The moment the museum's tempered glass door exploded behind her, Lin Yue, dragged by Ah Fu, fell into a thick darkness. The asphalt road glowed with an eerie, dark blue luster. The crawling black slime was outlining a star map at a visible speed, and twelve star rays converged at the street corner to form a hideous vortex. The pocket watch in her palm burned like a branding iron, and the click of the gears in reverse was like the teeth of death, each impact causing her temple to throb with pain.

"Three o'clock!" Xia Zichen suddenly called out, the star pattern on his neck blazing brightly. The moment Lin Yue looked up, the ground churned like boiling mud. A scaly, blue-gray claw, swathed in rotten earth, broke through the earth. Wedged between its nails was a half-cut yellowed page—a collection label from the Municipal Archives. The moment the monster wriggled free from the chasm, she held her breath. Its torso was forged from hundreds of human faces, its eye sockets skewering silver, streaking light in the darkness. Each twisted face screamed silently, its lips stained with wet ink, a clear manifestation of the pain of having history tampered with.

"It's the archivist!" Ah Fu's blade hummed, oracle bone inscriptions flickering on the guard. "Last week, while sorting through the Republican archives, Lao Zhang said he kept dreaming of someone tearing at his memories—" Before he could finish, the monster unleashed a black hurricane, a storm of shredded paper and bronze fragments that swept through the display window. Amidst the shattering sound of glass, Xia Zichen's star-patterned chain corroded, emitting a hiss of white smoke. Lin Yue saw overlapping visions amid the flying glass: a bronze-masked figure standing on the top floor of the archives, sparks from the falling pocket watch shards igniting an entire bookshelf, and she herself kneeling among the tomes, her fingertips bleeding and staining a yellowed diary page red.

"Look at its belly!" Lin Yue suddenly grabbed Ah Fu's wrist. The bulge of light in the monster's abdomen flickered like a heartbeat, and the outline of a half-broken bronze key was faintly visible beneath the slimy texture. The cloud-thunder pattern on the key handle matched the inscriptions on the base of the underground palace astronomical device. Ah Fu spun and swung his sword. The silver arc cut through the darkness, and the slime suddenly came alive, curling into vines, leaving deep purple bruises around his ankles. The monster's huge claws were close at hand. Xia Zichen bit his tongue, and blood spurted out. The star pattern transformed into a shield to block the blow. He stumbled with a grunt and slammed into the trash can. With a clang of metal, the pocket watch slipped from Lin Yue's hand.

"No!" She lunged at the pocket watch, its cracks oozing golden light. The moment her fingertips touched the watch chain, the entire street froze—splattered glass hung suspended in the air, forming a vast projection of a star map, while the key from the monster's belly slowly rose in the radiance. Lin Yue could hear her own pounding heartbeat, like an ancient pendulum striking time and space. The reverse trajectory of the pocket watch's gears perfectly aligned with the star map, and the fragments of memories she had devoured flowed down her arm back into her mind: when the Twelve Immortals forged the astronomical globe, they had sealed their own fragments of memory into keys, each a "memory anchor" that unlocked a node in time and space.

"Use your blood!" Xia Zichen suddenly shouted in the ruins. The star patterns on the side of his neck had connected into the shape of the Big Dipper. "The key needs the guardian's blood to resonate!" Lin Yue suddenly woke up, bit his index finger and pressed it between the key patterns. In severe pain, the key made a buzzing sound, and the monster's body collapsed as if its skeleton was pulled out. The fragments of the human face turned into fluorescent butterflies, and blurred traditional Chinese characters were printed on its wings: "A Record of the Astronomical Ceremony in the 23rd Year of the Republic of China."

When the key was completely in her hand, the star map on the ground suddenly burst into a dazzling blue light. Lin Yue saw countless points of light moving along the trajectory of the star map in the black fog in the direction of the archives - that was the gathering of contaminated historical fragments. The fragments of the pocket watch hovered in her palm, and the gears reassembled to form a countdown: 42 minutes. Ah Fu tore off a strip of shirt and wrapped it around her bleeding palm. The oracle bone script on the sword blade was now as bright as daylight: "This slime is acting as eyes for the black-robed man. We must do it before dawn -"

"Go through this star map." Xia Zichen pointed at the glowing path on the ground, the star pattern condensing into a compass at his fingertips. "There's a 'Memory Corridor' between the nodes of the astronomical orb, but the entrance is..." His voice suddenly stopped, his gaze fixed on a melted street sign on the corner. A bronze door had emerged from there at some point, its lintel emblazoned with the same Taotie pattern as the entrance to the underground palace. Silver paste seeping from the cracks in the door outlined the traditional Chinese characters for "Municipal Archives."

The moment the three men burst through the bronze door, black fog surged through the cracks, completely engulfing the real street. What unfolded before them was no longer the familiar archives lobby, but a circular corridor suspended in the starry sky. Tens of thousands of ancient tomes floated like a constellation, each cover oozing black slime, the numbers on the spines eerily reversed. The key in Lin Yue's hand suddenly grew hot as he pointed to a bronze platform at the end of the corridor. There stood an armillary sphere, identical to the one in the museum, but with seven key slots embedded in the base, the "Tianshu" position remained vacant.

"Be careful!" Ah Fu swung his sword to the right, and a floating tome suddenly erupted, its pages biting like iron teeth. Lin Yue then realized that the spines of all the ancient books had eyes, their pupils distorted star symbols. Xia Zichen's star pattern swept across the bookshelf, and the tomes it touched screamed. A distorted history emerged from the covers: on the pages that should have recorded the construction of the astronomical instrument, the faces of the twelve immortals were replaced with the masks of black-robed men, and the keys they held were inserted into the grooves of "destruction."

"We must find the original documents!" Lin Yue clutched the key and rushed toward the armillary sphere. The fragments of her pocket watch suddenly flew up, and the gears aligned with the scale of the armillary sphere. The moment she inserted the key into the "Tianxuan" groove, the entire corridor trembled violently. A twelve-node star map appeared on the surface of the armillary sphere, and the "Tianshu" node was oozing a bloody light—the seal in the direction of the museum was collapsing. When the countdown jumped to 30 minutes, the dome at the top of the corridor cracked, and the shadowy figure of a black-robed figure emerged from the mist, holding a blood-stained pocket watch in his hand, the needle on the dial pointing to "zero."

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