"Turn around..."
A hoarse and gloomy voice rang out in the absolute silence of the silvery-white space.
Blue Pigeon froze for a moment.
Then, he looked up from his phone, slowly turning his head to look at the figure who had appeared behind him.
The figure was draped in a pitch-black cloak. With his head slightly bowed, his sharp bird beak extended straight forward like a drawn sword.
From a distance, Rain Crow looked like a giant crow standing upright and perfectly motionless. A moment later, he lifted his eyes from the stillness and looked at Blue Pigeon's face.
The two figures, one black and one blue, met each other's gaze.
In the dead silence, it was as if the cawing of a murder of crows could be heard from somewhere unknown.
Blue Pigeon just looked at him quietly, seemingly at a loss for words. It took a long moment for him to finally break the silence.
Rain Crow did not respond.
Blue Pigeon scratched his head and put his phone away. "Let me think. You've spoken more words to a random high schooler on the street than you have to me."
Rain Crow remained silent.
Blue Pigeon looked up at the ceiling, counting on his fingers as he recalled, "Uh, for example, things like, 'Young man, don't slouch when you walk,' or, 'If you do this, you might get a whole bus full of people killed.' You know, it really broke my heart when I scrolled past those videos..."
He deliberately adopted the tone of an eager fan trying to show off in front of his idol.
Rolling his eyes, he threw his hands up. "I'm clearly your copycat, and my performance has been pretty stellar, yet you haven't given me a single piece of advice. Is a high school kid really more worthy of your attention than me?"
After speaking, Blue Pigeon looked up to gauge Rain Crow's reaction. The old crow remained motionless, his pitch-black eyes as deep as the polar night.
"Since you want one, I'll give you a piece of advice now," Rain Crow paused. "You could talk a little less."
Blue Pigeon stopped talking.
Resting one hand on his hip, he mimicked Shadow Girl's habit. He typed something into the memo app on his spare phone and turned the screen toward Rain Crow.
On the screen was a single word and a period.
[Understood.]
Rain Crow stared at the line of text in silence.
The two faced each other in silence. Blue Pigeon tactfully put his phone away and cleared his throat.
He felt like a brainless blonde punk trying his hardest to act funny, while the other party was an aloof, rich young miss.
"Alright, jokes aside."
Blue Pigeon shook his head and spoke up again. He knew the terrifying Crow Man had been annoyed into silence, so he adopted a much more serious tone and got down to business:
"What did you need to see me for?"
Rain Crow remained silent for a long time before speaking.
"Clock Maker."
"Clock Maker?"
Blue Pigeon tilted his head, murmuring the name softly. He really wanted to ask if the man had a speech impediment. You certainly weren't this stingy with words when you were pitching Rain Crow fan t-shirts to your kid at home, he thought.
"It is highly likely that one of Clock Maker's people has infiltrated your team. Be careful," Rain Crow said, enunciating every syllable.
"My team?" Blue Pigeon blanked.
"Yes," Rain Crow replied.
"Dark Crocodile?" Blue Pigeon asked. "He's a rookie who just joined us a few days ago. We don't usually interact with him much."
Rain Crow shook his head. "It's not entirely certain yet; it's just a possibility. I'm verifying this intelligence right now..."
He paused before adding in a deep voice, "I will ensure your safety, but you must remain vigilant, rather than continuing to treat this with such a playful, joking attitude. Otherwise, I guarantee you won't even have time to regret it."
Silence blanketed the two of them. Blue Pigeon lowered his head, lost in thought.
"You know what? I was almost blown up by Clock Maker a few days ago," Blue Pigeon suddenly said after a moment of silence.
Rain Crow looked up, narrowing his eyes slightly. A profound glint swirled in his eyes beneath the helmet.
"I know," he said softly.
Blue Pigeon took a deep breath. "That happened before Dark Crocodile joined our team, so naturally, it has nothing to do with him."
He thought for a moment before continuing. "At the time, we had accepted a mission to rescue Train Hero... Clock Maker controlled the entire board. First, he killed Train Hero ahead of time and dissected his body. Then, he stuffed his severed head into a parcel and had us deliver it to those criminals. By the time we opened the parcel, we realized a pocket watch was hidden inside. Then, boom! The pocket watch exploded..."
"It felt as if... Clock Maker knew our movements in advance."
Blue Pigeon paused, his tone growing a fraction heavier. "At the time, only three people knew we were going to take that mission."
"Lin Yin, Shadow Girl, and Invisible Giant," Rain Crow said, reciting the names for him.
"Exactly. They are the only three who could have leaked this matter to Clock Maker beforehand."
"Why are you so certain?" Rain Crow asked. "What if the intelligence was leaked by the higher-ups at the Hero Company?"
Blue Pigeon shot him a helpless glance. Knowing this old man was trying to test him, he answered at a measured pace:
"Clock Maker made his preparations hours in advance, which means he received the intel that morning."
"Meanwhile, the higher-ups at the Hero Company only learned we would be participating in this mission at most half an hour before our operation began. If they were the ones who leaked the intel, how could Clock Maker have possibly prepared so far in advance?"
Rain Crow looked up at him and did not refute his reasoning. Blue Pigeon breathed a secret sigh of relief.
"Correct," Rain Crow said in a low voice. "Therefore, there is a high probability that one of Clock Maker's people has infiltrated your side. That person was certain they could guide you into accepting the mission, so they informed Clock Maker several hours in advance."
Blue Pigeon recalled that early morning.
After he received the commander's message, both Shadow Girl and Invisible Giant had texted him to discuss the capture of Train Hero.
He initially hadn't wanted to accept the mission, considering Kuroki Hitomi was coming over to visit his house that afternoon.
But after taking the thoughts of his two teammates into consideration, he ended up taking the mission anyway.
Blue Pigeon fell silent for a moment. "If you put it that way, Shadow Girl and that brat Invisible Giant do look suspicious. They both started out as street thugs, so it wouldn't be strange for Clock Maker to buy them off."
He paused. "But I don't believe they would do such a thing."
"Then do you think it could be the other person?" Rain Crow lowered his head.
Blue Pigeon pondered for a long time. The image of Commander Lin Yin's pained expression upon hearing the name "Clock Maker" flashed through his mind, and he shook his head.
"No," he said with certainty. "I don't think there's any possibility of that. The traitor who leaked the information absolutely cannot be Lin Yin."
Rain Crow looked up, locking his eyes on Blue Pigeon, and spoke in a raspy voice:
"Correct. Because Clock Maker murdered his child, Grey Owl."
Blue Pigeon froze. He originally thought Rain Crow would avoid mentioning Grey Owl altogether, but that wasn't the case. Meeting Rain Crow's burning gaze, he felt as if he were looking at a crow perched in the abyss, letting out a bloodthirsty, gnashing shriek.
After a long moment, he gave a silent nod. He hesitated, then added, "Actually, I thought of someone else. Someone who might have known our movements. And I think there is a high probability that this person was the one who enabled Clock Maker to prepare everything and put the pocket watch in the parcel. But I'm not sure if I should say it."
"White Jack."
Rain Crow thought for a moment before slowly speaking the name.
"Exactly. Mr. Rain Crow, our minds really do work the exact same way."
"Aside from the three people you mentioned, only White Jack could possibly be involved in this." Rain Crow paused. "I'm still not sure exactly what kind of entity White Jack is. You must keep your distance from it and not let its words deceive you."
"Of course I understand that, Mr. Rain Crow," Blue Pigeon said. "So we have our answer?"
"No, it is merely a possibility. You still need to be wary of the people around you... Not just the newly joined Dark Crocodile, but Shadow Girl, Invisible Giant, and even Commander Lin Yin all have the potential to turn traitor." Rain Crow paused for a moment. "Over the years, Clock Maker has adopted many children with supernatural talents. There's no guarantee that none of these children possess brainwashing abilities."
Blue Pigeon sighed. "Even Clock Maker knows how to cultivate a batch of thugs for himself. What about you... why do you fight completely alone, Mr. Rain Crow?"
Rain Crow stayed silent for a while. Looking up from under his helmet, he directed his piercing gaze and sharp bird beak straight at Blue Pigeon's eyes.
"You can prove to me... that you have the qualifications to stay by my side."
After dropping those words in a gloomy and raspy voice, his figure dissolved into a flurry of crow feathers and vanished from the spot.
Blue Pigeon watched silently as he left. The silvery-white space was dead silent, leaving only a few gray feathers resting quietly on the ground.
He squatted down, picked up a feather, and quietly examined it. The edges of the feather looked like burnt ash.
Do you really need me to prove it?
Why do I feel like once I take off this mask, you'll be on your knees begging me not to die, and then you'll drag me back home and lock me up?
Thinking of this, Blue Pigeon suddenly looked up and asked the empty training room, "Wait a minute, since you're already here, why are you leaving after just a few words? Are you really not going to give me some pointers? Aren't you afraid I'll get kicked to death by Clock Maker?"
He let out a sigh. While secretly cursing this fickle old crow in his heart, he slowly pulled his left hand out of his pocket. By now, the Tracking Sunglasses hidden in his pocket had already been returned to his inventory.
A Pop-up notification window still lingered in his line of sight.
[Notice: Tracking Sunglasses have locked onto the location of A++ class super-human species "Rain Crow". The target's location will be continuously broadcast for the next two hours. (Warning—This target is one of the Roundtable Heroes, and the difficulty of subjugation is extremely high. Player, please act with caution).]
"Rain Crow-san, Rain Crow-san—? The cherry blossoms back in our hometown have bloomed. Are you really not going to teach me a trick or two? You haven't paid any attention to me for ten whole seconds. If you keep giving me the cold shoulder like this, I'm going to do push-ups right here until I collapse."
Looking at the text in the prompt box, Blue Pigeon called out Rain Crow's name weakly. Finally, he dropped to the floor and, as if in a fit of exasperation, fired off a hundred push-ups in a row.
His movements were so fast that every rise and fall of his body sparked with blue electrical arcs.
A moment later, he got up, panting heavily. Faint wisps of electricity still lingered in the air.
Blue Pigeon looked up, peering through his goggles at the notification prompt that popped up before him.
[Weekly Task 1: Perform 100 push-ups (Reward: 1 chance to use the reward wheel)]
Blue Pigeon shrugged and walked out of the private training room all by himself, stepping into the glass-walled elevator.
He pressed the button for the first floor on the control panel, then called up the lottery wheel and tapped the option to "Consume 1 Use Chance."
Crossing his arms, Blue Pigeon glanced at the six sections on the wheel.
The prizes were: "3,000 superhuman coin", "4,000 experience points", "One-Time Skill Card: Whale Fall", "One-Time Magical Girl Transformation Card", "One-Time Skill Card: Nocturnal Hero Form", and "One-Time Item: Future Loan Machine".
"Why is the One-Time Magical Girl Transformation Card here again? Speaking of which, the last time I was in a dungeon with Kuroki Hitomi, she never told me what the magical girl I turned into actually looked like..."
Blue Pigeon murmured silently. The blood-red pointer began to move. It spun wildly across the wheel, forming a blur of afterimages. Soon after, the pointer slowly ground to a halt.
The pointer landed on the prize in the sixth section.
[Congratulations, you have successfully drawn the one-time item: "Future Loan Machine".]
Blue Pigeon raised an eyebrow and opened his inventory for a look.
[Item Level: B Rank]
[Item Description: After using the Future Loan Machine, you can reserve a specific point in time within the next five minutes. Once that point in time is reached, the progression trend of everything in your surroundings will remain unchanged, but time will automatically skip forward by 10 seconds.]
"What does this mean?" Blue Pigeon knit his brows.
Suppose I fire a bullet, he thought. At that exact moment, the bullet maintains its forward momentum, and I set the Future Loan Machine to trigger in 0.1 seconds. If time skips forward by 10 seconds, wouldn't it directly fast-forward to the moment my opponent gets hit? Since their bodies would remain completely stationary over those 10 seconds just like mine, they would definitely be hit by the bullet.
The concept sounds incredible, but this item is a double-edged sword. If I make a single careless mistake—like if my opponent isn't standing still when the set time arrives, and their body is instead maintaining a forward trend to attack me—then skipping 10 seconds means the one who dies is me. It's best not to use this recklessly.
Blue Pigeon shook his head and was just about to dismiss the thought when, the very next instant, a spark of inspiration flashed in his mind.
Wait a minute...
His eyes widened slightly as he pondered, If I predict the exact moment Clock Maker uses his time stop, and then set the Future Loan Machine to trigger on that exact second, what will happen?
Just as his thoughts reached this point, the elevator car came to a halt. The humming stopped, and immediately afterward, the tightly shut metal doors slowly slid open before him.
Blue Pigeon looked up, peering outside through the widening gap in the doors. A group of superheroes were waiting for the elevator, laughing and joking around. However, the moment they saw the figure inside the car, they instantly snapped their mouths shut.
"Have a great day today," he said.
With that, Blue Pigeon stepped out of the elevator, brushing past the group of heroes, and walked step by step toward the exit of the Hero Company.
If my theory is right, then we're saved. Clock Maker's time-stop ability isn't necessarily impossible to counter.
Ke Mingqing kept his head lowered, murmuring silently to himself. The moment he stepped foot out of the Super Hero Company, he summoned a Theater Puppet in a deserted corner nearby.
[Notice: Theater Puppet No. 02—"White Jack"—has been deployed.]
........
........
Half an hour later, inside a dimly lit office at a certain police station in Leijing.
Ke Mingwei had drawn the curtains shut. Sitting all alone in his office chair, he quietly watched the video playing on his computer screen.
In the darkness, his scruffy face was illuminated by the monitor's glow.
On the computer screen was surveillance footage related to the Train Hero incident.
A hidden camera had recorded the scene on the third floor of that office building.
In the footage, a middle-aged man wearing a suit and a monocle over his right eye strolled onto the floor. He looked up, casting an intrigued glance at Train Hero, who was suspended from the ceiling.
The middle-aged man pulled out a pocket watch. With a sharp click, the video footage seemed to skip a frame, blurring for a split second. The very next instant, Train Hero's corpse had already been dismembered into mangled organs, left dangling from the ropes.
Ke Mingwei hit the spacebar, pausing the surveillance video.
He stared intently at Clock Maker's figure, his deep eyes narrowing slightly.
A moment later, Ke Mingwei suddenly tore his gaze away from the computer screen and tilted his head slightly.
A snow-white top hat suddenly squeezed in through a crack in the window, brushed the curtain aside, and tumbled into the office.
Immediately after, amidst this sudden beam of sunlight, White Jack made its grand entrance. It appeared out of thin air, caught the top hat, and placed it on its head, lifting its hollow eyes to look at Ke Mingwei's silhouette.
In almost an instant, a berserk tide of crows howled out from behind the man, forming a thick curtain that enveloped the figures of the human and the puppet, preventing any sound of their movements from leaking outside.
"Oh, Mr. Rain Crow is so considerate. Creating an environment for a secret rendezvous the moment I arrive," White Jack said, scratching its chin as it looked around the curtain of crows. "Or rather, you truly cherish this job as a police officer. You've really gone to great lengths to ensure your colleagues downstairs don't hear a thing."
Ke Mingwei remained perfectly still in his office chair, turning his head to glare at it.
After a long while, he asked, "What do you want to say?"
"I'm here to vent my grievances. Ever since Clock Maker came to this city, it's like you've found an old flame; the attention you give me has diminished drastically." White Jack threw its hands up. "It breaks my heart."
Ke Mingwei stayed silent, opting to selectively ignore White Jack's lunatic drivel.
White Jack held up a single finger. "Haven't you noticed? One of Clock Maker's people has already gotten close to Blue Pigeon. That's right, such a preposterous thing is happening right under your noses."
Ke Mingwei was quiet for a moment. "Do you know that person's identity? Or... is that person actually you?"
"Oh, regarding that matter, I can't really say." White Jack shook its head. "After all, I also wish to collaborate with Mr. Clock Maker. I am a middleman, so I cannot show bias toward either side."
Ke Mingwei furrowed his brows.
"But I can offer you a hint, Mr. Rain Crow," White Jack said.
"Speak."
"Perhaps that matter you've always refused to face is truly important to you—even more important than you imagine," White Jack said in an eerie tone. "Covering your ears while stealing a bell is useless. If you don't face it, sooner or later it will cling to you like maggots in your bones, bringing you a lifetime of regret and remorse. You will be surrounded by endless agony and ultimately die full of resentment."
"Then I suppose I truly... appreciate your advice."
Ke Mingwei said, enunciating almost every word.
He knew in his heart that White Jack was talking about Blue Pigeon. Indeed... he did not want to look upon that young man's face, simply to stop himself from hesitating.
The time to settle the score with Clock Maker was fast approaching. He absolutely could not waver at a time like this, nor could he afford any indecision.
Right as Ke Mingwei was lost in thought, a mocking voice rang out:
"One last hint."
Ke Mingwei watched White Jack in silence.
It said, "If you have the time, you might want to visit that train station in the Old Jingmai District. You just might find an unexpected surprise."
"The train station..." Ke Mingwei knit his brows, mulling it over silently.
In his memory, there really used to be a train station in Old Jingmai, but it had been abandoned years ago. He vaguely remembered Xia Wenna complaining once that the kids in the house used to play at that train station all the time, refusing to come home even when it was time for dinner.
"That's right. That is all I can tell you. I hope you will take my words seriously, Mr. Rain Crow... Now then, I shall take my leave."
Leaving those words behind, White Jack tipped its top hat down, and its figure slowly dissolved into a wisp of dissipating smoke.
The world fell perfectly silent.
Within the tide of crows that was as still as a tranquil lake, only a gloomy-faced middle-aged man was left sitting in his office chair, lost in solitary thought.