“If you mess with Chen Nian, you’ll be punished by ‘it.’ “
by M1zushiQin Zhilu casually grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down three dates: December 22, 2122; December 22, 2130; and December 22, 2138.
“From left to right, these are the dates when Yu Shen found you, when you were officially registered at the orphanage, and when you left it,” he explained.
“If we calculate from your supposed birth year, 2122, you should be 26 years old now. But after the attack on the shuttle bus, a full scan of your brain confirmed that your physiological age is only about 18. In other words, when you and Yu Shen experienced time acceleration, his body aged, but you remained unaffected, still an infant.”
He paused, the pen hovering over the paper, and added meaningfully, “From experience, those immune to external anomalies are often the origin of the anomaly.”
An Yu, fumbling with the computer as he searched for other children’s records, asked softly, “So, are you saying I caused the time acceleration for both Yu Shen and myself back then? But I was just a baby. How could I have suddenly activated an ability?”
“No one can fully uncover the past,” Qin Zhilu replied, moving to the half-open door and gazing at the snowstorm outside. “Not long ago, you triggered space powers due to sudden genetic contamination on the shuttle bus. 2122 was the first year of the Great Disaster. Perhaps, as a baby, you endured some form of pain or fear that passively triggered time acceleration, allowing you to escape those unbearable moments.”
Hearing this, An Yu instinctively glanced at the wound on the back of his left hand.
During the chaotic moment when the mirror cracked, he had felt an inexplicable, overwhelming pain, and at the same time, his wound seemed to heal at an unnatural rhythm, as if time had suddenly sped up.
Qin Zhilu suddenly asked, “Does your newly awakened second ability have anything to do with time acceleration?”
An Yu hesitated. “No.”
If anything, it seemed like the opposite—the Poet had once said that rewinding memories pushes others’ time backward, but only on a mental level.
Qin Zhilu mused, “In truth, time doesn’t exist. People noticed that cells age, flowers wither, food decays, and two substances left together slowly blend. Orderly things naturally progress toward chaos—thus, entropy increases. Humans invented the concept of time to record this process. Theoretically, without external interference, entropy increase is irreversible. Therefore, time shouldn’t flow backward. Yet, your genetic entropy once decreased from 0.2 back to 0.”
An Yu raised his eyes. “What exactly are you trying to say?”
Qin Zhilu stared at him. “If you truly have the power to manipulate time, perhaps it’s not just acceleration. One day, you might be able to reverse time itself—perhaps even reverse chaos.”
An Yu immediately countered, “That’s impossible.”
“For ordinary people, yes. Time is a one-way river, and most can only drift along its current. But you’re different—perhaps you’ve never been in that river to begin with.”
That analogy felt oddly familiar.
An Yu froze for a moment. “Do you know the Poet?”
“The Poet?” Qin Zhilu thought for a moment. “You mean the ‘Eye of the Church? He doesn’t seem to like me much.”
An Yu was surprised. “Why?”
Qin Zhilu shook his head. “He naturally connects with everyone else, but only avoids me. I don’t know why, and it doesn’t matter.”
“The Poet is always enigmatic.” An Yu typed in the last ID and, seeing the record pop up on the screen, said, “As I thought, there hasn’t been a new admission record at the orphanage in ten years. Everyone we met in the cafeteria today came here before 2139. Judging by appearances, their ages also seem frozen before 2139.”
“The stagnation of time and space is not an uncommon anomaly,” Qin Zhilu remarked with a nod. “What’s the last admission record?”
An Yu sighed softly.
“December 22, 2138. It was for that child admitted on the same day I completed my departure paperwork. He was the last one.”
“So, the anomaly began immediately after you left.”
An Yan didn’t want to admit it, but he could only nod.
Qin Zhilu asked, “If that’s the case, all the children here must have overlapped with your time at the orphanage. Do you recall anyone particularly memorable?”
An Yu shook his head. “I didn’t pay attention to others.”
“Did anyone frequently mention certain names to you?” Qin Zhilu pressed gently. “There must’ve been some people with more presence than others.”
“Commander,” An Yu said quietly, “no one ever talked to me at all.”
“…”
“From childhood to now, the only one who always came to chat with me was Lin Qiu,” An Yu recalled calmly. “He often said it was my great fortune to know him.”
Qin Zhilu nodded. “Indeed.”
Suddenly, a notification beep came through the earpiece as Pat came online. “Everyone, I’ve found the air wall.”
The sound of light tapping against glass followed as Pat explained, “There seems to be an invisible barrier around the outermost perimeter of the orphanage. We can only move along the outer ring. If we try to move inward, we encounter the air wall. It’s not visible, but when touched, it feels like glass.”
Fengjian Tenyu immediately asked, “How wide is the outermost area?”
“The mirror surveillance above us is divided into grids. The outer ring is as wide as one of those grids.”
An Yu softly said, “I remember the mirror surveillance had seven rows and seven columns.”
“Yes. So, the orphanage can likely be divided into four circles, narrowing inward. The innermost zone has only a single grid,” Pat deduced. “My years of experience tell me that the super-aberrant is hiding in that central grid.”
The sky had already turned dark.
The night’s snowstorm howled even more fiercely and the swirling snow and sand almost impossible to keep one’s eyes open. An Yu trudged forward with difficulty and his tattered, sackcloth-like coat flew in the icy wind. He shivered uncontrollably, lowering his head and tightly wrapping his arms around himself for some resemblance of warmth.
Suddenly, two glossy, pitch-black tentacles emerged from the side, draping themselves over his shoulders. They coiled around him layer by layer, wrapping tightly from his shoulders down to his abdomen, until they completely enclosed his upper body.
The tentacles tightened their grasp and quickly generated warmth underneath and protected him from the snowstorm’s piercing cold.
Qin Zhilu’s pace was steady even amidst the snowstorm. “Didn’t Billy suggest you to buy a high-polymer coat? It can pass as a low-income clothing while also being able to withstand extreme weather conditions.”
“I saw one in the store. It’s expensive—100,000 points,” An Yu replied, sneezing twice in succession.
The tentacles around him tightened even further.
As he struggled to maintain balance, An Yu cast a sidelong glance at his Commander. Qin Zhilu had incorporated the genes of District 53’s octopus. Considering that the children of the orphanage were generally small and had low genetic entropy, he deliberately restrained his transformation, keeping his human limbs while casually extending a dozen or so tentacles for effect.
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“Where to?” he asked.
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The reading rooms, occasionally updated with newspapers and magazines, were often occupied by kids eager to learn about the outside world. However, the activity rooms were rarely used. For children struggling to eat enough, sports equipment and musical instruments held little appeal.
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The activity room seemed smaller than he remembered. The lighting remained as faulty as ever and the wooden floorboards still creaked under his feet.
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An Yu nodded. “Mn.”
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“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a wooden guitar,” he murmured.
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“Are wooden guitars rare?” An Yu asked softly.
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The old guitar produced a strained but not unpleasant sound.
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An Yu thought for a moment. “I just want to test whether he harbors ill intent. I haven’t decided if I’ll take action yet.”
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An Yu nodded lightly, his terminal displaying a survival rate of 95.6%.
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An Yu couldn’t help but ask, “You were slashed by an aberrant earlier. What’s your survival rate now?”
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He froze for a moment, then a deafening roar filled his mind, as though an explosion of chaotic noise had detonated within.
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An Yu, overwhelmed by the intense noise, felt his whole body tense up. The world faded into a cacophony of ringing in his ears and the sound of his hollow, labored breathing. He forced his gaze toward the wound on his left hand.
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It took about half a minute for the noise to subside. An Yu, now pale and weak, glanced at his terminal. “92.4%.”
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After a pause, he mused, “It seems I experienced a very faint mental disturbance. The fluctuation is too small to be precisely measured, but it’s there.”
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An Yu thought while adjusting his breathing.
Whenever the mirrors break, he will endure an excruciating noise, comparable to severe genetic infections, and his survival rate will drop significantly.
Others, however, only hear faint sounds and have negligible survival impact, with only their mental power fluctuating slightly.
This mirrored the difference between his and others’ responses to genetic infections.
An Yan glanced at the wound that suddenly healed over half of his hand and silently pushed the door open.
From the adjacent room came the sounds of children arguing. At the orphanage, such fights were common.
This time, the protagonists were Chen Nian and two of the Flower Boy’s lackeys.
One of the lackeys—a boy with four irregular fingers—was already dead. His body lay stiffly in the center of the reading room floor, his eyes wide with terror as they stared at the ceiling. The cracks covering his body were far more numerous than those on the boy who had died at Qiang’s hands earlier, to the point where he was almost completely shattered.
The dozen or so children around him were trembling, their heads bowed.
A boy with skin like tree bark pointed at Chen Nian in horror. “Qiang always said you were a freak and told us not to mess with you. What the hell are you? You didn’t even touch him just now, so why did he suddenly—”
From the crowd, a little girl interrupted him in a trembling voice, “Stop it! Don’t bully Chen Nian.”
Her eyes were empty as she murmured, “Chen Nian is the most protected. Didn’t Qiang warn you? If you mess with Chen Nian, you’ll be punished by ‘it.’”
The tree-bark boy gulped hard and involuntarily took two steps back. “You monster! What kind of aberrant are you? Why can’t we see any signs?”
Chen Nian’s expression remained calm. An Yu noticed that he seemed a bit weaker than he had been during the day.
“Like I said, I didn’t kill Qiang. Go find someone else,” he said without emotion, then turned and went back to his seat, continuing to flip through the newspaper.
Through the crack in the door, An Yu caught a glimpse of the date printed in bold on the front page of the newspaper—December 25, 2138.
It was the third day after he had left.
The children were still reading newspapers from ten years ago.
Qin Zhilu spoke in a low voice, “It seems that in this orphanage, not only does being killed by someone cause the mirror-shattering phenomenon, but harming Chen Nian does as well. Chen Nian is protected by ‘it’—the ‘it’ we suspect is the mirror.”
An Yu nodded slightly. But the concept of “harm” was vague. It was unclear what degree of harm would trigger “its” protection.
As fate would have it, just as An Yu was pondering this, two sharp crackles came through the comms channel, and Slade’s voice suddenly rang out.
“I’ve arrived at the archive room coordinates you marked. Where are you?”
Having just endured the noise, An Yu’s voice naturally sounded weak. He replied softly, “I’m… outside. I just ran into a powerful aberrant. I couldn’t defeat him or catch it. Sorry… could you go handle it? He seems… special.”
Slade had originally planned to find an opportunity to eliminate An Yu. But when An Yu spoke like this, the instincts of a Protector compelled him to obey immediately. “Where is he? Any distinguishing features?”
An Yu recalled the information about Chen Nian he had just seen in the archive room. “Two hundred meters east is the residential area. He lives in room A1920 and his name is Chen Nian. He looks like an ordinary black-eyed boy, with no visible distortion traits.”
“I’ll head there now,” Slade said. “Is he already in the residential area?”
“He should be heading back soon,” An Yu paused, then added, “Don’t kill him. He probably knows a lot of useful information.”
“Understood.”
“Keep the channel open. I want to hear what he says,” An Yu added. “I’ll mute my side.”
“Got it.”
The communication ended.
An Yu let out a sigh of relief, but when he turned around, he saw Qin Zhilu looking at him.
“Commander?”
“Hmm.” Qin Zhilu raised an eyebrow. “I just taught you how to use people you dislike, and you’re already putting it into practice.”
Author’s Note:
No mini-theater this chapter. Instead, here’s a timeline summary to connect the dots (this reflects only details explicitly mentioned in the text):
Timeline Summary
[2122] The Great Disaster begins (the first major snowstorm). On September 30th, Qin Zhilu is born. On December 22nd, An Yu is found by Yu Shen. During his infancy, both An Yu and Yu Shen experience time-distortion, directly going to December 22nd, 2130.
[2130] An Yu is officially taken into custody (still biologically an infant at this point), while Yu Shen is dealt with due to mental instability (biologically aged).
- [2122–2130] An Yu’s “missing” 8 years (essentially in suspended animation at 0 years old) coincide with humanity’s brief buffer period following the Great Disaster, during which no new aberrant incidents occur (as mentioned in Chapter 24 during Yan Xi and An Yu’s conversation).
- [2130–2138] An Yu is housed in the orphanage. During this time, small-scale and relatively minor aberrant events begin to surface around the world (mentioned in Chapter 24), though the orphanage remains peaceful.
[2138] An Yu leaves the orphanage (aged 8, with his sleep symptoms suddenly improving), while Qin Zhilu now 16, witnesses the second world-class snowstorm and a surge in aberrant disasters, including the emergence of super-aberrant entities. Four other key events occur this year:
- The orphanage descends into disorder following An Yu’s departure (time stagnation, as revealed in this chapter).
- An Yu enters District 53 and meets Ling Qiu.
- Humanity formally introduces genetic classification.
- Qin Zhilu, as the sole initial Protector, becomes the Black Tower’s highest-ranking officer and issues the “Wait” directive (referenced in Chapter 24).
- [2138–2148] Over the next 10 years, An Yu leads an uneventful life in District 53. Meanwhile, humanity organizes a resistance against the catastrophe. Qin Zhilu and An Yu live separate lives, unaware of each other’s existence. Two notable events during this time:
- Qin Zhilu faces an unspecified ordeal in District 95, prompting him to destroy it (repeatedly referenced in Subplot 1).
- District 53, where An Yu resides, remarkably avoids any aberrant incidents.
[2148] On December 22nd (Winter Solstice), An Yu boards the shuttle bus to the Main City.
Additional Notes
As always, if you feel confused, don’t overthink—just keep reading, and things might start making sense! This arc will be relatively long, so don’t stress too much about the orphanage characters introduced so far.
Lastly, I plan to take a break tomorrow to work on a more detailed plot outline.
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