184: Chapter 184 The Lights Don't Turn

After the bell chimes vanished, the street became even harder to endure.

The wind blew past the street signs with a clanging sound, leaves rustled as they rubbed together, and the caution tape snapped loudly in the wind, yet everyone felt a void in their ears.

It was as if the entire street had been placed inside a glass dome; the sounds were still there, but they drifted and floated, unable to reach where they were supposed to go, nor could they settle into people's hearts.

Lin Zhao stood opposite the small shop, staring at that cheap plastic wall clock.

The clock was very cheap, with a white casing and red hands, and a half-torn promotional sticker still stuck to the edge.

It had probably hung above the counter before, reminding the owner when to eat and when to close up; it was the most ordinary everyday object.

Now it was stopped at exactly eight o'clock, and an ink-black eye had appeared in the center of the dial, its pupil rotating slowly, sticky as if it were crawling.

That eye stared at Lin Zhao from beginning to end.

Chen Jue walked up beside him, his voice lowered: "Why does it always look at you?"

"Because I just held the first line."

"So what?"

"So it wants to see if I can still hold the second line."

Chen Jue gritted his teeth: "Does this thing only pick on soft targets?"

Lin Zhao smiled slightly, without any anger: "Perhaps in its eyes, I am."

He spoke calmly, but Chen Jue became even more irritable, clenching his fists and staring at that clock-eye, wishing he could rush up and smash it.

Xu Minglan directed people to transfer the affected residents to the temporary tents at the end of the street, her bangs stuck to her forehead by sweat, clutching a registration board in her hand.

Seeing Lin Zhao still standing at the very front, she frowned: "You are standing too far forward."

"I know."

"And you're still standing there?"

"If I take a step back, the Guardian Lamp line will break a segment."

Xu Minglan wanted to scold him, but swallowed the words back.

She shoved a glucose drink into Chen Jue's hand: "Make him drink it."

Lin Zhao just wanted to wave his hand, but Chen Jue directly unscrewed the cap and shoved it to his lips: "Drink."

Lin Zhao was forced to gulp down two mouthfuls, almost choking, coughing until the corners of his eyes turned red.

Just then, the plastic clock in the small shop suddenly moved.

It wasn't the second hand moving.

It was the entire clock bulging out from the wall, as if a face were trying to squeeze out from behind the clock face.

That black eye stared fixedly at Lin Zhao, its eyelid slowly drooping, as if closing.

All the Guardian Lamp stickers along the street dimmed simultaneously.

In the tent, the girl who had just calmed down suddenly covered her ears, her body beginning to tremble: "Don't call me… Don't call me… I'm not late…"

Xu Minglan immediately turned and rushed over.

On the other side, an old man pushed away those blocking him and headed straight outside the caution tape, muttering to himself: "It's time to go home and eat, the old woman must be getting anxious…"

But his wife had passed away ten years ago.

More people began to move.

There were no bell chimes.

There were no broadcasts.

There was only an invisible force, as if it had lightly plucked something in everyone's heart.

It's time.

It's time to go.

It's time to head back.

Chen Jue's face turned pale: "It can lure people even without sound?!"

"It's not relying on sound." Lin Zhao took a deep breath, pressing his palm onto the last Guardian Lamp sticker on the ground, "It's relying on habit."

People are used to getting up when they hear a bell, going out when they hear the time announced, and rushing on their way when they see the time.

What the anomaly grasps is never the ears, but the instinctual reactions trained into the human body by day-after-day life.

Firelight spread out from his palm.

One meter.

Two meters.

Three meters.

By the fourth meter, the firelight began to tremble violently, like a candle flame in the wind, ready to extinguish at any moment.

His arm was also shaking, and cold sweat from his forehead dripped down his jaw.

Chen Jue reached out to press his shoulder, but was stopped by a shout from Lin Zhao: "Don't touch me."

"Can you hold on?"

"Even if I can't, I have to."

"That sounds like you're looking for death!"

Lin Zhao gritted his teeth, his gaze never leaving that clock-eye: "Then go drag the people back. Don't stand next to me worrying blindly; go do what you can do."

Chen Jue felt as if his chest had been shoved, feeling stifled.

He turned and rushed toward the old man walking outside the caution tape, grabbing his arm.

The old man didn't have much strength, but he was terrifyingly stubborn, struggling and waving his arms, repeatedly muttering "She's waiting for me to eat."

Chen Jue's wrist ached from being grabbed by him, and he suddenly remembered the sentence Han Yue sent: "Don't let them sit there for nothing."

He didn't shout again, nor did he pull hard.

"Grandpa." Chen Jue panted, his voice lowering a bit, "If she has waited for you for ten years, she wouldn't want you to die here today."

The old man's movements suddenly paused.

"Go back, buy a bouquet of flowers tomorrow, and don't go see her empty-handed. She'll definitely be happy."

The blankness in the old man's eyes slowly receded, and he suddenly crouched on the ground, covering his face and sobbing, like a lost child.

Chen Jue stood beside him, at a loss, and could only clumsily pat his back.

In the tent, Xu Minglan pressed the girl's shoulders, making her repeat the name of her school, her class, and the taste of the sesame seed cake stand at her home's entrance over and over.

By the third time the girl said "salty with sausage," she finally woke up from the obsession of being "late for the make-up test," and collapsed on the chair, sobbing until she was gasping for air.

The tent was in chaos; some were crying, some were panting, and some were looking around blankly.

In the center of the street, Lin Zhao stood alone, the Guardian Lamp light forming a thin semicircle, covering everyone on the entire street.

That was not a wall.

It was more like a hand.

Very thin, very hot, trembling, yet it stood between many people and that cold clock-eye.

A gray-Bai Ya shadow fell from mid-air and landed on top of the street lamp.

The firelight of the Patrol Crow Lamp transmitted a line through the crow shadow, thin, yet it precisely mended the parts at the edge of the firelight that were about to split.

Bai Ya's voice emerged from the channel, carrying his habitual laziness: "Holding on quite ugly."

Lin Zhao gritted his teeth: "Shut up."

"But it works."

As the words fell, the firelight suddenly steadied by a fraction.

In the small shop, the plastic clock's black eye blinked once.

Lin Zhao heard it speaking in a place without sound, cold and light, like ice shards falling on his heart:

[The lamp does not ring.]

[The lamp should also extinguish.]

Lin Zhao suddenly raised his head.

He looked at that clock, and the Fire Seal on his wrist suddenly burned hot.

"Who says a lamp must ring?"

The Guardian Lamp light suddenly surged outward, forcibly pushing out another half step.

Snap—

A thin crack appeared on the outer shell of the plastic clock.

A thin, black clock face fell out from the crack, drifting lightly onto the ground.

On the back of the clock face was carved an unfamiliar mark—half a closed eye, dragging a long, thin pendulum pattern, identical to the watermark in the Rhine letters.

Bai Ya's crow shadow looked down and swept a glance, his voice becoming uncharacteristically serious.

"Found it."

"It's the mark from Rhine's side."

The crow shadow rested on top of the street lamp, its black feathers scattered and then closed by the wind.

It didn't take all the pressure for Lin Zhao, but merely used a bit of lamp fire to illuminate the gaps on the fire line—where it was thin, where it was about to crack, where someone was standing on the boundary not yet awake, all were clearly marked with tiny sparks.

For the first time, Lin Zhao truly felt that what he was guarding was never a neat line, but a messy pile of people.

The student afraid of being late, the old man wanting to go home to eat, the uncle feeling bad about his new phone, the sharp-tongued but soft-hearted Chen Jue, the sharp-tongued but kind-hearted Xu Minglan, and Gu Xingzhou, who stood behind the caution tape, seemingly calm but actually gripping his pen tightly all along.

These people were not neat at all, and guarding them was extremely troublesome.

But if Guardian Lamp was only to guard a group of obedient, orderly, flawless people, then this path would not be worth walking.

It was right in this messy, bustling atmosphere of human life that he pressed his palm deeper into the ground.

Gu Xingzhou stood behind the caution tape, silently writing the four words "Silent Induction" into the field record, paused, and then changed it to "Silent Time Induction."

The difference in one word wasn't much, but it would be useful for those who encountered similar incidents later.

The Arbiter had said before that records were not for writing beautifully, but so that the next time someone flipped to this page, one less person might die.

Gu Xingzhou understood this sentence more and more now.

The moment the plastic clock cracked, those cheap alarm clocks and electronic watches in the shop all dimmed.

They weren't completely defeated, but rather seemed to have temporarily retreated, hiding into an invisible place.

Lin Zhao did not pursue.

He knew he couldn't pursue.

A Guardian Lamp holder is never someone who can wipe out the darkness every single time.

More often, they just stand there, confirming that the darkness has not crossed the line beneath their feet.

This realization was not hot-blooded at all, but it was very solid.

He suddenly understood a little why Zhao Ye always stood at the very front.

It wasn't that he wasn't afraid.

It was that after standing up there, the people behind would know where they could still retreat.