183: Chapter 183 The Person Who Stopped the Clock

The sky had not completely darkened, yet the east side of Qinghe felt as if it had been plunged into night prematurely.

The police tape outside the clock shop had been moved back twice. No matter how efficient Gu Xingzhou's men were, they could not block the panic welling up in people's hearts. An old woman carrying a vegetable basket stood at the intersection, gripping her cloth bag and asking repeatedly: "My grandson is still at his tutoring class. Over there... did the clock chime?"

No one dared to answer.

By now, any words related to "time" were like thin needles; speaking them aloud might pierce something, inviting whatever was in the darkness to come over.

Lin Zhao sat on the curb, his face devoid of color. Three Guardian Lamp patches had already burned out, and a cluster of fine, dense blisters had risen on the back of his hand. He quietly hid his hand inside his sleeve, not intending for Chen Jue to see.

Chen Jue saw it anyway.

"Your hand."

"I'm fine."

"Every time you say you're fine, it's like you're about to kick the bucket."

Lin Zhao looked up at him, the corners of his mouth twitching: "Learned how to care about people?"

Chen Jue was choked by the retort and turned to move the new barricades, grumbling in a low voice, though his footsteps did not lead him far away.

When Xu Minglan arrived, she was followed by two medical collaborators. She did not ask how dangerous the scene was, but immediately began directing people to separate and settle the affected residents.

"Those who froze after hearing the bell, sit on the left."

"Those who looked at the time and had slowed reactions, on the right."

"Those muttering about the hour, timekeeping, or 'it's time,' isolate them separately, further away from the clock shop."

Gu Xingzhou stood to the side, watching her sort them efficiently, and couldn't help but ask: "Are you sure this sorting method is useful?"

Xu Minglan shoved an ear thermometer at him: "You take the temperatures."

Gu Xingzhou looked down at the small object in his hand, was silent for half a second, then silently accepted it. It was not that he did not know how to do the work, but rather he was not accustomed to being ordered around. However, in times like this, an extra pair of hands meant one less person meeting with disaster.

The first uncle to recover sat on a folding chair, his gaze slowly focusing. He looked down and saw his shattered mobile phone on the ground, his breath hitching in pain.

"Who smashed it?"

Chen Jue stood nearby, expressionless: "Me."

The uncle opened his mouth, ready to curse.

Lin Zhao looked over, his voice very soft: "He saved you."

The uncle's curses caught in his throat, and after holding them back for a long time, he muttered: "But you can't just smash a new model... the installments aren't even paid off yet!"

Chen Jue laughed in anger: "You were almost hooked away by the clock just now, and you're still thinking about your installments?"

"That's twelve installments!"

As soon as this was said, several others nearby who were less affected couldn't help but look over.

The atmosphere, which had been stretched taut like a bowstring, suddenly loosened a fraction. Someone bowed their head and chuckled, then felt it was inappropriate and hurriedly coughed to cover it up.

Xu Minglan did not laugh.

She was pressing the wrist of a girl wearing a school uniform. The girl was seventeen or eighteen, her uniform sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and the digital watch on her wrist was stopped at exactly eight o'clock. Even her pulse seemed to be held by the watch hands, skipping a beat every few seconds for no reason.

"What is your name?" Xu Minglan asked very slowly.

The girl's lips were pale, her eyes unfocused: "I... I remember... the teacher said there was a makeup test at eight o'clock, and I was late..."

"There is no makeup test now."

"But the clock rang." The girl's eyes instantly turned red, her voice choking: "My mom said if I didn't test well, I shouldn't come home..."

Xu Minglan's movements paused.

The bell did not pick people at random.

It specifically targeted those with "fear" in their hearts—fear of being late, fear of missing out, fear of being told "it's time," fear that once something was settled, they would lose. The more ordinary the obsession, the easier it was to be hooked by it.

She reached into her medical bag, pulled out a basic Fire Seal patch, and stuck it to the back of the girl's watch.

The firelight was very faint, like warm water seeping into a crack in the ice.

"Listen well." Xu Minglan's voice was steady, each word landing in the girl's ears: "You are not late now. You are sitting at a temporary medical point in East Qinghe, with three medical staff, one police officer, and two ill-tempered Torch collaborators beside you. You are very safe."

The girl blinked blankly.

Chen Jue muttered from the side: "Who is ill-tempered."

Lin Zhao shot him a sidelong glance.

The next second, the girl finally couldn't hold it in and burst into tears.

Once she cried, her erratic pulse smoothed out.

Xu Minglan quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

Bai Ya's voice came through the channel, filled with electrical static, a lazy tone hiding underlying tension.

"The signal near Linhai is severely cut off. I sent two Crow Shadows over; one came back, the other is gone."

Zhao Ye's voice instantly turned cold: "What do you mean by gone?"

"Literal meaning. No sound, no Fire Seal, as if someone cut the road."

Shen Qinghe joined in, her tone heavy: "The one cutting the road may not be the same force as the clock shop. Qinghe is just a low-level echo; the real thing is still over at Rhine."

"The problem is we can't get across," Zhao Ye said.

Bai Ya replied slowly: "So don't die in Qinghe first."

Zhao Ye: "Stop with the crow's mouth."

"I actually have crows now."

"..."

Lin Zhao listened to the bickering on the channel, feeling a bit steadier in his heart.

As long as they could still argue, it meant things hadn't reached the worst possible point.

But the next second, the Fire Seals on everyone's wrists grew hot simultaneously.

The Grey Net popped up a new warning, glaringly red.

[Synchronized clock-stopping event detected.]

[Three in Qinghe, two in Jiangbei, one in Linhai.]

[Pollution type: Silent Timekeeping.]

Across the street, the rolling shutter door of a small convenience store suddenly rolled up an inch on its own.

Behind the door hung a cheap plastic wall clock, red shell, white face.

The second hand stopped at the exact same second.

And in the center of the dial, where the brand logo should have been, there was now an extra black eye.

That eye turned slowly, sweeping over the crowd at the street corner, the police tape, the medical point, and finally, it landed steadily on Lin Zhao.

There was no sound.

Yet Lin Zhao heard a sentence clearly, as if it were whispered right against his ear, cold and light:

[Guardian Lamp, it's time for you too.]

Lin Zhao looked at the girl's tear-stained profile and suddenly remembered the first time he stood guard on the perimeter. Back then, he also thought that as long as he didn't charge into the core area, there was nothing he could do. Later, he slowly understood that many people did not die in the mouths of monsters, but at that crucial step, with no one there to reach out and pull them back.

So now, he didn't feel like laughing at Chen Jue.

Chen Jue used to always think about proving his usefulness, wishing he could charge into the most dangerous places to fight every time. But just now, smashing the phone, pulling the old man, and standing outside the police tape shouting—he was doing all the work he used to look down on as "work only the useless do."

Yet these tasks were truly capable of pulling people back.

Gu Xingzhou sent the photos of the scene to the internal channel, with only one line of text: Bell pollution is using daily behavioral habits to induce.

The Arbiter quickly added: All personnel evacuation procedures must include a "time induction" screening item.

Gu Xingzhou looked at that line of text and did not argue. Procedures were sometimes like hemp rope—annoying, rough, and chafing to the hands. But when someone was truly about to fall, it could always hold a little bit of weight.

The black eye in the old clock shop did not turn again, nor did it disappear.

It had astonishing patience, hiding quietly behind the wooden-cased clock, watching the medical point, the police tape, and the people coming and going outside, as if counting its prey.

Lin Zhao felt a chill down his spine from being stared at, yet he did not step back.

He suddenly understood that he would likely be targeted by such things often in the future.

After all, he was standing on the boundary.

Places like boundaries were the easiest to be seen by both sides.

Xu Minglan was also lowering her head to record her observations.

She discovered that when people affected by the stopped clocks woke up, their first reaction was often not fear of the anomaly, but panic about having missed things in reality. Makeup tests, mealtimes, shift changes, children getting out of school... the more trivial and ordinary the daily life, the easier it was for the bell to use it as a hook.

She wrote this point heavily into the medical record.

In the future, when saving people, one must not only ask "what did you hear," but also ask "what are you afraid of missing."

After finishing, she crossed out the words "psychological weakness caused by family blame" that followed. She couldn't write that.

Many people being pulled away by anomalies was never because they were weak.

It was because they were living too tiredly, and there was a place in their hearts that had long been worn too thin by the day-after-day "it's time."

Deep inside the clock shop, the wooden-cased clock chimed again softly.

It was very light, yet it felt like it struck everyone's nerves.

That black eye curved slightly again, as if smiling.

The Grey Net alert popped up again, cold words floating in the field of vision.

[Rhine Line 6th shelter, confirmed lost.]

[Pollution is spreading along Clock Road.]

[Target: All Guardian Lamps.]