A bug that even gods cannot fix
The sound of the key being inserted into the lock was particularly jarring.
Shi Xu suddenly grabbed Yun Xi's wrist with terrifying force. His face was as white as paper, and his breathing was rapid and disordered, but he still managed to drag her stumble into the kitchen.
“Over here.” His voice was so hoarse it was almost inaudible.
Yunxi stumbled as he pulled her, her knee hitting the edge of the cabinet, causing her to gasp in pain. But she didn't utter a sound.
Shixu frantically reached for the small window, her fingers trembling violently. It took her two tries to open the latch. Outside was a dark back alley, rainwater streaming down the wall.
"Quickly..." he gasped, trying to lift the gap in the clouds.
The rain felt like cold bullets hitting my face.
Shixu gripped Yunxi's wrist tightly, so hard it felt like she was about to crush her bones. They rushed out of the alley and plunged into the neon-lit streets. The rain immediately soaked them both, their clothes clinging heavily to their bodies.
“He… disappeared,” Shi Xu gasped, his voice broken. His face was even paler than before, and every step he took felt like walking on a knife’s edge.
Yunxi didn't look back. She knew that the thirty-seventh timeline was gone. That timeline with its weary yet gentle eyes, willing to burn its last breath for her. Her heart felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand, the pain almost unbearable.
"Where are we going?" she asked loudly, her voice drowned out by the sound of rain and the noise of the city.
"'The Gap'!" Shi Xu shouted, pulling her into a narrower street. "The place he last mentioned! The place the system can't reach!"
He stumbled, almost falling. Yunxi quickly caught him, his skin burning hot to the touch. His body temperature was alarmingly high, and the veins beneath his skin emitted a faint blue glow, as if something was surging and clashing within him.
"How are you?" she asked anxiously.
"It's alright!" Shi Xu gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand firm. "Officer Zhou... he'll catch up soon. He's targeting me... or rather, the 'system mark' on me."
They walked through street after street, leaving familiar areas behind, and entered the dilapidated industrial zone on the city's edge. Abandoned factory buildings stood like silent behemoths in the rain, most of their windows broken, staring back at them in darkness. The air was thick with the acrid smell of rust and chemicals.
Time seemed to slow down, and his breathing grew increasingly rapid. He leaned against a mottled red brick wall, coughing violently, dark blood seeping from between his fingers.
"Time Sequence!" Yunxi caught his slumping body and helped him sit against the wall. His eyes were tightly closed, his eyelashes trembling from the rain and pain. The blue light beneath his skin grew stronger, like living circuits coursing and clashing within him. He seemed to be enduring immense suffering, his body convulsing intermittently.
“Data…conflict…” he mumbled intermittently, his voice indistinct, “Thirty-seven…fifty-one…anchor point…error…”
Yunxi knelt beside him, rain streaming down her hair and into her eyes, stinging and painful. Looking at his anguish, her heart felt like it was being torn apart. The boy who always carried a certain aloofness and mystery was now so vulnerable. Because of her.
She recalled the relieved and content smile on his face before the thirty-seventh timeline vanished, and his gaze that even reincarnation could not erase. She remembered the "accident" her parents might have encountered while investigating her "abnormality." A chilling anger rose from the depths of her heart, dispelling some of her fear.
She can't fall. Time needs her. She has to figure it all out.
She looked around. It seemed to be the site of an abandoned machine shop, with rusty steel supports and discarded parts everywhere. In the rain, everything looked blurry and unreal.
She noticed the black hard drive that Shixu had been clutching tightly. Even in his unconscious state, his hand gripped it like a vise. She carefully pried open his fingers and removed the hard drive. The metal casing was cold, still warm from Shixu's body heat, and the faded, strange blue patterns remained on it.
The hard drive left by my father. What's hidden inside? Why is the name "Timing" a password? Why did it trigger abnormal reactions in two timing sequences, even leading to the demise of one?
She clutched the hard drive tightly to her chest, as if it offered a sense of security. Then, she turned her attention back to Shi Xu. His breathing had calmed slightly, but his body temperature remained alarmingly high, and the blue light hadn't faded. She took off her soaking wet coat, wrung it out, folded it, and placed it under his head. Then, she carefully wiped the blood from his mouth and face with her sleeve.
Just then, she heard a very faint buzzing sound, like an electric current passing through it. It wasn't coming from the passage of time, but from… the wall he was leaning against?
Yunxi cautiously raised her head and approached the mottled red brick wall. The sound seemed to be coming from inside the wall. She reached out and touched the wall, feeling a strange, extremely subtle vibration at her fingertips, completely different from the cold, slippery feeling of rain.
She slowly felt her way along the wall, the rain blurring her vision. In the crevice between the wall and a huge, rusty metal can, she found a slightly darker brick. The hissing sound and vibration were most pronounced there.
Is this the place? The 'gap'?
She glanced back at Shixu, who was still unconscious, and gritted her teeth. There was no other choice.
She pushed the brick hard, but it didn't budge. She tried sliding it to the side, but still no response. She observed it closely and noticed that the edge of this brick seemed smoother than the surrounding bricks, as if it had been touched frequently. She pressed her entire palm against it, feeling the subtle vibrations.
Suddenly, the brick silently caved inward, and then the entire wall, centered on that brick, in an area about the size of a door, began to ripple like water! The texture of the brick twisted and blurred, eventually turning into a swirling, dark halo, like a vertical, calm black pool embedded in the dilapidated wall.
Behind the door, the view was no longer of a factory, but of deep, bottomless darkness.
Is this what they call a 'gap'?
Yunxi's heart pounded. Without hesitation, she bent down, forcefully lifted Shixu up, draped one of his arms over her shoulder, and half-dragged, half-carried him, staggering towards the swirling darkness.
Just before stepping into that darkness, she subconsciously glanced back.
In the rain, at the end of the street, a figure in a dark uniform was walking slowly towards them. The distance was still too great to see their face clearly, but a cold, almost tangible sense of oppression pierced through the rain and enveloped them.
Officer Zhou!
The gap in the clouds never looked back. With all its might, dragging along the passage of time, it stepped into that swirling darkness.
There was no impact, no falling sensation, as she had imagined. It was more like being plunged into a thick, warm liquid. Light and sound were instantly sucked away, leaving only absolute silence and darkness, with only her own heartbeat and the faint sound of her breathing echoing in her ears. She felt disoriented, disoriented of time, as if floating in the void of the universe.
This state lasted only a few seconds, or perhaps a long time; she couldn't tell.
The next moment, she felt solid ground beneath her feet. Light flooded her vision again, but it was very dim. She found herself standing in a small, room-like space. Time itself pressed down on her, its weight almost entirely on her.
She steadied herself and looked around.
This place looked like a…forgotten corner. The space wasn't large, only about ten square meters. There were no windows; the only exit was the “wall” they had just entered through, now restored to its ordinary, weathered, and unremarkable state. The air was filled with a strange smell—a mixture of old paper, dust, and…ozone.
The light source came from several slowly pulsating, faintly glowing things on the wall, like some kind of plant roots. They meandered along the walls and ceiling, emitting a soft, flickering blue-green light that barely illuminated the space.
The room was filled with some strange objects: an old-fashioned nautical compass with its pointer spinning erratically; several heavy books with blank covers but pages that turned slowly on their own; a crystal ball that floated in mid-air and rotated slowly, its interior shrouded in mist and occasionally flashing with unrecognizable symbols; and several metal discs covered with intricate patterns scattered on the floor.
The sense of time and space here was extremely chaotic. Yunxi felt her thoughts were sometimes clear and sometimes blurry, as if countless parallel thoughts were running at the same time. She looked at Shixu and found that the blue light under his skin seemed to have stabilized a bit, no longer clashing so violently, but his face was still pale and he was unconscious.
She carefully placed him on the relatively clean floor in a corner of the room, letting him lie flat. Then, she took out the hard drive again.
In this place known as the "gap," a place inaccessible to the system, will this hard drive, the only clue left by the father, take on a different appearance?
She found the only thing in the room that looked modern—an old laptop covered in a thin layer of dust, sitting on a wooden crate piled high with blank papers. She blew away the dust and turned it on. The battery was still half full. She inserted the hard drive.
The hard drive indicator light is on, indicating normal read operation.
The folder popped up on the screen again. She opened the encrypted file named "Observation Log".
The password field popped up again.
She took a deep breath and typed "time sequence" again.
Press Enter.
The file is open.
There was no data corruption, no remote erasure. In this "gap," the records left by her father were presented completely before her eyes.
She began to read it word by word.
"...The time anchor theory has been preliminarily confirmed. The existence of an individual's 'cloud gap' is highly positively correlated with the stability of the local time flow. Their conscious activity, especially strong emotional fluctuations, may have a subtle perturbation to the time structure..."
"...Indications of 'Maintainer' (codename Zhou) activity were observed. Its behavior pattern conforms to the 'System' protocol, but there are unexplained redundant operations, suggesting the existence of a secondary target independent of the core commands..."
"...Anomalies detected! Unauthorized behavior! The source points to a high-dimensional observer claiming to be 'Time Series'. Its behavior logic is unanalyzable; it seems primarily aimed at recording the timeline of 'cloud gaps' and exhibits a clear...protective tendency? This contradicts the underlying logic of the 'system'..."
"...Key discovery! 'Chronology' does not exist in isolation. Its observational records show traces of multiple 'resets.' After each reset, its core data is retained, but the emotional modules and some memories are stripped away and sealed. These stripped-away 'reverberations' materialize under certain specific conditions and maintain a strong...obsession with 'cloud gaps'?..."
"...'The system' is afraid. It fears the awakening of 'cloud gaps' and the continued interference of 'time series.' It tries to maintain stability by clearing 'cloud gaps,' but the existence of 'time series' makes the clearing operation difficult and creates more data redundancy and paradoxes..."
"...I may have touched upon core secrets. The so-called 'stability' maintained by the 'system' might not be to protect the flow of time, but rather to...imprison something? Is the anchoring characteristic of the 'Cloud Gap' some kind of...lock?..."
"...Zhou is monitoring me. He may have already discovered my investigation. I must speed things up..."
"...The final record. If something happens to me, find the 'crack.' That's a fold in time, a blind spot in the system. There, you can see...the truth. Be careful of Zhou; he's not just the 'maintainer,' he might be...the original..."
The record ends here.
The last line of text appeared particularly rushed, with the ink even slightly blurred.
Yunxi sat on the cold, dusty ground, unable to move for a long time.
The father's words were like keys, unlocking doors to a larger, darker truth. Was she not only an "anchor," but also a "lock"? What was the system imprisoning? Was the timeline a memory stripped of emotion, repeatedly reset? Officer Zhou… was not merely an executor, but also the "original"? What was the original?
Too much information overwhelmed her brain. She felt dizzy.
She looked at the unconscious Shi Xu beside her. His peaceful sleeping face appeared exceptionally fragile in the pulsating dim light. The lingering echoes of those stripped-away emotions, like his thirty-seventh reincarnation, still instinctively and madly loved and protected her. And the main Shi Xu, carrying all the memories and pain, repeatedly sought her out, trying to break this hopeless cycle.
My heart felt like it was being soaked in a warm, sour liquid, both swollen and painful.
She reached out and gently brushed away the damp black hair clinging to his forehead. His body temperature seemed to have dropped a little.
“Time sequence…” she whispered his name.
As if he heard her voice, his eyelashes fluttered, and he slowly opened his eyes.
The initial confusion in his eyes quickly faded, replaced by a bottomless weariness and clarity that bore the weight of countless cycles of reincarnation. He looked at her with a complex expression, a mixture of relief at surviving a calamity, unconcealable pain, and... a deep-seated tenderness that even he himself might not have fully understood.
“We…are in the ‘gap’?” His voice was hoarse.
Yunxi nodded and turned the laptop toward him: "I looked at the records my father left behind."
Shi Xu's gaze swept over the words on the screen, his pupils contracting slightly. He was silent for a moment before saying in a low voice, "Your father... knows more than I thought."
“He said you were reset time and time again, stripped of your emotions.” Yunxi’s voice trembled slightly, “The you of the thirty-seventh time…”
“It’s a part of me.” Shi Xu interrupted her, his voice low and certain. “It’s all of me… the part that ‘doesn’t want to forget you,’ the obsession that was forcibly severed by the system.” He raised his hand, looking at his palm, the blue light under his skin had mostly subsided. “The data conflict just now was because I touched the hard drive and tried to reassemble those ripped fragments… especially the ‘him’ who just disappeared.”
He looked up at Yunxi, his eyes filled with an almost cruel honesty: "Yunxi, I am not the omniscient and omnipotent god you imagine. I am a flawed product, a malfunctioning program that is constantly being formatted by the system and restarted because it cannot completely erase the records of you. My very existence is a loophole in the system."
Yunxi looked at him, at the pain and self-doubt in his eyes. She wasn't afraid, nor did she back down. Instead, she leaned forward and took his cold hand in hers.
“But it is you, this ‘faulty program,’ that has found me time and time again.” Her voice was soft, yet unusually firm. “It is those stripped-away ‘reverberations’ of yours that have protected me at critical moments. Timing, if you are a mistake, then I would rather that mistake continue to exist.”
Shi Xu was stunned. He looked into her clear and resolute eyes, feeling the faint yet real warmth emanating from her palm. That warmth seemed to carry some kind of power, seeping into his cold body, composed of data and rules, soothing some of his restlessness and pain.
He gripped her hand tightly, as if he were holding onto the only piece of driftwood in a drowning river.
Just then, the crystal ball suspended in the air suddenly emitted a blinding red light! The clouds inside the ball churned violently, revealing a clear image—it was the outer wall they had just entered the "gap" from!
In the video, Officer Zhou stands in front of that wall. He reaches out and touches the wall, his brow slightly furrowed. He doesn't seem able to open the entrance like a gap in the clouds, but he clearly knows it exists and is trying to locate it.
“He’s found the entrance.” Time’s voice grew serious. “The ‘gap’ can block the system’s direct scanning, but it can’t completely prevent a ‘maintainer’ from getting close and infiltrating. He can’t get in, but he can stay outside, or… find a way to ‘stitch’ this ‘gap’ together from the outside.”
"Sew it up?" Yunxi's heart tightened.
“It’s about completely sealing off this space, trapping us here forever, or erasing it from the timeline altogether,” Time Sequence explained, struggling to stand up, but his body remained weak.
Just then, the front door was pushed open with a bang. Footsteps entered the living room, unhurried, each step landing on one's heart.
The gap in the clouds remained still. Suddenly, she reached out and pressed her hand against Shixu's forearm, her touch finding it icy cold.
"Wait." She whispered in his ear, "He must have heard the noise. Now he's climbing out the window and he's trapped in the alley."
Time seemed to stand still. His eyes were a little red, and he stared at the window like a trapped beast, his chest heaving violently.
"What should we do?" His throat tightened.
Yunxi didn't answer, her gaze quickly sweeping across the kitchen. The old refrigerator hummed, and the sink was piled high with dinner dishes. She suddenly let go of Shixu, walked a few steps to the wall, and snapped off the light switch.
The kitchen was plunged into darkness in an instant.
"You..." Shi Xu was about to speak when Yun Xi covered his mouth.
Her palms were a little damp, with a hint of lemon scent from dish soap.
"Don't make a sound." Her warm breath touched his earlobe.
The footsteps from the living room stopped at the kitchen doorway. A blurry, swaying figure could be seen through the frosted glass door.
"Cloud Gap?" Officer Zhou's voice came through the door, still in his gentle tone, but a bit harsher than usual. "Why are the lights off?"
Yunxi took a breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was hoarse from just waking up: "Uncle Zhou? I... I got up to get some water... Maybe the switch is not making good contact."
As she spoke, she gently nudged Shi Xu's shin with her toe. Shi Xu immediately understood, held her breath, and shrank back into the corner.
There was silence outside the door for a few seconds.
"I heard a noise just now and was worried about your safety," Officer Zhou said. "Could you open the door?"
"I'm wearing my pajamas." Yunxi's voice carried a hint of embarrassment. "It's really nothing, I just had a nightmare."
Another silence fell. The sound of raindrops hitting the outdoor unit of the air conditioner was exceptionally clear.
Time slowly clenched his fist in the darkness. He saw the shadow on the glass door sway slightly, as if judging something.
"Okay." Finally, Officer Zhou said, "Then you should get some rest."
The footsteps gradually moved towards the door.
The two stood motionless in the darkness until they heard the soft sound of the door closing.
Just as Shi Xu was about to breathe a sigh of relief, Yun Xi squeezed his palm hard.
She held up one finger, indicating that she should continue waiting.
Sure enough, half a minute later, the faintest footsteps sounded outside the door again—he hadn't left at all; it was just a feint.
This pause lasted even longer. Long enough to send chills down your spine.
Finally, footsteps sounded again, this time heading towards the gate. Then came the clear sound of the gate closing.
Shi Xu's legs went weak, and his back slammed heavily against the wall.
"He's gone?" His voice was weak.
Yunxi didn't turn on the lights. I groped my way to the window in the dark, pulled back a corner of the curtain, and looked down. The area below was empty, with only the puddles reflecting the streetlights.
"For now." She turned around, leaning against the windowsill. "But do you think he'll try to ambush me at school tomorrow?"
Shi Xu gasped for breath twice in the darkness. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed her arm with a frighteningly strong grip.
“You can’t go to school.” His voice was tense. “Who knows what he’ll do next? Last time… last time on the police station rooftop…”
He didn't finish his sentence, but the cold sweat seeping from his palms said it all.
He didn't break free from the gap in the clouds. After a moment of silence, he suddenly asked, "You said before that he was the first witness to my parents' car accident?"
Shi Xu paused for a moment, then nodded: "The rescue log says..."
"Did he mention any specific details?" Yunxi asked softly. "For example, was there anything unusual at the scene of the accident?"
Shi Xu frowned as he recalled, "The file only states the standard procedure... and so on."
He looked up abruptly: "In the record of the thirty-seventh cycle, there was a sentence that was crossed out, saying that the rescuers found a charred notebook on the passenger seat."
"A notebook?" Yunxi's heart skipped a beat. "What notebook?"
“I couldn’t see it clearly. The text was blacked out; I could only vaguely make out the words ‘experiment’ and ‘cycle.’” Shi Xu paused. “At the time, I didn’t think it was important…”
“Experiment…” Yunxi repeated the word, then suddenly grabbed Shixu’s hand, “In my study, in the bottom drawer, there’s an old hard drive belonging to my dad.”
Shi Xu paused, stunned: "You mean..."
“In the period before my dad’s accident, he often stayed up late writing in his study.” Yunxi’s speech quickened. “My mom said he was doing some kind of observation recording…”
The two looked at each other and saw the same horror in each other's eyes.
What if Officer Zhou was trying to cover up more than just the "anomaly" in the cloud gap?
What if her parents' deaths were also related to this so-called "system"?
Outside the window, the rain started falling again, the raindrops pattering against the puddles in the back alley, creating fine ripples.
As the sun peeked through the clouds and climbed out the window, Officer Zhou was already standing in the kitchen doorway. He didn't rush to chase them, but simply watched them quietly, his gaze so calm it was unsettling.
"Why are you running?" His voice cut through the rain. "I'm just here to retrieve what belongs to the system."
Time seemed to shield him from the clouds, and rain dripped down his jawline. He could feel the oppressive aura emanating from Officer Zhou, a power belonging to a higher dimension.
"The system has crossed the line." Time's voice was soft, yet carried an undeniable authority. "She's just an ordinary person."
Officer Zhou gently shook his head: "From the first time you interfered in her fate, she was no longer ordinary."
Just then, the light at the alley entrance suddenly dimmed.
Another timeline stands at the alley entrance.
He looked more haggard than he did at this time of year, his eyes bloodshot, as if he hadn't had a good night's sleep in a long time. But his gaze was unusually clear, fixed on the gap in the clouds.
"The thirty-seventh time," the present moment whispered, his voice filled with barely concealed pain.
As that moment slowly approached, the rain seemed to automatically shun him. He didn't even glance at Officer Zhou, his gaze fixed on the gaps in the clouds, a complex expression that was heartbreaking.
"You're still alive." His voice trembled as he said this, as if he had been waiting for these words for far too long.
Officer Zhou frowned: "Afterimage, go back to where you belong."
The thirty-seventh timer finally turned its gaze to Officer Zhou, a bitter smile tugging at the corners of its lips: "Where should I go? I'm not going anywhere."
He suddenly raised his hand, and an invisible barrier shut out Officer Zhou. At the same time, Shi Xu abruptly knelt on one knee, clutching his chest in pain.
"He's absorbing my power," Time Sequence said with difficulty, "at his own cost..."
Looking through the clouds at that timeline, he saw that his body was gradually becoming transparent.
"It was worth it." The thirty-seventh timeline smiled at her. "This time, we finally made it in time."
Officer Zhou began striking the barrier, each impact making that time-traveling body even more transparent.
"Hurry," he said to the present timeline, "take her to the 'Gap,' the only place the system can't reach."
The present timeline struggled to its feet and grabbed Yunxi's hand. Before leaving, it turned back for one last look at that timeline.
"I'm sorry," said Shixu.
Shi Xu shook his head, his gaze never leaving the gap in the clouds: "Take good care of her."
As Yunxi was pulled out of the alley, she looked back one last time. That timeline was now completely transparent, leaving only a blurry outline, yet it stubbornly maintained its barrier.
Before disappearing completely, he silently said something in the direction of the gap in the clouds.
Much later, Yunxi finally understood what that sentence meant:
"I finally managed to protect you this time."
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