I firmly believe that Ding Jian will become a nightmare for my future world, his coming and going, his maverick behavior, his superpowers that can always appear in time at all kinds of critical moments, and the countless contradictions that appear in him: the contradictions of cause and effect, the contradictions of logic, and even the contradictions of world views, which will haunt my memory for a long time.

But this nightmare is not frightening, Ding Jian is not a person who has a little melancholy temperament, and his personality is gentle and stable, not as paranoid and crazy as most artists, on the contrary, he is more like a thinker. But in terms of art, Ding Jian's personal style is too strong and aggressive, and his paintings are definitely the kind that are unforgettable, but the themes of darkness and despair will make all viewers depressed for a long time. Perhaps this is also one of the multiple contradictions in him.

Ding Jian saw my suspicious look, smiled at me, but turned around and walked carefully to the other side of the dinghy, I found that on the other side, Cao was lying on the ridgeline, one arm was propped up, and the palm of the hand was supporting the head, looking leisurely, but the head wrapped in a lot of white cloth betrayed him. It seems that after the Cao team fell into the water, they were hit by the current and hit their heads on the hull of the boat. Looking at the red blood stains oozing out of the white cloth, his posture could only mean that his head was still dizzy.

Next to Team Cao, Xiao Lei was sitting cross-legged, his shirt was only half torn, he was biting a white cloth with his teeth, bending his right elbow, and using his left hand to make a simple triangular fixation on it, which should be a fractured arm bone in his right hand.

Ding Jian took two steps to the other side of me, and Huan Sheng, like me, was lying on his stomach like a dead fish, seeing that he was taking less air in and more out of air. Looking at the tragic situation of several people, it seems that only I am still in good condition, so it is obvious that several of us were rescued by Ding Jian. Ding Jian crouched next to Huansheng and patted him lightly on the back as he began to answer my questions.

"Uncle Chang, your speedboat capsized, and I happened to be nearby, so I swam over to help, how many people were sitting on the boat? I only found the four of you. Ding Jian turned his head, his eyes were calm without a trace of waves, where was the appearance of having just experienced a moment of death and life?

"Thanks to you, none of them have been left behind, all of them are here, it's just Ding Jian, why are you near us? Are you also soaked in the sea? Also, don't toss your uncle Huansheng, as soon as he gets on the boat, he will become like this, seasickness, it's not that the sea water is too much, you just let him lie on his stomach." "I tried to sit up on the bottom of the speedboat.

Ding Jian scratched his head, let go of Huansheng, and pulled his arms up again, so that he could lie completely flat on the bottom of the boat. Then he simply sat down beside me and slowly opened his mouth.

"Uncle Chang, you know, I have a bit of a problem with my brain, often one second is normal, and the next second is short-circuited. Yesterday, you were discussing work on the research ship, and I went up to the top deck, and for some reason, I fainted when I looked at the purple mist in the distance. ”

"When I woke up, I was in Officer Lei's cabin, his hat and clothes were all there, but no one was there, but soon the power went out on board, and there was no light at all, so I had to grope my way along the passage in the bilge. ”

"I didn't meet anyone along the way, but in the passage overhead, the sound of someone running, I went up to the first floor, maybe I was walking too slowly without lighting, and the upper floor was empty. But this journey in the dark was very long, as if there was no end to it, and I wondered if I was on a research ship at all. ”

"Later, in the staircase passage, I heard someone above saying that if you want to call out the people in the central laboratory, you must wear life jackets and find a safe place to hide, and the research ship is about to rush into a huge wave. ”

Listening to Ding Jian's narration, I couldn't help but have more doubts. Not to mention that he came out of the cabin after waking up, he should not have left the bilge, and we searched almost all the up and down of the bilge, how could we not find him? Even in terms of time, it seems that it is not right.

In my concept of time, from the discovery of Ding Jian's disappearance to the departure of the research ship, it was at least an hour or so, could it be that Ding Jian didn't go out of the bilge for an hour? There was no fork in the road there, a straight passage of more than 30 meters, even if there were three floors up and down, there was no reason to get lost in it.

"When I got up to the deck of the research ship, it was empty, and I thought everyone should go to the cockpit at the bow of the ship and go that way. Just walked a few steps, the scientific research ship suddenly shook violently, I saw the ship's side railing hanging life jackets, so I reached out to reach, but at this moment, a big wave hit, the scientific research ship just tilted to the right, I stood unsteadily, and fell into the sea. ”

"Fortunately, I pulled the life jacket off before I fell into the water, otherwise I wouldn't have lasted long in the sea. Soon after I fell overboard, the power of the research ship was restored, the engines began to turn, the bow of the research ship adjusted its direction and drove away. ”

"How is the research ship? Did you break out of the wall of waves?" I hurriedly asked.

Ding Jian nodded slowly, but his eyes were still staring at the empty sea, with a pensive look, as if something was about to appear there.

"I guess I rushed out. After I fell into the sea, the research ship had already regained power, and soon the distance between us widened, and it was not very real, and the waves were so big that I couldn't care about it. The lights on the research ship disappeared for a while, and after a few minutes, they reappeared at the top of the wave wall, and eighty percent rushed over. ”

"Ding Jian, how did you get out of the whirlpool? didn't get swallowed up by the wall of waves?, how long did you wait to save us?" The Cao team on the side still maintained the posture of a reclining Buddha and asked.

Ding Jian wiped the sea water on his face, "Team Cao, when the big waves came, in fact, my mind was blank, I just felt that there were columns of water everywhere around, and in an instant I had sunk into the depths of the seabed, maybe it was my instinctive reaction, desperately swimming upstream, but there was a force that pulled me to the bottom of the sea." Maybe it was my luck, I was swept into a huge column of water, which was not going to the center of the whirlpool, but going up in circles, I just felt that the speed of the water was very fast, and my body was about to be torn apart, and then I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was already floating on the surface. “

"Uncle Chang, Team Cao, I can't say why, anyway, in this sea, I have a strange feeling, time is constantly changing, sometimes slow, sometimes urgent, but this is by no means my illusion, it is real. So, I don't know the exact time, but at least it's more than half an hour. ”

"At that time, I was actually exhausted, but fortunately, when the day dawned and the dark clouds dispersed, I was floating on the sea, and your boat came out of the sea and made a loud noise, but it was upside down, and it was about a few hundred meters away from me. ”

"I tried to swim over to find that it was you, floating around the dinghy, and I dragged you all to the boat, but fortunately you were all wearing life jackets, and there was nothing wrong with everything except a belly of seawater. ”

I carefully looked Ding Jian up and down again, his eyes were somewhat hollow, but they didn't wander, not like he was lying at all.

But the more this is the case, the more I feel that the whole thing is bizarre and incredible, I don't believe that Ding Jian can escape and ascend to heaven under the wave wall of tens of meters, in a huge whirlpool with only a life jacket. I don't believe that there could be such a coincidence, our dinghy surfaced just not far from Ding Jian's landing.

There must be a strange internal logic in this.

For example, in certain circumstances, Ding Jian's time is different from ours, like the inside and outside of the Xuanmen, which causes us to not meet in one place.

For another example, if Ding Jian's time is not linear, but jumping, then his memory will definitely be interrupted, and his experience will become less coherent.

Also, what if Ding Jian could travel through a slice of time? His experience itself is fragmented, what is in the blank space in between?

The most important thing is that in the last scene on the East Star, Ding Jian fled back to the wooden boat along the soft ladder, and those white shadows in his eyes must be a few of us, but is it the moment when we returned to a few months ago, or was that scene interspersed with our current time and space?

If we had boarded the Eastern Star a few months ago, have we changed anything?

Thinking about the uncertainty of time is always a headache, it changes the standard of your understanding of things, and makes everything chaotic and unfamiliar.

"Xiao Ding, are you sure you didn't board the Dongxing that came out of the purple mist just now?" Team Cao half sat up, stared at Ding Jian, and asked very solemnly.

"No, I'm sure, just ......"

"Just what?"

"It's just that I'm not surprised at all by your presence, as if I've experienced it before, and I've just done it again. “

The sun climbed higher and higher, it should be almost noon, the light sparkled people's eyes, the chill on their bodies disappeared, but a sense of exhaustion diffused from every pore of the body. There is a lack of food, a lack of fresh water, everyone is injured, and if there is no timely rescue, it is estimated that the sun will not rise again. But looking at Ding Jian's calm and complacent expression, he didn't take this predicament into his eyes at all, and kept staring silently at the sea in the distance, could it be said that he had predicted our upcoming fate?

(Long is not long in conspiracy, Ann is not content with forbearance, first not before cultivation, happiness is not happy to be good, God is not God in sincerity, Ming is not clear in physical things, auspicious is not auspicious in contentment, suffering is not bitter in wishing, sorrow is not sad in essence, illness is not sick in impermanence, short is not short in Gou, secluded is not secluded in greed, loneliness is not lonely in self-reliance, danger is not in danger, defeat is not defeated in selfishness.) --"Plain Book")