Chapter 94: The Backlash of Time and Space

Chapter 94: The Backlash of Time and Space

Chen Feng decisively changed his mind. He went back to his room and first spent time organizing and completing the dozen or so songs he had noted down during his recent trip to the past. Then, with an anxious heart, he waited for the time that represented the Serum’s expiration to arrive.

Three and a half hours passed.

The time that had flowed for him personally had long exceeded three hours, but he did not fall unconscious.

No changes occurred, as if this state was simply how he was meant to be.

It meant the effect of the Serum had become a permanent fixture for him.

After experiencing brief excitement and elation, and taking a casual cold shower, Chen Feng, the “steadfast” type who remained unflappable even if Mount Tai collapsed before him, began to give himself some intelligence tests.

About two hours later, he finished several sets of IQ test papers and reached a conclusion.

In a way, he had become smarter.

Extremely high concentration and a more excitable brain response during active thinking made his thought processes faster, allowing him to arrive at desired answers more quickly.

Some conventional calculation abilities, such as mental math and logical analysis, also received a comprehensive boost.

Of course, he did not turn into one of those freakish geniuses from movies who, after quantum-fluctuation-reading a university physics textbook once, could rival Einstein.

He was still an ordinary person. Things he didn’t know before, he still didn’t know.

To go from not knowing to knowing, he still needed to learn. His ability to comprehend new things had not improved; what improved was his thinking speed.

A mathematically gifted child learning simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division might only need to glance at a problem to quickly grasp the underlying principles through analogy, and thus master all problems within their knowledge framework.

An ordinary child would need one, two, or even many more rounds of continuous reinforcement training to form the mathematical concept in their mind.

This was the gap in comprehension ability.

Chen Feng’s intelligence still remained at the level where he needed multiple reinforcement sessions to understand new knowledge. However, because his thinking sped up, to others it might seem like he understood everything at a glance.

But in reality, he still went through multiple repetitions and reinforcement to understand. It was just that his speed was so fast, the time for several repetitions was basically the same as the time it took someone else to understand on the first try.

The outcome appeared the same, but the internal process was fundamentally different.

In short, if he wanted to learn a new subject now, thanks to his increased focus and sharper mind, he would probably only need about half the time or even less than before—but he still had to learn.

Things he could never have learned before, he still absolutely could not learn now.

Intelligence was a comprehensive concept, encompassing both learning speed and the upper limit of comprehension ability. The Coagulation Serum accelerated his learning speed but did not raise the upper limit of his comprehension ability.

The morning had been wasted by the incident regarding his mutation. Changing his plans again, after testing his intelligence, he headed straight for Zhonghai.

Signing the contract with Ou Junlang could wait until he returned, but Zhong Lei’s matter could not be delayed.

Every minute delayed meant a greater chance for something to go wrong.

What if Zhong Lei, in her enthusiasm, sent him a rough draft of “Baptism of Fire” on the way, asking for his opinion? If that happened, he would be in deep trouble, with no one to turn to for help.

Should he plagiarize it? Or should he plagiarize it?

This seemed like a minor issue, just a song after all, but it could completely derail Chen Feng’s plans.

Because of the changes “Baptism of Fire” brought to the Xuanwu Institute, Chen Feng deeply realized the important role outstanding artistic works played in the progression of Human Civilization.

Good artistic works, whether literature, music, or painting, could leave behind spiritual power.

That was sustenance, a torch that Civilization could use to illuminate its path while stumbling in the dark.

Nowadays, the times had become superficial, songs had become shallow, and stars lived behind fake personas. Such works did not deserve to be called works; they were merely entertainment born to cater to the needs of others for amusement.

Stars formed by ignoring the essence of artistry and talent, and instead crafted through hype and marketing to create false personas, were an entertainment phenomenon that arose in the early stages of the information age.

This phenomenon would be born and rise to prominence with the booming development of the internet era, reaching its peak at a certain stage, allowing a large group of people to amass immense wealth.

But as times changed and the information process deepened further, data becoming more explosive, this garbage-like redundant information would be buried in the ocean of information, unable to make even the slightest ripple.

Gold is only revealed after the great waves wash away the sand. Only truly good works would be remembered and truly show their value.

Wasteful entertainment was born from the spread of informatization, and would die from its maturity.

Looking back from the outcome, Chen Feng knew this was a crooked path that wouldn’t lead far.

He didn’t care how others walked their paths; he only wanted to walk the path he had chosen well now.

Therefore, the Ultimate Form of entertainment culture was culture, not entertainment.

Only after seeing the future did Chen Feng realize how valuable Zhong Lei was now.

She could create works with historical value.

In her songs, she criticized injustice, irrationality, satirized the twisted and the filthy, and encouraged and promoted positivity.

Even when she sometimes embedded her own negative emotions into her works, those negative songs could still pry open the defenses of the weak, awakening their motivation to become better and improve themselves.

Her songs could teach people how to correctly face their own weaknesses, how to fight against the weakness and ugliness within human nature, which was beneficial for the development of Civilization.

That example was too profound. Let’s use a simpler one.

Take Aamir Khan’s movies as an example.

The theme of the movie “Dangal” was to cry out for the women suffering injustice in a certain country.

If the male head of a family who originally looked down upon women was influenced by this movie and decided to give his own daughter a fair chance to study…

And then this daughter, who was originally destined to be a mere dowry tool, successfully completed her education, became an outstanding scholar, and left behind a piece of technology that, a hundred years later, gave birth to an entire academic discipline?

Then the impact of this movie would be profound enough to last over a thousand years.

Perhaps no one would know the initial connection between this rigorous discipline and a movie, but this butterfly-effect-like causality would objectively exist.

Therefore, although Chen Feng had already begun to covet the technology of the future, he was still unwilling to give up his original path of copying songs, which he initially thought was a shortcut to wealth but later discovered was a shortcut to change history.

Directly transplanting technology was a direct change to the future.

But transplanting artistic works and squeezing Zhong Lei’s potential was a broader, more extensive, and profound change to the future.

These were two complementary paths. Chen Feng intended to pursue both, and do both well.

Copying songs was just the beginning; he still had many things to do.

Perhaps the road ahead was long and the end unseen, but he was determined to persevere until the end of his life, just as Brother Hu had once told him, similar to what he himself had said in one Timeline.

The plane arrived in Zhonghai. Stepping into the airport terminal hall, Chen Feng turned on his phone and happened to receive a call from Zhong Lei.

Even before boarding the plane, he had already contacted Zhong Lei once and told her he had prepared a “surprise” for her today.

“Are you off the plane yet?”

Zhong Lei’s voice on the phone sounded a bit tired. Recently, she had been working non-stop without a break.

But her fatigue carried a thread of excitement and eagerness. As long as she was making music, no matter how tired she was, she enjoyed it.

Chen Feng replied, “Yeah, I’m about to grab a taxi now. You should rest a bit too, don’t overwork yourself.”

Zhong Lei yawned. “I’m sleeping in the car. Don’t take a taxi. I’m catching a ride with my junior sister to the airport. Her brother is also returning from abroad today, his flight time is similar to yours. We’re picking him up and you at the same time. It’s a bit congested in the city, but we’re about to get on the highway now. We’ll be there in half an hour at the latest, oh no, twenty minutes.”

Chen Feng was stunned, his heartbeat suddenly accelerating.

He wasn’t moved because Zhong Lei was coming to pick him up; it was something else.

He asked uneasily, “Uh, the junior sister you mentioned is your assistant at the recording studio here, Meng Wanyue, right?”

Zhong Lei said in surprise, “Huh, how did you know?”

Chen Feng forced himself to stay calm and quickly defended, “I saw that name in the production credits for the song ‘Dullness’ before.”

At the same time, he had already taken long strides and started sprinting desperately towards the main entrance of the terminal.

“Oh, right. You know me, I don’t have many friends. Wanyue is one of the few friends I made at school. I was able to produce songs here in Zhonghai mostly thanks to her help.”

A cheerful voice sounded on the phone again.

“Ya! Sister Lei Lei, are we just friends? Hearing that makes me so sad!”

Zhong Lei: “Stop fooling around, you’re driving.”

“Relax, I’m a great driver. Hello, Brother Feng! I’m Meng Wanyue, just call me Wanyue! I’m Sister Lei Lei’s biggest fan, I’ve never admired anyone so much in my life! And Sister Lei Lei is your biggest fan, Brother Feng, so you are my super… super idol! I absolutely worship you!”

Zhong Lei: “Okay, okay, enough talking. You wait for us.”

The call ended abruptly with a click on the other end.

Chen Feng hurriedly called back while running like a madman through the crowd, causing a commotion and drawing angry shouts along the way.

But he didn’t care.

Because of his high-speed running, the blood in his body, which had become much thicker than normal due to the Coagulation Serum, gradually boiled. Large drops of sweat fell from his temples.

Meng Wanyue’s cheerful, joking voice replayed repeatedly in his mind, yet his mood felt like it had plunged into an icy abyss.

That was the voice of the deceased.

Last time in the past, Meng Wanyue died in a car accident.

Today, on the airport highway while driving to the airport to pick up her brother!

In the previous Timeline, Zhong Lei stayed safely in the recording studio arranging music today.

Meng Wanyue, who had worked nearly ten consecutive days of overtime with Zhong Lei, drove her BMW X3 to the airport to pick someone up.

Later, her vehicle spun out of control, plunged off the elevated airport highway, rapidly caught fire after landing, and driver Meng Wanyue died on the spot.

This incident was a huge blow to Zhong Lei, affecting her deeply.

Twenty years later, she produced an extremely sorrowful song to commemorate her only close friend.

From the day after Meng Wanyue’s death, she had begun brewing this song in her heart, taking twenty years to finally complete it.

The status of this song in Zhong Lei’s artistic career was even comparable to “Baptism of Fire.” In the following millennia, it was often used as funeral music for memorials.

When Chen Feng read about this in Zhong Lei’s new biography, he also felt sad and even seriously considered whether he should intervene and change this event after returning.

He made a ruthless decision at that time: not to intervene.

But he never expected that his recent change of plans, combined with the morning’s delays, would drag Zhong Lei into it.

If he had set off earlier, his arrival time in Zhonghai would have differed by at least several hours from Meng Wanyue’s brother’s, and Zhong Lei wouldn’t have caught a ride to the airport.

If he hadn’t come to Zhonghai today, choosing tomorrow or the day after instead, Zhong Lei naturally would have had no reason to ride in Meng Wanyue’s car.

If he hadn’t been worried about being too deliberate and arousing suspicion, choosing to copy the song by singing and playing the Guitar for her over the phone instead of doing it in person… this wouldn’t be happening.

But it had happened. There were no “ifs.”

People came and went in the airport hall. As Chen Feng weaved through the crowd, he even faintly detected a cold, malicious intent in the air.

Was this the backlash of Time and Space for his reckless changes to the future?

He didn’t even have time for regret, and regret was useless now.

Thirteen short seconds passed. He crossed nearly a hundred meters and rushed out of the airport terminal hall.

His phone was still on the dialing screen.

His heart burned with anxiety.

Please answer the phone!

Answer the phone!