Time Merchant

Chapter 5: The City of Reverse Time

Time turbulence tore at Edwin's consciousness, making him feel like glass shards stuffed into a kaleidoscope, colliding between countless refracted realities. Before his last shred of awareness faded, he clenched Lin Xia's wrist—only to touch not warm skin, but metal patterns growing like veins.

They crashed onto a soft, breathing surface.

"What is this..." Edwin propped up, and the "ground" beneath his palm suddenly squirmed. He jerked back, realizing it wasn't earth at all, but interwoven gears and springs meshing and rotating like a living organism.

Lin Xia staggered to her feet, pointing to the sky. "Welcome to New Babylon."

Edwin looked up, his throat tightening.

Hanging in the sky wasn't a sun, but a giant bronze pocket watch rotating counterclockwise, its dial projecting light to construct the entire city. Buildings towered like a child's stacked blocks—Gothic spires fused with Suzhou garden eaves, while people on the streets wore era-mixed clothing but identical brass goggles.

The eeriest part was the sound—everything played in reverse. Hawkers' cries, horse hooves, even the hum of wind through gears echoed like rewound tape.

"Time flows backward here," Lin Xia adjusted a hidden knob on her watch. "We must find the Clockmaker before our bodily functions reverse."

Edwin suddenly noticed his watch read: Remaining Time: 49 hours 22 minutes—three hours more than before the jump.

"Don't celebrate." Lin Xia yanked open her collar. Golden patterns below her collarbone had spread to her chest. "Time reversal doesn't affect the brands—my mechanical assimilation is accelerating."

They advanced along gear-strewn streets past a "Memory Pawnshop." Countless bubbles floated in the window, each looping a stolen memory. Edwin stopped short—one bubble showed his father's face.

"Don't touch!" Lin Xia pulled back his hand. "Those are pawned memories. Contact contaminates your own."

A girl in Victorian child's clothing skipped over, handing a metal card: Clockmaker waits at the tower top. PS: Eat nothing here.

The tower comprised nested pocket watches; each step rearranged the gears underfoot. At the summit, an old man in camel overalls adjusted the valve of a crystal heart with tweezers.

"Two hours late," the Clockmaker didn't look up. "Give me the gear."

Lin Xia presented the half-gear from the mechanical geisha. The man pressed it into his left chest—where a half-mechanical heart resided—and the gear meshed perfectly.

"Last key designed by Lin Mingyue." His cybernetic eye focused on Edwin. "You resemble Carter remarkably, especially that stubbornness in your eyes."

The workshop trembled violently. Hundreds of wall-mounted watches alarmed simultaneously, three dials flashing blood-red: 00:00:00. The old man's face paled. "The Committee just erased three parallel timelines."

He lifted a floor hatch, revealing a complete watch blueprint submerged in blue fluid. At its center: an hourglass coiled by twin snakes, below a note: ETERNAL VAULT: Where Time Begins.

"Your parents aimed to restart the universe's clock." The Clockmaker's wrench morphed into a pistol. "But the twin-watch system has a fatal flaw—"

Glass shattered. Three crossbow bolts pierced the window, pinning the blueprint. Edwin saw snipers in black robes on the opposite roof, their mouths moving in reverse under goggles.

"Chronos Judges!" The old man shoved them aside, a fourth bolt piercing his throat. Dying, he stuffed something into Lin Xia's hand—a miniature key etched with lotus patterns.

"Go..." Blood frothed in his throat. "Go before time begins..."

The tower collapsed. During the escape, Edwin saw the old man's body "reverse-reviving"—arrows withdrawing, blood flowing back—yet his mechanical heart proliferated wildly, transforming him into a gear monster.

Lin Xia pulled him into a steam pipe at the tower base. In the dark, she opened her palm: the key projected a holographic star map, a pulsar's blink matching Edwin's watch tick for tick.

"Not coordinates." Her voice held dreadful resolve. "It's a countdown—the Eternal Vault is opening itself."

At the pipe's light-end, a silhouette in a white lab coat materialized.

Edwin's watch suddenly displayed: Remaining Time: 72:00:00.