The bitter smell of coffee mixed with the sharp edges of ceramic shards hung in the dead air. Lin Mo slid down to sit against the cold partition, his gaze locked on his wrist. The string of red digits burned into his retinas: 71:58:22… 71:58:21… Each tick seemed to drain a bit of his strength.
"Lin Mo? Hey! What the hell is wrong with you?" Xiao Wang's voice held confusion and a hint of concern. He abandoned the mess on the floor and crouched, reaching out to pat Lin Mo's shoulder.
"Don't touch me!" Lin Mo flinched back violently, his voice hoarse as sandpaper. He stared in horror at the steadily ticking "512:21:30" above Xiao Wang's head, then at the madly draining numbers on his watch. Touch came with a price. Twenty-four hours of his life had bought this "living" colleague, but it had plunged him into deeper despair.
Xiao Wang's hand froze mid-air, arrested by the near-feral fear in Lin Mo's eyes. "You… you okay? Should I call an ambulance?"
An ambulance? Lin Mo's lips twisted into something uglier than a smile. In this frozen world, where were the ambulances? Where were the functioning hospitals? He struggled to his feet, ignoring Xiao Wang's bewildered stare, and stumbled out of the office. He couldn't stay here. He couldn't risk touching anyone else. The price was one he couldn't afford to pay again.
He fled through the dead office, down the frozen stairs, and back out onto the empty street. The absolute silence enveloped him once more, this time weighted with a suffocating heaviness. He was no longer the child in a giant's dollhouse; he was the last man abandoned in a post-apocalyptic ruin. No number above his head, but a blade hanging over his wrist.
He wandered aimlessly, through frozen traffic, around petrified human statues. The sunlight was bright but cold. He tried a convenience store; its glass door was frozen open. Shelves packed with goods, a customer at the register holding up a phone to scan—everything still. He reached for a bottle of water. His fingers touched the cool plastic, but the bottle didn't budge. Hunger began to gnaw at his stomach, his throat parched, but everything before him was like a museum exhibit—visible, tangible, yet untouchable.
Then, a low, continuous hum wormed its way into his ears. It came from the distance, muffled and oppressive, like a sigh from the earth's core. Lin Mo looked toward the sound, and his pupils constricted.
To the southwest, on the horizon, a massive, distorted black vortex was slowly rotating. It wasn't solid, more like a construct of pure shadow and collapsing light, its edges blurry, constantly swallowing the surrounding air and illumination. The vortex's center was an abyssal darkness, as if connected to another universe. What made his scalp crawl was that the vortex's edge was slowly, inexorably, consumingseveral towering skyscrapers!
The steel and concrete giants, upon contact with the black vortex's edge, dissolved and disintegrated like ice cubes dropped into strong acid. No explosion, no sound, just the eerie spectacle of matter being utterly erased. The consumed parts left no debris, as if they had never existed. Where the vortex passed, only a void, a disturbing black backdrop remained.
Terror gripped Lin Mo's heart. This frozen world was more terrifying than death. It wasn't just still; it was being slowly, thoroughly erased by some incomprehensible force! His time was draining away, and the world itself was being devoured!
He glanced at his wrist instinctively: 71:45:18. The threat of the vortex made the jumping digits even more glaring and urgent.
"You're watching it."
A clear, cold female voice spoke abruptly behind him.
Lin Mo jumped, every hair on his body standing on end. He whirled around, his heart hammering. When?He was sure there had been no other "living" thing around!
A young woman stood a few paces away. She wore practical dark work clothes, was tall and slender with delicate features, but her eyes were like ice-tempered blades—sharp and weary, holding a world-weariness beyond her years. What shocked Lin Mo most was the semi-transparent countdown floating above her head: 48:12:07. Its color wasn't the faint white glow like Xiao Wang's, but an odd, shimmering silvery-gray.
"Who are you?" Lin Mo's voice was hoarse, his body tense, ready to bolt. In this bizarre world, any "living" thing could be a threat.
The woman ignored his question. Her gaze swept over the red countdown projected from his wristwatch, and the corner of her mouth lifted in a faint, almost bitter twist. "71 hours, 45 minutes… You were recently 'activated,' I see. The cost was high."
Her words pierced his heart like an ice pick. "You… you know what this is? You know about this countdown?"
"I know," she said, her voice flat yet heavy. "My name is Su Yu. Like you, I am a variable 'alive' in this frozen spacetime. Or rather, a variable who survived the last cycle."
"Cycle? Last?" Lin Mo's mind reeled.
Su Yu's gaze drifted toward the slowly rotating, all-devouring black vortex in the distance. "Time has been frozen, Lin Mo. But the freeze isn't the goal; it's the beginning of a screening process. That thing," she pointed at the black vortex, "is the 'Entropy Vortex.' It's devouring this temporal bubble, reducing everything to absolute 'nothingness.' When it finishes consuming the city, or when your countdown reaches zero, your existence, and all traces of it, will be completely erased. As if you never were."
Lin Mo felt dizzy, his stomach churning. "Why me? Why can only I… we… move?"
"Because you were chosen as a 'Time Regulator,'" Su Yu's eyes returned to his face, sharp as knives. "Or rather, you are the 'seed' chosen for this cycle. I am a survivor from the previous cycle. My task… my reason for existing now, is to find you. To tell you the rules."
"Rules?" Lin Mo pressed urgently.
"The rules are simple. And cruel," Su Yu's voice was icy. "You see the countdowns above people's heads? They are the 'anchors' of this frozen spacetime, maintaining the bubble's fragile stability. Your task is to find and 'recover' seven 'Temporal Anomalies' before your countdown reaches zero."
"Temporal Anomalies? What are those?"
"They are the aberrations among the anchors. The 'glitches' and 'cancers' of this temporal bubble," Su Yu explained. "They possess the ability to distort local time rules. They act as catalysts, accelerating the Entropy Vortex's expansion. Finding them and recovering the 'Temporal Fragments' they carry is the only way to slow the Vortex's consumption, and perhaps… even restart the entire cycle."
"Restart the cycle?" Lin Mo seized the term.
Su Yu's eyes flickered, avoiding his direct gaze. "That's for later. What you need to know now is, you have 72 hours—no, just under 71 now." She glanced at his wrist again. "Find the seven anomalies. Recover the fragments. Otherwise, when your time runs out, or when the Vortex consumes everything, we will truly vanish. We won't even qualify for the next cycle."
"How do I find them? What are their characteristics?"
"Characteristics?" The bitter twist on Su Yu's lips deepened. "The countdown numbers above their heads… are blue. Like the deep sea. Like glacial ice… a blue you could never mistake. As for how to find them…" She paused, her eyes sweeping the frozen world. "You need to observe. To think. And to… pay the price. Remember, Lin Mo, in this frozen world, every action has a cost. Especially actions related to time. Every use of your 'regulating' ability, every attempt to influence a frozen object or person, may accelerate your own countdown or attract dangers you cannot foresee."
As her words hung in the air, the massive black vortex in the distance seemed to rotate slightly faster. The low hum grew noticeably louder. Lin Mo felt a faint vibration through the soles of his feet.
"The Vortex is accelerating," Su Yu's expression turned grave. "We have no time. Remember: blue countdowns. Find them. Recover the fragments. It's your only chance to survive."
She looked at him deeply, her gaze complex—warning, weariness, and a hint of something Lin Mo couldn't decipher… pity? Then, before Lin Mo could ask more, Su Yu's figure began to blur, like ink dissolving in water. She grew transparent in the still air and vanished completely, as if she had never been there.
Lin Mo stood frozen, Su Yu's cold words echoing in his ears. Blue countdowns. Temporal Anomalies. Seven. Recover fragments. 72 hours. Entropy Vortex.
He looked up toward the ever-expanding, all-devouring darkness in the southwest. On his wrist, the red digits ticked mercilessly: 71:30:15.
Loneliness engulfed him like a cold tide. He wasn't the only variable, but he was the Regulator bearing an unimaginable weight. In this frozen, slowly-erasing world, he had less than three days to complete a nearly impossible task.
And where would the first blue countdown be?