Chapter Two: Thirteen Milliseconds Before the Prophecy

At 1:20 a.m., Gu Yan took REVERSE RAIN apart inside an all-night laundromat. Literally, not metaphorically. Ye Ning inserted her camera card into his old laptop. Gu Yan compared twenty-seven videos frame by frame, corrected each device's clock drift, and used the traffic signal phases as a shared timeline. The result was unambiguous. The first drain cover moved at 23:59:59.987. The forum post became public at 00:00:00.000. The high-pressure pumps started at 00:00:00.041. The event's first physical action preceded the “prophecy” by thirteen milliseconds. “What can thirteen milliseconds prove?” Ye Ning asked. “A person can stage something in advance, but cannot react to a post before seeing it.” Gu Yan drew three lines.