56: Chapter 56 Night of Power Outage in the Neighborhood

The streetlights in the Old neighborhood had only been out for half an hour, and the darkness was like a rising tide, flooding every alley entrance.

Chen Jie crouched behind Brother Li's bicycle stall, the wrench in his hand still coated with motor oil from fixing chains that afternoon, glinting coldly in the moonlight.

In the distance, the emergency light at Wang Leis Braised Food Stall flickered on and off like a blinking firefly, stretching their shadows long across the leaf-strewn ground, where they swayed and morphed into indistinct blobs of ink with the shifting light.

"This lousy wiring throws a tantrum twice a month, every month."

Brother Li took a swig of ice-cold beer, the condensation from the bottle dripping onto the concrete floor and blooming into a dark circle. "Last time the power went out, Grandma Zhang's radio was still playing 'flower as matchmaker.' She said after you fixed it, it could play for half the night even without batteries."

Chen Jie didn't respond, merely touching his canvas backpack.

The jade stone was unusually quiet tonight, its icy surface pressed against his side like a pebble soaked in well water.

He thought of what Old Zhou called "time dust," and the afterimages of gears Shopkeeper Zhang had seen while fixing the church clock, suddenly feeling that this power-outage night was like a clock with its pause button pressed—even the sound of the wind passing through the locust tree leaves seemed a beat slower.

"Jie-zi, got a light?"

Zhao Kai's voice emerged from the darkness. He kicked a bicycle in the gloom, and the bell rang out with an abrupt "ding-a-ling."

Just as Chen Jie pulled out his lighter, he heard Zhao Kai hiss sharply, "Why is your backpack glowing?"

From the seam of the canvas backpack's zipper, a pale green light was seeping out, flickering in and out of existence like a little snake hiding in the fabric, secretly peeking at the outside world.

Chen Jie felt a jolt of alarm and hurriedly hid the backpack behind his back, terrified that someone would discover this eerie glow.

However, the moment his fingertips touched the backpack, he suddenly felt a faint vibration.

This vibration didn't come from the backpack itself, but from the jade stone inside.

Chen Jie looked closely and saw that the circuit board patterns on the jade stone's surface were actually glowing!

The green light seemed alive, slowly traveling along the patterns, weaving a dense web across the fabric.

A sentence Grandma Zhang once said suddenly flashed through Chen Jie's mind: "The blue light looks like the gear light of the old grandfather clock in the ancestral hall."

He suddenly realized that the light from the jade stone was the very appearance of time flowing!

"Reflection," Chen Jie explained vaguely, then hurried toward Wang Lei's stall.

In the dim, yellow halo of the emergency light, he saw Grandma Zhang leaning on her cane, struggling to grope her way forward in the darkness.

A locust leaf had caught on the hem of her blue cloth shirt at some point, and it swayed slightly in the wind as she walked.

"Little Jie-zi, is that stone of yours showing its power again?"

Grandma Zhang's voice sounded somewhat ethereal in the darkness. "I just heard the grandfather clock at the watch stall ticking, but that clock stopped last month."

Chen Jie glanced toward Old Zhou's stall. Sure enough, a very faint "tick-tock" sound came from the darkness—not like the meshing of mechanical gears, but more like someone gently tapping a glass with their fingertip.

He thought of the church clock Shopkeeper Zhang had repaired, and the shadows walking backward and pigeons flying in reverse. So the jade stone was never meant to turn back time; it just allowed those forgotten sounds to linger a little longer in the darkness.

"You misheard, Grandma," he said softly, then quickly pulled a candle from the side pocket of his backpack.

This candle was a spare he'd kept from when he fixed Su Rui's scanner; he hadn't expected it to come in handy now.

He handed the candle to Wang Lei, who expertly struck a match. The flame leaped up instantly, illuminating the surrounding darkness.

The moment the firelight flared, the green light that had been flashing inside the backpack suddenly receded, and the backpack returned to normal.

Chen Jie's gaze was drawn to the candlelight, and he stared at the dancing shadows within the flame.

Brother Li was bent over, pumping up a bicycle tire, while Zhao Kai held the candle high to light the way for Wang Lei as he rummaged for braised food.

Grandma Zhang's enamel mug sat on the stone table, steaming, as if telling the story of this night's warmth.

Despite it being a night without power, it was livelier here than usual.

Everyone sat around together, enjoying this rare moment of tranquility.

"This stone," Old Zhou's voice suddenly sounded behind Chen Jie. He didn't know when he had walked over, clutching that brass pocket watch tightly in his hand.

The chrysanthemum pattern on the watch cover flickered in the candlelight, as if telling stories of the years gone by.

"Just like this candle," Old Zhou continued, "it can light the path in front of us, but it cannot light the footprints we've left behind."

His words revealed a faint sense of lament.

Chen Jie thought of Shopkeeper Zhang. After he had finished repairing the church clock years ago, he had drawn a question mark in his ledger and written beside it: "Light is not for illumination; it is a guide."

This sentence seemed to contain deep meaning, making one ponder.

Chen Jie looked down at his canvas backpack. The coldness of the jade stone seeped through the fabric like a silent exhortation.

In the darkness, the laughter of a child suddenly drifted from afar. Perhaps someone had lit a lantern, the halo shaking a patch of warm yellow at the alley entrance.

He suddenly understood that the so-called speed of time was never in the light of the jade stone, but in this mundane atmosphere of passing candles in the dark and gathering together to gossip—just like the pendulum of an old grandfather clock, it didn't beat seconds, but the steadiness of living life.

When the candle had burned halfway down, the power suddenly returned.

The streetlights switched on with a "whoosh," pinning everyone's shadows to the ground. Wang Lei's emergency light died with a "buzz," and the "tick-tock" from the clock stall ceased abruptly.

Chen Jie touched his backpack; the jade stone was icy cold, as if the green light from just a moment ago had been an illusion.

"Power's back!" Zhao Kai threw the candle onto the ground, and the sparks spun in the wind before extinguishing.

While packing up his tools, Chen Jie discovered some pale green powder on the inside of his canvas backpack, like crushed firefly wings.

He remembered Old Zhou's words and suddenly smiled—the jade stone wasn't some Dominator of time, but merely an onlooker who loved to join in the fun, quietly lighting up a patch of light belonging to the Old neighborhood on a night of power outage.