 

“You saw wrong,” Xu Pei said, putting his hands in his trouser pockets and tapping the black nylon carpet with the tip of his leather shoe. “With such a dark color, what could you possibly see clearly?”

Mo Xin tilted her head suspiciously, joining Zhan Gao in doubting her own memory.

Regardless, Xu Pei was standing there alive and well, leaving little room for disbelief.

Zhan Gao walked into the room, first glanced at He Yixun, and frowned. “Why are you still hanging around like a lingering ghost?” 

He then picked up the small knife from the desk and asked Xu Pei, “You’re saying someone stabbed you with a knife while you were unconscious and only caused a superficial wound?”

“Yes,” said Xu Pei.

“Then it must have been an omega. An alpha wouldn’t have spared your life.” Zhan Gao casually tossed the knife back onto the desk. “You weren’t putting on a show for me, were you?”

Xu Pei was a representative of the omega faction. If the culprit was an omega, it was likely an act. 

“Would I need to?” Xu Pei mustered his presence, loosening his tie. “Or should I show you my wound?”

Of course, he was just bluffing and wouldn’t actually expose his chest. However, as his collar loosened, a hint of honey sweetness inadvertently escaped, drifting into the surrounding air.

Zhan Gao twitched his nostrils, like someone unexpectedly finding a lost item. His cold eyes suddenly lit up, and he looked at Xu Pei in surprise. “How did your pheromones change back?”

Damn. 

The blocker was in low-power mode, accidentally leaking private pheromones.

“Ahem.” Xu Pei cleared his throat, fabricating an excuse. “It was unstable before. It’s stabilized now. No need to make a fuss.”

“If that’s the case,” Zhan Gao’s look towards Xu Pei changed, actually gaining a trace of familiar infatuation, “there’s no need for us to call off the engagement.”

Xu Pei: ? 

“Our compatibility is 92%. We would definitely produce exceptionally outstanding offspring.”

“You can’t.” He Yixun’s voice, calm and even, cut through Zhan Gao’s fantasy. “He is my omega. I’ve already marked him.”

Now Zhen Li became the most surprised one. “You can mark someone?”

Xu Pei glanced towards the door and only then noticed the subtle expressions on Mo Xin and Qiu Wei’s faces. 

“Yes, I’ve been marked,” said Xu Pei. “He is my husband.”

“No wonder you brought him on the plane.” Zhan Gao didn’t seem angered. Instead, a glint of competitive excitement appeared in his eyes, as if quite confident he could outshine He Yixun. “Do you know what awaits you after we land?”

“The hearing,” said Xu Pei.

“I asked you to reform the stabilizer, and you refused. The outcome was already decided then—you will go to prison.” said Zhan Gao. “However, if you agree to marry me, I can spare you from jail.” 

“Speaker Zhan,” Mo Xin spoke up, frowning. “This will be hard to explain.”

Zhan Gao shot her an unhappy glare. “Shut up.”

“How can I marry you when I’m already marked?” Xu Pei found this conversation strangely familiar, as if it had happened before.

“It doesn’t matter,” Zhan Gao said dismissively. “After this is over, I’ll take you to have the mark removed.” 

Xu Pei: “……”

So it is familiar.

Spacetime really is one big cycle.