193: Chapter 193 Shen Qinghe Can't Hear

Shen Qinghe lost her sense of hearing abruptly while on her way to the Old Archives.

First, the communication channel went completely silent, without even a trace of static; immediately after, the dull sound of tires rolling over a manhole cover vanished into thin air; in the end, even the sound of her own breathing, the rise and fall of her chest, was completely stripped away from the world.

She sat in the passenger seat, her fingertips instinctively brushing behind her ears. There was no blood, nor any stinging pain, yet everything around her seemed to have been drained of all sound. Outside the car window, red lights flickered in alternation, the windshield wipers swept back and forth across the glass covered in raindrops, and the driver's lips moved continuously, looking exactly like an old silent film with all its audio cut out.

The fate-illuminating bronze bell in her arms pressed quietly against her chest.

The fine cracks originally covering the body of the bell were lighting up with a pale, faint glow, as if someone in the darkness were holding a blade, scraping carefully along the old markings.

Shen Qinghe lowered her gaze to stare at the bronze bell for a moment, then raised her hand and tapped her fingers lightly against the center console.

The driver paused, turning his head in confusion.

She took out her phone, typed something, and held it before him: "Stop the car."

The vehicle came to a steady stop. At the intersection ahead, a minibus suddenly swerved violently, driving straight toward the back door of the Old Archives. Inside the windows sat seven or eight passengers, each with hollow, vacant eyes, as if they were all listening to some sound that no one else could catch.

Shen Qinghe pushed open the car door and stepped into the curtain of rain.

The driver hurriedly reached out to grab her sleeve, his lips moving rapidly.

She could not hear his words, but she accurately read the concern in his lip movements.

She shook her head gently, pointed to her own ears, and then pointed toward the out-of-control minibus ahead.

The driver's face turned pale instantly.

The minibus did not honk its horn once, and there was no sound of braking friction at the intersection.

The entire street seemed to be tightly muffled by an invisible hand; vehicles, pedestrians, and traffic lights went about their business, yet there was not a single sound that could warn of danger.

For the first time, Shen Qinghe realized truly that after her sense of hearing was stripped away, the basis for her judgment of the situation was missing by more than half.

For a long time, she had always relied on sound to capture anomalies: the sound of faint footsteps, rising and falling breaths, the vibration of the Suppression Domain bell, and the unique low-frequency hum before the old law landed. The core advantage bestowed upon her by the fate-illuminating bronze bell was capturing the minute vibrations of the instant before a catastrophe descended. Now, the Clock Collector had drained away all sounds in the world, which was equivalent to directly severing her most familiar guiding landmarks.

She did not panic or lose her composure. Only an irrepressible irritation remained in her heart.

Zhao Ye hurried over from the other side of the street. Just as he was about to speak, Shen Qinghe raised her hand to stop him.

She pointed to her ears.

Zhao Ye's brows knitted together fiercely, and his lips moved twice.

Shen Qinghe read that curse at a glance.

She nodded gently. For once, she felt that those two words perfectly summarized her current state of mind.

Zhao Ye pointed at the minibus and made a motion as if to smash through an obstacle.

Shen Qinghe shook her head slowly, opened her phone, typed, and held it up before him: "The people on the bus are being led by an abnormal sound. If we rashly smash the car and provoke them, we will only get them all dragged into the trap of the old law."

After reading it, Zhao Ye's expression grew even heavier, and he typed a reply: "Then what should we do?"

Shen Qinghe did not answer immediately. She slowly closed her eyes. Since her ears were useless, she would abandon her sense of hearing.

Rain fell on her cheeks—silent, yet carrying a cold touch. The asphalt road transmitted extremely faint vibrations; the minibus engine continued to run, sending intermittent, rhythmic tremors through the soles of her feet. The cracks in the fate-illuminating bronze bell in her arms flowed with a faint light, producing no sound, only rising and falling in brightness like a pulse being forcibly suppressed.

She bent down and pressed the bronze bell completely against the wet asphalt road.

Zhao Ye's expression changed abruptly, and he instinctively reached out to stop her.

Shen Qinghe looked up at him, her gaze calm and determined.

Zhao Ye's hand, reaching halfway through the air, stopped dead.

The bronze bell remained pressed against the water-logged road, yet still did not emit a single chime.

However, on the water accumulated on the road, three layers of fine ripples suddenly spread outward in circles.

The first layer of ripples pointed directly at the out-of-control minibus; the second led to the back door of the Old Archives; the third landed on a black iron mailbox without a house number at the street corner.

Shen Qinghe opened her eyes.

She could no longer hear the tremors of the law descending, but through the ripples of vibration, she could clearly see the veins of the anomaly.

The Clock Collector was not simply plundering all sounds, but was collecting all the stolen sounds, turning them into invisible threads that led living people step by step into the trap.

The passengers on the minibus were not having their bodies forcibly controlled; rather, they were being seduced by the sounds they were most obsessed with and longed to hear the most in their hearts, causing them to step forward involuntarily.

She typed quickly, with only two words on the screen: "The mailbox."

Zhao Ye did not need to ask more; he immediately turned and rushed toward the old wall at the street corner.

The black iron mailbox had been soaked by rain for years, and the rust on its surface was shiny. Just as he approached, countless thin, transparent threads suddenly extended from inside the mailbox. The threads were not physical objects; they were more like solidified human voices, and each one was firmly connected to a passenger inside the minibus.

Zhao Ye clenched his fist, preparing to swing, when the threads suddenly tightened and pulled.

Several passengers in the minibus simultaneously showed extreme pain, their bodies convulsing violently.

Shen Qinghe stepped forward quickly and grabbed his wrist, which was about to strike.

Zhao Ye gritted his teeth, his lips opening and closing, full of reluctance.

She could not hear his reprimand, but she understood the impatience in his heart.

She held the fate-illuminating bronze bell to the bottom of the mailbox, not to strike it, but to press it firmly against it.

The side of the bronze bell covered in cracks pressed against the damp sheet metal, and gray-white sparks spread along the rainwater, wrapping around the entire mailbox. In the midst of the total silence, Shen Qinghe tapped the bell body twice with her fingertips.

Still, no chime spread out.

But all the threads guiding the people froze simultaneously for a moment.

Zhao Ye instantly understood her intention. He stopped attacking the mailbox and instead reached out to grab the stagnant sound threads, driving his own nascent Suppression Domain downward to suppress them, forcefully pinning all the threads in place.

The out-of-control minibus ahead jerked and came to a steady stop at the intersection.

The driver slumped over the steering wheel, panting heavily, his hollow eyes slowly regaining clarity.

The silence around Shen Qinghe's ears remained absolute, but where her palm touched the bronze bell, there was a new, warm marking.

The second chime of the bell had failed to break through the shackles of silence and was pinned tightly beneath this absolute stillness.

This could not be counted as a complete two-chime bell law; it was merely a prototype.

But it was enough to sever the threads guiding the human voices.

The shell of the black mailbox at the street corner slowly cracked open, and a piece of paper soaked in rainwater fluttered lightly to the ground.

The paper was blank, with no words, only a standard bell-shaped hole hollowed out in the center.

Shen Qinghe bent down to pick up the paper and looked up into the depths of the rain curtain.

In the shadows across the street, a figure wearing a black tuxedo and white gloves stood silently.

It bowed slightly, its posture humble, as if thanking her for taking the initiative to deliver the bell sound to it.

The group transferred the seduced passengers from the minibus to a temporary Guardian Lamp point. A middle-aged woman kept clutching her cloth bag tightly, weeping silently.

Shen Qinghe watched her lips moving continuously and understood the reason: she had heard the call of her late husband. The other party said he was waiting for her at the back door of the Old Archives; the timbre and the rhythm of his coughing pauses were exactly the same as when he was alive. She knew clearly that the deceased could not appear, yet her feet walked toward the trap uncontrollably.

Shen Qinghe did not offer comfort; she turned and signaled for Xu Minglan to take over the soothing. She then walked to the recording whiteboard and wrote a line of text:

"A voice is not equal to the person."

She stared at this sentence for a few seconds, raised her hand to cross it all out, and wrote again:

"The one who can call your name is not necessarily the one who has come to save you."

She tore off this warning and stuck it firmly at the entrance of the shelter point.

Zhao Ye stood by watching for a long time, then leaned in front of her, deliberately moving his lips in an exaggerated manner.

Shen Qinghe looked up at him.

She picked up her phone and typed: "You were just saying that my temper is too bad."

Zhao Ye's expression froze.

Another line of text popped up on the screen: "I can read lips."

Zhao Ye turned his head away sheepishly, no longer teasing her.

Shen Qinghe put away her phone, and the oppression accumulated in her heart dissipated slightly. She loathed the weightlessness of losing her hearing, and she resented even more that the enemy had deliberately laid out a plan targeting her most proficient ability. But she knew very well in her heart that if the Clock Collector thought that stealing sound could completely disable her, it was underestimating the law of the Dao carried by the fate-illuminating bronze bell too much.

The rules never relied solely on sound to manifest. Vibrations, temperature, patterns, ripples—these were all traces left behind by it. Sooner or later, she would be able to retrieve all the stolen chimes from this silent world.

Afterwards, the driver couldn't help but ask, using gestures to inquire why she had dared to press the bronze bell directly onto the ground just now.

Shen Qinghe thought for a moment and typed a reply on her phone: "The ground will not lie."

People can be misled by illusory sounds, swayed by sealed memories, and led toward the abyss by the calls of the deceased. But the tremors of wheels rolling over the road, the fluctuations of footsteps passing through accumulated water, and the slight shaking of anomalous threads penetrating walls are all objectively existing traces that cannot be faked.

Previously, she had been too reliant on her hearing, waiting for sounds to give her the answers. Now that the answers had been completely taken away, she finally saw clearly that she had another path to investigate the rules. This was by no means a reluctant remedy after losing her hearing, but a brand-new path that belonged solely to her.

Shen Qinghe sealed the paper with the bell-shaped cutout into a storage bag. Before sealing it, a line of pale, small text slowly appeared on the edge of the paper: "Those who cannot hear will also be interrogated."

She expressionlessly squeezed the storage bag, completely locking the text on the paper. A trace of coldness flashed in her eyes. Come if you dare.