Everyone stared at Cotton with wide eyes, their faces full of disbelief.
"You're saying you've found the hidden time in each poem?" Lu Hua asked in shock. "Where is it?"
Cotton flipped to the first page of the book and pointed to the poem. "Look closely. Isn't it right here on this page?"
"What! It's written right here?" Lu Hua immediately buried his head in the book, adjusting his thick glasses to examine the page closely. "Where? I must have read this page dozens of times last night! If the date is really written here, how could I have missed it?"
Sean leaned in, looking at the book. "Cotton's not saying the date is explicitly written somewhere on this page, right? You mean you've discovered a 'hint' about the time in the poem itself, don't you, Cotton?"
"No, neither of those," Cotton replied calmly. "You've all overlooked one inconspicuous detail."
Lancy stared at Cotton intently. Lu Hua and Sean asked almost in unison, "What inconspicuous detail?"
Cotton pointed to the "01" in the bottom-right corner of the page and said, "The date is right here—what we assumed to be the page number is actually the year when the event described in the poem occurred."
"What? The page number is the event's year?" Lu Hua exclaimed in shock. Then, as if struck by a sudden realization, he continued, "Ah! Of course! '01' stands for 2001—the exact year of the 9/11 attacks, and '04'… My god, that's the year of the Indian Ocean tsunami, 2004!"
Sean and Lancy were both stunned, their mouths agape. The eerie nature of this discovery sent chills down their spines.
Lancy stared in disbelief for a few seconds before shouting, "So… this really is a magical book of prophetic poems?"
"This is… absolutely unbelievable," Lu Hua said, shaking his head in amazement. "If the event's year is truly encoded here, then the predictions in these poems are astoundingly precise. I finally understand the line 'Poseidon suddenly raged in his final days'—the Indian Ocean tsunami happened on December 26, 2004, which is literally in the last days of that year!"
"Ah…" Lancy gasped, "The author of this book really is a miraculous person with the power of prophecy!"
"But," Sean frowned, looking puzzled, "why would he put the 'year' in such a misleading place?"
Cotton pondered for a moment before saying, "I think the author deliberately concealed it as part of the mystery. For some reason, he probably didn't want people to immediately understand the true meaning of the poems. That's why he set up so many layers of puzzles. First, the verses themselves use a lot of suggestive and symbolic language, making them obscure and hard to interpret. Then, he cleverly hid the year of the events in the 'page numbers.' These 'puzzles' were designed to keep the true meaning of the verses veiled unless one digs deeper or meets certain conditions."
"Yeah, you're right," Sean nodded in agreement with Cotton's analysis. "He definitely meant for the verses to be obscure and difficult to understand. Take that line 'Nerga will visit the new city for the second time in September,' for example. If the author wanted people to grasp the meaning immediately, he could have just written 'September 11th, the new city.'"
Lancy felt completely confused by now. She asked, "I don't get it. If he's writing these prophetic poems, why would he not want people to understand them easily?"
Cotton lowered his head, his expression serious. "Actually, the beginning of the book already gives us a hint. Perhaps the author didn't want ordinary people to uncover that mysterious 'secret of the heavens.'"
"Ah!" Lu Hua seemed to have an epiphany. "You're saying that the sentence we saw at the beginning…"
"'Prohibit reading humanity !'" the four of them said in unison.
After a brief exchange of glances, Lancy suddenly shivered, her voice trembling as she said, "I feel like this book… it's eerie… We ignored the author's warning of 'Prohibit reading humanity 'and after reading the contents, we unexpectedly cracked the puzzles he set up, essentially uncovering the 'secret of the heavens'… We won't be cursed or anything, right?"
"Sean said, 'The two poems we've decoded so far describe events that have already happened. Even if we've uncovered the secret of the heavens, it's an outdated secret.'
Suddenly, something came to mind for Cotton. He asked, 'Lu Hua, you said you translated the first, fourth, and which other pages?'
Lu Hua paused for a moment and said, 'The eighth page.'
'So, does the poem on this "eighth page" describe events from 2008?' Sean exclaimed, 'That's just last year!'
"You're still calling it 'the eighth page'?" Cotton said. "That '08' doesn't represent the eighth page at all. We initially thought this book had been scattered and then improperly reassembled, but now it looks like we've fallen right into the author's trap!"
Lu Hua took the book, flipping through the pages, and exclaimed, "So it is! The page before '01' is '99', then '98', '97'… and the first page's 'page number' is '13', which seems to refer to the year 1913! This means the sequence of the book is actually completely correct!"
Lancy exclaimed in astonishment, "So you're saying he predicted the major events of almost an entire century, every year?"
"But," Sean said to Lu Hua, "you just said '01' is preceded by '99'? Where's '00'? What about the year 2000? He didn't predict the year 2000?"
Lu Hua opened his mouth, looking puzzled.
Cotton rested his chin in his hand and thought for a moment, then suddenly grinned. "This author is very clever and meticulous—think about it. Would a typical book print a '0' as a page number? If '99' were followed by '00,' anyone could immediately guess that it refers to the year 2000. That would make the puzzle too easy!"
Sean understood. "You mean, he deliberately left out the year 2000 page to prevent people from easily realizing that the page numbers are disguised as years?"
"Exactly." Cotton suddenly felt a surge of excitement. "I can only imagine how incredibly clever this ancient prophet was!"
Sean looked at the astonished Lu Hua and asked, "By the way, when you saw that the page numbers were '01,' '02,' didn't you think it was strange? Usually, books just print '1' as the page number, not '01.'"
Lu Hua sighed. "I didn't think about it at all yesterday! I just assumed it was an ancient book, so the page numbers were a little odd."
Lu Hua muttered quietly, "What about the poem on the 'eighth page'… should we still look at it?"
This question reminded everyone. Cotton immediately said, "Of course we should look at it—anyway, Lu Hua already knows the content. Besides, the events of 2008 have already happened. What's there to fear?"
Lu Hua glanced at them, as if seeking their approval. "So, should I really write it?"
"Go ahead," Sean said, handing him the paper and pen.
Lu Hua turned to the '08' page of the poetry book and wrote the Chinese translation of the four-line poem on the paper:
"Chrys' name should be changed to Erebos,
For the atrocities she committed on the twelfth day in the East.
The innocent tremble with the earth,
Calling out for the gods and saints who will soon arrive amid the ruins."
Even though everyone had mentally prepared themselves, when they read the poem that Lu Hua had written down, the overwhelming fear it evoked left them stunned. Lancy was the first to raise her finger, trembling as she pointed at the lines on the paper. "What do you think… this poem is about?"
"What else could it be?" Sean took a deep breath, "The biggest disaster of 2008—what else could it be?"
"Wenchuan earthquake," Cotton said quietly, his expression serious.
Lu Hua sighed and said, "No, Lancy. It does point to the time and general direction. The first and second lines already reveal it."
Lancy carefully reread the first two lines of the poem, but still looked up at Lu Hua with a blank expression, clearly confused.
Lancy tried to offer some comfort, "I think this poem is about an earthquake… that's true. But it doesn't clearly indicate the time or location… I don't think it's necessarily referring to the Wenchuan earthquake, right?"
"No, Lancy," Lu Hua said with a sad tone, "It does indicate the time and general direction. The first and second lines already make that clear."
Lancy carefully reread the first two lines of the poem and looked up at Lu Hua with a puzzled expression.
Lu Hua sighed deeply and said, "'Kreis' is the Greek goddess of the earth and harvest, and she rules over May in the twelve months of the year. 'Erebos' is the Greek god of destruction, representing ruin and devastation. The first line actually means: the earth goddess of May brings about destruction. And her 'atrocities' occur on the 'twelfth day'—this perfectly matches '5/12,' the date of the earthquake! Moreover, the poem mentions that the location is in the 'East.' For the distant French, isn't China precisely in the East of the world?"
After hearing Lu Hua's explanation, Lancy felt a chill run down her spine. She collapsed onto the couch, muttering, "It's over, it's over! I thought this Frenchman could only predict events in the West, but I didn't expect him to predict something happening so far away in China!"
Sean staggered a bit, then let out a deep breath. He pointed to the fourth line of the poem and asked, "What do you think 'the gods and saints who are about to arrive' refer to?"
Lu Hua shook his head, indicating that he did not understand this line either. Cotton thought for a moment, then suddenly looked up and said, "Ah! The 'gods and saints' must be referring to the paratroopers who jumped out of helicopters to rescue the stranded people! Think about it— for someone from the medieval period, those soldiers descending from the sky would surely appear like messengers from heaven!"
"Ah, yes! That must be it!" Lu Hua and Sean said together. "This way, all four lines of the poem align perfectly with the '5.12' earthquake!"
"Oh my God, these three poems were randomly selected by Lu Hua, and yet each one perfectly matches the major events of that year, with both the time and place predicted so accurately! If every poem in this collection is like this, then the author of this book would be the greatest prophet in the world! Even Nostradamus would pale in comparison!" Sean exclaimed excitedly, his voice rising. "But the problem is, if there really was such a great prophet in the world, why have we never heard of him before? And how come this book was only discovered by a few of us, high school students, just now?"
Lancy raised her head and glanced at Sean. "Rather than that question, I want to know…" She hesitated, looking at Cotton and Lu Hua before finishing her sentence.
"I want to know… what does the poem on the '10' page say?"