NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 17: Chapter 17
The first snow of 2048 came half a month earlier than in previous years. When Xiao Nuan's delivery truck slipped on the icy alley, the mark on her wrist suddenly became hot. The virtual sausage in the incubator was vibrating violently, and the heartbeat data flowing on the surface actually spelled out the coordinates of "1903 Laboratory" - the place that should have been demolished twenty years ago.
"The order address is 'Non-existent Snowy Night Convenience Store'?" Xiao Nuan stared at the screen of her mobile phone. The text in the address bar twisted in the snow light like sausage oil, and the sender showed "Li Xiaoming (17 years old)". Even more weird was that the delivery box automatically popped up his father's old work badge from twenty years ago, and the small sun sticky note on the back was now oozing with the real sausage aroma.
When the snow particles hit the glass of the convenience store, Xiao Nuan saw the seventeen-year-old Li Xiaoming squatting in the corner to repair the electric car. The incubator tied to the back seat leaked hot air, drawing a crooked metal stick pattern in the snow. "Your sausage is about to fall." She subconsciously reached out to catch the sausage that was about to fall. The temperature her fingertips touched was exactly the same as the burn on her father's palm in her memory.
The moment Li Xiaoming looked up, Xiao Nuan held her breath - those eyes did not have the vicissitudes of later years, but they hid the same glimmer of the first-generation system as on her wrist. What shocked her even more was that the sausage machine on the shelf of the convenience store was turning counterclockwise at this moment, and what was stuck between the gears was not a sausage stick, but a popsicle that was melting.
"Who are you?" Li Xiaoming clenched the broken piece of metal stick, and the scorch marks on the broken end flickered in the snowy night. "Why do your eyes look like the monitors in Kailan's laboratory?" As he spoke, the electronic clock of the convenience store suddenly reversed, and the sticky notes on the wall floated up, revealing the "Time Paradox Warning" written with sausage oil stains underneath.
Xiao Nuan then noticed that her delivery vehicle was disappearing, replaced by an old electric vehicle from 20 years ago. The small sun stand welded on the back seat was clearly the work of Brother Zhang before his death. The mark on her wrist suddenly split into two, one warm yellow and one ice blue, spelling out the startup interface of the first-generation controller in the air - in the center of the interface, it was a delivery log from her father's youth that she had never seen before.
"December 24, 2025, snowy night, 1378th delivery: I met a girl in a white coat, her silver bracelet and broken chain can reflect the future of sausage roasting machines." Xiao Nuan read out the content of the log, and the lights of the convenience store suddenly turned cold blue. Seventeen-year-old Kai Lan rushed into the store holding an incubator. The mark on her wrist was exactly the same as the ice blue part of her at the moment.
"They are restarting the time core of the first-generation system!" The woman in sunglasses suddenly jumped down from the ventilation duct, and the silver light of YSL03 flashed on her cuffs - it was a young version of SUSAN that had never appeared in historical records. She threw a sausage to Xiao Nuan, with tiny gear patterns engraved on the casing. "Use the sausage that your father didn't give out that year to break the paradox cycle." The snow was getting heavier, and the electronic clock of the convenience store stopped at 23:59. Xiao Nuan saw two seventeen-year-old figures approaching each other, and in the air between them, countless transparent "0"s and "1"s were floating, weaving into an ice wall. She suddenly remembered the "sausage paradox" her mother had said: when the warmth of the past and the future meet, a hole will be burned in the crack of time to restart the world. "Go!" Xiao Nuan threw the sausage to the seventeen-year-old Li Xiaoming. The moment the casing burst, the aroma of the sausage twenty years later mixed with the coldness of the snowy night, burning a small sun-shaped gap in the ice wall. Kai Lan's silver bracelet chain took the opportunity to entangle the ice wall. The welding point on the broken chain was exactly the "Eye of Eros·Inheritance Edition" that Brother Zhang later welded on her delivery car.
The time paradox began to collapse in the aroma of sausages. The shelves of the convenience store resumed normal rotation. The electronic clock skipped 0 o'clock, and the sky on the snowy night finally brightened. Xiao Nuan found herself back to the delivery truck in 2048. The sausage in her hand had a new line of words engraved on the casing: "To the future Xiao Nuan: Every sausage on a snowy night is a love letter from time to warmth."
The phone vibrated. A new order came from the "Human Fireworks Museum". The note read: "The paradox is eliminated, the time core of the first generation system has been reset, and all warm moments will continue to heat in parallel time and space." Xiao Nuan touched the back of her work badge, and her father's handwriting when he was young appeared at some point: "It turns out that we have met a long time ago, on every snowy night when warmth needs to be delivered."
The snow stopped, and the automatic sausage machine at the old convenience store was working for the elderly who were jogging in the morning. Xiao Nuan started the delivery truck, and the small solar lamp on the back seat swept across the snow, reflecting countless overlapping figures: seventeen-year-old Li Xiaoming, twenty-year-old Nuan Nuan, and a mysterious woman wearing sunglasses. She suddenly understood that the so-called time paradox was nothing more than a never-ending reunion prepared by the system for all warm moments.