If an outsider were present at this moment, they would undoubtedly think this guy is crazy. Yes, a madman. Even knowing he couldn't die, anyone who could nonchalantly stab their own heart must be insane.
After a wave of excruciating pain, the enormous, illusory tombstone appeared once again, still as mysterious and grand, solemn and awe-inspiring as ever.
"8012232591..." Raymond glanced casually at the numbers on the tombstone and suddenly froze: "8,012,232,591?! Isn't it supposed to be 8,012,232,592???" He clearly remembered that the last time he committed suicide, which was when the enormous tombstone first appeared, the number displayed was 8,012,232,593. After he resurrected, consuming one life, it changed to 8,012,232,592. How did it become 8,012,232,591 now?!
Missing one?!
Could it have been deducted in advance this time?
Impossible!
Last time, the number changed only upon resurrection. It's impossible for it not to have been deducted in advance last time, but deducted in advance this time.
"When did I die once more?" Raymond was bewildered.
He had no recollection of dying again. Even if he might have been killed unknowingly, he should still remember the resurrection. But in reality, he had no such memories.
"Meow! Meow!!!"
Seeing Raymond stab himself in the heart, BEN MAO was stunned, unable to comprehend what had happened. When it saw his hands drop and blood flow from his chest, it finally reacted and pounced to his side, crying out desperately. Its cries were pitiful, and it rubbed its small head against Raymond's arm in sorrow, trying to wake him up.
Gradually, tears began to flow from its blue-gray eyes.
After a few minutes, BEN MAO finally realized that its owner wouldn't come back. It sorrowfully lay down, gently placing its small head on Raymond's arm, crying softly and continuously: "Meow... meow..."
Suddenly, a hand gently patted its head.
"Why are you crying?" Raymond sighed. Due to the shock and confusion brought by the changing numbers on the tombstone, he returned a bit late this time.
However, from this, he roughly understood the process of resurrection.
Aside from the mysteriously lost life, the time he spent in a soul state before the two resurrections was different. This indicated that the resurrection wasn't a countdown or timed mechanism. In fact, this time, when he had the thought of wanting to revive, the number on the giant tombstone changed, decreased by one, and he came back to life.
Therefore, it should be a command-based mechanism.
Thinking this way, when he first resurrected, it was probably when he subconsciously thought of the meaning of the number 8,012,232,593, triggering the resurrection mechanism.
However, if he hadn't guessed the meaning of the numbers on the tombstone, would he still have been able to revive?
The answer was likely yes.
As a soul, floating there was very boring—extremely boring. He could see the real world but couldn't hear anything, as if he had entered a silent world. Touching the real world was even more impossible. Sooner or later, Raymond would have the thought of reviving, even if he didn't know the meaning of the numbers on the tombstone.
Of course, there might be a forced resurrection after a certain period.
Should he test it?
Raymond hesitated for a moment but eventually dismissed the idea of committing suicide again.
When he was in the soul state, though he couldn't hear, he could see. BEN MAO's silent mourning beside his body deeply moved him.
In the future, he'd better avoid suicide.
By the way, when he turned into a soul state this time, he considered another possibility: if he didn't revive for a long time, would his soul slowly disappear?
However, given that he had so many lives, this possibility seemed very slim.
"Stop crying," Raymond said.
Come to think of it, this was the first time he had seen a cat cry.
"Meow?!!"
Feeling the hand on its head and hearing the familiar voice, BEN MAO looked up, stunned, clearly unable to understand the situation. But soon, it joyfully confirmed the reality, jumping into Raymond's arms with a "meow," affectionately rubbing against his chest. After a few rubs, it suddenly jumped back, looking at Raymond with an angry expression: "Meow, meow, meow!"
Raymond froze for a moment before realizing, and then he smacked BEN MAO's head: "What are you mad about?! Without dying, how would you heal such serious injuries for me?!"
"Meow..." BEN MAO raised its little paws to cover its head, whining pitifully.
Raymond stood up.
Now, he had no injuries at all. Because when he resurrected, his body was completely healed.
"See? I can't die. Even if I do, I can revive. Stop worrying about me." Saying this, Raymond crouched down, picked up the stone taken from the yellow dog, and glanced at the dog again. He suddenly asked, "BEN MAO, can this dog be eaten?"
Ordinary dogs can certainly be eaten, but whether this dog could be eaten was another matter.
However, he thought that BEN MAO, now akin to a spiritual beast in a fantasy world, should have pretty accurate instincts.
"Wouldn't it cause stomach problems?" Raymond was particularly concerned about this.
BEN MAO approached the yellow dog, sniffed it, then nodded and shook its head.
"Nodding and shaking? What does that mean?" Raymond asked, "Can it be eaten?"
BEN MAO nodded.
"Will it cause stomach problems?" Raymond continued.
BEN MAO shook its head.
"Oh." Raymond understood. He picked up the dog and said, "Let's go home. We'll have dog meat hotpot for lunch."
As he walked home, he continued, "By the way, why did you eat everything in the fridge? Does evolution require a lot of energy? Fine, the meat I can understand, but how did you even eat the chocolate and jelly I had in there? Can you digest those too? Geez, you really have changed species..."
BEN MAO trotted closely beside him: "Meow~ meow~~~"
....
"You stupid cat! My stomach hurts!!!"
This little cat-dog altercation ended with a fragrant dog meat hotpot and Raymond having a stomachache. But Raymond knew that things were far from over.
There were too many unresolved questions. Did the yellow dog, which BEN MAO slapped to death, really have intelligence? Or was it just his illusion? If it did have intelligence, was it related to the stone inside it? What was that stone? Could it be a meteorite from that night?
If so, was the yellow dog an exception after swallowing the meteorite? Or did the same apply to all meteorites that night?
And what about BEN MAO?
BEN MAO's changes also started after that night. Was it related to the meteorite too?
But the most critical questions remained: Why did the dog attack him, and... what about the mysteriously lost life?
Hotpots and barbecues are best enjoyed outdoors.
Raymond set up the hotpot on the balcony. After cleaning and preparing the dog, he and BEN MAO enjoyed a delicious meal together, which eventually led to Raymond having a severe stomachache. "I can't take it anymore... I feel like I'm dying..."
Raymond staggered out of the bathroom, feeling weak.
The eighth time.
He felt like he was really going to die.
After resting for a while, he knew he needed to find some medicine at the hospital.
Luckily, after a few more trips to the bathroom, Raymond gradually felt better.
He glared at BEN MAO, who was lounging on the sofa.
"No stomach problems, huh? That meant you, not me! I'm the one with the stomachache! It's me! ME!! OK?! I was asking if I would have stomach problems!!!"
"Sigh..."
Raymond sighed, feeling like arguing with this dumb cat made him look dumb too.
After half an hour of resting on the couch, Raymond finally felt somewhat recovered.
He glanced at the stone on the coffee table.
It was the one BEN MAO had found inside the yellow dog.
Of course, it had been cleaned by now.
It was about half the size of a fist, irregularly shaped, with a metallic sheen, very hard, and much heavier than a stone of the same size.
Yeah, it didn't look like a gallstone.
Considering that BEN MAO's changes started after that night's meteor shower, and given the texture of the stone, Raymond thought it was likely a meteorite.
Suddenly sitting up, he handed the suspected meteorite to BEN MAO, asking, "Wanna eat this?"
BEN MAO was startled and then shook its head.
"Oh," Raymond nodded slightly.
BEN MAO seemed uninterested in the stone.
"Can you find out where it came from?" he asked again.
Upon hearing this, BEN MAO came closer, wrinkled its little nose, sniffed, and then turned around and trotted away.
"Hey?! It's not entirely useless after all!" Raymond's eyes lit up with joy.
As expected of a spiritual beast-like existence in novels, its nose was indeed sharp.
However, just half a minute later, he was stunned.
He saw BEN MAO lead him back to the balcony and then point its paw at the unfinished dog meat hotpot, wearing an expression that said, "Praise me, praise me."
Raymond gave it a light kick in exasperation, causing BEN MAO to flop down in a huff, letting out a pitiful meow.
Raymond shook his head helplessly, returned to the living room, put the stone back on the coffee table, and picked up a book about meteorites that he had specially gone out of his way to get from a bookstore on his way home.
According to the book, the size of the crater formed when a meteorite hits the ground is mainly related to its impact velocity because the kinetic energy formula is 1/2·m·v^2.
The greater the impact velocity, the greater the kinetic energy, and thus the larger the crater.
And the impact velocity of a meteorite hitting the ground is related to its speed before entering the atmosphere, the angle at which it enters the atmosphere, and its own mass.
Generally, the impact velocity of a meteorite when it approaches the ground is between tens of kilometers per second, rarely exceeding 100 kilometers per second.
For example, the Arizona Meteor Crater in the United States has a diameter of about 1240 meters and a depth of more than 170 meters. It is believed to have been formed 20,000 years ago by a meteorite about 60 meters in diameter and weighing about 100,000 tons, hitting the ground at a speed of about 20 km/s.
"Impact velocity of 20 km/s, crater diameter of 1240 meters, meteorite diameter of 60 meters... The crater diameter is about 20 times the diameter of the meteorite..." Raymond looked at the stone on the coffee table and made a rough estimate.
Although the stone in his hand was irregularly shaped, if he considered it roughly spherical, it was about three centimeters in diameter. Comparing it to the Arizona Meteor Crater's conditions, the crater diameter should be around seventy centimeters, a small pit less than a meter in diameter.
Of course, this was not an accurate estimate.
The size of a crater is related to many factors, not just the meteorite itself but also the geology of the impact site.
However, it could serve as a rough reference.
Besides, Raymond thought that with such a small meteorite, the crater should not be very large. But if... if the crater were unusually large, it would mean that the stone in his hand might only be a part of it.
Flipping through the book, Raymond then put it down and rubbed his stomach with a bitter smile. "Even though I need to go look, not today."
He had searched for meteorites that fell that night for several days before, but after a week of fruitless searching and the changes that happened to BEN MAO, he gave up. But with the recent incident with the yellow dog, he felt it was necessary to search again.
.....
The next morning.
After a night's rest, Raymond felt his body had recovered, possibly because the situation wasn't too serious.
With his body recovered, he began to search for the meteorite crater.
This time, Raymond was much more serious than before.
Previously, he had taken a casual approach, treating it as a leisure activity, not actively seeking efficient methods because he had plenty of time, or rather, he had all the time in the world and didn't consider finding a meteorite an important task—it was just a way to pass the time.
But this time, his goal had changed.
With a new purpose, his attitude naturally changed.
On his way home yesterday, he had also picked up a city map besides the book on meteorites and craters.
Spreading the map out on the coffee table, he sipped tea and carefully recalled and deliberated before using a black marker to draw a large circle on the map, roughly marking the potential fall area of the meteorite.
Then he continued to draw and mark on the map, planning the search routes bit by bit.
After completing this, he rolled up the map, picked up some tools he might need, and set off with BEN MAO in the car.
Inspecting each area by car was more efficient than blindly searching, but it was still a cumbersome method.
However, considering the meteorite crater he was looking for might only be a few dozen centimeters wide and accounting for the possibility that the meteorite might have crashed into a building rather than the ground, methods like "choosing high buildings with good views and using binoculars to search" wouldn't be suitable because it was easy to miss the target.
So, he had no choice but to use this not-so-smart but practical method.
Of course, this search didn't include rooftop inspections.
If it came to that, efficiency would be too low.
It was better to first rule out the ground. If nothing was found, it would imply the meteorite likely hit a rooftop, and then he could use the elevated vantage point method to inspect rooftops.
After more than half a month of painstakingly searching and checking off hundreds of variously sized pits in the circled areas, Raymond finally found the place where the meteorite fell that night.
Before him lay a crater over 6 meters in diameter, surrounded by numerous smaller pits, with even the nearby buildings damaged.
These pits varied in size, some over a meter in diameter, others just a few centimeters.
There were no warning lines or repair signs around, indicating they weren't pre-apocalyptic, and the probability of two meteorites falling in the same city within six months was extremely low. So, this scene before Raymond was likely caused by the meteorite fall that night.
"What a bother..." He hefted the stone in his hand and muttered to himself.
After standing there for a while, Raymond shook his head and turned to BEN MAO, "Let's go back."
He had found the crater, but the meteorite was nowhere to be seen.
All the pits were empty.