manynovel Chapter 5 Split Operations
Chapter 5 Split Operations
Outside the door, faint sobs echoed in the corridor, making it seem as if a vengeful ghost was haunting the place.
"Alright, young lady, please stop crying. I understand you're scared, but being scared won't help now, young lady." The middle-aged woman looked at Pang Qingxuan with sympathy. She didn't know how to comfort Pang Qingxuan, so she could only whisper words of comfort.
Lizzie's face was grim. "That was really dangerous. Do you know you almost killed us all?"
"I'm sorry...I'm so sorry, I was really scared..."
"I can't worry about that now. If you keep crying, no one here can help you! Don't drag others down with you."
Seeing Lizzie's gloomy face, Pang Qingxuan realized the seriousness of the situation. She suppressed her sobs and tried her best to calm herself down.
Without looking at Pang Qingxuan, Li Qi summarized her discovery in as fast as she could:
"Time flows backward in this room, contrary to the outside world. It seems the people inside are long dead; what we're seeing is a replay. And they can't see us, nor can they touch us."
"But inanimate objects like books can be touched, meaning these items are things that still exist while we are alive."
"If time can be reversed in the library, then maybe it can be reversed in the other two rooms as well," Tian Tian added.
“That’s right, and I have an idea that needs to be verified. I think that since time can be reversed, we might be able to find the clues we need from the past,” Lizzie said.
"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Since time can be reversed, maybe there's something that can control the rewinding of time."
"Otherwise, relying on its automatic playback would be too inefficient. Even if we had a month, we wouldn't find anything," Tian Tian quickly added.
Next, the group finalized the mission details:
Tian Tian and the middle-aged woman were tasked with searching the reading room to the left of the library, while Li Qi and Pang Qingxuan were in charge of the library itself.
If all goes well, the four of them will meet at the entrance and then go to the last reading room together.
Without further hesitation, Tian Tian and the middle-aged woman headed towards the reading room.
In the library.
Upon re-entering the room, Pang Qingxuan became even more cautious, closely following behind Li Qi. The two of them hugged the wall, carefully avoiding the people in the room. During this time, Li Qi casually took a pen and paper from the reading table.
Stopping in front of the bookshelf, Lizzie placed the paper on it and wrote: "Don't make any noise. I'll search the five on the left, you go to the five on the right. Take the useful information you find, and we'll meet here in a bit."
Pang Qingxuan nodded in acknowledgment, and then tiptoed to the right.
Lizzie carefully avoided the tidyer as she wandered among the five rows of bookshelves. The books were arranged much more haphazardly than she had imagined, lying there in disarray without any clear categorization.
At that moment, she thought to herself that searching through books one by one like this wouldn't work; she needed more specific clues.
The more Lizzie thought about it, the more anxious she became. Just when she was at her wit's end, she heard a "beep beep beep" sound.
It's... the sound of a pointer, it's nearby.
Lizzie quickly searched the fourth and fifth rows for the source of the sound. When she returned to the fifth row, she saw the janitor squatting in front of her.
The books were removed one by one by the librarian, and the faint sounds became much clearer.
After the tidyer left, Lizzie quickly stepped forward and rummaged through the remaining books, the sound of things hitting the ground echoing around her.
Lizzie turned to the side and picked the object up from the ground. It turned out to be a black, square electronic watch face. The watch face was surprisingly light and slightly smaller than an A4 sheet of paper.
Lizzie wiped the dust off the watch face with her sleeve and discovered that the numbers on the watch were moving backward.
After her new discovery, Lizzie quickly found Pang Qingxuan, who was engrossed in reading. She wrote on a piece of paper, "This watch should be the key to the time reversal. Can you disassemble it?"
Pang Qingxuan understood at this moment, nodded in acknowledgment, and took the watch face to start fiddling with it.
The year, month, day, hour, minute, and second on the dial correspond one-to-one with the six knobs.
The electronic numbers rapidly reversed as the knob was turned, and the two realized that everyone in the library except for them seemed to have been put on accelerator, moving so fast that they were just afterimages.
Pang Qingxuan seemed to have thought of something. She gently put down the watch face, tugged at Li Qi's sleeve, and wrote on the paper:
"I found a diary on the right. I don't know who wrote it. It's all gossip and the like. But there are a few entries that I'm particularly interested in."
As she spoke, she handed a worn-out notebook to Lizzie.
The first half of the notes consists of daily life records and mood notes.
Lizzie flipped through the pages quickly, but soon her brow furrowed slightly, her gaze lingering on one page, on which was written:
"June 5, 2010, how did she get here! Why was she brought here! I have to save her, I must find a way to save her!"
"Her? Who is she?" Lizzie continued flipping through the pages, still wondering.
"June 7, 2010, death sentence... How could this happen..."
"July 17, 2010: Great news! My boss is willing to help me; my sister is saved!"
"On July 28, 2010, she didn't seem to be in good spirits. The boss said that District 2 needed me, and I couldn't go to District 3. However, he often went to District 3 with a bunch of documents, so it seems that things are still progressing. Sigh... I can't take care of Jenny in District 3. I hope everything will be alright."
"August 3, 2010. My sentence will start in October, and my boss has been giving me the runaround these past few days... Is he lying to me...?"
"August 5, 2010, Great! Jenny is saved!"
"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!..."
The diary ends abruptly here, the handwriting is messy and illegible, the whole page is full of curses, the deep strokes seem to want to tear someone to pieces.
Lizzie closed the diary and wrote on the paper: "Set the time to June 5, 2010."
As the gears of time accelerated and reversed, Pang Qingxuan made a new discovery: the time on the watch face could not only be adjusted backward, but also forward.
As the knob turned, the time came to a little after 1 p.m. on June 5, 2010.
A middle-aged man, hunched over at a reading table, stood out in the bustling crowd. He was dressed in a police uniform and was writing something with his head down.
The man's eyes were sunken, with dark circles around them that surrounded his swollen, red eyes. His eyeballs bulged out and were bloodshot, clearly indicating that he hadn't had a proper rest in a long time.
The two approached the table and quietly observed the man, whose expression was both focused and slightly eccentric.
Upon seeing the notebook on the table, Lizzie was certain that this person was indeed the owner of the notebook—a prison guard. Lizzie then looked at the number pinned to the man's chest—057.
After writing this clue down on paper, Lizzie signaled to Pang Qingxuan to move the time back.
Over the next few days, the man's condition worsened, and he began talking to himself. However, Lizzie learned from his words that the "boss" in the diary was none other than the lewd warden—Quide.
On August 5th, the man's condition improved considerably, but it didn't last long before it deteriorated again.
For several days starting from August 14th, the man simply sat blankly at the table, writing nothing.
Continuing on, on September 9, 2010, the two made a new discovery.
Today, the man's face was sinister as he scribbled curses on a piece of paper, his eyes filled with madness.
As he was writing, he suddenly raised his head and roughly turned the diary to the last page.
The man began to mutter something, and because they were too far apart, Lizzie had to walk closer and bend down to listen.
"No...no...he deserves to die...I have to go to District Three myself, I have to go to District Three!"
Then, the man quickly scribbled something on the paper. Moving closer, Lizzie saw what was on the paper: a floor plan of a ventilation duct.
Just then, the door to the library opened, and the man quickly tore off a piece of paper and swallowed it the moment he saw who it was.
Two men in police uniforms walked in, grabbed the man and said, "It's time for your shift, Joe. The boss is looking for you."
The man abruptly broke free from the arms that were pulling him, hid the diary back on the bookshelf, and then followed the two away.
Watching Joe and the two prison guards walk away, Lizzie drew the floor plan on paper from memory, and also noted down the other clues.
The two then adjusted the time to the current time, and Lizzie removed the battery from the watch face.
The screen gradually dimmed as the power supply disappeared, and the noise in the library vanished, leaving the room deathly silent.