17: Chapter 17 The Clock at 2:17

The eyes inside the bronze bell watched Bai Ya.

They were not human eyes.

They had no whites and no pupils, looking like a piece of polished black glass. Deep within, they faintly reflected the shelves, tables, and old clocks in the warehouse, as well as Bai Ya himself.

But the Bai Ya in the reflection was speaking.

The Bai Ya in reality had his mouth shut.

The prompt in the grey message was written very clearly.

Do not answer any questions coming from inside the bronze bell.

So no matter what was said inside, he could not respond.

The next second, a voice came from inside the bronze bell.

"How many harmful items have you sold?"

Bai Ya gripped the wooden-handled hammer tightly, not answering.

"You knew that mirror would cause trouble."

"You knew that buyer later went missing."

"You knew, yet you still hid the records."

The voice was soft, not like an interrogation, but more like a statement whispered right against his ear.

Bai Ya's expression grew cold bit by bit.

He did indeed know some things.

But not before he sold them.

The most troublesome thing about anomalous old objects is that they disguise themselves too well. Before something happens, everything seems like ordinary superstitious merchandise. After something happens, the buyer disappears, the seller cancels their account, the platform records are deleted, and all that remains is a pile of contradictory fragments.

Bai Ya relied on these fragments to make judgments.

He was not a good person.

But he also didn't want to be the one who handed a knife to a monster.

The sound of the bronze bell began to brew for the third time.

When the third chime rang out completely, according to the grey message prompt, a certain change would be completed.

Bai Ya had no time to play psychological warfare with it.

He abruptly tore a roll of black cloth from the shelf and covered the entire bronze bell.

The moment the cloth fell, the voice inside immediately changed to someone else.

"Boss White, save me."

It was a woman's voice.

Bai Ya remembered her.

She had bought a vanity mirror and later asked him in the chat history: If a mirror faces the bed in the middle of the night, is the feng shui bad?

Bai Ya had not replied to that message.

It wasn't that he hadn't replied on purpose.

He was processing another batch of goods at the time, and by the time he saw the message, a day had already passed. Later on, the other party's avatar turned grey, and the account never came online again.

The voice under the black cloth continued to sound.

"Why didn't you reply to me?"

"You clearly saw it."

"You clearly could have warned me."

Bai Ya bit the tip of his tongue.

The pain kept his eyes clear.

If he answered, he would lose.

The anomaly was waiting for him to acknowledge a relationship.

As long as he responded with a "sorry," it could use that guilt to nail something into his body.

Bai Ya put on rubber gloves and smashed the wooden-handled hammer hard against the bronze lock on the side of the old clock.

The first strike didn't open the bronze lock.

The thing under the black cloth suddenly bumped against it.

The entire table slid back half a foot.

The electronic clock screen on the wall lit up.

Even though it had been disconnected from power, it displayed a string of constantly changing numbers.

Bai Ya only glanced at it, his pupils slightly constricted.

That was not time.

It was a transaction ID.

The IDs in his hidden folder.

Those anomalous old objects he had recorded scrolled across the screen one by one. With every one that scrolled by, the corresponding memory in Bai Ya's mind faded a little.

It was deleting him.

Not deleting the warehouse records.

It was deleting his memories.

Bai Ya finally understood why that forum poster had found that a digit was missing from the date of birth on their ID card.

The Lost Time Mantel Clock wasn't stealing items.

It was taking away the "proof of existence."

Objects, photos, records, numbers, memories—all were proof.

The third chime was about to fall.

Bai Ya closed his eyes.

Don't look at the clock face.

Don't answer.

Don't let it finish ringing.

The three restrictions were very clear.

The problem was, he only had two hands.

"This crappy mechanism..."

Bai Ya stopped halfway through cursing in his heart.

Cursing more was useless.

He wasn't here to write a negative review.

He needed to survive.

Bai Ya let go of the wooden-handled hammer, grabbed a box of glass marbles from the table with his other hand, and poured them all into the gear slot beneath the mantel clock.

These marbles were originally accessories from some Republic of China-style ornament; he had found them to be in the way but had never thrown them out.

The moment the glass marbles rolled into the gear slot, a harsh grinding sound came from under the black cloth.

The sound of the bronze bell jammed.

Clang——

The third chime only rang halfway.

Bai Ya took advantage of this gap, gripped the wooden-handled hammer again, and smashed it down hard.

Crack.

The bronze lock broke open.

The black cloth suddenly bulged, as if something inside wanted to rush out.

Bai Ya did not lift the cloth.

He reached in from under the cloth, followed the internal structure of the mantel clock, and grabbed the real black bronze bell core.

That thing was not big, looking like a compressed pendulum bob, or perhaps a clock weight without hands.

The moment he touched it, countless voices rang in Bai Ya's ears.

Buyers urging.

Sellers whispering.

Strangers crying out.

And his own voice, asking him why he hadn't stopped sooner.

The veins on the back of Bai Ya's hand bulged, and he forcibly dragged the black bronze bell core out.

A muffled sound came from inside the old clock.

Like something had had its tongue ripped out.

The lights in the warehouse turned back on.

The electronic clock returned to a black screen.

The mantel clock on the table was still covered by the black cloth, and there was no sound inside anymore.

Bai Ya stood in place, and it took a while before he realized his hands were shaking.

It wasn't fear.

It was exhaustion after the excitement.

He looked at the black bronze bell core in his palm.

A thin crack had appeared on the surface of the bell core, and grey mist was seeping out from the crack.

The next second, a layer of familiar grey rose from the warehouse floor.

The grey mist surged from all directions, swallowing the shelves, tables, the old clock, and the concrete floor beneath Bai Ya's feet.

When his vision stabilized again, he was standing in a vast, empty black hall.

In the distance, there was a stone stele.

A fire was suspended above the stone stele.

Behind the firelight, there was a figure whose face could not be clearly seen.

Bai Ya looked up.

The dozens of probing sentences he had originally prepared all got stuck at this moment.

Because that figure was just sitting there quietly, yet it gave him a feeling.

That his little cleverness, hidden in the dark web, second-hand platforms, the Old Goods Circle, and private folders, was just a thin layer of paper in front of this fire.

Zero's cold voice rang out.

"Candidate Bai Ya, test mission completed."

"Do you wish to submit the mission objective?"

Bai Ya looked at the black bronze bell core in his hand.

He did not ask how much money it could be exchanged for, nor did he ask what this place was.

He walked to the stone stele and placed the bell core on it.

The black bronze bell core was lifted by the grey mist and slowly sank into the stone stele.

What Bai Ya saw was the settlement surfacing on the front of the stone stele.

[Mission completed.]

[Anomalous core received.]

[Contribution points obtained: 27.]

[Permission updated: Candidate → Apprentice.]

[Mark of the Torch generating.]

A fire pattern appeared on the inside of his wrist.

Very faint, yet real.

Bai Ya stared at that fire pattern, suddenly realizing that he hadn't just found a weird rumor circle.

He had been formally written into a list by some higher-level order.

And behind the firelight, Lu Chen watched the backend records that only he could see.

[Anomalous core: Black bronze bell core, recovered.]

[Recovery value: 9 source essence.]

[Organization retention: 6 source essence.]

[Low-level anomaly recovery loss: 0.3 source essence.]

[Member contribution conversion: 27 contribution points.]

Before Bai Ya submitted the anomalous object, the available source essence of the Core of the Torch had stopped at eleven.

Now, the number had pushed to seventeen.

Lu Chen first noted down the account.

Nine source essence is not ten; after the seventy percent conversion, there would be a loss.

If the decimals weren't handled clearly in advance, the subsequent exchanges, inventory, and rewards would all start to skew.

The Xinhuo Council might not have been dragged down by anomalies in the first place.

But rather pushed toward being out of control by one mismatched account after another.

He looked up at Bai Ya, his voice calm.

"Welcome to the Xinhuo Council."