Outside the museum, an alarm suddenly blared. Red and blue lights danced wildly on the walls of the exhibition hall, cast through the twisted shadows of the sycamore trees. Lin Yue's phone vibrated violently in her pocket. A string of garbled text messages popped up on the screen, the last three characters clearly reading "Quickly leave." Ah Fu gripped the hilt of his sword warily. The oracle bone script on the blade suddenly dimmed, dissipating into wisps of smoke.

"Although the seal is temporarily secure, the lingering aura of the black-robed man remains." Xia Zichen's fingertips traced the newly revealed star map on the last page of the ancient book, and his pupils suddenly contracted. "This isn't an ordinary space-time rift—each seal corresponds to a location on the ancient astronomical instrument, and the one we just activated is only the 'Tianshu' of the twelve nodes."

Before he could finish his words, spiderweb-like cracks suddenly appeared on the ground. Black slime oozed from the base of the armillary sphere, condensing into a translucent humanoid silhouette in the moonlight. When the slime man spoke, his voice was like the harsh roar of countless metals rubbing against each other. "Do you think patching the cracks can save the world? Those erased fragments of history are crawling out from the abyss of memory to devour reality."

Lin Yue's temples throbbed. Fine cracks appeared on the surface of her pocket watch, but within these cracks gleamed even brighter stars. She suddenly remembered the shattered bronze mirror deep within the underground palace. The future reflected in it showed her standing in the center of a ruin studded with star tracks, the sparks from the turning gears of her pocket watch igniting the entire night sky.

"Memory Abyss..." Lin Yue muttered to himself, "Afu, when you were on guard, your sword was pointing to the southeast. Is that where..."

"Municipal Archives!" Ah Fu looked up suddenly. "Last week they sent over a batch of documents from the Republican era. There was a diary that recorded a ceremony related to an astronomical instrument. At the time, I thought it was superstition..."

Xia Zichen quickly tore off the fragments of the ancient book and overlaid the star map with the map on his phone. "The archives are located exactly in the direction of 'Tianxuan'. The historical fragments mentioned by the slime man are likely real records tampered with by the black-robed man."

The museum's alarm suddenly gave way to a long, shrill wail, and the ceiling sprinklers began to spray a black liquid. Slime Man fragmented in the corrosive mist, transforming into dozens of dark shadows that pounced on the three. Xia Zichen's Beidou phantom reappeared, only to be engulfed the moment it touched the shadows. Ah Fu's sword sizzled in the black liquid, quickly becoming covered in rust.

At the critical moment, Lin Yue pressed his pocket watch against the crack in the ground. The star pattern within the dial swam into the crack like a living thing, exploding into a dazzling river of light within the slime. Wherever the light streams passed, dark shadows shrieked and recondensed into translucent words that hovered in the air—all fragments of distorted history.

"I see." Xia Zichen caught a falling fragment of text that recorded the true purpose of the Twelve Immortals' construction of the astronomical instrument. "They weren't sealing power, but recording the nodes of time and space to prevent anyone from tampering with the course of history. The black-robed man wanted to destroy these records and plunge the world into an endless cycle of chaos."

Ah Fu smashed the last slimy shadow with the hilt of his sword. The vibration from the sword made his face pale. "But the documents in the archives must have been contaminated. What should we do..."

Lin Yue raised her pocket watch, and the starlight on the cracks of the dial suddenly exploded, projecting a complete planetarium projection in the void: "Use the resonance of the pocket watch to reread history! Just like in the underground palace..." Her words were interrupted by a violent vibration. The entire museum began to tilt, and what emerged from the cracks was no longer black mist, but countless flickering fragments of memory.

When the first fragment of memory touched the pocket watch, a blinding white light exploded in Lin Yue's mind. She saw the twelve young immortals forging a celestial globe under the starry night, their eyes ablaze with the same golden flame. She also saw a black-robed figure wearing a shattered bronze mask burying a bloodstained ancient tome deep within the foundations of the archives...

"We must reach the archives before sunrise!" Lin Yue grabbed the dissipating fragments of memory, which clearly marked the activation time of the "Tianxuan" node. "Once this contaminated history is permanently solidified, all the cracks in time and space will never be repaired!"

At that moment, the sound of shattering glass echoed outside the museum. Countless crows crashed through the dome, their wings dripping with black slime, forming an arrow pointing southeast on the ground. Xia Zichen stuffed the ancient tome into his backpack, and the star pattern on his neck lit up. "It seems the black-robed man is deliberately luring us into his trap."

Ah Fu wiped the rust off the sword, and the blade began to shine again: "Then let him see that a true guardian never backs down."

The three of them rushed through the crows, heading for the archives. The vibrations of their pocket watches grew stronger, and the fragments of memory emerging from the cracks wove into a dazzling chain of stars behind them. And a more terrifying truth lay quietly waiting in the darkness to the southeast.