"Speaking of which..." Haelie, who was crawling on the counter, tilted his head, his silver mask reflecting the dim light in the store, "You are extremely lucky to be here."
Li Wen frowned slightly. "What do you mean?"
In response, Haelie just laughed and continued to tease the guinea pig in the cage with his slender fingers. The creature made a dissatisfied squeak, its short claws pulled at the iron bars, its purple eyes rolled around, and it glanced at Li Wen from time to time.
Time in Clock Shop seemed to have frozen. Countless clocks ticked at different rhythms, and the chaotic sounds intertwined into an annoying noise in the small space. Li Wen's eyes swept over the strange objects displayed on the display cabinets, lanterns, chessboards, Metal Book... everything gave her an extremely strange feeling.
"Your father collected these?" Li Wen pointed to the exhibits.
Haelie stopped teasing the guinea pig and looked back at the objects.
"Some of them were brought back by dad, but most of them were found by me." As she spoke, she puffed up her chest proudly. "These are all my collections. Dad doesn't have such a hobby."
Li Wen nodded thoughtfully. The guinea pig suddenly struggled violently, and slapped its front paws against the iron cage, making a harsh metal collision sound. It was not until Haelie knocked on the cage in displeasure that the guinea pig immediately calmed down and shivered in the corner.
As time passed by, the ticking of the clock became more and more harsh. Li Wen's patience was being worn away. She spoke again, "When will your father come back?"
"Dad is a punctual person." Haelie replied without raising his head, "When the time is up, he will come back naturally."
"How long do we have to wait?"
Haelie fell silent and concentrated on teasing the guinea pig. The creature in the cage had given up its struggle and collapsed into a ball of fur, letting the little girl control it.
It seemed like the little girl didn't take her seriously at all.
Li Wen raised her brows, but forced herself to calm down. She walked to the nearest display cabinet and carefully observed the strange-looking lantern. The blue flame gave off a cold light, which reflected on the face through the bone translucent lampshade, giving people a chilling feeling.
"Where did this lamp come from?" Li Wen asked.
Haelie finally raised his head, and the eyes under the silver mask shone with strange brilliance. "I got it from a poor lost guy. He thought he could find his way out with this lamp, but... now it has become one of my favorite collections."
Li Wen felt a shiver in his heart and took half a step back calmly. Haelie seemed to notice her vigilance and smiled happily, "Don't worry, I'm not interested in living people, at least not now."
So it will happen sooner or later?
Li Wen, who had a bad premonition, subconsciously opened the character panel. The next moment, her pupils suddenly shrank, and the dazzling red warning on the character panel pierced her eyes like a sharp knife - her life had reached the 20% death line, and was still declining. What made her hair stand on end was that Witch State had entered the cooling state without knowing when.
It lasted more than ninety hours of cooling.
Li Wen subconsciously clenched Crow Feather Dagger, and his knuckles turned white from the force. Witch State will naturally go into cooling when it is cancelled. The cooling time is calculated as one hour for every 1% of the Twilight Erosion progress. The cooling time is more than 90 hours, which means that even based on the most conservative guess, the Twilight Erosion progress reached nearly 100% when Witch State was last exited.
But a more accurate guess is that Li Wen kept Witch State dead at some point, and she has no memory of this.
"Guest?" Haelie tilted his head, the silver mask reflecting a strange cold light, "You look uncomfortable..."
Before he finished speaking, a cold light suddenly appeared.
The dagger attached to Spell-less Arc Light stabbed out like a poisonous snake, accurately cutting off the girl's slender neck. Haelie's head was thrown high, the chestnut curly hair drew an elegant arc in the air, and the silver mask shone like a shooting star in the dim light. Li Wen's cloak squeaked from the impact of the thrust, and the soles of his boots crushed small gear parts on the floor.
But the next second, the world twisted and rewinded like a rewinding movie.
"Why did the customer do this?" Haelie was sitting on the counter, her clear left eye full of confusion. The brass pocket watch she was playing with her fingertips was slowly rotating counterclockwise, and the sound of gears biting was particularly harsh in the quiet shop.
Li Wen had experienced such a ridiculous scene not long ago, but she was the leader at that time, but now she has become the victim. Of course, although the two scenes are so similar in form, Li Wen firmly believes that the essence of the two is different.
One is to change fate, thus changing the established facts; while the other is to reverse time and return to the moment when nothing happened.
"Temporal Path."
Li Wen murmured, staring intently at the brass pocket watch in the girl's hand.
She took half a step back and Emerald Star Cloak Wufeng automatically said, "I have felt it since I came here. This place is really too weird, but this weird feeling does not come from the store, nor does it come from the items on the stand - but from you."
The clocks hanging on the wall stopped at the same time, and the ticking stopped suddenly as if cut off by a knife. The guinea pig in the cage hit the iron bars crazily, its purple eyes bulging out of fear.
"You know nothing about this." Haelie's movements suddenly froze, her voice was particularly cold, and the silver mask was slowly taken off by her, "Just like those poor people who accidentally entered this place."
The right side of his face exposed under the mask made Li Wen frown subconsciously. It was not a human face at all, but a decayed texture covered with bark-like wrinkles. Amber mucus oozed from the dark brown cracks. The gray pupil embedded in the right eye socket was splitting without limit, splitting into two, two into four, and four into eight...
The brass pocket watch popped open in Haelie's palm, and the three hands of different lengths twisted and stretched like living creatures. Her dexterous right hand gently stroked the dial, and the air in the store suddenly solidified.
"Welcome to the inner layer of time." Haelie's voice split into two tones, half young and half old, "This is my workshop, and it will also be the end of your journey."
Li Wen's dagger was unsheathed again, but it stagnated in the middle. Her movements were infinitely stretched, and the thrust trail left an asphalt-like trail in the air. Haelie sidestepped it like a leisurely stroll, tapping her pocket watch lightly on the counter.
"Crack."
Time suddenly accelerated. Li Wen's dagger completed the thrust at a hundred times speed, and the inertia caused her to stumble and fly out. At the same time, the lantern on the shelf suddenly exploded, and the blue flames wrapped around her body like a living thing. At the critical moment, Emerald Star Cloak suddenly burst into bright light, and "Emerald Star's Eternal Guardian" was activated at the critical moment. Three layers of light green shields surrounded the body, just blocking the flames coming from all directions.