Good news.
I took apart this pocket watch, which had a total of 1549 parts.
Bad news.
I can't put it back together.
Bai Luan stared expressionlessly at the miniature "mountain range" constructed from tiny gears, springs, bearings, and screws.
The height of these stacked parts already far exceeded the original height of the pocket watch.
At first, he arranged the parts neatly, but then he gave up.
Because the desktop wasn't big enough to hold all the parts.
He originally thought he could disassemble and assemble it freely with the blueprint, but now it seems he underestimated this pocket watch.
He didn't know which part was installed incorrectly, occupying the position of another part. He didn't notice it at the time and continued assembling.
Now, when trying to install the part whose position was taken, he realized the position was wrong.
At this moment, Bai Luan was more despairing than a pilot unable to take off.
As the saying goes, one wrong step leads to many wrong steps. Now Bai Luan had to disassemble all the way back to correct the mistake.
But… this would undoubtedly take a lot of time.
I don't want to spend the night in the lab.
Forget it! Since it's already like this! I have no desire to argue over right or wrong!
Little Black Room, activate!
After Bai Luan entered the Little Black Room, the familiar voice of Black Tower soon came.
"The lab? It seems the flying backpack, which you've been tinkering with for a long time, is finally on the agenda."
Black Tower walked closer and saw the parts scattered on the table.
"What did you take apart?"
"A pocket watch you threw into the junk pile."
"A pocket watch?"
Black Tower casually picked up the projected dial, fiddling with it with her fingertips, her eyes like she was flipping through a long-forgotten, unimportant diary.
"...I can't remember."
She was unenthusiastic, and with a flick of her wrist, the image of the dial scattered and disappeared like discarded waste paper.
"Probably a souvenir from some boring banquet, forced upon me by some family."
"Very valuable?"
"It was thrown into the junk pile by this genius, how valuable could it be?"
Black Tower leaned carelessly against the workbench.
"However—generally speaking, it's quite valuable."
"Did I just casually take apart something worth hundreds of millions?"
"It should..."
Black Tower tilted her head, thought for a moment, and then uttered words with a matter-of-fact cruelty.
"It's not that cheap."
"...I'm just saying, can you please stop throwing away such priceless things casually in the future? What if someone like me, who doesn't know its value, picks it up and takes it apart?"
"Oh my? You're quite self-aware, aren't you?"
"Haha."
Bai Luan laughed twice, finding joy in his misery, then began to disassemble and reassemble a portion of the pocket watch.
While carefully disassembling the parts on the pocket watch, he casually said:
"By the way, I almost got caught by you today."
"Caught doing what?"
"The fact that I created a life."
"Tell me the details, I'll enjoy it."
"I took Chizuru to the Botanical Garden, and as I was releasing it, I turned around and you were behind me, watching me release it."
"Since you didn't go into the Little Black Room to figure it out, that means you managed to fool your way through, right?"
"As expected of Miss Black Tower, you guessed it right away."
"How did you fool your way through?"
"That was all thanks to Chizuru. I named that life, Chizuru."
"Such a casual name."
"Although the name is casual, Chizuru is very smart, at that time..."
Perhaps it was because someone was accompanying him, assembling the complex pocket watch was no longer tedious.
Even if a part flew off or was installed incorrectly, Bai Luan just smiled, retrieved the part, and then calmly continued assembling.
After an unknown amount of time, Bai Luan placed the dial part of the pocket watch, completing the assembly of the entire pocket watch.
Looking at the complete pocket watch, Bai Luan raised his hands and cheered:
"I finally finished assembling it!!!"
Then Bai Luan turned his head and saw Black Tower, who was propping her chin with her hand, watching him.
Bai Luan scratched his head a little awkwardly. At first, he was chatting with Black Tower while assembling, but towards the end, he became completely engrossed in assembling the pocket watch.
The guilt of leaving his friend aside naturally arose.
"Sorry, I left you hanging earlier."
"You didn't notice."
Bai Luan was startled and asked:
"Notice what?"
"The fact that you missed one part."
Black Tower, with a gloating smile, pointed to a tiny part that had fallen into a dark corner at some unknown time.
Bai Luan extended his finger, pointed at the part, picked it up, looked at the part that was about the size of a grain of rice, and then looked at the already assembled pocket watch.
He had to take it apart again, check it step by step, and then put it back together...
Instantly, his face was covered with a mask of pain.
Then a roar, mixed with annoyance, regret, anger, and pain, erupted from his throat:
"Oh no—! Old Ma— no, I got my lines mixed up, never mind— Oh no—!"
Bai Luan's fluid changes in expression and self-deprecating remarks successfully amused Black Tower.
"Alright, there's no need to be so sad."
Black Tower waved her hand, beckoning the projector's projection over, then with a casual flick of her finger, she disassembled the projected pocket watch step by step, until it reached the part Bai Luan hadn't installed.
"This part's position,"
Black Tower's fingertip lightly tapped the tiny speck of light in the projection, her voice calm and unruffled.
"Did you remember it?"
She waved her hand again, and the entire disassembled pocket watch projection was as if pushed by an invisible hand, floating steadily in front of Bai Luan.
Bai Luan watched intently, making sure to engrave the projection in his mind, then nodded and said:
"I've noted it down."
"That's good. Don't make the same mistake outside that you made in here."
Black Tower turned off the projection.
"My guidance will become increasingly difficult to obtain as the number of times increases."
"Understood, I will cherish every piece of guidance."
Then his figure disappeared from the Little Black Room.
Back in reality, Bai Luan looked at the scattered parts on the table, his mind no longer blank.
Before, he could only rely on the projected blueprint for guidance, but now, he had the steps to assemble this pocket watch in his mind.
Bai Luan's mouth curved into an arc. He picked up tweezers, clamped a tiny part, and said in a relaxed and cheerful tone:
"Super ~ Assembly ~"
With the assembly experience from the Little Black Room, Bai Luan's assembly efficiency soared.
Aha, who was secretly watching, couldn't help but ponder:
Why does this guy have sudden enlightenments so often? Is he really a genius?
Soon, the pocket watch in Bai Luan's hand reached the step he had previously missed. He found the small part from that dark corner.
If Black Tower hadn't reminded him, he probably wouldn't have noticed this, right? Or, even if he did, it would have taken him a lot of trouble to find this part.
"Praise Miss Black Tower ~"
The last few steps were fluid and effortless. When the last screw was tightened, and the tightly fitting dial cover closed—
Tick.
Tick.
Tick...
The clear, steady, rhythmic sound of the hands moving, like a newborn heartbeat.
"Perfect."
Bai Luan picked up the pocket watch, looking at it from left to right, completely satisfied no matter how he looked at it.
"Strange Item: Reassembled Pocket Watch"
"Pauses time for seven seconds. I know what you're thinking."
"ZA! WARUDO!"
"Can such a concept-bug-level strange item really be obtained so casually?"
"A pocket watch with over a thousand parts can be considered high-grade."
"Does reassembling it count as me creating it?"
"Why not?"
"..."
Never mind, for him, this was a good thing.
He gently pressed the exquisite button on the side of the pocket watch with his thumb.
The pocket watch in his hand burst into a bright light. The intricate markings on the dial rotated and reassembled like living things, finally settling into seven evenly distributed, faintly glowing, strange symbols.
The hands on the dial began to move along these seven new markings.
In the laboratory, the hum of all instruments, the sound of liquid flowing through pipes, and even the trajectory of dust dancing in the air... all the rhythms belonging to "time" instantly froze and disappeared.
Absolute silence.
As if the entire universe had been paused and plunged into the deepest death.
Bai Luan curiously observed the world of time stop. To summarize it in two words, it was—dead silence.
He casually picked up the tweezers from the workbench and gently tossed them upwards—
The moment the tweezers left his hand, they were like a fly pinned in amber, suspended motionless in mid-air, maintaining the posture of the moment they were released.
"So this is what time stop feels like.
It's as if the entire world dies within these seven seconds, and only I am alive."
When the seventh marking was quietly crossed by the hand—
Buzz!
The suspended tweezers seemed to be released from an invisible restraint, obeying the call of gravity, leaping up a small distance again, and then beginning to fall.
Bai Luan's eyes were quick, and with a flick of his wrist, he steadily caught them back in his palm.
The world "came alive" again. The hum of instruments, the flow of liquid, the dance of dust... all the noises of time poured back into his ears.
"Usable once every twenty-four hours."
"Once a day?"
He really did get a gold-tier item from a single casual draw. He never expected to get such a strange item just by assembling a pocket watch.
It seems he has another trump card in this world.
Bai Luan carefully put the pocket watch away close to his body, then took out his phone to check the time.
"It's already night... It was morning before I entered this lab..."
It's true that doing scientific research makes one forget to eat and sleep.