pertwk Chapter 78 What transcends time and space is a smile; what remains unchanged is love.
Chapter 78 What transcends time and space is a smile; what remains unchanged is love.
Without a moment's pause, the conflict had reached its climax.
Sakuragaoka region, the center of the spacetime dimension.
The super-powerful monster Goldras, known as the "Golden Dragon," exudes a despair-inducing oppressive force.
The attacks from the Victory Team felt like mere tickles.
Victory Swallow No. 1 launched a laser, but Goldras didn't even move. The spacetime barrier in front of him directly swallowed the laser and then reflected it back.
"No! We can't break through its defenses at all!"
Shinjo shouted as he pulled the fighter jet up, "This thing can warp space! All the attacks have been redirected!"
Vice Captain Munakata ordered, "Feiyan II, prepare the Texas Cannon! Fire directly from this distance!"
A thick Texas beam of light shot out.
However, Goldras's horns flashed, and the spacetime barrier opened once more. This time, it not only defended against the attack but also reflected the Texas beam back at double the speed!
"Danger!"
At the critical moment, a ray of light flashed.
Daigo has transformed.
Ultraman Tiga appeared in mid-air, blocked the reflected beam of light with his body, and crashed heavily to the ground.
[This monster is too strong! It's good at both offense and defense?]
[Even a Texas Cannon can deflect it? How can you fight that?]
[Tiga, watch out! This golden dragon seems even fiercer than the previous monsters!]
The battle reached its climax.
At this moment, the crowd, as always, cheered for Ultraman Tiga.
Seeing everyone's actions, Zhong Baihe did the same...
"come on!"
Tiga's punches and kicks landed on Goldras, but instead of causing any damage, they were suppressed by the opponent's terrifying power.
Even Tiga in his powerful form could only manage a draw against it.
The normally invincible Diracium Beam was also reflected back by Goldras's barrier.
Goldras unleashed a beam of lightning that forced Tiga to retreat repeatedly, and the color timer on his chest quickly began flashing red.
"Ding-dong... Ding-dong..."
The urgent alarm sounded as if it were counting down the days for this love story that transcended time and space.
Ye Rui stared intently at the screen in the ground command center.
His fingers were trembling, but he forced himself to calm down and analyze the monster's data.
"Its superpower... comes from its horns!"
Ye Rui suddenly shouted, his voice hoarse, "As long as we destroy its horn, the spacetime boundary will become unstable! When its horn glows, its defenses will weaken for three seconds! Use that moment to attack!"
"Three seconds..."
Lina, piloting Unit 2: "No problem, I can do it!"
"No, Unit 2 doesn't have a dedicated spacetime wave targeting system," Zongfang immediately rejected. "This mission is for the ground! Ye Rui, you take over!"
A tremendous responsibility instantly weighed on Ye Rui's shoulders.
He sat at the control panel, his finger hovering over the red launch button.
Simply press this button, and the anti-dimensional energy will be emitted, shattering the monster's horns.
Simply press this button and the monster will be destroyed, and the world will return to normal.
but……
If you press it, the spacetime boundary will disappear.
That smiling girl, that young woman named Zhong Baihe, will also disappear.
Will she return to that era of war and turmoil?
Or, as Horii said, will he instantly turn into a pile of bones in this era?
In Ye Rui's mind, Bai He's smiling face flashed wildly, as did her laughter in front of the game console and her figure waving by the roadside.
However, it was during this meal that he missed a chance to kill the monster!
"Yorui!"
Tiga was struggling to hold on when he was once again knocked away by the monster.
"Next charge will take 20 seconds!"
Ye Rui's fingers trembled, and tears blurred her vision.
"How could I... kill her with my own hands..."
【Please don't do this! It's too pitiful for Ye Rui!】
Is this what they call killing someone's spirit? Saving the world means killing your first love?
Press it! Ultraman Tiga is dying!
[If we don't press the button, even if Zhong Baihe stays, she'll be killed by the monster's expanded spacetime dimension! A short, sharp pain is worse than a long, drawn-out one!]
Countless viewers were heartbroken in front of their screens.
This trolley problem-like choice is too cruel to put on a teenager.
Just then, that sentence echoed in Ye Rui's mind again.
"You look so listless, why don't you smile?"
Those were the words he said to Lily.
These were the words he spoke to himself in despair.
If Yuri were here, she certainly wouldn't want to see the world plunged into disaster and Ultraman Tiga fall because of her.
"Aaaaaaahhhhh!!"
Ye Rui let out a heart-wrenching roar.
He closed his eyes, and with all his might, slammed down the red button.
"boom!"
A dazzling beam of light shot out from the ground base and struck Goldras's glowing horns precisely.
"Snap!"
Both horns snapped off instantly!
The monster let out a painful howl, and the spacetime barrier shattered instantly.
Tiga seized this last opportunity, charged up his power, and unleashed the Delasium Beam!
The giant ball of light struck the monster, and Goldras turned to ashes in the explosion.
We won.
The spacetime boundary began to collapse rapidly.
Those ships, airplanes, and cars that did not belong to this era, some turned into nothingness particles in the light, and some quickly decayed, decomposed, and dissipated into the air.
Ye Rui rushed out of the base like a madman.
He ran towards that intersection, towards the place where he last saw Lily.
"Lilies! Lilies!"
He pushed through the crowd and looked around the empty streets.
The crowd around was cheering and celebrating the monster's defeat, and everyone's face was filled with the joy of surviving a disaster.
Only Ye Rui stood there, looking utterly lost.
No more.
The girl in the old-fashioned school uniform, the girl who smiled at him, vanished completely, as if she had never existed.
There wasn't even a chance to say goodbye.
Ye Rui slumped down on a roadside bench, covering his face with his hands, tears streaming through his fingers.
"It was me... who killed you..."
That profound sense of powerlessness and sorrow touched all the viewers.
This is too heartbreaking...it's really too heartbreaking...
Perhaps, she has simply returned to the right time and space that belongs to her...
Not even a goodbye? Even just one last time would have been nice!
Although we won, I'm not happy at all.
[Yorui will probably be traumatized for the rest of his life.]
However, at this moment, the real tearjerker arrived.
The scene changes.
Ye Rui returned home.
He seemed completely out of his mind, rummaging through his own storage room.
Just now, amidst his painful memories, he suddenly remembered something.
That sentence.
"You look so listless, why don't you smile?"
At that moment, Ye Rui felt as if he had been struck by lightning...
This statement was not his original quote about lilies.
It was a very gentle old lady he met when he was very young who told him this.
That memory is still very vague...
It wasn't until today, until just now, that things suddenly became clear.
"Found it!"
Ye Rui pulled a pendant out of a dusty old box.
Inside was a faded old photograph.
It was given to him by an old lady who passed by when he was a child and was crying in the park, to comfort him.
It was a necklace made from photo booth pictures.
Even after decades and the photo has faded, it is still clearly visible that it is a close-up of Ye Rui and Bai He!
In that instant, memories flooded back like a tide.
Flashback.
As a child, Ye Rui sat on a rock and cried.
An elegant elderly woman walked over, patted his head, and said with a smile:
"Look at me, I'm so old, but I'm still so energetic."
"You look so listless, why don't you smile?"
At this moment, just as at that moment.
He wanted to say something, but tears streamed down his face before he could speak…
Ye Rui held the photo, his hands trembling violently, but the tears on his face stopped.
He smiled.
It was a smile filled with tears, relief, and deep emotion.
It turns out, she didn't turn into bones.
She went back.
Wearing the necklace and carrying the memory of that single half-day, she returned to 1915.
She lived a long life, experiencing both war and peace, growing from a young girl into an old woman.
Then, more than seventy years later, she met him again when he was still a child.
She recognized him.
She used the words he had once used to encourage her to encourage him in his childhood.
This is a closed loop that spans nearly a century.
It is a smile that transcends time.
The ending theme song, "Ultraman Forever," began to play.
At this moment, countless viewers were already in tears.
In fact, when they saw the sentence "You look so listless, why don't you smile?", they were already stunned as if struck by lightning.
The title "A Smile Beyond Time" came to mind again.
At this moment, the preceding plot and details connect seamlessly...
Countless viewers felt their scalps tingle and their bodies covered in goosebumps.
"So... that smile transcends a century."
The barrage of comments on the screen exploded at that moment, so dense that it even obscured the image.
Holy crap!!! I got goosebumps all over!
[A masterpiece! This episode is absolutely divine!]
The moment the pocket watch was opened, time was corrected, and the old woman vanished.
[I initially thought it was a tragic ending, but it turned out to be a top-tier happy ending? No, this transcends the realm of happy endings!]
[It turns out that the old lady was Lily! She remembered her all along! She remembered her whole life!]
[A closed loop of romanticism]
["You were born before I was born, I was born after you had grown old"—this line of poetry is so vividly portrayed!]
It's hard to say whether Ye Rui influenced the girl first or vice versa. That's probably what love is like: you influence me, and I influence you; it won't be changed by time, nor by distance.
I can't stop crying, this sense of fate is so heartbreaking.
[Gu Nan, you're a genius! How did you come up with this kind of plot?]
This is the real closed loop of time! So romantic it's almost unbelievable!
That night, episode 36 of "Ultraman Tiga," titled "A Smile Beyond Time and Space," dominated the charts on major social media platforms.
The top trending topic on Weibo: #A Smile That Transcends Time#
Second on the trending list: #Ye Rui and Lily#
Third on the trending list: #GuNanKnowsWhatRomanceIs#
Countless derivative videos have sprung up like mushrooms after rain.
A talented content creator edited a video of Ye Rui and Bai He, set to background music from songs like "Anhe Bridge" and "I Still Miss You," which moved millions of netizens to tears.
Some artists even worked through the night to create a comic depicting Yuri traveling back in time and living her life with the necklace, filling in the blank and once again garnering a wave of tears.
In the comments section of this episode, one of Lao Tang's comments was pushed to the top:
To the girl waiting for me at the end of time: On Gu Nan's ultimate romance and the aesthetics of a tragic ending
It took me a full hour to come up with this long review.
Really, is Gu Nan heartless? No, it's precisely because he understands people so well that every strike is fatal.
Everyone is saying "it's heartbreaking", but I think this might be one of the most perfect endings for Ultraman Tiga so far.
Why?
Because this is a perfect closed loop.
Think about it carefully, what would Zhong Baihe face if she didn't go back? In this modern society where she has no household registration, no relatives, and is completely unfamiliar with everything, watching everything she was familiar with turn into dust of history, that sense of loneliness would be fatal.
Did anyone notice a detail at the beginning: Lily, holding that old map, looked around blankly at the bustling streets of Jinghai City. She was surrounded by traffic and towering buildings, but her eyes were filled with fear and helplessness.
This kind of loneliness is not "no one to play with," but a kind of despair of "the world is so big, but my world is dead."
At that moment, when Ye Rui took her out for hamburgers, to play games, and to take photos, it wasn't just about flirting; it was about helping her rebuild her connection with the world.
I especially loved the scene where the two of them took a photo booth picture.
Lily was initially reserved and scared, until Ye Rui poked her cheek.
The moment that smile bloomed was the only time she felt "safe" in this unfamiliar future.
But what follows is the most agonizing part!
What hurt me most in this episode wasn't the separation, but the "going to the destination knowing the ending."
To defeat Goldras, Yeri must fire a beam of light to break the spacetime barrier!
Ye Rui knew that pressing the button would make the lilies disappear, but he had to press it.
Lily knew that Ye Rui was leaving, but she didn't cry or make a fuss. She just stood by the roadside, smiling and waving goodbye.
The shot of her waving was so beautiful, yet so heartbreaking.
The wind lifted her skirt, and against the backdrop of the still-lingering chaos of the temporal realm, she resembled a lily blooming amidst the ruins.
She knew she was going back, back to an era that might be filled with war.
But because of the necklace given to her by Ye Rui and this memory, she can live with a smile even if she faces the storms of the next few decades.
When I finally saw the old lady's photo, to be honest, I, a grown man in my thirties, cried like a child.
It turns out that love really can transcend time and space.
That photo was truly a stroke of genius!
The old lady who encouraged Ye Rui when he was a child was Baihe.
What does this mean? It means that after Lily returned, she did not die tragically in the war, nor did she forget Nozomi.
Wearing that necklace and carrying that half-day memory, she bravely lived through that turbulent era, until her hair turned white.
She spent her entire life keeping that appointment that transcended time and space.
When she saw her childhood friend Ye Rui again with a full head of white hair, what was she thinking when she said, "Smile, okay?"
Is it nostalgia? Or is it acceptance?
Or should I thank that big boy who once gave her a brief moment of warmth?
Ye Rui saved her half a day, and with that smile, she saved Ye Rui's childhood and also saved the adult Ye Rui who was on the verge of collapse.
The transmission of Tezuka Yuri's words to Nozue forms a closed loop.
What transcends time and space and remains eternal is love, distance, promises made but never fulfilled, and the unfathomable secrets between two people…
The closed-loop timeline tells the story of the timeless bond between Nozomi and Yuri Tezuka...
I believe that human love can transcend every aspect of history, the present, and the future.
This isn't just a simple tragic ending; it's the ultimate romance born from fatalism.
Gu Nan, you win. I'll drink this cup of knife mixed with sugar!