366: Chapter 366 The Limit to Maintaining Clarity

A low grinding sound echoed as the train slowed down.

The scenery outside the window shifted from vast farmlands to dense overpasses and high-rise clusters.

The female voice on the intercom rang out on time.

"Dear passengers, the train is about to arrive at its final destination, Beijing South Station. Please prepare your belongings in advance..."

Lin Que turned off his phone screen.

Temporarily locking away the wailing and collapsing comments flooding the comment section after the release of "the rats in the walls" on the other side of the screen.

He stood up, tugged at the hem of his jacket, and walked toward the luggage storage area of the business class carriage.

Just as his palm touched the handle of the suitcase, his fingertips felt its heavy weight.

He dragged the suitcase out of the storage compartment, the sound of the wheels hitting the floor especially clear in the quiet carriage.

"This suitcase..."

Tang He had stood up in the aisle at some point, carrying a gray backpack.

In her hand was a standard twenty-inch carry-on suitcase.

Her eyes widened as her gaze fell on Lin Que's massive suitcase, which was severely deformed from being overstuffed, with fabric folds visible at the zipper's teeth.

Lin Que looked down at his own suitcase, which looked like it could burst at any moment.

He reached out and patted the surface of the suitcase twice.

The suitcase didn't budge, as solid as a brick.

"It's a long story. It's all strategic supplies."

His tone was flat.

Tang He blanked for a moment, then couldn't help but laugh.

It wasn't a mocking laugh, but a sudden relaxation, as if being pulled back to earth.

From the moment she boarded the train in Magic City until now, her shoulders had been tense, and she even sipped water in tiny gulps.

The six months of devilish training in the Qinglan Project,

Breaking bones, feeding blood, forging bones—

Just thinking about those names was enough to send chills down one's spine.

But with Lin Que standing opposite her, his hand resting on that overstuffed suitcase, the expression on his face offered an invisible comfort.

"Let's go."

Lin Que dragged the suitcase toward the train door, the wheels leaving two deep indentations on the carpet.

The exit of Beijing South Station was more than three times larger than Jiangcheng East Station.

On a mid-September afternoon, sunlight streamed down through the tempered glass roof of the dome, illuminating the entire hall in a transparent white.

Crowds converged and dispersed from all directions, moving in a hurry.

The sound of footsteps mixed with the intercom and the rolling of suitcases, merging into a low hum.

The moment Tang He walked through the ticket gate, her pace noticeably slowed.

She looked up; the skyline outside the exit hall was carved into sharp, angular silhouettes by the midday sun.

The buildings in the distance were completely different from those in Magic City.

There was none of that sharpness created by glass curtain walls; instead, there was a steady, oppressive weight of history.

She unconsciously pulled up the straps of her backpack.

Her fingertips gripped the edges of the webbing tightly.

Beijing.

She murmured the name in her heart, her lips moving without making a sound.

Then she stood on her tiptoes and scanned the crowd left and right, looking for a pickup sign.

Lin Que walked beside her, his baseball cap pulled low, the shadow of the brim hiding most of his face.

His pace was steady, and the rhythm of dragging his suitcase remained constant.

The flow of people from the exit parted and closed around him, his path never interrupted by anyone.

Tang He glanced at him.

She remembered that public lecture, where she had personally witnessed this man deconstruct the logical core of a nightmare-level essay question from five years ago in just a few sentences.

She thought that after getting off the train, facing the aura of Beijing, he would show at least a hint of something unusual.

But no.

His expression was exactly the same as when they were chatting in the carriage, even more relaxed than when he was giving a speech on stage.

It was as if all the weight of this city had nothing to do with him.

Or as if he had already weighed it all out pound by pound and knew it couldn't crush him.

"Over there."

Lin Que's voice pulled Tang He back from her observations.

He gestured with his chin toward a pillar on the left side of the exit.

Tang He looked in that direction and saw a wooden sign through the gaps in the crowd.

It wasn't a printed foam board or an LED screen.

It was a warm-textured walnut sign with four characters handwritten in brush calligraphy:

"Qinglan Project".

The calligraphy was powerful yet restrained, clearly the work of someone with a solid foundation in the art.

This sign was held by a young man.

The newcomer was about twenty-six or twenty-seven, tall and slender, wearing a sharply tailored dark gray trench coat over a black turtleneck sweater.

His hair was styled maturely, and he wore a pair of thin-framed glasses on his nose, his gaze behind the lenses steady.

It carried the scrutinizing habit cultivated from being immersed in an academic environment for a long time.

Not a volunteer.

Tang He made the judgment in her mind.

She had seen that kind of gaze in academic lectures at Fudan Affiliated High School—

It was the same look professors used when reviewing a paper.

As the two approached, the young man lowered the wooden sign and bowed slightly.

"Student Lin Que, Student Tang He." His voice was at a moderate volume and his articulation was clear.

"I am Song Yuan, a graduate teaching assistant for Professor Liu Zuoqing of the Qingbei School of Literature. I am responsible for today's pickup and camp registration."

After speaking, he pulled two printed registration forms and temporary passes from the inner pocket of his trench coat and handed them over with both hands.

His actions were polite and thorough, but what emanated from his core was not warmth, but rules.

Those rules weren't aggressive, but they naturally drew a line—

"I respect your achievements, but you have not yet been truly accepted here."

Tang He took the registration form and thanked him.

Lin Que took his with one hand, scanned the content, folded it, and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

Song Yuan's gaze lingered on Lin Que for an extra second.

"The car is at exit B3."

Song Yuan spoke, his gaze falling on Lin Que's bulging suitcase.

"Let me."

He reached out and grabbed the handle.

His wrist suddenly sank a significant amount.

Song Yuan's forearm muscles tensed instantly, and his center of gravity was forced forward by half a step.

His expression changed for less than 0.3 seconds before he quickly adjusted his exertion angle.

He used his other hand to support the bottom of the suitcase and took it completely from Lin Que.

"Whoa, that's quite a lot of stuff."

His tone was well-controlled, merely stating a fact without unnecessary emotion.

But Lin Que noticed he had to switch hands twice to steady the suitcase.

"Yeah, it's all good stuff."

Song Yuan paused, the corner of his mouth twitching almost imperceptibly, but he didn't respond.

The three of them walked toward exit B3.

Song Yuan led the way, dragging Lin Que's heavy suitcase with one hand.

His other hand hung naturally at his side, his pace not changing due to the weight.

It was clear he was trying his best to maintain a sense of composed poise.

The passage narrowed and darkened from the brightness of the exit hall.

The fluorescent lights overhead emitted a uniform white light, and the sound of footsteps echoed clearly on the tiled floor.

Tang He walked half a step behind Lin Que to his right, her gaze involuntarily switching between the signs on the wall and Song Yuan's straight back.

After walking for about two minutes, Song Yuan didn't turn his head, speaking as if casually.

"Student Lin Que, I've read your 'folding beijing'."

Lin Que didn't stop or respond, just tilted his head slightly to show he was listening.

"There's something I've been thinking about."

Song Yuan slowed his speech by half a beat, his wording clearly deliberate.

"When you set the physical switching rules for the three-layered space, you used forty-eight hours as the flip cycle.

That number... it shouldn't be arbitrary, right?"

Tang He was taken aback; clearly, she had never considered this question.

Seeing that Lin Que didn't speak, he continued.

"Forty-eight hours is scientifically the threshold where cognitive abilities begin to decline sharply in a state of continuous wakefulness.

You anchored the folding cycle of physical space to the human physiological limit."

Song Yuan slowed his pace by half a beat and turned his head for the first time.

The gaze behind the lenses was calm but focused.

It was no longer the polite scrutiny from the pickup, but the expression of a researcher pressing the record button on a research subject.

"So what you really wanted to express wasn't the boundary of space,

but the upper limit of time humans are allowed to stay awake in a system of solidified classes.

Correct?"

..."}],