Original subtitles

What's this?

Look carefully.

Look in the middle.

What's this?

Countdown.

Where did you get these?

Wang Miao took them.

Every one of them was taken by him.

Every one has that thing on it.

When did he start taking these?

This is the first time.

Previous to this,

it only appeared in pictures,

but now, it's right in front of him.

I mean, even the things he sees have that countdown on them,

and it's been ongoing all the time.

Chang, while you're checking these out,

I, uh, I'll fill you in on something.

I used to have a colleague named Tian.

I think you know him.

He has a habit.

Every time he needs to go on a mission,

he'll check the total number of the cigarettes

in his cigarette pack first.

It has to be odd.

If it's even,

he'll pull one out before departure.

Don't smoke in here.

Strangely enough,

so long as it's odd,

he's guaranteed to catch the suspect.

On one occasion,

after he checked his cigarettes,

I stealthily pulled one out.

Guess what?

On that day,

he cornered the suspect at a dead end,

but somehow the latter climbed over the wall and escaped.

Because of that,

I didn't get any cigarettes from Tian for two months.

Chang,

do you think this

has anything to do with the case?

Then what did

Wang Miao do

that had nothing to do with the countdown?

Wang Miao shut down the nano experiment,

and the countdown disappeared.

I've always said

that anything sufficiently weird must be fishy,

but this time around,

this fishy thing's way too unusual.

Do you know who had him shut down the experiment?

Shen Yufei.

♪ I don't know who I am ♪

♪ And I don't know where I am ♪

♪ Fly and fly ♪

♪ Never reached the sky ♪

♪ I'm lost in the forest ♪

♪ When I just can't leave my land ♪

♪ On my way ♪

♪ To endless darkness ♪

♪ Waiting for your boat ♪

♪ Can you take me from the old world ♪

♪ But now we cannot stop ♪

♪ All my life feels me sailing ♪

♪ We'll stop in time ♪

♪ The falling stars are still alive every night ♪

♪ Moon is full of sorrow ♪

=Three-Body=

=Episode 6=

It's very weird that I, a would-be Buddhist,

raise chickens, right?

I heard chicken used to be your favorite food.

Yeah.

A student of mine,

who didn't know I'd converted to Buddhism,

came to visit,

and he actually brought me a couple of chickens.

I couldn't eat them,

even if I wanted to,

so I had no choice but to keep them.

You see,

now they've become so many.

It's not weird.

I'm a scientist but I pray quite often.

I wonder if these chickens know

it is me who's been feeding them.

Just like I don't know if the deity you pray to

can see your piety or not.

I mean, the whole universe

is... is like

a malfunctioning fluorescent tube.

It flickers with a crackling sound,

and uh,

Shen Yufei told Wang Miao beforehand

when it would flicker.

The rhythm of its flickering

is a set of codes.

After the codes were deciphered,

they're still

a countdown.

Do you guys raise chickens in Pastoral China?

That program is the work of Pan Han and some others.

I got nothing to do with it.

I heard he threw people back into the natural environment

to reduce consumption and trash.

You don't like his method of environmental protection?

What's the point of that?

Humans can never give up city life

and get back to nature.

Only a small number of people

have seen through the emptiness of earthly life.

What is this countdown exactly?

Where does it come from?

And what will happen

when it ends?

That's what I'm going to find out.

Chang,

what should we do with Wang Miao?

Shen Yufei put a lot of work into him.

Her efforts will not be in vain.

But don't worry.

Wang Miao

is definitely our entry point to the truth.

Yeah.

Alright.

My report is over.

I understand.

You made it an odd number.

See you.

How does it feel to see through the emptiness of earthly life?

Boring.

You guys think my lifestyle's boring,

and I think yours is boring,

so

this is very interesting.

Interesting.

Professor Peng,

I'm Chang Weisi.

I got a question for you.

Can the universe

flicker?

We've got

European, North American, African, and all other major combat zones.

Send those pictures to them right now.

Okay.

I'm sorry

to have kept you waiting, everybody.

Latest news.

A moment ago,

another exceptional case happened in Asian Combat Zone.

Another scientist's suicide?

No.

Someone saw a countdown.

A countdown?

You mean, like, the ones in the photographs?

Were they printed?

They're not printed.

We haven't verified

how they came into being.

Those on the pictures

are only in a preliminary form.

What do you mean?

Are they projected or are there other carriers?

It's somewhat bizarre.

I should say

this is something we've never seen before.

It's on his retina.

What? Undercover?

That's one way to put it.

You see,

all those things

have something to do with Shen Yufei

and the Frontiers of Science,

and Shen Yufei came to you.

If you don't go undercover,

do you think

they'll come to me someday?

I used to think

the Frontiers of Science was just an academic organization,

but I see it differently now.

What do you mean by "differently"?

I don't know how to explain it,

but I know very well

that they're desperate

to have me accept a hard truth.

And it's that no matter whether we're eating,

chatting,

or improving civilization, developing science and technology,

or deepening our understanding of this society,

it doesn't change the fact that we're

just a flock of turkeys on a shabby farm.

Even so, you're an undercover science-savvy turkey.

I'm not like you.

I'm a bodyguard turkey.

Don't worry.

I'll always be there for you.

You'll never understand

what I've been through,

or what I'm going through.

Here.

Look here.

Don't be afraid.

I had a friend make this for me.

I told him

I wanted a super-long countdown timer.

He's an expert bomb maker

who blows up things.

This is the best he can do.

I...

I don't know

what your countdown is about.

Anyway, here's the point.

Wang Miao,

if your time is up,

mine will be up

as well.

Do you understand?

Come on.

Let's set the watch.

You became cross-eyed.

Are the numbers of the countdown very close to each other?

Not that close.

Tell me. What is it?

One, zero, one, eight,

four, five, two.

One.

Zero.

One, eight.

Four.

Five.

Two.

Alright.

Tell me when it's double four.

I'll press the button at the same time.

Countdown starts.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Are they the same?

Yeah.

Okay.

Done.

Look.

It seems insubstantial.

The experiment has been restarted.

When can you finish the Flying Knife?

It's Flying Blade.

Are there any differences?

Currently, nano Flying Blades

are made with molecular construction techniques,

but it's very resource-intensive.

Right now what we're trying to do

is develop a catalytic reaction

as a substitute for molecular construction.

Can you translate those words for me?

I mean, use a language I can understand.

The experiment hasn't succeeded yet.

We still need to work on it.

Can you get the job done

before it ends?

I mean, the countdown.

I don't know.

You said the countdown halted

when you stopped the experiment.

Is it possible that

this is a countdown to your success?

I mean,

can it be that

you'll succeed

at the end of the countdown?

Your way of speaking is very unreasonable,

but there have been too many unreasonable things lately.

Just tell me if seeing it this way

cheers you up.

Munphy also talked to Shen Yufei

before his death.

If you're right,

all those who had dealings with Shen Yufei

have either joined the Frontiers of Science

or committed suicide.

Not all of them.

You're still alive, aren't you?

That's why you need to join it.

Apart from me,

are there any other survivors?

Yes.

Yang Dong's mother.

During the investigation,

I originally thought

that Shen Yufei got close to Ye Wenjie

for Yang Dong,

but it didn't seem to be the case,

because Ye Wenjie is a scientist herself.

She's alive, and so are you.

You two survivors

don't seem to follow any patterns.

Do you think it's possible

Ye Wenjie can see the countdown as well?

Probably not.

The other day, when I went to observe cosmic background radiation,

it was she who contacted her student for me.

If she could also see the countdown,

she should know what I was there for.

You've looked into Ye Wenjie, right?

Yeah.

Nothing out of the ordinary, except she didn't commit suicide.

This place

used to be the warehouse of a museum.

It's very roomy.

Now it's your office.

A warehouse?

It's pretty nice.

Being big enough is the whole point.

There are a dozen people, after all. They need enough space.

You've already started working?

General.

Let me introduce you.

The introduction can wait.

You should wait until everybody's here.

It'll save you the trouble of introducing me repeatedly.

Everyone's here.

Xu Bingbing.

Transferred here from CID.

She's worth ten agents.

What do you mean by "Everyone's here"?

How do you know she's worth ten agents?

Why should I believe you?

Chang, how can you do this?

You're such a high-ranking general.

How could you go back on your word?

Do I need to have you write it down every time you make me a promise?

Are you done?

You don't want her?

I'll take her away then.

Go, go, go.

Wait.

You can't leave.

I'm not letting her leave unless you get me

the 10 people as promised.

I need a hostage.

Alright.

Stop it.

I asked Chang for information specialists,

not cleaners.

Ye Wenjie, an astrophysicist.

Mu Xing, a reporter and freelance media worker.

That's all?

I'm giving you four hours

to gather everything you can

on these two people.

Alright.

This job requires two people at the most.

This

is a list of the names

of all the scientists we need to look into.

I want all the detailed information

about them and their family members!

It must be done today!

Alright.

And clean this room.

I want it spotless.

Don't say alright.

Say yes.

Understood.

Yes.

Dad, do you feel better?

Doudou put the eye drops in Dad's eyes,

and Dad's eyes feel much better now.

You two, the rice is done,

and the fish will be ready in two minutes.

- Doudou, go wash your hands and eat. - Get ready to eat.

Hurry.

Wash your hands clean, Doudou.

Li Yao,

you and Doudou may eat without me.

I have an errand to run.

What errand do you have to run at mealtime?

You're going out, Dad?

Yeah.

Dr. Doudou has cured Dad's eye disease,

so now Dad has to go to work.

I think Dad hasn't fully recovered yet.

The treatment has to continue.

You still don't get it?

Your daughter

wants you to stay at home a bit longer.

Right, Doudou?

Dad will stay at home and keep Doudou company

for many days after finishing this job.

Be good.

Sit there and eat.

Alright. Come and eat. Come on.

Li Yao, the fish is almost done.

You may turn off the heat now.

It can't be done so soon.

You're so accurate. Are you a stopwatch or something?

You're

just too tense,

and too punctual.

It's bad for your health.

I have an appointment with an old expert today.

I can't be late.

Doudou,

bye-bye.

Goodbye, Dad.

I've got to go.

Alright.

Wang, thanks.

You went to so much trouble.

You're welcome, Ms. Ye.

Alright, thanks.

Let me help you with this.

By the way, Ms. Ye,

a few days ago,

I met a scientist.

Her name's Shen Yufei.

Have you ever heard of her?

It rings a bell.

Maybe I saw her at some kind of event.

If my memory serves me well,

she specializes in nanotechnology

as you do.

Yeah.

By the way,

the other day, when you went to the observatory,

Sha Ruishan gave me a call.

He said you guys

spotted some rather unscientific stuff.

Yeah.

This is exactly what I want to consult you about.

You specialize in astrophysics.

In your experience,

do you think it's possible for the universe to flicker?

According to what we know,

that's impossible.

What about what we don't know?

When science

goes beyond our comprehension,

it usually

gets mistaken for heresy.

That's why it throws people into panic.

In human history,

science caused panic

many times.

During the Renaissance in Europe,

Copernicus got persecuted and repressed

by the Church for his heliocentric theory.

When The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies was published,

he only stroked its cover

before passing away.

Bruno, who supported the heliocentric theory,

was burned at the stake by the Church.

Cecco d'Ascoli, an astronomer,

believed that the earth was round,

and he got burned alive as well.

The theories that we see

as common sense today

served only to cause great panic

among the public in that era.

Just like the many problems we're faced with today.

In the future,

when we look back on them,

we'll find them as unsurprising

as the fact that the earth is round.

Mu Xing

returned from overseas only half a year ago.

She's in the new media industry.

Her reports are mainly

about science and technology and environmental protection.

She's very aggressive in getting exposure on newspapers.

She once exaggerated the facts

to create hot topics.

But some of her reports

did bring attention to the issues

and fix some of the problems.

Nothing else?

All information on Ye Wenjie is here,

including some deciphered files

and some info about her father.

They're all in here.

These are infosheets about all the scientists on the list

and the family members

of some of the scientists who committed suicide.

I don't think these infosheets

have any special value,

but I looked into everything you asked me to look into.

Alright.

If this task was assigned to ten people,

it would definitely have been a waste of manpower.

In the observatory, there's a guy named Sha Ruishan,

he...

I know.

He's Ye Wenjie's student.

He went to observe cosmic flicker with Wang Miao a few days ago.

I'll do some digging.

Here's my cell number.

My phone's on twenty-four seven.

If anything happens,

you may call me anytime.

Yes.

Alright.

Who are you looking for?

So you're Sha Ruishan?

How do you know?

The other day, Professor Wang Miao paid you a visit.

I need to verify a few things with you.

Who are you?

I want some information about cosmic flicker.

Are you saying

even if Ye Wenjie knows she's a turkey,

she'll feel it's unsurprising?

We only talked for a short while,

but it made me feel much calmer.

No matter whether those theories

of the Frontiers of Science are right or wrong,

I find them acceptable now.

Maybe we just don't know

who we are exactly.

Just like Schrodinger's cat.

I know about cats.

Lately I've boned up on physics.

It's about putting a cat into a box, isn't it?

And when you open it, it's either dead or alive.

But isn't that frivolous?

It's just an experiment

with a lot of constants and variables.

In other words,

it's a process of finding proof and seeking confirmation.

Is that necessary?

What if the third possibility happens?

That'll be like seeing a ghost.

It'll mean physics no longer exists.

Does Ye Wenjie believe it?

She believes

our physics might have ceased to exist.

Physics

didn't cease to exist.

It's just the physics we know

might be non-existent.

Many years from now,

history will reveal the answer.

We might be Copernicus,

or Bruno,

or the Church.

Or maybe

we're nothing.

Come. I'll show you something.

Come on.

All data are unproblematic,

but this is impossible.

Even the explosion of a supernova

couldn't have done that.

What if someone made that happen?

That's even more impossible.

It's such a large scale.

It was spotted from the observatories

in both Beijing and Urumqi.

Do you know what that means?

You see this?

Do you get it now?

I'm imposing human interference

on your observation of this lamp.

This is both theoretically possible

and doable,

but what's a cosmic flicker?

The observation signals received

by Beijing and Urumqi observatories

are from three observation satellites.

Do you know what that means?

What does it mean?

Let's say this is our earth.

These three are observation satellites.

To make the whole universe flicker

with human interference,

theoretically,

you need to build

a gigantic screen at least

300,000 kilometers wide in a place

150,000 kilometers away

from the earth.

Is there science behind your theory?

Science?

You want to talk about science with me?

Considering this scale,

not only Batman and Iron Man can't make it happen,

but even Superman can't do it.

In other words,

it's impossible even in sci-fi.

Then what can make it happen?

Mythology.

Zeus should be able to swing it.

It was really not my doing.

I'm a cop.

I had dealings with a lot of criminals.

Criminals

experienced things others didn't experience,

so sometimes their mindset

is different as well.

Did Professor Ye experience anything unusual?

That's hard to say.

She lived in that era.

She might've been affected.

By the way, the constant

and variable thing you talked about a moment ago.

The guy surnamed Schro.

Did he have to pick a cat?

Could it not be a rabbit,

or a squirrel or anything like that?

What is this place?

Our office.

Roomy, huh?

Come on. Come on.

Take a look.

Spotlessly clean.

I brought you here

to let you take a closer look

and do some research into Ye Wenjie's file.

Alright.

Where's Professor Ye's file?

Over there.

Under the picture of Houyi Shooting Down The Suns.

Below the first sun.

Everything here is orderly.

You found it, right?

Yeah.

I'll fill you in while you read those.

Ye Wenjie's father

was a great scientist,

a counter-revolutionary one.

Now he's rehabilitated, of course.

Do you know who ratted on him?

His own daughter.

Professor Ye?

No.

Ye Wenjie's little sister.

Her name's Ye Wenxue.

And it gets better than that.

Do you know who delivered the decisive blow to him?

His wife.

Shao Lin.

Uh, not Shaolin Monastery.

Her surname was Shao. Her given name was Lin.

It's all in here.

I wonder

what Ye Wenjie felt at that time.

Ye Wenjie's little sister, Ye Wenxue,

personally had the leader of the campaign

take her father away

for interrogation about the ideology

embodied in his treatise.

In the key phase of the interrogation,

Ye Zhetai's wife, Shao Lin, showed up as well,

Together with Ye Wenxue,

they distanced themselves from Ye Zhetai,

which was a terrible blow to him.

Didn't Mother say

that Grandfather and Einstein were close friends?

That they used to discuss science together?

But why are they

beginning to criticize Einstein?

Shao Lin's father

did cross paths with Einstein.

In 1922,

on Nanjing Road

of Shanghai.

They were walking along the road.

Einstein

suddenly asked a young boy smashing stones at the roadside

how much he earned in a day.

He said five cents.

That was the only time he conversed

with the master who changed the world.

No physics.

No theory of relativity.

Only the hard truth.

Lin is better than me.

She proved all scientific achievements

were the fruits of the people's wisdom.

Those academic authorities of the bourgeoisie

just stole the fruits.

There are so many terms in physics.

Will changing the names

be enough?

Any brilliant idea

will fall apart eventually.

The gravity of reality

is just too strong.

It never crossed my mind

that Professor Ye had been through something like that.

Now I can understand

why she took Yang Dong's death

so calmly.

But I find it confusing.

By rights, those who have

lost a loved one

will definitely cherish familial bonding even more,

but Professor Ye doesn't seem to be like that.

It strikes me

that the reason her grief was dissolved

is probably not so simple.

Professor Ye's father

was unable to continue his research because of the era.

Professor Ye's daughter,

since physics had ceased to exist,

couldn't continue her research either.

Maybe in Professor Ye's eyes,

death was a relief to them.

We never experienced anything like that,

so maybe we can't understand it.

No.

Professor Ye didn't have many dealings with Shen Yufei,

but judging from what she said to you,

she's not against the theories of the Frontiers of Science.

Professor Ye's behavior is becoming

an increasingly greater mystery to me.

What did she say to you again?

Did she say this was not

the first time the scientific community had been in panic?

Yeah.

In human history,

science caused panic

many times.

We might be Copernicus,

or Bruno,

or the Church.

Or maybe

we're nothing.

Was she asking you to become someone like Copernicus?

Even if I wanted to do that,

aren't I still your plant?

Well, go ahead and become Copernicus.

With me protecting you,

I promise you won't get burned alive.

Get burned alive?

That guy's name's Bruno.

What about Co-Copernicus?

He died of natural causes.

Well, with me protecting you,

I promise you'll...

be Copernicus.

Thank you.

♪ I've seen things you people won't believe ♪

♪ Soon our planet will vanish ♪

♪ I've known the future you people won't think of ♪

♪ Soon your planet will be punished ♪

♪ I've seen things you people won't believe ♪

♪ Soon our planet will vanish ♪

♪ I've known the future you people won't think of ♪

♪ Soon your planet will be punished ♪

=Three-Body=