Chapter 7

Ruan Qing asked more questions, and Nian Qi listed familiar place names, Kaifeng, Jiangning, Lin’an, Quanzhou. This confirmed that the continent where Nian Qi came from and the one Ruan Qing inhabited were the same—both were part of the land known as Huaxia.

“That means the issue must lie with the timeline,” Ruan Qing concluded, her mind instantly connecting the dots from reading hundreds of time-travel novels.

“Timeline?” Nian Qi repeated the unfamiliar term, tasting the word.

Ruan Qing stood up, fetched paper and a pen from her study, and sat down on the sofa, spreading the paper over the coffee table. “Come here. I’ll explain!”

Her fair, bare arm was close enough to touch, and Nian Qi unconsciously held his breath as he leaned in slightly, focusing on the white rectangular sheet laid out before him.

Ruan Qing drew a straight line and began her not-so-scientific explanation:

“Generally, time flows in a straight line. My grandfather gave birth to my father, and my father gave birth to me. Or in another case, Zhang San becomes the emperor, and his family rules for centuries. Eventually, a new dynasty takes over, and Li Si becomes emperor, starting a new imperial lineage. That’s how time and history normally flow. Got it?”

“I understand,” Nian Qi nodded.

“Good.” Ruan Qing smiled. “Now, this straight line represents the flow of time and historical development—this is what we call a timeline. Got it?”

Nian Qi nodded again. “Understood.”

“Great. But…” She drew a shorter line, marked a heavy dot in the middle of it, and declared, “Here’s where the timeline got messed up! See? At this point, something went wrong. Maybe my grandfather didn’t give birth to my father, or during the change of dynasties, Li Si never became emperor—Wang Wu did instead.”

From that point, she drew a branching line. “History changed at this moment, creating a different timeline. On my timeline, Li Si becomes emperor, and my grandfather gives birth to my father. On this new timeline, Wang Wu becomes emperor, and maybe somewhere down the line, my grandfather isn’t even born—let alone my father or me.” She paused, then clarified: “Oh, by the way, ‘father’ means ‘dad.’ Same thing.”

“So, these two timelines are called parallel timelines—different histories unfolding on the same continent.”

“Do you understand?”

This time, Nian Qi didn’t respond immediately. He stared at the two branching lines on the paper, lost in thought. After a moment, he lifted his gaze. “A dream within a dream?”

Ruan Qing was impressed. “Wow, you’re smart!” She had been worried that someone from ancient times might struggle with these modern concepts.

“That’s not exactly right, but it’s close enough,” she said approvingly. “Think of it like this, my timeline is one dream, and your timeline is another. There’s no real or fake—both are real, both are true timelines.”

Nian Qi was silent for a moment, then muttered, “Three thousand worlds…”

Ruan Qing grinned. He was clearly well-educated. Excellent.

“Exactly!” she said. “And now you’ve crossed over to another timeline. It’s like you were supposed to enter one room but accidentally walked into another.”

However, Nian Qi’s expression turned puzzled. “What kind of force could make this happen?” he murmured.

“That, I don’t know,” Ruan Qing admitted. “In this era, knowledge, science, and technology have advanced far beyond what you’re familiar with. People have even traveled to the moon—yes, the one in the sky. Yet, despite all this progress, there are still supernatural phenomena that science can’t explain.”

This was the second time since arriving in this world that Nian Qi felt truly shocked—the first being when he saw the towering buildings.

“We’ve been to the moon?” he asked, astonished. “You mean that moon up there?”

He was getting sidetracked, but Ruan Qing couldn’t help answering his question. “Yes, the moon you see in the sky.”

“How did they get there?” Nian Qi asked.

Ruan Qing explained, “They used a machine called a rocket, which can fly beyond the clouds and into space. We also have machines called airplanes that can fly, but they’re used for ordinary long-distance travel—like from Jiang City to Hangzhou. With your way of telling time, it takes less than an hour to get there.”

But Nian Qi wasn’t concerned about the difference between rockets and airplanes. What intrigued him most was, “So, is there really a Guanghan Palace on the moon? Did the astronauts see the goddess Chang’e? Or Wu Gang?”

Ruan Qing: “…”

“No. The legends are just myths,” she said, waving off his curiosity. “There’s no Jade Emperor or Laozi either. The moon is just a barren rock, similar to Earth but with harsher conditions—freezing cold, and no place where people could live.”

Seeing that Nian Qi’s eyes sparkled with more questions, Ruan Qing quickly steered the conversation back on track. “Friend! Let’s not get sidetracked. We need to focus on the task at hand, okay?”

Nian Qi cleared his throat, feeling a bit embarrassed. “Apologies. Please continue, Miss Ruan.”

Ruan Qing had her own questions—being a fan of time-travel novels and alternate history stories, she was eager to figure out where exactly the timelines diverged.

Fortunately, Nian Qi was well-read. Unlike those from remote rural areas in ancient times, who often had no idea who the current emperor was—or even that a new dynasty had risen—he could recount details of earlier eras.

However, every time he mentioned a name, Ruan Qing shook her head.

“Yi? Never heard of it. Next!”
“Ying? No such dynasty. Try another!”
“Zhou? Which Zhou? The emperor’s surname was Niu? A royal family with the surname Niu? Next!”

They traced history back, step by step, until they found the point where the two timelines diverged.

“Three hundred years of Qin? You mean the Qin founded by Emperor Qin Shi Huang—the one who unified the six states, standardized the writing system, and built roads?”

“Yes, the very Qin founded by the First Emperor,” Nian Qi confirmed. “It lasted over three hundred years.”

Ruan Qing was stunned. “What?! In our history, the Qin dynasty collapsed after just a few years—after the second emperor!”

Nian Qi was equally surprised. “How could that be?”

After comparing histories, they discovered the critical divergence: in Nian Qi’s timeline, the Crown Prince Fusu never committed suicide and ascended the throne instead.

There was a remarkable person by his side, someone who had “predicted” the arrival of a falsified imperial decree even before it was issued by reading the stars. When the decree arrived, Prince Fusu saw it and, stunned that the prediction was true, immediately drew his sword and executed the messenger. What followed was like a wild horse breaking free—history took an unprecedented turn. The powerful Qin dynasty, which had ruled for 300 years, went on to influence the rest of history. Many founders of dynasties were born in a time of peace, and while some people became famous ministers or figures, others vanished into obscurity, their names erased, or perhaps they were never even born. The entire historical timeline was different from the one Ruan Qing knew.

Based on her calculations, Nian Qi likely came from about a thousand years ago, during the period between the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms to the Song Dynasty. In his world, however, the Great Mu dynasty had only existed for about a hundred years and was in a stage of prosperity and peace.

“A thousand years!” Ruan Qing gasped, trembling as she extended a finger. “I-I wonder… can I…?”

That finger, trembling as it was, posed no threat. Nian Qi had already realized during their journey that Ruan Qing knew no martial arts, neither internal nor external. He raised an eyebrow but didn’t move.

Ruan Qing slowly extended her finger toward him and poked his shoulder. After a pause, she poked him again.

Nian Qi: “…”

“Oh my God!” Ruan Qing clasped her hand, the one that had just touched a man from a thousand years ago, and exclaimed excitedly, “A thousand years! I just touched a man from a thousand years ago!”

Nian Qi was silent for a moment before asking, “Why is Miss Ruan so excited?” Her eyes were practically glowing, as if she had found some sort of treasure.

“You don’t understand,” she said, composing herself slightly. “We have a genre of novels here. A ‘novel’ is like a script or a story that’s made up for people to read.”

Nian Qi nodded, signaling he understood.

“We have a specific genre of novel called ‘time travel fiction,’” Ruan Qing continued. “It’s about modern people traveling back to ancient times, or like you—an ancient person traveling to the modern world. I’ve been reading these since middle school, for over ten years now. I must have read nearly a thousand of them.”

She didn’t even dare mention that, during her “cringe-worthy” teen years, she had actually dreamed of time travel and had compiled a whole set of time-travel essentials, including recipes for gunpowder, methods for making soap, glass, and allicin, as well as memorizing a bunch of classical poems and essays. She even attempted to self-learn hybrid rice cultivation, but had to give up when it became too difficult. After all, she couldn’t even tell wheat from chives in real life—agriculture was just too much for her.

“I’ve always dreamed of time travel,” she said, “and though it’s not me who has traveled to the past, but you who has come here, it’s still fate, right? Why else would you fall into my car, and not someone else’s?”

Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she said this.

Nian Qi started to understand. “So, this is why you’ve been willing to help me?”

Now the conversation was getting back on track, and there were some important things that needed to be clarified.

“You could put it that way,” Ruan Qing cleared her throat. “But there are some things you need to hear me out on.”

Nian Qi nodded.

“First of all, your situation… well, I don’t really know how to categorize it,” Ruan Qing said. “Those time-travel stories are all fictional, like plays. But now you’re standing in front of me, alive and real. My first piece of advice for you is, don’t reveal your true identity. Don’t let anyone know you’re a man from a thousand years ago.”

Nian Qi’s expression became serious.

“Because this situation is just… too rare,” Ruan Qing explained. “If you expose yourself, I don’t know how the government would treat you. They’d definitely take you away for research. And if that happens, you might lose your freedom. In the worst-case scenario, they might even dissect you, and then you wouldn’t even keep your life.”

She tried to keep a serious tone. “I’m not trying to scare you. Just think about it—if I traveled back to your time and got discovered, how do you think people there would treat me?”

Nian Qi didn’t even need to think before answering. “Most likely, I’d say they would burn you as a witch.”

They would probably grind her bones to dust, and then have monks or Daoist priests perform rituals to seal her spirit, preventing it from seeking revenge. In any case, someone so out of place in time would not meet a good end.