I Am Your Natural Enemy

The rows of numbers on the wall—Wen Yan didn’t need anyone to explain to understand what they represented.

In front of each number was a timestamp for the archive point; in the early records, the precision wasn’t that high.

But later on, it was clearly accurate down to the second.

Year, month, day, hour, minute, second, followed by a ”-”, and then a string of time—this had to be the duration elapsed after the archive point.

Looking at the earliest record, it was already three years ago.

Wen Yan didn’t know how the General Director managed to persist for so long.

Because it’s only the atomic clock’s time, it actually doesn’t mean much; in fact, even the most basic question—whether the atomic clock is actually accurate—has to be marked with a question mark.

”What’s the serial number of this atomic clock within the Scorching Sun Department?”

”There isn’t a serial number.”

Wen Yan understood—yes, with no serial number, it meant the General Director wasn’t certain either, so all these records had been made by the General Director himself.

What the atomic clock showed was just that there was something wrong with the world’s time, but that was it.

With no other information, the General Director couldn’t be sure of anything.

But this time, Little Mustache went too far, really made a fatal mistake, and got caught by the Old Celestial Master during a ritual.

The information in the General Director’s hands, which couldn’t previously be verified, finally had another piece of evidence.

Still, Wen Yan’s thoughts turned—how did the General Director know he knew about these matters? He’d never told anyone.

But then he thought of that Black Box—Feng Yao said to get top-level clearance, he had to see the General Director.

Could it be that just from this, he guessed what I know?

Wen Yan’s mind spun rapidly, and in an instant he tossed those doubts aside, focusing on the digits recorded here.

Here, in his first loop, the ending time was the night he returned from Southern Sea County.

And at that time, according to the original plan, he should have been in Central Plains County to meet Luo Liang.

But at that point, by all rights, he hadn’t met Luo Liang yet.

So, if the rollback was related to him, something must have happened that night, before he met Luo Liang, that necessitated the rollback.

Because in the second loop, he met Luo Liang, then the Doll Master tried to silence him, and following that lead, he found the Doll Master, and using the Doll Master’s phone number, he finally tracked down Little Mustache.

When the rollback happened, he was equipped with Cloud Sync, so after the third loop began, he could remember what happened in the second loop.

The cause for the rollback in the first loop definitely wasn’t related to his visit with Luo Liang, otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to do those things in the second loop.

So that night, something definitely happened that forced Little Mustache to roll back.

And according to the Black Box records, that night, Little Mustache was in Guanzhong County City.

Hmm, to be more precise, something happened when he had never seen Little Mustache, or even knew about Little Mustache’s existence, that forced Little Mustache to roll back.

Thinking of the Doll Master’s case, Wen Yan felt it was possible that one of Little Mustache’s subordinates was killed during that timeframe.

Someone other than the Doll Master, another person.

He had already uploaded Little Mustache’s call records using the Black Box with top access; the one he focused on was the call made just a few seconds after the starting point.

That number wasn’t often used, it was a black card, but he was certain that the person who used that phone wasn’t the Doll Master, and this person wasn’t in Central Plains County.

If the reason for the rollback in the first loop had nothing to do with him, then he couldn’t deduce much more information.

If the cause was somehow related to his trip to Central Plains County at the time, then aside from the Doll Master and the informant, there was one more person he encountered in Central Plains County.

Because that day, he returned from Southern Sea County, and to get to Central Plains County, he could only have used the Nether Path under Old Zhao’s Family’s house as a shortcut.

There’s no way he could’ve gone through his own family.

Whoever he encountered in the Nether Path, Little Mustache couldn’t possibly have known about them.

The most likely scenario was after he arrived in Central Plains County.

Wen Yan stared at the timestamps on the wall, a flood of thoughts flashing through his mind.

He was just guessing wildly, without much evidence, but then again, he didn’t need evidence.

Anyway, he could just check later if something happened in Central Plains County—it wouldn’t cost much effort.

Or he could take some time to secretly make a trip to Central Plains County to see if he could come across anything.

Wen Yan continued to examine the other time logs, amazement showing on his face.

There was simply too much to glean from these records.

As he carefully inspected them, the General Director and the Old Celestial Master didn’t interrupt him.

After reading, he turned back to look at the General Director.

”Astonishing. The sheer amount of information contained here is a bit overwhelming—I doubt I can summarize it all in a short time.”

The General Director smiled, gazing at those records.

”In the beginning, the time deviation was very small, just a few hours.

According to my information, when this atomic clock first began to deviate, it was only off by a few minutes.

But for an atomic clock, a few minutes’ deviation means it’s completely useless.

I’ve logged this for three years, watching, step by step, every increment in deviation.

From a few minutes at the start, it’s now reached at most a deviation of sixteen days.

No matter how it jumps, the deviation is always confined to a certain range in every record.