The street was like a frozen river; Lin Mo the only grain of sand shifting on its bed. The vacuum left by Su Yu's departure felt more suffocating than the absolute silence. The red numbers on his watch stubbornly blinked: 71:28:49… 71:28:48… Each flash was a needle prick to his nerves. The low hum of the Entropy Vortex from the southwest persisted, like the breath of a colossal beast, a reminder that the world's foundation was being eaten away.
He forced himself to move, walking in the opposite direction of the vortex. Aimless, yet compelled. Su Yu's words replayed in his mind: blue countdowns, Temporal Anomalies, seven fragments. The goal was clear, cruelly so. But where to begin? This city was a graveyard of millions of silent tombstones. How was he to find seven specific markers?
Hunger and thirst coiled like vipers in his stomach and throat. Passing a bakery, the golden croissants in the window gleamed temptingly. He tried again, fingers straining until his knuckles turned white. The bread might as well have been welded to the display. Despair washed over him anew. He possessed the "privilege" of movement but couldn't satisfy the most basic needs. The privilege felt more like torture.
After crossing several blocks, the scenery shifted. Skyscrapers gave way to residential buildings. The sense of daily life was stronger here, but frozen even more solidly. Laundry on balconies hung in mid-billow. By a flower bed, a small dog was frozen mid-leap toward a frisbee. Lin Mo's eyes scanned the frozen faces, searching for the fabled blue numbers. Nothing.
Then, a faint but persistent sound reached his ears.
Not the Vortex's muffled hum. Not the dead silence. It was… the groan of twisting metal? And a soft, rhythmic dripping?
It came from around the corner of the intersection ahead. Lin Mo's heartbeat quickened. In this absolutely still world, any sound meant "anomaly." He crept forward, keeping close to the wall, and peered cautiously around the corner.
A yellow school bus lay on its side at the intersection, its front end crumpled against a roadside fire hydrant. The twisted metal body looked like a toy crushed by a giant. The windshield was a spiderweb of cracks. A sharp piece of metal pipe had pierced the driver's seat. Water gushed from the broken hydrant but hung frozen in the air, a crystallized curtain of droplets.
The sound came from the dripping water—no, from those frozen droplets, detaching from the main curtain at an excruciatingly slow, almost imperceptible pace, plink… plink… plink…as they fell into the equally frozen puddle below. The sight, so defiant of physics, made Lin Mo's scalp prickle. Time here wasn't completely frozen; it was being drastically, unevenly slowed by some force.
His eyes were drawn to the rear of the bus. Through a twisted window, a small figure was curled up. A boy, maybe seven or eight, wearing a blue school uniform. His face was frozen in terror, mouth wide, tears crystallized in his eyes. What stopped Lin Mo's heart was the faint, almost translucent countdown floating above the boy's head: 00:03:17. Its color was a dim, ashen white, like a candle guttering in the wind.
The boy was still "alive"! His time wasn't completely frozen, but it was almost out!
Lin Mo's instincts took over. He rushed forward. The bus's side door was badly deformed, buckled inward. He grabbed the handle, pulling with all his might. Metal screeched in protest, the frame twisting, but the door didn't budge. Sweat instantly soaked his back. He looked around for a tool, but saw only frozen vehicles and people. Nothing usable.
"Dammit!" he growled, his hands grabbing the deformed door frame again, fingers digging into the cold metal gap, fingertips cut by sharp edges unnoticed. He summoned every ounce of strength, muscles in his arms and back corded, a low, animalistic grunt escaping his throat.
Screech—CRACK!
A horrible metallic tearing sound rang out. The deformed door yielded, pried open just enough for him to squeeze through! A wave of metallic scent mixed with gasoline hit him. Lin Mo ignored it, ducking inside.
The interior was chaos. Frozen backpacks, scattered stationery hung in the air. The boy was curled in a relatively intact corner near the back. A broken seat support was suspended inches above his temple. At its tip, a droplet of dark red liquid was slowly coalescing, elongating, about to fall. The boy's ashen countdown read: 00:01:45.
Lin Mo's heart was in his throat. Carefully avoiding the floating debris, he maneuvered to the boy's side. The bloody droplet at the support's tip crept closer to the boy's skin. He reached out, intending to gently shift the boy aside.
The moment his fingertips neared the blue uniform sleeve, a cold electric shock jolted through his entire body! The red numbers on his watch suddenly accelerated!
71:15:22… 71:15:21… 70:59:59… 70:59:58…
The numbers cascaded down like a waterfall! Just the intentto touch was draining his life at a visible rate!
Lin Mo's hand froze, centimeters from the boy's sleeve. Cold sweat trickled down his temple. The boy's ashen countdown ticked slowly: 00:01:30… 00:01:29… The droplet at the support's tip stretched another fraction downward.
To save, or not to save?
To save, the cost might be an unbearable loss of his own life. Three days? Five? More? Su Yu said every action had a cost. He had barely seventy hours to find seven anomalies. Every minute was precious.
Not to save? Watch the boy's countdown hit zero, watch him be pierced by that slowly descending droplet… or swallowed by the Vortex? The boy's ashen number was a needle in Lin Mo's conscience. He thought of Xiao Wang's bewildered face, of the pity in Su Yu's eyes. He was the only variable, the only "living" person in this frozen world. Could he just walk away?
The boy's frozen teardrop, caught on his eyelash, refracted a weak light from the window. That glint stabbed Lin Mo's eyes.
"Fuck it!" The word hissed through Lin Mo's teeth. He stopped hesitating. His hand shot out, grabbed the boy's arm, and yanked him roughly into his embrace!
Rrrrip—
The uniform sleeve tore against the sharp edge of the seat support, but he successfully pulled the boy away. In the same instant, the coalesced droplet finally fell, landing silently where the boy had just been, leaving a dark red, frozen trail in the still air.
The price came.
The red digits on his watch went into fast-forward, leaping, plummeting:
70:00:00… 69:59:59… 69:59:58… 69:00:00… 68:59:59…
The numbers finally settled at: 68:15:22.
A full three days! Seventy-two hours of life, gone just like that. A wave of intense dizziness and weakness washed over Lin Mo, as if something vital had been ripped from his body. He gasped for breath, leaning against the cold bus wall, looking down at the still boy in his arms. The ashen countdown above the boy's head flickered like a dying candle the moment Lin Mo touched him, then extinguished completely. The boy's body became like the other frozen objects, utterly devoid of the last trace of "activity."
Exhaustion and a profound, indescribable sense of loss overwhelmed Lin Mo. He had saved a life, yet ended its existence in this frozen state, paying with three days of his own life in return. Was it worth it? He didn't know. He only knew that when he saw that droplet about to fall, he couldn't stand by.
Holding the boy's cold body, he struggled out of the twisted bus. Gently, he placed the boy on the sidewalk, propping him against a similarly frozen mailbox, as if he were merely asleep.
As he straightened up, ready to leave this tragic scene, his peripheral vision caught something on the rooftop of a residential building across the street.
His body locked.
On the edge of the seventh-floor roof, a figure stood silently. A man in a gray trench coat, slender. He stood with his back to the street, facing the southwest, toward the Entropy Vortex, as if gazing into the distance.
What froze Lin Mo's blood was the clear countdown floating above the man's head.
Its color was not the faint white of Xiao Wang's, nor the dying ashen gray of the boy's, nor the glaring red of his own watch.
It was a deep, cold, glacial-core blue.
00:48:31:15.
A Temporal Anomaly! The first one!
Lin Mo's heart hammered against his ribs. Instinctively, he wanted to charge over, but his foot halted mid-stride. Su Yu's warning exploded in his ears: "Each anomaly will try to stop you."He'd just expended three days of life; weakness still lingered. The other man held the high ground, had the advantage. And… he possessed time-warping abilities!
At that moment, the blue figure on the rooftop seemed to sense something. He turned around, slowly, agonizingly slowly.
Lin Mo couldn't make out his face from this distance. But he could feelit—two icy gazes, sharp as physical things, piercing the frozen air to land on him.
A chill shot from Lin Mo's tailbone to the crown of his head. He jerked back a step, his back hitting the cold mailbox.
The blue figure didn't move. He just stood there, across the frozen street, facing Lin Mo silently. The blue countdown above his head shimmered with an eerie, cold light in the sunlight.
The hum of the Entropy Vortex seemed to grow louder, pounding dully against Lin Mo's eardrums. On his wrist, the red numbers ticked: 68:15:21.
Time had never felt so precious, nor so perilous.