Nobita's Time Heist

With a powerful, muffled thud, the time tunnel was stretched and elongated by a force, the black silhouette receding backward. The time machine was clearly moving forward, but relative to the entire tunnel, it was constantly moving backward. Nostradamus had turned himself into a black hole; faced with absolute attraction, the time machine was like a powerless ant, slowly falling into the antlion's trap.

"ha----!!!"

Nostradamus tossed his shadow-like robes, and in an instant, countless shadows separated from him. They materialized, emitting incredibly shrill screams, and lunged at the time machine. These monsters multiplied in mid-air, and soon their dark forms had increased hundreds of times in number, almost swallowing up the last glimmer of light in the tunnel as they shrouded each other.

One, two...

Thousands of monsters rushed forward at once, like a slowly opening maw, swallowing the time machine whole.

A sinister smile appeared on his zombie-like face.

Unfortunately, his smile didn't last long before it was easily torn off by a beam of light that pierced through the darkness.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

"【Moonlight Lamp】—!!"

The flashlight was turned on, and the technique that had once briefly suppressed the Demon King Daimao was used once again.

"ah----!!"

The pure moonlight's anti-magic effect remained effective. These shadows, separated from Nostradamus's body, naturally possessed a low-light attribute. Upon being illuminated by the moonlight, they screamed in agony, like furry animals being burned alive. Black smoke billowed from the parts in contact with the moonlight, and they scattered like birds. The time machine's engine roared to life again, and Nobita broke free, using his Earth-level tracking gun to precisely direct the beam of light directly at the culprit's face.

The light, like a sharp spear, pierced his face.

"Woo..."

Nostradamus was suddenly jolted, and blue smoke began to rise from his face. He opened his right hand and grabbed at the air, actually intercepting a beam of light from mid-air.

The cold moonlight in his palm was eroded by darkness and lost its brightness.

"Moonlight? To actually use moonlight as a weapon, haha... just playing petty tricks."

"Crack!"

Put your five fingers together.

He crushed the moonlight in his palm.

"[Moonwalker] Narniadis, you actually used magic from hundreds of years ago against me, you wielder of divine blood..."

"You're underestimating me far too much!"

It's hard to describe what Nobita saw the next moment. If I had to use a metaphor, it would be that the man in front of him, who seemed to have gone mad and had epilepsy, suddenly transformed into a monster like Sadako, opened his mouth wide, and became enormous, pouncing on him in a cockroach-like posture!

Chapter 160: The Head of the Gorgons

"Damn it... What kind of team is this? Why do you keep getting involved with these kinds of things?" Asur clung tightly to the lamppost on the time machine to avoid being thrown off. Because of the speed, her hairstyle was automatically transformed into the kind that looks like someone who's good at playing cards. She still couldn't help but complain, "I thought the Mother of Insects was abstract enough, but this one is even more heavyweight!"

Nobita was too busy to chatter with her anymore. After all, he wasn't Doraemon, and his understanding of time machines was certainly not as thorough as Doraemon's, since this thing was essentially a vehicle. Accelerator, brakes, setting the year, ignition—he left everything else to the AI. At this moment, he had used every available means possible. To accelerate, the battery was almost depleted, but the terrifying tail behind him remained stubbornly persistent.

It wasn't that they lacked spare fuel; Nobita had considered the time machine's battery issue long before setting off. He couldn't produce these batteries on his end, so he had to use a copying mirror to make extra copies and keep them in his pocket for emergencies. But in the current situation, stopping to change batteries was impossible. He could only have Shizuka continuously spray the time machine's nozzles with the "Bad to Good Spray," squeezing out its last bit of speed.

The good news is that, during this long chase, the text on the screen shows that they are only a little bit away from their destination—the year 9 AD.

The bad news is...

"Warning! Warning! A spacetime vortex has been detected ahead, exceeding the operational threshold range of this aircraft. Battery power is insufficient to maintain the normal operation of the navigation lights. You are about to leave the current spacetime. For your safety, please return to base immediately."

A series of alarms vividly illustrated what it means to be completely overwhelmed.

"Nobita, we've run out of spray!" Shizuka half-raised her head, clearly cornered, her face ashen as she watched the monster rapidly approaching from behind. "What should we do?"

"The last time I was chased in the time tunnel, it was Medusa, one of the Demon King's subordinates. How can this guy fly faster than a regular Demon King's military officer?!"

Nobita gritted his teeth, watching as the time machine's power waned and it gradually slowed down, while the opponent's flight speed continued to increase. It was only a matter of time before he was caught up.

His right hand reached into his pocket, preparing for a desperate gamble, when a sudden flash of inspiration struck him. This time, it wasn't someone's careless remark that inspired him, but rather something he himself had said just seconds before.

"Wait a moment……"

"Medusa?"

"What, has your 'machine' malfunctioned?" Nostradamus no longer bothered to hide his hostility towards technology and machinery. He sneered, and lightning once again gathered between his ten fingers. With a sinister grin, he shouted, "Watch me turn you into charcoal!"

……

At the critical moment, Nobita's lips curled up slightly, revealing a somewhat eerie smile.

He pulled a square box out of his pocket. There was a hole in the box, and a small white snake crawled out of the hole, which looked quite strange.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

"What? This snake-shaped prop?"

"This is a very dangerous thing, we must be careful!" Doraemon widened his eyes, gestured with his round hands, and said very seriously.

Whenever Doraemon says this, Nobita knows that he's about to pull out something amazing.

"Do you know Gorgons? They're snake-haired monsters from ancient Greek mythology." Before Medusa was harmed by ACG culture, the words "Gorgon" were hardly associated with anything cute. Doraemon's expression was also quite comical: "When people see her eyes, their bodies turn to stone and they can't move!"

“This prop works the same way. The box contains Gorgon’s head. As long as you open the box and expose a crack… it will emit light and turn a part of the human body into stone.” He held the small snake on the box with his round hand and explained, “Pull the snake’s head, and the petrification will be lifted on its own.”

Looking back now, how could such a bizarre prop have come out of a childcare robot's pocket? The tag "body petrification" would be considered 18+ content on Pornhub, yet Nobita got to experience it ahead of time. The reason he initially used this prop was simply because he was punished by standing in the corridor every day, and his legs were sore from standing. By petrifying only his legs, he could stand tirelessly until the end of time.

With such a bizarre reason and such bizarre props, it's fair to say that one of them dared to ask and the other dared to take.

Even worse, as expected, Nobita messed things up again—he let Gorgon's head escape from the wooden box. Fortunately, it had safety measures in place, so its movements were relatively slow, almost like a tortoise crawling. Even so, it took a lot of effort to catch it back. (The above plot is from his short comic strip "The Head of Gorgon")

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

"[The Chief of the Gorgons]—!!!"

Facing the monster rushing towards him, Nobita mustered his courage and opened the box completely. A beam of eerie green light shot out from the box, and the leader of the Gorgon let out a whale-like roar. Its bizarre face, resembling an Easter Island statue, engaged Nostradamus in a head-on sniping duel.

“Gala…”

The sound of a stiff body.

Nostradamus's puppet-like face finally changed. He looked at his hands in disbelief, his body hardening like ice in the extreme cold.

"Petrification...petrification magic?" His lips remained still, but a fierce glint flashed in his eyes. "I seem to have underestimated you, Blood Bearer."

"Unfortunately, it's no use."

Petrification hadn't completely knocked him unconscious; it seemed to have only temporarily restricted his movements. Nostradamus's body began to slowly fall downwards, his eyes still fixed on Nobita, radiating a venomous light. If looks had killing power, Nobita would probably be riddled with holes by now.

"The prophecies of the centuries have long foretold that the Scarlet Dynasty will devour everything. This time..."

"You can't save anyone!"

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The next moment, the time machine burst out of the tunnel, revealing a thorny forest before them. At first glance, it looked exactly the same as the forest they had traversed before, perhaps illustrating that human technology had made no progress in the past two thousand years.

Da Xiong jerked the control stick and slammed on the brakes, trying to slow the time machine down as much as possible, but to no avail. Like a bull that had seen a red bull, it went berserk, charging wildly. Amid screams, the carpet-like time machine sped through a grove of trees, covering the three of them in leaves, before crashing heavily to the ground with a deafening roar, sending dust and debris flying, creating a large crater in the soft earth.

Asur, the lightest of the group, was even thrown off during the process, landing with a thud on a tree branch, looking quite disheveled.

"Seriously, Nobita, we should put a seatbelt on the time machine." Shizuka rubbed her head, feeling dizzy and seeing stars. "It was the same when we went to the Cretaceous period last time."

"Anyway, at least we landed safely." Nobita, his eyes watering from the impact, still managed a weak smile. "This is China two thousand years ago..."

……

Turning their gaze, they saw a disheveled, grass-gathering boy carrying a basket standing not far away, staring at them in disbelief.

Chapter 161: The Famous Good Man Wang

"You guys actually tried something like this? Are you out of your minds? How could you possibly fly?" The boy squatted down, took out a stack of herbs from his tattered, almost unusable cloth bag, chewed them in his mouth, then spat them onto his hand. He then scooped up a clump of dirt from the ground and mixed the two together.

"Wait...wait a minute, what are you doing?"

Just by looking at this, Asur was so frightened that he shrank back repeatedly, his face full of terror.

"Your calf was scratched by a tree branch." Although the boy was dressed in tattered clothes and his face looked like it hadn't been washed in centuries, his eyes were unusually serious. "If you don't stop the bleeding in time, the wound will fester and get infested with maggots. The only way to heal it then would be with cauterization, where you put a hot iron block on the wound and forcefully cook the skin. Do you want that?"

The scene he described was so terrifying that Asur seemed to hear a hissing sound as a red-hot iron was pressed against his calf, along with the smell of burning flesh. His face turned pale, and he subconsciously swallowed.

"No need for that, we have..."

Just as Shizuka was about to take out the first-aid kit, Nobita gently pressed her hand down. Their eyes met, and she saw a deep meaning in his gaze. They understood each other perfectly; no words were needed. Shizuka lowered her hand and gave Asur an innocent, helpless look.

Every world has its own worldview. Imagine two sides engaged in a world war, and then a divine intervention sends a giant log by that same direction, trampling one of the leaders to death. While this might be satisfying, the underlying problems don't disappear. On the contrary, such a sudden deus ex machina can actually create many issues, such as the subsequent division of power and the calculation of battle damage.

Nobita isn't someone who's impatient for quick success. You can tell from the fact that he's had Doraemon's gadgets for so many years, yet he hasn't become the protagonist of a mindless wish-fulfillment novel. He also doesn't want to drastically change history right away; at the very least, he wants to understand what each step he takes means for the people living here.

So they watched as the boy slowly applied the "ointment," a mixture of herbal dregs and dirt, to Asur's bleeding calf. The girl's expression, initially one of utter despair, gradually became numb, as if she no longer cared what was done to her.

"Alright, that's about it." Spitting out the herbal dregs in his mouth, the boy carefully scraped the dirt off her knees. "Take care and rest. Don't work in the fields for the next couple of days... But even so, you're dressed so nicely, you probably don't have to do any work, right?"

"Thank you for healing our companion." Da Xiong helped Asur up, reciting the explanation he had prepared earlier, "We are..."

"The village is just nearby, want to come?"

These words interrupted all of Nobita's prepared thoughts. He looked at the boy in front of him with some surprise and suddenly realized that this so-called "ancient times" seemed to be different from what he had expected.

“If you can help someone in distress, do your best. We don’t seek future success, but rather to ensure peace of mind. That’s what our master has always taught us.” The boy picked up his basket, and although his face was still dirty, his smile was incredibly pure when he said this, without a trace of impurity. “My name is Huang Amao, and I’m from Tongxin Village.”

“Everyone in our village is a good person. Let’s rest over there.”

The idea that humble names are easier to raise has persisted for a long time in this land. Especially for ordinary farming families, it is said that if a name is too auspicious, the child will not be able to "handle" it.

For Nobita, a child who has lived in the city since childhood, the mountain path was undoubtedly quite difficult. He was a short-distance burst-out athlete, having been chased by Gian every few days since he was a child. His speed within 100 meters was like lightning, but as the distance increased, he would be panting heavily. On the contrary, Shizuka, the girl, had better stamina. She followed Huang Amao all the way along the winding mountain path without even blushing.

As they walked, they naturally didn't remain completely silent. Perhaps to take care of Asur's leg injury, Huang Amao deliberately slowed his pace. He was quite familiar with this mountain, and when he leaped across the stream, his steps were light and quick, as if he were strolling in his own backyard.

"Are you a doctor?"

"Doctor... ah, you mean doctor? You outsiders always use strange words. One of the people who came here the other day was the same."

Huang Amao shook his head repeatedly and laughed, "I'd like to, but I'd have to have the ability. My master only taught me a few folk remedies. They're enough to deal with people in the mountains, but the city folks are all very refined. People are naturally rough, and they don't need medicine for minor illnesses; they'll get better on their own."

"Actually, I'm not that rough..." Asur muttered to himself. However, thanks to his "chewed ointment," the wound had indeed clotted. It was hard to say whether his mysterious method was truly effective or whether the wound healed naturally.

"The outside world isn't all that great either." After a few words, Da Xiong realized that he was in a relatively closed environment, so he pretended to be someone from the "outside" and waved his hand, saying ambiguously, "There are a lot of troubles."

“Yes, the heavens keep sending down strange phenomena. It is said that the court is full of wolves and tigers. The emperor… sigh…” After a heavy sigh, Huang Amao murmured, “Perhaps, only if that virtuous man returns to the court and becomes an official can everything get back on track.”

"A good person?"

“Wang Mang.” Huang Amao calmly uttered these two words and continued walking forward with his basket on his back, as if he had just casually uttered a universally known axiom.

The three of them stopped in their tracks. None of them had expected that less than an hour after landing, the clue they had been desperately seeking would be so easily obtained. In Japanese naming conventions, the surname comes first, followed by the given name. They could easily understand that Huang Amao was discussing a person surnamed Wang and given name Mang. This coincidentally matched the phrase "the royal family ruling the world" spoken of by the old farmer in the fields two thousand and four years later.

Suppressing his joy, Da Xiong cautiously probed, "This Wang Shanren is..."

"Haven't you heard?" This time, it was Huang Amao's turn to be extremely surprised. "Grand Marshal Wang Mang, a very famous and kind man in the capital, held a high official position, yet he distributed his entire salary to his retainers and the poor, and even sold his own carriage to help others. Where can you find such a good official who cares about the common people these days?"

"pity……"

Huang Amao sighed. Although he was thousands of miles away from this "good man" and their social status was worlds apart, he still felt indignant on the man's behalf and said angrily, "He has been forced to retire and return to his hometown. It must be because he was too good that he was feared by treacherous officials, who then ousted him!"

"As soon as he left, all sorts of strange phenomena began to appear, such as a celestial eclipse and rivers drying up. This is Heaven's warning! If the emperor is truly willing, he should not be swayed by treacherous officials and should invite him back to revitalize the Han Dynasty..."

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

As he spoke, he parted the leaves and bushes, revealing a village.

Quiet and peaceful, nestled at the foot of the mountain, it's like a paradise on earth.

Chapter 162: Is the ancient world really worth reminiscing about?

The village roads were practically indistinguishable from muddy paths, especially after a recent rain, where each step revealed a deep, uneven depth. The scent of earth mingled with the fragrance of grass, creating a refreshing and invigorating aroma. Indeed, such a small village nestled among the mountains, its terrain sloping gently downhill, with wooden houses scattered here and there, along with a few cultivated fields.

"There were no hawkers, no construction jackhammers breaking up the road, and no car horns..." Shizuka clasped her hands together, took a deep breath of clean air, as if her whole being was being purified, and said in rapture, "Ancient times are so wonderful."

“Yes, there was no electricity, no clean water. No air conditioning in the summer, no heater in the winter. If you got even a minor illness, you might die because there was no medicine.” Asur rolled his eyes and whispered, “You think the past was better, but that’s because you haven’t really lived here yet.”

"That's not entirely true..."

This argument reminded Nobita of a past experience. As a child, he was always naive and innocent, thinking that the past, without schools or exams, must have been better.

Other children might think about it but that's it; it doesn't really cause any trouble. But Nobita is different. The moment this thought crossed his mind, his next step was to open the drawer of the time machine and head straight to ancient times. Luckily, he met a kind family who were willing to take him in.

As a result, he didn't have to go to school, but he had endless chores from day to night: farming, carrying water, chopping wood, boiling water, drying clothes... In those days, as long as you were old enough to walk, you were a full-fledged laborer; there was no distinction between adults and children. Luckily, that family was kind enough to take him in and feed him, even though he couldn't do any chores well.

However, life is unpredictable. The kind uncle who took him in contracted tuberculosis due to overwork. So, long before Arthur, Nobita had actually encountered this terrible disease. At that time, without a cure, it was considered incurable. In the end, Nobita cried and shook Doraemon over, who injected him with the special medicine, thus saving his life.

Good deeds are rewarded, and meeting Nobita is perhaps a blessing destined for him.

While on the road, Da Xiong remembered that he had sighed deeply, "The old man is such a good person, but he is so poor. He doesn't even have water to irrigate his crops because there is only one river, and the neighboring village also needs the water from this river. If they take the water on their own, there will definitely be more bloodshed."

The next moment, Doraemon's calm words are still etched in his memory.

"Actually, this was roughly the standard of living for people in that era."

It is the development of the times and the progress of science that have enabled people to eat three meals a day. After eating, they can watch TV programs for a while and have a good laugh, so they don't have to go to bed hungry.