"Do you know the meaning of life? Do you really want to... live?"

Le Yu interlaced his fingers and set them on the stone table, crossing his legs, leaning back against the stone chair, and said, "Have you ever heard this sentence before?"

Qian Yuya shook her head, "No."

"That means you're not a potential member of our organization," Le Yu said, putting on an air of regret, "The only threshold for our organization is whether you can hear this distant whisper from the River of Time."

Of course, if Qian Yuya had nodded and said she'd heard it before, Le Yu would have followed up with 'Odd flips, even stays' to confirm kinship... But such an absurd and bizarre rejection clearly wouldn't satisfy Qian Yuya, so she just stared quietly at Le Yu, waiting for a reasonable explanation.

Le Yu carelessly took out a bottle of red juice from his pocket, using the moment of sipping this energy drink to hurriedly sort out more details—just a few days ago, his gofer little brother dropped off a huge box of the red stuff, saying it was a gift from the Shi Family. Shi Huaifeng knew he loved this, plus Qin Leyi was his direct boss, so of course he had to curry favor in the right direction.

Word had it this was top-shelf Blood, aged over a year. Shi Huaifeng was holding onto it for when Qin Leyi hit Yanjing, started craving, and couldn't find a fix, then he'd use this batch of red juice to properly 'train'—wait, no, to properly honor—Hongle's right-hand man.

Who knew Qin Leyi had actually quit the stuff, but since this was a signature drink of the Bloodline group, all he could do was give it away to the Qin Family. Le Yu hadn't even wanted it, but after fighting in Wanxiang Forest, he'd realized the perk of having Blood Bottles on hand, and besides, he needed some props to scare Ming Shuiyun, his current handler, so he grudgingly accepted this batch of red juice.

He had to admit, after drinking a few bottles, the taste was sour-sweet, waking up the mind, giving you energy all over, making it a breeze to climb five flights of stairs. There was a subtle hint it might overtake iced honey Five-Flower Tea as Le Yu's drink of choice, which just proved that "love really does fade."

After a couple more gulps of red juice, Le Yu had already made up all the details.

"If we're being honest, this story was hard to cook up, since he had to explain why Qin Leyi killed Zhengwei, why Yin Yinyin killed Qian Yuliu, and how these four totally unrelated people could possibly belong to the same organization."

"Plus, even though Qian Yuya dreamed of being a gofer, she wasn't dumb. If Le Yu's story didn't hold water, on the surface she'd say 'Uh-huh, you're so right, I'm a patriot 1000% now,' but on the sly she'd secretly accept Le Yu as her boss."

"Le Yu didn't like lying, but if he had to lie, he wished that lie would last ten thousand years."

So Le Yu spoke in a calm tone, "I've told you the threshold of our organization, and its purpose. Is there anything you still don't get?"

"I don't get anything," Qian Yuya said, "Your stated purpose means you're not satisfied with the current social order. So are you also with the Backlight Organization? Yin Yinyin, Qian Yuliu, even Zhengwei have all worked with White Night. Does that mean your group is just a small cell hiding within White Night? And by your logic, if just hearing that sentence means you qualify to join, now that I've heard you say it, doesn't that mean I can join too?"

Damn, she instantly poked a hole in his logic, this cold-blooded little sis with crystal-clear thinking. Without missing a beat, Le Yu replied, "Of course not—this sentence is just a key, a way to unlock the locks deep in our souls. Although you got the key from me, you still haven't opened the lock, so you can't join us just yet."

"Honestly, I don't even know where to start when introducing our organization..." Le Yu thought for a moment, then suddenly asked, "Have you ever read 'Future Echoes' in the Dongyang Youth Daily?"

"I have," Qian Yuya said, "The main character, Liu Yu, always felt to me like a portrait of my brother."

"Your feeling is absolutely right, because that novel was written by Zhengwei. He used Qian Yuliu as his template for the story," Le Yu tapped the stone table and said, "In a way, actually, the story Zhengwei wrote... isn't fake."

Qian Yuya was slightly stunned.

"You mean..." she frowned a little at Le Yu, her eyes full of 'do you think I'm a little kid' suspicion, and asked, "Are you saying my brother really traveled a hundred years into the future?"

"No, no, no, the dead don't come back to life, that part is definitely bullshit," Le Yu waved his hand, "But the future—that's real."

"Zhengwei knows what happens a hundred years from now. Qian Yuliu does. Yin Yinyin does."

"And so do I."

Before Qian Yuya had time to digest or even raise questions, Le Yu continued, "Do you know what an 'Echo' is? When sound hits an unbreakable mountain, unable to move forward, it turns and walks the other way..."

"Zhengwei's story is fascinating, because 'future' is the purpose of our organization, and 'echo' is our threshold. So here's the thing, Qian Yuya—do you get it now?"

"Qian Yuya's mind was completely scrambled by this whole spin. After a moment's silence, she nodded, then shook her head, "I get it... kind of."

"No rush, I'll break it down for you," Le Yu showed a kindly smile.

"When you heard me say, 'Our organization's purpose is to create a society free of classes, a society with massively increased productivity, and a world of immense material and spiritual wealth,' didn't it sound like some hopeless pipe dream? But for us, it's reality—just a reality that happens to take more than a hundred years to come true."

"Do you know how you can reverse time and go back to the past?" Le Yu said lazily, "You'd have to surpass the speed of light—and as it happens, 'Radiant' people are absolute pros at playing with light."

"Over a hundred years from now, people invented a time-reversing machine called 'Echo.' 'Echo' can't send people physically back in time, but it can take information and send it upstream, and anyone strong enough to resonate with the 'Echo' in the River of Time can pull out the messages they need—even linking up with others to form alliances."

"The trigger phrase for 'Echo' is exactly that sentence I just told you: 'Do you know the meaning of life.'"

"But time is the most exquisite system in the world, the most precise rule of nature. Anybody who tries to play with time will find time playing back."

Le Yu suddenly asked, "Qian Yuya, let me ask you a question—if someone traveled back in time and killed his own grandmother, would he still be born?"

Qian Yuya didn't even have to think: "If the grandmother dies, then he's never born; if he's not born, she never dies—that's a paradox."

"'Radiant' has its own share of time-travel novels, only traveling to the future is much rarer. So even though Le Yu's writing wasn't great and his stories were full of private jokes, he was the only author in all Radiant doing future fiction, and readers had no choice but to pinch their noses and push through."

"Eventually, after Le Yu bailed on his story, readers in Dongyang who'd waited so long they'd nearly grown roots finally couldn't take it and started writing sequels themselves—'Future Echoes: The Return of War God,' 'Future Echoes: The Greatest World Tournament,' and so on—a real mess left behind."

"On the flip side, stories about traveling to the past were everywhere, so fun topics like the Grandmother Paradox had long been picked over at the Imperial Academy, which was why Qian Yuya quickly caught on to Le Yu's line of thought and asked, "

"If what you're saying is true—if people in the past could use 'Echo' to learn about the future and then change it, what happens to 'Echo' then? Even if it still exists—would it be the same as the one before?"

"You nailed it, 'Echo' can also create time paradoxes," Le Yu nodded, "So this is where I have to bring in a second time theory: the Observer Effect."

"If you put a cat into a sealed box full of poison gas, before you open it, you don't know if the cat is dead or alive. In other words: the moment you look, you decide whether the cat lives or dies."

"You might think that's nonsense, because whether or not someone observes, the dead will die, the living will live. But that's only if the observer is limited."

"What if you treat time itself as the observer, with every second, every moment, every snap of the fingers as a separate observer? All those moments together make up the River of Time, and its observation is enough to determine the cat's fate."

"The so-called time paradox is just the cat, who should be hidden in a sealed box, suddenly poking her head out to peek at the River of Time, then darting back inside."

"The River of Time can't directly do anything to a cat hidden in a box, but it does know when it will see the cat die. Then—what do you think happens?"

Qian Yuya just stared at Le Yu, thinking hard for a good long while, then finally shook her head, "I don't know."

"You do," Le Yu said, spreading his hands wide, "When the River of Time decides a cat is dead, she's got to die. Life and death is the biggest paradox of all."

"When the cat glimpses the River of Time, that also means the cat sees her own death date."

"That's all 'Echo' really is—we know all the turning points in our stories, but we also know exactly how it ends. So the only thing left for us to do is, before we die, do everything 'Echo' has tasked us with."

"Qian Yuliu really was killed by Yin Yinyin."

"Zhengwei really did die by my hand."

"Because that's just how they were always meant to die."

At that, Le Yu finally got to the heart of the matter.

"He'd talked about the future, time machines, and even made up an 'Echo' system—really just to explain why Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3, Unit 4 all wound up in mutual destruction. Yes, it was us who acted, but even if we hadn't, they would've quit the game on their own!"

"Everyone dies eventually. Some people just need a tiny little push."

After a moment's silence, Qian Yuya asked, "What would have happened if you didn't kill them?"

"You still don't get it. We didn't kill them—they were simply meant to die."

Le Yu said, "The River of Time can't just zap someone's heart, stop their breath, make their head explode. But if it wants someone dead, it'll always find a way."

"Yin Yinyin had his own reason to kill Qian Yuliu, and I had my reason to kill Zhengwei. But Yin Yinyin wasn't dead set on killing Qian Yuliu—he even arranged two train tickets for her, but she didn't leave with you; I was just strolling around, taking in the sights, how was I supposed to know I'd bump into Zhengwei on the run."

"Everything just happened to line up, everything was..."

"Heaven's will can't be denied."