Xiao Daidzhao

Growing up with eccentric materialistic parents who left him in the care of his grandfather for a job overseas, Zhang Heng had learned to adapt and be unfettered by the oddities and challenges in life. But he would soon learn the baffling truth about the world he thought he knew when one day at midnight time froze and he found himself in a world so quiet and still it was deafening. That night, he discovered that he had 24 hours more than everybody else and thus, marked the beginning of his adventures. The mysteries surrounding his newfound ability only deepened when a strange old man claimed to have given Zhang Heng that ‘gift of time’ and recruited the young man to participate in a cryptic ‘life-changing’ game on his behalf. Little did Zhang Heng know that accepting those terms meant embroiling himself in many versions of reality and exposing himself to the hidden secrets of the world—a decision he could never undo.

48 Hours a Day

Initially, Zhang Heng and Bai Qing thought that the radio emission would yield a trove of information. Little did they expect that the only thing they would get was a word. It looked like Lin Sisi had deleted all the other pointless parts, leaving only the part that represented the final answer.

"This is... cyanobacteria?" Bai Qing rummaged through the vocabulary in her head and found the right word for it.

"I know why the three children went to the river that night." Zhang Heng sighed, "They were collecting blue-green algae from the river."

Blue-Green Algae