Lin Wanwan had originally thought that once she found the date of the next blood moon, she could call it a night on her research for now.
She had already created the Blood Moon Transmigration Hypothesis, organized the personal and external conditions, drawn a flowchart, and even made a thirty-day countdown starting from today. Under normal circumstances, that would have been enough. She should shut down her computer, take a shower, and go to bed, then continue planning what exactly she needed to learn over the next month after waking up tomorrow.
However, less than two minutes after staring at the blood moon cases on her screen, Lin Wanwan noticed a new problem.
Among transmigration stories involving unusual celestial phenomena, there were actually very few cases in which a single condition alone completed the transmigration.
In Novel Twenty-Three, the female lead was in a car accident just as a lunar eclipse appeared in the sky. In Novel Thirty-Seven, the female lead lost consciousness at the peak of a meteor shower. In Novel Forty-One, thunder boomed outside the window at the same moment the female lead touched an ancient mirror. In Novel Seventy-Four, the female lead leaped from a high-rise building after seeing a red moon.
In other words, the celestial phenomena in these stories had never caused transmigration on their own. A lunar eclipse came with a car accident, a meteor shower with a loss of consciousness, a thunderstorm with an ancient mirror, and the blood moon with death.
As for Novel Fifty-Eight, although the female lead vanished out of thin air while inside her room, the novel never fully explained what she had done before disappearing. For now, that case could only be listed as insufficient data. She couldn't conclude that a blood moon could send someone to another world by itself just because the author had left out a few paragraphs.
Lin Wanwan rearranged the five cases and added a new column beside them: “Other factors appearing simultaneously.” She filled it in with car accident, loss of consciousness, ancient mirror, fall from a building, and unknown, in that order.
Not a single piece of data was enough to prove that merely standing beneath a blood moon and looking up would automatically send someone to another world.
She stared at the data, her brow gradually furrowing.
If the blood moon really was a time window for transmigration, then simply standing beneath it might very well do nothing. Perhaps the blood moon could only temporarily loosen the boundaries of an otherwise sealed-off world, while actually pushing a person through required another force.
It was like a door that had already been opened: a person wouldn't automatically fly out of the room. Someone would have to push her, or the floor would have to suddenly tilt, or there would have to be a powerful suction force waiting behind the door.
At that thought, Lin Wanwan immediately added a paragraph beneath the Blood Moon Transmigration Hypothesis:
“The blood moon may only be responsible for opening the passage, while the other conditions are responsible for initiating the transfer.”
She read it once and felt that it still wasn't precise enough, so she simply broke the entire process into three stages: Stage One, the space-time passage opens; Stage Two, the transmigrator's consciousness separates; Stage Three, the target world completes the reception.
It looked much more professional that way.
Although she had no idea how the target world was supposed to “receive” someone, and she didn't know whether ancient times had a department specifically responsible for processing souls from other worlds, research was about building hypotheses from the unknown. She couldn't give up on asking questions just because she didn't know the answers.
Lin Wanwan reopened the master list of her ninety-nine novels and began checking every transmigration case involving unusual celestial phenomena. This time, she didn't search only for blood moons. Instead, she entered “moon,” “star,” “thunder,” “light,” “sky,” “solar eclipse,” “lunar eclipse,” and “omen” into the search bar one by one.
The results were even more numerous than she had expected.
In Novel Six, the female lead saw two moons before transmigrating. In Novel Nineteen, nine stars appeared in a straight line across the sky. Novel Thirty-One was more vague, containing only one sentence: “The stars moved backward, and the moon's shadow became two.” In Novel Forty-Five, the female lead made a wish beneath a meteor shower and woke up as the princess of a fallen kingdom. In Novel Sixty-Two, an ancient jade grew hot as thunder sounded, while a second lunar shadow appeared around the moon outside the window.
By Novel Eighty-Eight, the description was even more direct.
When the female lead looked up, she saw two full moons hanging in the night sky at the same time, one snow-white and the other blood-red. The world promptly shattered, and she transmigrated into a badly written novel with an ending the female lead herself had dropped only yesterday.
Lin Wanwan read that passage twice more.
Two moons.
She remembered this kind of setup.
Transmigration novels and cultivation novels especially loved using “twin moons.” One represented the original world, while the other represented the world the protagonist was about to reach. When the moons of the two worlds overlapped at a special moment, the passage would open. Some novels set one moon as life and the other as death; one illuminated the body, while the other illuminated the soul. As soon as the twin moons appeared together, the protagonist's fate would begin to change.
In the past, when Lin Wanwan read descriptions like this, she only thought the imagery was beautiful. At most, she would imagine what it might look like to have two moons hanging above an ancient palace—perfect material for a television drama promotional poster.
But now, she began to feel that this might be an important clue.
The blood moon might be the first door, while the twin moons could be proof that the two worlds had begun to overlap.
Lin Wanwan immediately created a new worksheet and named the tab “Twin Moon Phenomenon.” She then created columns for novel title, twin moon colors, twin moon positions, time the twin moons appeared, whether they were accompanied by other celestial phenomena, time of transmigration, and whether any overlap between worlds occurred.
Once she finished, she quickly switched back to her browser and typed into the search bar: “Can two moons appear in the real world?”
Before the search results appeared, she already knew the answer.
Impossible.
Earth had only one natural satellite. Unless the universe suddenly decided to add another moon to Earth—and that second moon entered a perfectly stable orbit without colliding with Earth, altering the ocean tides, or conveniently triggering a global catastrophe—the next thing humanity would need to prepare for after seeing a second moon wouldn't be transmigration. It would be the end of the world.
The search results, as expected, did not overturn her common sense.
A second real moon wouldn't appear out of nowhere in Earth's sky, but photographic images and certain environments could indeed produce phenomena resembling twin moons. For example, there could be reflections when shooting through glass, ghost images caused by a camera lens, or bright spots beside the moon created by mist, ice crystals, and unusual atmospheric conditions. In some photographs, the moon developed an obvious double image; in others, a blurry, fainter patch of light appeared beside the real moon.
Lin Wanwan opened the pictures one by one.
Most so-called twin moons were very obviously photographic reflections. One moon was clear, while the other looked like an afterimage stuck to the glass. A normal person would probably wipe off the lens and take another picture.
Lin Wanwan, however, stared at the photos with extreme seriousness.
If space-time overlap occurred and the scenes from two worlds briefly reflected one another, then the second moon might not actually be in Earth's orbit. It could simply be the moon from another world, projected into this one.
Like a reflection on glass.
Visible, yet untouchable; not a physical object, yet potentially proof that another space truly existed.
She immediately wrote in her notebook: “Twin moons do not necessarily represent two real moons. They may also be the moons of two worlds projected simultaneously.”
After thinking about it, she added beside it: “Temporary name: spatial reflection.”
The term sounded very much like something she had just invented.
In fact, that was exactly what it was.
But since she couldn't find a more suitable technical term for the moment, she could only use it for now.
Lin Wanwan looked up several more articles on atmospheric refraction and optical ghost images. From a scientific perspective, those phenomena still involved only one moon. But from the perspective of her research, any appearance of two lunar shadows in the sky was worth recording.
After all, what she truly needed had never been two moons. It was the “twin moon signal” that appeared repeatedly in novels.
As for whether that signal represented space-time overlap or merely meant she hadn't cleaned her windows properly, she could only wait for an actual observation to decide.
Lin Wanwan returned to the “Twin Moon Phenomenon” tab and established her criteria at the top: First, could the second lunar shadow be seen with the naked eye? Second, did the second shadow change with the observer's position? Third, did the double image remain after removing glass, mirrors, and camera lenses? Fourth, could other observers see it at the same time? Fifth, was it accompanied by physical abnormalities, environmental changes, or electronic equipment failure?
She had originally intended to list only three items. By the time she reached the fifth, the entire table was beginning to look like a record from a supernatural-incident investigation.
But Lin Wanwan thought it was necessary.
If a second moon really appeared on the night of the blood moon, she couldn't simply stand there and yell excitedly that the door to space-time had opened. She first had to confirm that it wasn't a reflection in her phone's camera lens—or a double image caused by her eyes after staying up for thirty straight days.
At that thought, she added another item to her preparation checklist: “Maintain a normal sleep schedule during the week before the blood moon.”
Eye fatigue could affect judgment.
That would be very bad for her research.
Before she could close the twin moon data, a meteor photograph beside the search page caught her attention.
Against the black night sky, a streak of white light slashed diagonally past the moon.
Lin Wanwan immediately remembered Novel Seventy-Four. Before that female lead jumped from the building, she seemed to have seen a meteor in addition to the red moon.
She switched back to the master list and searched for “meteor.”
Seventeen results appeared.
That number was even higher than the seven major cases she had initially categorized as “unusual celestial phenomena.”
Lin Wanwan was puzzled at first, but she soon discovered why. Those seven cases were stories in which she had directly classified the unusual celestial phenomenon as the primary cause of transmigration during her initial count. In the other ten, the meteor was merely part of the background, while the female lead's actual cause of transmigration had still been categorized as sleep, an ancient object, falling into water, or unknown.
In other words, meteors appeared in transmigration stories far more often than her original statistics suggested.
Some people made wishes on meteors, hoping to return to ancient times and meet their lover from a past life. Some were struck by objects suspected to be meteor fragments. Some opened an ancestral wooden box on the night of a meteor shower. Some merely stood on a balcony watching the stars, then a streak of light fell and they vanished from the spot the next second.
In one novel, the female lead casually said before bed, “Let me transmigrate.”
A meteor happened to streak across the sky outside.
When she woke up the next day, she had become an Empress in the Cold Palace who was about to be sentenced to death.
After reading that passage, Lin Wanwan fell silent for two seconds.
From a research perspective, this case was highly valuable.
From a life perspective, it proved that one absolutely had to state the additional conditions clearly before making a wish.
She couldn't just say she wanted to transmigrate.
At the very least, she had to specify her identity, era, health, marital status, and whether the original owner was currently under a death sentence.
Otherwise, the universe might only be responsible for carrying out the request.
It wouldn't handle the after-sales service.
Lin Wanwan organized the seventeen cases involving meteors separately. Only then did she discover that before the meteor appeared, most of the transmigrators had already encountered other triggering conditions, including ancient objects, sleep, serious injuries, wishes, and intense emotions.
Six people lost consciousness immediately after the meteor appeared, while three completed their transmigration before the meteor shower ended. The other cases had no precise timing and left behind only descriptions such as “at the moment the starlight fell.”
Lin Wanwan stared at the data for a while, and a new theory gradually took shape.
If the blood moon was responsible for opening the space-time window, then perhaps the meteor was the activation signal.
The universe had already opened the door, and the instant the meteor streaked across the sky was like a command notifying the passage that transmission could begin.
She immediately returned to the flowchart in the Blood Moon Transmigration Hypothesis and added a box between the existing steps: “A meteor or other brief celestial phenomenon appears.”
The arrow pointed to the next box—“Transmigration transfer initiated.”
The entire flowchart looked more and more complete.
And more and more like a logistics system operated by the universe itself.
Lin Wanwan couldn't help wondering: if the blood moon opened the door and the meteor handled shipping, then ancient objects were probably the address labels. A transmigrator who touched different ancient objects would be sent to different destinations.
A jade pendant shipped to a prince's estate.
An ancient mirror shipped to the inner palace.
An ancient book might ship someone straight into the book itself.
As for people who were hit by cars, they probably hadn't filled out a shipping address and could only be randomly assigned by the system.
She had written halfway through the thought when she stared at the words “universal logistics system” for two seconds before quietly crossing them out.
The name wasn't solemn enough.
If she really succeeded in transmigrating one day and even had a chance to pass her research down to future generations, she couldn't let anyone discover that a transmigration theory capable of overturning humanity's understanding of space and time had originally been named a logistics system.
Lin Wanwan wrote a new name beside it: “Celestial Phenomenon Trigger Mechanism.”
It immediately looked much more official.
Part Four | End