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“Light has slowed down.”
Li Xingyuan was momentarily surprised that this woman had reached the same conclusion. He watched her expression—her lips moved, forming a simple phrase. From the shape of her mouth, it seemed to be “Damn.”
It took Li Xingyuan a few moments to realize that what he was seeing was Su Xiao’s expression from several seconds ago.
With light traveling much slower than sound, communication and movement became excruciatingly difficult.
Li Xingyuan raised his hand, relying on the delayed visual cues to slowly reach out and find Su Xiao’s arm. Her body stiffened briefly but didn’t resist. Guided solely by touch, he traced her forearm until he grasped her hand firmly.
“Our eyes can’t be trusted,” Li Xingyuan said. “Hold onto me. We’ll support each other as we move.”
Su Xiao didn’t respond verbally, but Li Xingyuan felt her gloved hand tighten around his arm. She hooked her arm through his, their proximity resembling dance partners locked in an intimate embrace.
But this was no pleasant intimacy. As they moved together, the scene before them grew even more distorted and surreal. Beyond the Doppler-effect-induced shifts in color, sudden bursts of blue light began flashing sporadically in the air—like stars rapidly born and extinguished within the confined space.
Su Xiao chuckled softly. “Cherenkov radiation,” she murmured.
From her tone, it seemed she might actually be enjoying the situation—not the physical closeness with Li Xingyuan, but the phenomenon itself.
Li Xingyuan had no idea what Cherenkov radiation was. Clearly, he was a humanities student; otherwise, he wouldn’t have become a journalist.
“You know what a sonic boom is, right?” Su Xiao seemed to sense his confusion or perhaps simply wanted to share her excitement. In a cheerful tone utterly at odds with her usual demeanor, she explained: “When a charged particle, like an electron, moves faster than the speed of light in a given medium, it emits Cherenkov radiation. Think of it as… a sonic boom for light.”
“Right now, the speed of light is incredibly low.” Su Xiao swung something, and Li Xingyuan heard the sharp whistle of displaced air. “Watch my hand.”
Li Xingyuan focused on the arm not gripping his forearm. He saw Su Xiao swing her arm forcefully. As it moved, her arm appeared elongated, warping the surrounding space into a long, thin thread-like shape. A trail of eerie blue light followed its arc, resembling a fluttering blue wing.
When her arm came to rest, it returned to its normal appearance.
What was that? Some kind of superhuman ability? Did she, like him, possess powers beyond the ordinary?
“Length contraction and time dilation,” Su Xiao remarked, sounding almost gleeful. “When an object approaches the speed of light, its length contracts in the direction of motion, and time slows down.”
Perhaps sensing Li Xingyuan’s bewilderment, she added succinctly: “Relativity.”
“Uh—I didn’t know agents in the military needed to study this stuff.”
“What agent?” Su Xiao asked curiously. “I’m a professor—at least, I used to be—at Jiangcheng University.”
“Jiangcheng University? Are you a colleague of Chen Yancheng?”
“Ah, Professor Chen Yancheng,” Su Xiao’s voice turned sharp and critical. “Colleague? I suppose so. More accurately, a research rival.”
A professor from Jiangcheng University dressed like this, breaking into an observatory with such casual disregard for propriety—Li Xingyuan wanted to ask why, but he suppressed his instinctive curiosity as a former journalist.
“Do you know where the observatory staff went?” Li Xingyuan asked instead.
“No idea. That’s why I’m here,” Su Xiao replied lightly. “They’ve been missing for several workdays now, so I decided to investigate.”
“Were you sent by the government?”
“No one sent me. Let’s call it… a personal interest.”
Weirdo.
That was Li Xingyuan’s silent assessment of her.
“Well then, let’s keep moving,” Su Xiao said eagerly, like a child conducting a science experiment. “Let’s see what fun surprises await us.”
Li Xingyuan didn’t object. He wasn’t about to back down from something strange like this.
As they pressed forward, the world around them twisted like flowing water, morphing into an abstract painting of swirling reds and blues—a surrealist masterpiece reminiscent of Dalí. Every object stretched unnaturally as they advanced, revealing minute details. Each step they took caused the chaotic canvas to twitch and flow, colors streaking past them in nauseating waves.
Only when they stopped moving for a while did the images stabilize, returning to the familiar, steady reality they knew.
As they supported each other while walking, they occasionally bumped into objects. But here, solid walls felt as soft as cotton. Collisions were gentle, almost soothing, as if the stationary objects repelled them with the faintest of pushes.
They exited the office area and navigated a corridor. The observatory was eerily silent. What lay ahead? Where had the scientists gone? Amidst the maelstrom of frenzied colors, maintaining sanity was a challenge. Li Xingyuan couldn’t help but wonder what had happened here. Why was only the light within the observatory distorted?
Was it a purely ‘natural’ phenomenon, like the gravitational anomaly they’d encountered before? Or had the light been somehow… obstructed?
Su Xiao’s body pressed against his, and Li Xingyuan could feel her earlier excitement waning. The bizarre, macroscopic effects of relativity were indeed wearing on her willpower. Whether it was his imagination or not, he felt that every action in this environment required far more effort than usual.
“We’ll take turns keeping our eyes open,” Li Xingyuan suggested. “I’ll guide you for ten seconds, then you guide me for ten.”
“Fine.”
Su Xiao’s response was brisk and decisive.
Closing his eyes and being dragged forward wasn’t exactly reassuring. Blindness bred fear, especially when guided by a stranger of the opposite sex whose steps occasionally faltered. Still, since Su Xiao hadn’t complained, Li Xingyuan saw no reason to either.
They approached the observatory’s main control room.
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