Mou Xuan's fingertips rolled out blood on the scratches on the conference table, and three hundred parallel lines suddenly reorganized on his retina into the coordinates of his father's laboratory.
As the taste of rust rushed into his throat, he heard the sound of Chen Yao biting the apple core - this sound always appeared on time 0.03 seconds before time went back.
"The propaganda team is arguing again." Chen Yao used a dagger stained with fruit to cut open the curtain of the air-raid shelter.
The stench wafting from Area 7 was wrapped in the distorted voice of Propaganda Officer Cui, as if someone had stuffed a loudspeaker into a rotting hippopotamus carcass.
Mou Xuan stared at the anger rising in front of the propaganda stand. Member Liang was rolling the "Gene Sampling Regulations" into a tube and poking it at propagandist Cui's Adam's apple.
When the piece of paper was about to pierce the other party's throbbing Adam's apple, ice-blue ripples appeared in the depths of his pupils - the sound of the gears of time gnawing seeped out from between the fingernails of three hundred corpses.
"Rewind fifteen minutes," he whispered into the air duct.
Chen Yao suddenly grabbed his wrist, and the apple juice spread on the silver silk pattern, causing a burning sensation: "Take me in this time."
The moment the ice cone pierced his temple, Mou Xuan saw frost on Chen Yao's eyelashes.
As the diesel generator spit out the legal text again, the crowd around the propaganda stand gathered in an inverted posture.
Member Liang backed up and stuffed the details back into Propaganda Officer Cui's hands, while Leader Fan's spare badge was struggling to break free from the spiral clause.
"They are afraid of the barbs in the commas." Chen Yao suddenly pointed at Auditor Li's magnifying glass.
In the reflection of the lens, behind the neck of every questioner there are translucent time-mark larvae wriggling - those parasites are gnawing at the punctuation marks in the legal text.
Mou Xuan grabbed the rusty microphone stand on the propaganda stand. The moment the tip pierced into the ripples of time, seventeen possibilities for the future exploded on his retina.
He saw in the fourth possibility that Shen Yao's collarbone was cut by the inverted comma, and the blood condensed into a cigar smoke ring on the cover of the "Emergency Marriage Law"; in the ninth possibility, Assistant Feng's chain code suddenly materialized into a law enforcement badge; in the thirteenth possibility, he was using the centrifuge in his father's laboratory to separate the malice in the legal clauses.
"Replace mudslides with avalanches." Chen Yao suddenly opened his clenched fists and used the apple juice on his fingernails to draw a three-dimensional model of the brochure on his palm. "Print the mandatory clauses as translucent watermarks, which will only appear when the questioner's body temperature exceeds 37 degrees."
The ice chips that fell from the top of the air-raid shelter suddenly hovered on the tips of Cui's hair. Mou Xuan watched the sweat beads oozing from the tip of Chen Yao's nose refracting a rainbow in the time lines.
When there were three seconds left in the countdown, he tore off page 14 of the "Gene Sampling Guidelines" and folded it into a paper airplane. The serrations on the edge of the wing were just enough to cut off the suction cups of the larvae of the moth.
The moment reality began to flow again, the paper plane accurately pierced into the back collar of Liang member.
Propaganda officer Cui suddenly opened the collar of his uniform, revealing the flashing time pattern totem on his collarbone: "Your body temperature is baking the truth - please look at the projector!"
When the watermark frame activated by body temperature appeared on the wall of the air-raid shelter, the larvae behind the necks of the seventeen questioners screamed at the same time.
Chen Yao pretended to fall and knocked over the diesel barrel, and the flowing fuel just formed a circle of fire that isolated the parasite.
When Mou Xuan caught her falling body, the time patterns on their wrists suddenly merged into a double helix structure.
"You saw the larvae a long time ago, right?" Chen Yao's breath swept across the old scar behind his ear, where there were still traces of the burns from the drug injected by the betrayer in the previous life. "Next time, remember to control the frequency of pupil contraction before lying."
Suddenly, there was a sound of glass breaking at the propaganda stand.
The fragments of auditor Li's magnifying glass melted into liquid metal in the fire circle, and solidified into the code array that Assistant Feng had carved on the iron sheet this morning.
Mou Xuan felt the new marks on the bottom of the conference table - they were no longer parallel lines, but countless ∞ symbols connected end to end, with half an ice cone curled up in each ring.
(Continued from the previous article)
When Chen Yao's nails scratched sparks on the projection screen, Mou Xuan smelled that the rust smell wafting from Leader Fan's cuffs had changed - it was the unique burnt smell when the laboratory mice in the previous life gnawed on the circuit boards.
"Article 8 requires the addition of joint liability for marriage." Leader Fan suddenly lifted the curtain with the tip of his pen, and dark red ink flowed into the table of contents of the Emergency Marriage Law. "For example, spouses who violate the law need to jointly bear the ice pick penalty." As he spoke, the larvae of the cerebrospinal fluid on the back of his neck were molting, and the newly grown mouthparts had the metallic luster of a court hammer.
Mou Yao grabbed the thermos and poured it onto the curtain. The rising mist revealed a scene from six hours ago: Leader Fan was alone in the material warehouse, prying open the legal filing cabinet with three iron wires. The frequency of his trembling as he rubbed the "Gene Sampling Regulations" with his fingertips was exactly the same as when the traitor in his previous life opened the combination lock.
"Is this what you need?" Mou Xuan suddenly opened his collar, and the time pattern totem on his collarbone was oozing an ice-blue liquid.
The liquid condensed into revised clauses on the curtain, and each law was embedded with a corresponding material distribution flowchart - this was exactly the encrypted file that Leader Fan tried to steal last night.
The icicles on top of the shelter suddenly began to melt synchronously, and water droplets etched a circular chain of evidence in the pile of brochures.
Chen Yao crushed the three larvae corpses with her heels and suddenly pointed at Leader Fan's pen: "The law enforcement badge in your pocket has faded." As she spoke, the time pattern on her wrist was converting the frequency of the other party's pupil contraction into a data stream, projecting it onto the newly condensed liquid metal mirror of Auditor Li.
After Leader Fan's Adam's apple rolled up and down five times, he suddenly smiled and tore up the proposal paper: "It's just a joke to test the flexibility of the terms." When he turned around, the ice chips swept off by his trouser legs formed an incomplete law enforcement code on the ground. When Mou Xuan wiped off the first three digits with the tip of his shoe, he heard the sound of glass exploding in the pilot area 300 kilometers away.
"It's time to add a temperature lock to the brochure." Chen Yao suddenly slapped the hot pack on the cover of the "Gene Sampling Regulations", and the activated hidden clause emerged with a simulated animation of material distribution.
When demonstrating the ice cone punishment process, Propaganda Officer Cui suddenly discovered that his loudspeaker could synchronously play the sound of stomach rumbling - those hungry sounds were more convincing than any speech.
When Mou Xuan carved the seventh ∞ symbol on the conference table, cheers came from deep in the air-raid shelter as Assistant Feng successfully deciphered the code.
Those symbols connected end to end suddenly began to rotate slowly, and the time pattern larvae frozen in each ring were molting and being reborn as the rotation speed increased.
When Shen Yao bent down to pick up the brochure, she found that the jagged crack on the edge of the last page was exactly the same as the paper airplane that Mou Xuan had folded.
Those cracks extended into dotted lines in the shadows on the ground, and the end point pointed to the law enforcement station that had just been built in the pilot area. At this moment, thirteen emergency lights there were malfunctioning at the same time, and something in the darkness was gnawing at the newly painted "Legal Pilot Point" metal sign.
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