Chapter 596: with translation of chapter title

Jiang Yuan gave no one time to hesitate.

Attack.

Two words squeezed from his throat, his voice cracked, reeking of blood.

Dark Shadow Court fully unfolded.

The black domain exploded from under his feet—not the previous probing vanguard, but all of them, pouring out the nest. Numbering in the thousands, ghost-faced soldiers condensed into a substantive black wave, wailing and lamenting, sweeping across the sky toward Chu Che's position.

The corridor was too narrow.

Shadow burst the walls, the reinforced concrete was squeezed apart, and the entire floor's structure cracked and deformed in the shadow flood.

Qin Zhixia's mechanical prosthetic arm rose in sync; the Ignorance orange-red fire line was no longer single-shot but rapid fire. One beam after another, each shot bore the price of burning life, the dense beams scorched the air with a burnt smell. The servo motor's overloaded whine was sharp and piercing, the heat sinks on the prosthetic's casing glowed red, edges beginning to melt.

She didn't stop.

Su Ming's pupils turned gray, the Time Marrow Worm writhed frenziedly inside his body. He didn't slow down; he accelerated.

He sped up the time flow for everyone on our side.

Actions sped up, reactions sped up, attack frequency sped up.

Their countless rehearsals of tacit understanding peaked at this moment. Jiang Yuan's Shadow handled coverage, Qin Zhixia's Ignorance handled penetration, and Su Ming's time acceleration doubled their output.

Liang Wen's black windcoat flared at the edge of the shadow wave, the patterns on his fingerless gloves all lit up, charging up.

This was the first all-out attack the Night Watchers had ever launched without holding back since their formation.

No reserves kept.

No retreat.

When the leading edge of the shadow touched the three-meter rule boundary around Chu Che, compressed by the crown shards, a violent collision occurred. Nanoscale crimson powder mixed with the shadow flood, making the whole space tremble.

Qin Zhixia's Ignorance fire line pierced the shadow's gap, accurately stabbing toward Chu Che's chest.

Ten shots.

Twenty shots.

With Su Ming's time acceleration boosting, he fired forty-seven shots in one second.

Wei Gong at the end of the corridor clenched his fists.

That's enough.

Enough.

An attack of this density could melt through any known S Ji Weird.

Then Chu Che moved.

Not a dodge, not a block.

He merely tilted his head.

The Living Eyeball atop his staff slowly rotated a full turn, its pupil aligning with the direction of the shadow wave.

The three-meter rule boundary expanded back to ten meters in that instant.

No, it was twenty meters.

The vanguard of the shadow wave—thousands of ghost-faced soldiers—upon contacting that boundary, vanished in whole swaths. Not killed, not dispersed; their very existence was negated.

All forty-seven of Qin Zhixia's Ignorance fire lines recoiled back at a point twelve meters from Chu Che.

Recoiled.

Not dissipated, but reversed.

The orange-red beams reversed direction, blasting back toward Qin Zhixia herself.

"Qin Team!" Jiang Yuan roared, the remnants of his shadow desperately trying to block.

Too late.

Su Ming's time acceleration failed before that boundary. The Time Marrow Worm emitted a sound he'd never heard—not a wail, but a crack. The worm convulsed violently inside him, spitting out a mouthful of grayish fluid that surged straight from his nostrils.

Su Ming's knees gave way, and he propped himself up on one hand.

Qin Zhixia was struck in the left shoulder by a backlash of her own Ignorance, flung outward, smashing through two partition walls before stopping. The casing of her mechanical prosthetic exploded, revealing scorched wiring inside.

Jiang Yuan's shadow legion lost seventy percent of its forces in three seconds.

The remaining soldiers huddled behind him, trembling, unwilling to advance further.

Chu Che stood in place, not a speck of dust on the lenses of his gold-thread glasses.

He lifted his right hand and pushed up his glasses.

"Excellent coordination."

His voice was gentle, carrying a sincere affirmation.

"But this is merely excellence within the human dimension."

The left half of his face was still that of the gentle, handsome school doctor; the right half, behind the mask's black void, held nothing.

Jiang Yuan knelt on the ground, the domain of the Dark Shadow Court beneath his feet violently shaking, unable to hold.

Qin Zhixia crawled out from the shattered wall, her mechanical prosthetic limp at her side, completely unresponsive. Her white hair fell loose, blood at the corner of her mouth.

Su Ming's nosebleed wouldn't stop, dropping drop by drop onto the ground. The grayish fluid of the Time Marrow Worm mixed with the blood, looking shocking.

Chu Che took a step forward.

The nanoscale crown shards still floated in the air, but their crimson luster was visibly dimming to the naked eye.

They had been consumed.

He Chuan's cage was being eaten away bit by bit.

Chu Che took another step.

"As the lead surgeon, I have a suggestion for you." He said, his tone exactly the same as when he took blood pressure for students at Qiu Ce Yuan. "Don't struggle. The more a patient on the operating table struggles, the larger the incision."

Jiang Yuan's fingers dug into the crack in the ground.

He wanted to stand up.

He couldn't stand up.

When Chu Che took his third step, one person stepped in front of everyone.

Black windcoat. Fingerless gloves. His meticulously groomed hair was now a mess like a bird's nest.

Liang Wen.

His spine was ramrod straight, arms outstretched, blocking Jiang Yuan, Su Ming, and Qin Zhixia behind him.

No chanting.

No cheesy lines.

In his peach-blossom eyes, the usual flamboyant spark was gone, replaced by something utterly still.

"Liang—" Su Ming spoke.

Liang Wen didn't turn back.

The patterns on his fingerless gloves all lit up—not the kind of glow from charging an attack, but another kind.

Rewind.

Time reversal.

Liang Wen's body convulsed violently the moment he activated it, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

The whole world's picture began to rewind.

The shattered walls restored, the drifting dust flowed backward, Qin Zhixia's trajectory of being knocked away played in reverse.

Everything returned to fifteen seconds ago.

Jiang Yuan's shadow legion was whole again, Qin Zhixia's mechanical arm resumed function, and the blood in Su Ming's nasal passage disappeared.

Everyone froze for 0.3 seconds.

Then Su Ming was the first to react.

"Scatter! Don't concentrate fire head-on!"

His voice was hoarse but clear, his mind racing. In the previous round, a head-on assault was crushed; the rule boundaries could expand and rebound, so a direct clash meant nothing.

"Jiang Yuan, split the shadows into three routes to encircle. Qin Team, only strike the flanks with Wu Ming—no head-on output. I'll use a time anchor to lock his movement."

Jiang Yuan had no objection. The shadow legion split into three streams, converging from left, right, and above simultaneously.

Qin Zhixia adjusted the angle of her mechanical arm, directing the fire line in from the side.

Su Ming activated the time marrow worm; gray-white temporal rules clung to Chu Che's feet, attempting to anchor his coordinates.

Liang Wen stood in the rear, hands braced on his knees, gasping heavily.

Blood dripped from his cuff.

The price of rewinding was already devouring his life.

Three-shadow routes, Wu Ming flanks, time anchor.

A brand-new tactical combination, under Su Ming's on-the-spot command, executed with textbook-level coordination.

Chu Che didn't even turn his head.

He merely gave a light tap with the black staff in his hand.

The sound of the staff tip touching the ground was faint.

But from that point of contact, an invisible ripple spread outward.

The three shadow streams froze as the ripple passed, then shattered.

The Wu Ming flank fire line changed direction within the ripple, tracing a weird arc that plunged into the ceiling.

Su Ming's time anchor...

Had no effect.

"Huh?" Chu Che tilted his head, as if noticing Su Ming's move for the first time, "You're pretty adept at manipulating time."

His gaze fell on Su Ming.

"But your 'time' runs within my 'rules'. What do you use to anchor someone who created the rules themselves?"

Su Ming's pupils contracted.

He understood.

Like an operating system's admin privileges, Su Ming's time rules, no matter how strong, still operate within Chu Che's weird system that he created.

Using a program to hack the person who created the program is itself a paradox.

Chu Che raised his staff.

His eyeballs rolled.

The second wipeout came even faster than the first.

Jiang Yuan's Shadow Court collapsed from within; the backlash of the crumbling domain made him spit out a mouthful of blood and fall flat on his back.

Qin Zhixia was burned through her right ribs by her own Wu Ming and collapsed, unable to rise.

Su Ming's time marrow worm fell utterly silent, curled up inside him, motionless, as if frightened stupid.

And Liang Wen—

He was still standing.

The black windcoat was covered in cracks—not in the fabric, but in his skin.

Starting from the back of his hand, it spread up his arms like a dried riverbed; the fissures oozed not blood, but a gray-white light.

That was life itself ebbing away.

Rewind.

Plus the drain from forcibly withstanding Chu Che's aftermath just now.

Liang Wen's body was already disintegrating.

Chu Che glanced at him.

In the black hole beneath the half‑gray mask there was no emotional fluctuation; the expression on the left half of his face was the calm of a standard medical observer.

"Short‑dimensional time reversal is meaningless to a god."

He pushed his glasses up.

Liang Wen's knee buckled.

Not kneeling. He couldn't hold himself up.

The light in his peach‑blossom eyes was gone, but the corner of his mouth still twitched out of habit.

It didn't move.

He attempted to trigger a Rewind.

The pattern flashed briefly, then went out.

It flashed again, then died out.

Like an engine that won't start.

"I can't......" Liang Wen said softly, his voice carrying a fatigue never seen in him before. "I can't rewind."

His body was sinking downward.

Grayish cracks crawled up his neck.

Su Ming scrambled over, rolling and crawling, and grabbed him.

"Liang Wen!"

Liang Wen grabbed Su Ming's shoulder.

The strength in his hand was surprisingly great, crushing Su Ming's shoulder blade painfully.

Those peach‑blossom eyes stared straight at Su Ming.

No chuunibyou, no exaggeration, no melodrama.

Only the last lucidity of a person about to die.

"Su Ming." He spoke, his throat full of blood froth.

"Go back earlier." Liang Wen's voice grew lower, but each word was crystal clear. "Back to before he walked out of that interrogation room. Back to when we still had time to lay plans, when we could still unite everyone."

"A short Rewind won't work—go back fifteen days, a month, to a timeline he couldn't possibly have predicted."

Grayish cracks crawled over his chin.

The left half of Liang Wen's face began to shatter.

But he was still smiling.

That smile—Su Ming thought for the first time that Liang Wen was devastatingly handsome.

Not the flashy handsomeness of a show‑off, but the quality a true warrior has when facing death.

"I, the prince, entrust the rest...... to you."

His hand slid off Su Ming's shoulder.

It shattered.

Starting from the fingertips, it turned into grayish specks of light, segment by segment, drifting into the air.

Su Ming stood frozen in place.

Liang Wen's body disintegrated before his eyes inch by inch, the black windcoat emptied, the fingerless gloves fell to the ground, and the pattern faded.

The last thing to vanish was those peach‑blossom eyes.

Before closing, they gave Su Ming a blink.

That was Liang Wen's final chuunibyou moment.

Su Ming's hand hung in mid‑air, grasping at air.

Chu Che watched from twenty meters away, tilting his head slightly.

"Interesting." He said. "The self‑immolation of a time‑system spell‑caster is indeed spectacular, but the outcome won't change."

Su Ming didn't look at him.

He lowered his gaze, fixed on the fingerless gloves on the ground.

The grayish specks of light were still drifting.

The Time Marrow Worm inside him was dormant.

Su Ming closed his eyes.

He recalled the day Lei Yu died, the night he swore he would never owe anyone again, and the words he told Wei Gong when joining the Investigation Bureau—"I'm just here to repay a debt."

The Time Marrow Worm stirred awake under his prompting—not a gentle awakening, but a forcible, brutal, consequence‑dragging pull.

The worm screamed inside his body.

Su Ming felt his veins boiling, his organs shifting, his bones cracking.

He didn't care.

Go back.

Go back further.

Go back to a time when it's still possible.

Chu Che's eyebrow twitched.

He saw the gray‑white light erupting from Su Ming's body.

"Oh?"

He raised his cane.

But Su Ming was faster than him by 0.1 second.

White light surged out from every pore, swallowing all sound, touch, and sight.

The last lingering sound by his ear was Liang Wen's blood-stained voice, drifting over from that patch of gray-white light.

It faded away.

It shattered.

But each word struck him crystal-clearly.

"For this king...... go back and chop that pretentious fool!"

White light swallowed everything.

——

Su Ming suddenly opened his eyes.

Above him was a white ceiling; the fluorescent light shone on his face, stinging his eyes.

A sharp electronic bell rang in his ear.

The end-of-class bell.

He recognized that bell sound.

Qiu Ce Yuan's end-of-class bell.

Su Ming sat behind a desk, with an open notebook spread out in front of him, its pages filled with his own handwriting.

Around him were noisy chatter, the sound of chairs being dragged, and raucous laughter.

He turned his head to look out the window.

On Qiu Ce Yuan's playground, students walked by in twos and threes; the sunshine was nice, and someone was playing basketball.

Su Ming's hand was trembling.

He lowered his head and glanced at the date on his phone screen.

His pupils contracted sharply.

From the conclusion of that interrogation room...... there was still a full month.