Chapter 488 Not Yet Piled

"Huh?"

Fei Yisuo Si looked at Lin Xian incredulously:

"You... you're being too casual, aren't you?"

"No, no, no."

Lin Xian shook his head in denial:

"I must correct you. I was enlightened by the Lord. How could such a loving and merciful act not move people?

"In this broken age, the Lord and his followers care about the world and have compassion for all living beings, providing free breakfast for the dockworkers at the bottom of society and vagrants like us who have no home. If we don't believe in them, are we supposed to believe in those detestable capitalists?"

Lin Xian was quick-witted and eloquent, leaving her momentarily stunned.

She felt like...

This Dragon Country person in front of her was somewhat different from the loyal and simple Dragon Country people her grandmother had described.

But...

"Alright."

She nodded:

"The priest also said that God forgives the world, and anyone who returns from straying is our partner."

"That's what greatness is."

Lin Xian pressed his right hand to his chest, his eyes shining with piety, loyalty, and sincerity:

"Praise Jesus."

...

Actually, this wasn't the first time Lin Xian had come into contact with Christianity.

When he was in university in Donghai, he had encountered similar activities.

There were several churches in Donghai, as well as dedicated church organizations that often organized evangelism in the city, parks, or places where people gathered.

The activities were simple and adapted to local customs—

[Giving out eggs].

As long as you listened to the doctrine and left your contact information, you could receive eggs. If you were "enlightened" on the spot, you might get a few more.

This caused the old men and women to believe in Jesus one after another, praising the Christian doctrine and the Lord's mercy! Some even fought to show their devotion, making for a spectacular scene with a success rate of nearly 100%.

However...

Once the eggs were gone, so was the faith.

The old men and women's pious experience card only lasted until the eggs were given out. If there was a promise to give out eggs again tomorrow, they would recite the Bible tonight as well; if they didn't come tomorrow, then goodbye Jesus, sunny-side up it is.

That's how the people of Dragon Country are. They never believe in useless gods. They believe in whoever is effective, and quickly switch to the next if they're not. This land doesn't support idle gods.

Lin Xian was naturally this kind of self-adaptive believer.

When he saw these evangelistic activities, he thought that if they gave out snacks and milk tea, he might be willing to recite a few verses from the Bible.

Pragmatism is the belief in the Dragon Country people's bones. If it's not necessary, don't add substance.

"I wonder... if my Lord and the priest can help me with my shoe problem."

Lin Xian looked down at his dark feet and joked:

"Look, I'm a poor man without shoes, wearing short sleeves in the middle of winter, hungry and cold. If the Lord and the priest can solve these two problems for me... I'll definitely sing the loudest during worship later."

"Cotton clothes are no problem."

She said casually, without thinking much of it:

"The church at the pier has cotton clothes for poor believers, donated by a kind merchant. The purpose is to keep the homeless and beggars warm in the winter and prevent them from freezing to death."

...

"No way."

At that moment, Lin Xian truly felt the light of Jesus:

"They really provide winter cotton clothes!"

He was just joking, but he didn't expect it to be true:

"What about shoes? Do they have shoes?"

She rolled her eyes at him:

"Do you really think the church is a shopping mall? Of course there are no shoes. The church and the priest don't provide those things."

"However... if other believers know you're in trouble, they might lend a helping hand, but who knows?"

Lin Xian nodded:

"So, this is the moment to test my acting skills... no, my devout faith."

"..."

She was speechless.

She finally understood.

This man was simply there to freeload food, drinks, and clothes. Although he shouted "Praise Jesus" with every breath, he had no piety in his heart:

"Forget it, do whatever you want, just don't cause me any trouble. And don't act like you know me when you get to the church. I don't want you dragging me down with you."

"By the way, what's your name? What should I call you?"

"Lin Xian," Lin Xian replied.

"Link?"

"No, it's lin-xian."

Lin Xian spelled it out:

"It's a Chinese name. Just call me whatever, it doesn't matter if the pronunciation is perfect. I'll know you're calling me."

"The sooner the better, let's head to the pier now. I can't wait to worship."

She snorted softly:

"I think you can't wait to eat, right?"

...

The slanting sunlight shone into low-rise Brooklyn, casting a layer of warmth and laziness over the city.

Lin Xian was barefoot.

Following behind.

The two of them walked along the winding path together in the morning sun, heading towards the pier.

Lin Xian followed behind, chatting about one thing and another.

He was still thinking about the laws of space-time, space-time rejection, and the matter of piling the Millennium Stake.

He couldn't figure out what the problem was.

And what worried him even more was...

Because he didn't know when he would turn into blue stardust and disappear, he was nervous all the time.

The Millennium Stake did disappear every 24 years, and the time of disappearance was fixed at 00:42 on the 20th birthday.

But the key was... that every Millennium Stake girl had a different birth date.

Chu Anqing's birthday was March 28th;

Zhang Yuqian's birthday was January 15th;

The birthday of the one 600 years later was August 29th;

And the one in front of him now... could only be roughly estimated to be in November, but the exact day was impossible to know.

Tough.

"Huh?"

Suddenly, Lin Xian thought of something very important!

Millennium Stakes all had similar, strange dreams.

In Zhang Yuqian's dream, she dreamed of mushroom clouds, newspapers, Einstein, and other montage scenes. Chu Anqing dreamed of fireworks, and the future dreamed of a blue-eyed version of himself. Could it be... that the one in front of him could also have some useful information extracted from her dreams?

That's right!

This was a crucial clue!

Even if he could hear one or two more keywords, it could provide some ideas and directions for his trip to Brooklyn.

"."

Lin Xian looked at the bouncy ponytail in front of him and asked:

"Do you usually dream?"

"Of course."

She turned a corner ahead and said softly:

"Who doesn't dream? Why do you keep asking such nonsense questions?"

"Hmm?"

Lin Xian was a little puzzled.

What was going on again?

The other Millennium Stake girls all said they didn't remember the content of their dreams and would forget them one or two seconds after waking up. How could she talk about dreaming so calmly:

"When you wake up, can you remember the content of your dreams?"

"Usually, I can, I guess."

She turned her head:

"But who would deliberately memorize such a thing? Every day's dreams are different. Some are memorable, some are remembered when you wake up, and all are forgotten after a day or two."

???

Lin Xian frowned.

Something was wrong...

It was increasing again and again.

Based on the research on the other three Millennium Stake girls, Lin Xian and Zhao Yingjun had previously summarized the rules of their dreaming:

1. The content of the dreams every day is the same, all belonging to sporadic fragments of a certain time and a certain story.

2. They forget everything one or two seconds after waking up, forget everything completely, and can't remember anything, no matter how hard they try to recall.

3. Only by suddenly shaking the Millennium Stake girl awake from her sleep can some words and phrases be extracted from her mouth while she is still in a daze.

These rules are absolute, and every Millennium Stake girl should be exactly the same.

But.

The one in front of him was clearly a Millennium Stake, but why was she so special?

Not only could she remember the content of her dreams like a normal person, but the content of her dreams also didn't repeat every day. Like a normal person, she thought about things during the day and dreamed about them at night.

This was too strange...

She didn't seem like a Millennium Stake at all, but more like a normal, ordinary girl!

"What's going on?"

Lin Xian muttered softly.

He felt very strange.

This 1952 was full of strangeness everywhere:

"What's wrong with this era?"

"[The traverser doesn't seem like a traverser, and the Millennium Stake doesn't seem like a Millennium Stake.]"

This summary was very incisive.

As a space-time traverser, he didn't have any traverser characteristics; as a Millennium Stake, he didn't have any Millennium Stake characteristics either.

He really didn't know what the reason for this was.

"Huh? What are you mumbling about?"

The one in front turned her head:

"You really like to talk to yourself, can't you control yourself?"

Lin Xian regained his thoughts.

He looked up:

"Can you roughly describe to me what you dreamed about last night?"

"I remember yesterday very clearly."

She slowed down and walked on Lin Xian's left, side by side with him:

"Because... I dreamed about my grandma again, the one who adopted me at the welfare home. I missed her very much. I talked to her a lot and hugged her."

"What about the day before yesterday's dream?" Lin Xian continued to ask.

"Um..."

She poked her chin with her index finger:

"The day before yesterday... I should have dreamed of delicious food, Coney Island hot dogs, which I often see in advertisements on the street. I dreamed that I was eating a hot dog. Alas... what a pity..."

She smiled helplessly:

"I've never eaten a hot dog, and I don't know what Coney Island hot dogs taste like, so I couldn't taste anything in my dream, and I couldn't feel any texture."

...

Hehe.

Lin Xian was amused.

Indeed.

Gao Yang had said to himself when analyzing dreams for the first time that people's dreams cannot dream of things beyond their own knowledge.

Just like she had never eaten a Coney Island hot dog, then of course she couldn't taste it in her dream. Even if she tried to associate it, she could only associate it with similar foods she had eaten before.

But unfortunately...

In the nearly 20 years of her life, perhaps she hadn't even eaten food "similar to hot dogs." It's like asking a girl who has never seen or heard of ice cream to dream of ice cream. She can't do it no matter what.

"What about the day before yesterday?" Lin Xian asked again.

"I don't remember that."

She shook her head and said impatiently:

"Hey, can you stop asking these boring questions? Is there any point?"

Lin Xian smiled and stopped asking.

Actually, he had asked enough.

It was not difficult to judge from her answers that she would not dream like Zhang Yuqian, Chu Anqing, or the future.

This couldn't help but make Lin Xian wonder...

Was the one in front of him really a Millennium Stake?

He pondered again.

At least from the future's point of view, she was definitely a Millennium Stake.

After all, the space-time rift was an objective fact.

If there were a large number of space-time rifts, then there would inevitably be Millennium Stakes piling; if there were Millennium Stakes piling, then there would definitely be Millennium Stake girls; and the one in front of him looked exactly like Chu Anqing and Zhang Yuqian, without any difference. How could she not be the Millennium Stake herself?

With this reasoning, the contradiction came out again.

She was clearly a Millennium Stake, but she didn't have the characteristics of a Millennium Stake. What was the reason?

After thinking about it.

Lin Xian narrowed his eyes.

Perhaps.

There was only one possible answer—

[The one now is just an ordinary girl! She hasn't officially become a Millennium Stake yet!]

Hiss...

This unimaginable guess made Lin Xian take a breath of cold air.

A very bold idea.

Hard to believe.

But what if the facts were really like this?

Originally, there were no accurate standards for judging a Millennium Stake girl except for her appearance. The only means was to distinguish them through the commonality of their dreams.

But now.

She wouldn't dream like the other Millennium Stakes, so theoretically, she shouldn't turn into blue stardust and disappear on her 20th birthday.

Unless...

Something happened during this period that turned her from an ordinary girl who should have grown up normally into a Millennium Stake with a ruthless fate, thus starting a piling mission that would last for hundreds of years.

"Then."

"[What kind of opportunity made her become a Millennium Stake?]"

Lin Xian couldn't figure it out for the time being.

He had thought that the fate of the Millennium Stake, even the fate of the first-generation Millennium Stake, was already doomed the moment she was born.

But now it seemed that the formation of the Millennium Stake was not so-called fate, but [man-made], [acquired behavior].

"It seems like I came to the right place in 1952 this time."

Lin Xian clenched his fists, feeling that he had already grabbed that illusory black hand...

It seemed.

As long as he kept a close eye on her in the days to come, he would be able to witness the fact that she became a Millennium Stake, understand the truth, and find out the mastermind behind it.

...

The one who tied the bell must untie it.

If he could really find the reason why she became a Millennium Stake and the culprit... maybe, when he returned to 2234, he could go against the trend and save Chu Anqing!

"Humph."

Lin Xian snorted coldly:

"I want to see which bastard is creating Millennium Stakes and for what purpose he is piling... Maybe, if I act fast, I can kill him in 1952 and end his Millennium Stake plan in advance."

Suddenly, Lin Xian's eyes widened.

He touched the back of his head.

No...

He realized that he couldn't do this.

The "kite string" connecting the future time and space in 2234 was still clearly felt on the back of his head, which meant that the world line had not jumped, and his connection with the future was still there, and he could return at any time.

And once he rewrote history in 1952 and broke through the elasticity of time and space... the world line would probably jump to other frequencies.

This would inevitably cause his "kite string" to break, turning him into a ghost of the times, unable to return to his original time and space forever.

He recalled his promise to Liu Feng:

"Don't worry, when I get to 1952, I will definitely be a law-abiding citizen, and I will never kill anyone, nor will I reveal any information to key figures in history."

"I'll just honestly play the role of an observer, an NPC, a camera. My main purpose is to obtain information and intelligence, and then use this information... to complete the breakthrough in our current era."

Alas.

Lin Xian sighed.

This was probably the helplessness of a space-time traveler.

However, don't say it so definitively yet.

Take it one step at a time.

From the current situation, almost all known laws of space-time have failed. Can the laws and judgments related to the world line still guarantee stable operation?

There were too many unknown situations, so he could only act according to the circumstances.

Anyway, for now.

Just stay by her side all the time.

Since she was not a Millennium Stake yet, then according to the established historical trajectory, she would definitely become a Millennium Stake because of a certain [opportunity].

And what he could do now.

Was to wait for this opportunity to appear.

"Lin Xian, we're here."

The one in front stopped suddenly.

She pointed to the green belt on the right.

Lin Xian turned his head and looked along her arm...

At the end of the two rows of holly bushes stood a simple, classic Christian church.

The church was not very large, but it would not be a problem to accommodate hundreds of people for worship at the same time.

He raised his head and looked at the cross on the top of the church.

Perhaps the different architectural styles of the churches also had their own characteristics. The top decoration of this church was very different from the churches he had seen in Donghai City.

However, he really didn't understand Christian doctrines. He was just here to freeload a meal, so he didn't care so much.

He withdrew his gaze.

Lin Xian looked to the left and the pier below.

The church was located on a relatively high terrain, and it took dozens of meters of long steps to get down to the pier below.

It was early morning.

The workers at the pier had already started to work, and the tourists were coming and going, boarding and disembarking, very lively.

Compared with the ragged dockworkers, the people who came down from the merchant ships and cruise ships were particularly glamorous.

...

Most of the men were wearing neat and decent black long shirts, with black nylon hats and long scarves, which Lin Xian found very much in the style of black and white movies.

In contrast, the clothes of the modern women in the 1950s were unusually colorful.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, there were all kinds of colors, but they were all extremely bright, even a little too bright.

This was the characteristic of the era.

In the era in which Lin Xian lived, if any woman dared to wear such large yellow and green clothes, she would definitely be classified as "rustic", but in the United States in the 1950s, this was "foreign".

"Don't look, Lin Xian, let's hurry to the church."

She grabbed Lin Xian's arm and walked to the right:

"Worship is about to begin, and it is not allowed to be late for worship."

The two walked on the brick-paved road, heading towards the church at the end of the road.

The small stones on the ground were piercing Lin Xian's feet.

He hoped...

That he could receive the Lord's blessing later.

Walking to the end of the holly bushes, Lin Xian saw large pots and tents already set up outside the church. Thick corn soup was stewing in the pots, and next to it were loaves of bread that looked very hard and thick.

"Is it limited?"

Lin Xian was indeed feeling a little dizzy from hunger.

"One serving per person," she replied.

"That's a little too little..."

Lin Xian looked at the size of those loaves of bread:

"It shouldn't be enough for these workers who do heavy work, right?"

She nodded:

"But this way... more people can avoid going hungry. After all, the funds donated by the church members are also limited, and they definitely hope to help as many people as possible."

She looked Lin Xian up and down.

He was very tall and strong, and such a big physique would indeed not be full.

"Don't worry."

She looked at Lin Xian:

"I'll give you half of my bread later."

"That's too embarrassing. Forget it, I'll just fill my stomach a little. I can think of other ways later..."

"It's okay."

She interrupted Lin Xian and shook her head:

"I can't eat that much, and you look like you've been hungry for a long time. You can eat more."

"I just hope you behave normally later, don't embarrass yourself, and don't cause me any trouble. You... how should I put it, you look nothing like a Christian, but more like an Indian thief."

"Why do you emphasize Indian?"

Lin Xian looked at her:

"You should be grateful that you live in this era. If it were a few decades later in the United States, you would have been arrested by the police for saying this."

"I'm telling the truth."

She tugged at the sleeve of Lin Xian's short shirt:

"Because you're wearing animal skin clothes... I thought I saw it wrong before, but when I touched it just now, my goodness, the clothes you're wearing are really made of animal skin. It's hard to imagine how much suffering you've endured before, not even having a decent piece of clothing."

Lin Xian didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

The value of this otter suit, regardless of the era, could be regarded as a luxury item, but he didn't expect to be disliked in this era:

"Do I really look so down on my luck, so pathetic?"

She nodded:

"Very down on your luck, very pathetic, wearing animal skin clothes, wearing so thin in such cold weather, and without shoes... Even in the Brooklyn slums, you can't find anyone more miserable than you."

"That's good."

Lin Xian smiled slightly, looked up at the Jehovah statue carved on the church wall, and the pattern of the Virgin Mary:

"Thanks to you, I've already thought about how to get the Lord's blessing for free later."

"You, what are you going to do?" She frowned and became alert.

"Hehe, just wait and see."

Lin Xian walked around her and put his hands on the double wooden doors.

Squeak—

Sunlight and Lin Xian entered the sacred church together...

(End of this chapter)