41: Chapter 41 The "Time Reversal" Touched by Jade

The evening in the Old neighborhood was always wrapped in the scent of food.

Just as the iron shutter of Wang Leis Braised Food Stall was pulled halfway down, Chen Jie was dragged by his arm by Su Rui toward the third floor.

The girl's canvas shoes made rapid "dong-dong" sounds on the stairs, and she tightly clutched a crumpled sheet of A4 paper, its edges still stained with some toner from the scanner.

"The contract I just scanned saved as garbled text!"

Su Rui shoved the laptop screen in front of his eyes; the blue background was full of distorted characters, looking like a group of drunken ants.

"The client needs to sign it tomorrow, and I've tried seven or eight different repair software, but none of them worked. This is a deal I spent three sleepless nights negotiating last month..."

Chen Jie had just finished fixing Brother Li's bicycle chain, and there was still some black oil stuck in his fingernails.

He bent down to take a look at the screen, then touched the scanner on the table that he had just repaired—the metal edge of the paper feed still retained the gentle luster he had polished with his spiritual power.

"It was fine when you scanned it this morning, how did it suddenly go wrong?"

"I wanted to convert the scanned file into a PDF just now, and the computer screen suddenly flickered when I clicked save."

Su Rui was so anxious she stomped her feet, her ponytail sweeping across the desk and knocking over half a cup of unfinished herbal tea.

As the brown liquid spread across the keyboard, she suddenly let out an "ah," "I spilled some coffee on the keyboard yesterday too! Could it be related to this?"

Chen Jie said nothing, simply pulling out a soft cloth from his canvas backpack and gently wiping the keyboard.

When his fingertips touched the Enter key, the jade stone in his backpack suddenly became slightly hot, as if a freshly peeled boiled egg was hidden inside, radiating heat.

This strange feeling stirred Chen Jie's heart; he took the opportunity to place the backpack on the table, aligning the gap in the zipper directly with the scanner.

In that very instant, the originally chaotic garbled text on the screen suddenly began to shake violently.

At first, this shaking was very subtle, just like the static on a TV screen with a bad signal, flickering in and out.

However, as time passed, those originally distorted characters actually began to move in reverse, one by one shrinking back to their original positions.

Those originally twisted lines also slowly smoothed out, as if they had been reorganized by an invisible hand.

In less than half a minute, the entire page of the contract seemed to have been cast with magic, restoring itself into clear Song typeface characters, and even the signature section that Su Rui had accidentally deleted appeared intact at the end.

"What... what is going on?"

Su Rui's fingers hovered over the mouse, not daring to click for a long time; she widened her eyes, looking at the screen in astonishment, and muttered to herself, "I definitely didn't click restore!"

Chen Jie's gaze was drawn to the scanner as if by a magnet.

The metal surface that had just been saturated with spiritual power was now emitting a very faint green light; this green light seemed to possess a life of its own, slowly crawling along the data cable into the computer, like a tiny electric current.

A thought suddenly flashed through Chen Jie's mind; he remembered when he was repairing the machine in the morning, that green light had also traveled along the grooves of the gears.

Could it be that the spiritual power of the jade stone could not only repair hardware but also affect data?

This thought surged with excitement and curiosity in his heart.

Just as he was immersed in thought, Su Rui's voice suddenly came: "Maybe the System backed it up automatically."

Chen Jie replied casually, while moving the backpack to the side to hide his thoughts.

However, the moment he moved the backpack, the green light seemed to lose its support, like a kite with a broken string, and quickly disappeared without a trace.

A trace of warmth still lingered on Chen Jie's fingertips, which made him involuntarily think of the scene at Suiyu Slope.

At that time, the jade stone had made the stream flow backward for half a second.

He had originally thought it was just his illusion, but now it seemed that this stone really possessed some special ability to make certain things return to a past state.

While Chen Jie was thinking about these things, Su Rui was still constantly refreshing the page to confirm that the contract was intact.

When she saw that the contract was complete and undamaged, she let out a sigh of relief, then suddenly, like an excited little bird, she pounced over and hugged Chen Jie's arm tightly, saying happily: "Brother Jie, you really are my lucky star! Tonight I must treat you to the braised pork knuckle from Wang Leis Braised Food Stall, and I want the one with the tendon!"

Chen Jie was shaken so hard he almost lost his balance.

Just as he wanted to stubbornly say "let sleeping dogs lie," he saw the sunset outside the window falling on the scanner.

That old machine, which had been jamming paper yesterday, was now glowing with a soft light in the sunset, like a comforted child.

He suddenly realized that the spiritual power of the jade stone was never earth-shattering magic.

When repairing the long chair, it was quietly smoothing out the solder bumps; when repairing the scanner, it was letting the gears return to their place; and now, it was letting the garbled text return to its original state—just as Old Zhou said, "The speed of time depends on the heart," this stone was merely giving things a gentle push along their original trajectories.

When they went downstairs, night had already quietly fallen, and the entire Old neighborhood was shrouded in a quiet atmosphere.

Wang Leis Braised Food Stall looked particularly eye-catching under the street lamp at the entrance of the alley; the orange-yellow light spilled onto the stall, as if draping a warm coat over the braised food.

The air was filled with the rich aroma of meat, making one's mouth water.

Chen Jie subconsciously touched the jade stone in his backpack; under his touch, the jade stone had already returned to its original coldness.

He couldn't help but recall what Zhao Kai had once said; Zhao Kai always said that the things he repaired carried a "scent of old times."

Previously, Chen Jie didn't have much understanding of this sentence, but at this moment, he suddenly felt that Zhao Kai's words seemed to have some truth to them.

Those objects touched by spiritual power were like they had been gently stroked by time; although they didn't become brand new, they had all returned to their most usable state.

They seemed to have experienced a baptism of time, shedding the superficial glamour and revealing their most authentic essence.

On the long chair at the alley entrance, Grandma Zhang was leisurely squinting her eyes, listening to the Pingju opera playing on the radio.

Sunlight shone through the gaps in the leaves onto the chair surface, warming it up.

Chen Jie walked over slowly and sat down beside Grandma Zhang.

The solid touch from the metal chair legs gave him an inexplicable sense of peace, as if this chair had accompanied the people of this Old neighborhood for many years.

Chen Jie sat quietly on the long chair, feeling everything around him.

He suddenly realized that life in this Old neighborhood might also be like it had been quietly brushed by the jade stone.

Those stumbling little troubles were just like the flaws on the surface of the jade stone; although they existed, they did not affect its overall beauty.

And inadvertently, these little troubles would always gradually disappear, and life would return to a smooth and steady state.