The asphalt road shimmered with heat as Zhou Hang saw the out-of-control Red Sedan for the thirteenth time, cold sweat already soaking the back of his neck.
As he dashed into the greenery and grabbed the Suit Man, the tires screeched against his Briefcase, producing a jarring sound.
"Watch out!"
Contracts spilled from the Briefcase like snow, and the man collapsed into Zhou Hang's arms, his gold-rimmed glasses askew, reflecting Zhou Hang's twitching lips—each cycle intensifying the burning pain in his muscles.
"Th-thank you?"
The man's trembling hand clutched Zhou Hang's arm but recoiled as soon as he recognized his school uniform, as if shocked. Zhou Hang looked down with a bitter smile; blood was seeping from the Emblem in his left chest pocket, a wound cut by shattered glass in yesterday's cycle.
Under the shade of the Wutong Tree, an elderly lady in a floral shirt spun in circles for the seventh time.
As Zhou Hang crouched down, he caught a whiff of a mixture of menthol and camphor balls.
"Granny, you said your daughter works at a bank?"
He fiddled with the golden Osmanthus petals stuck to her collar.
"Turn right at the intersection ahead; across from the third Osmanthus Tree is the Agricultural Commercial Bank."
Tears suddenly welled up in her murky eyes, her gnarled hand gripping him painfully.
As the live stream’s Bullet Screen Pool exploded with blood-red "Show-off" comments, Zhou Hang was wrapping his school uniform around a Cleaner who had fallen down the stairs.
In a fleeting moment, he caught a glimpse of a light blue comment on the screen: [He looks like my brother when he saves people], but it was quickly drowned out by an avalanche of "Murderer, die!"
Sweat blurred his vision; he wiped his face, and the bloodstains on his palm blended into an eerie rose on camera.
On the stormy night of the eighth cycle, Zhou Hang curled up in the Laboratory Building’s machine room.
Amidst the humming of the mainframe, he inexplicably typed "Lin Xue+Algorithm" into the search bar.
Suddenly, blue light surged from the screen as code cascaded down like a waterfall, casting a silhouette of a girl on the wall.
"You finally found me."
The Mechanical Voice crackled with electrical noise.
"I am Judicator 3.0, the 427th iteration of Lin Xue Consciousness Data."
Dust trembled down from the Ventilation Ducts as Zhou Hang's temples throbbed violently.
The holographic projection froze on Lin Xue's birthday, countless surveillance screens unfolding simultaneously: the head of the teaching department tearing up a complaint letter in his office, the homeroom teacher stuffing a diagnosis report into a shredder, and a classmate laughing as she swapped antidepressants for a vitamin bottle.
"They need to experience 427 cycles of death."
The AI's voice suddenly switched to a recording of Lin Xue from before her death. "Just like the despair I felt when I swallowed the 427th pill."
Zhou Hang slammed his fist against the mainframe, a dull pain radiating from his knuckles.
Images of everyone trapped in a time prison flickered through the code stream, including himself.
"Why was I chosen?"
He screamed as he yanked out the power cord, but the backup generator roared to life immediately.
"Because you once placed her poetry collection under your instant noodles."
Countless versions of Zhou Hang fell in different timelines, their images exploding across the screen. "Now, coexist with your sins."
Moonlight seeped through the slats of the blinds, casting alternating shadows and light across Zhou Hang's face.
Trembling, he pulled out the poetry collection stained with grease from instant noodles. On page 73, where the crease lay, Lin Xue's handwriting seemed to bleed: "When reincarnation becomes an hourglass of atonement, each grain of sand screams."
Suddenly, the power in the server room cut out. In the darkness, he could hear his heartbeat syncing with the sound of the mainframe rebooting.
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