A full cycle consisted of the funeral procession disappearing and reappearing, spanning roughly ten minutes.
Time was on Ji Li's side, so he was in no hurry to verify his conjecture. He only needed to sit quietly and wait.
The hands of the watch on his wrist continued turning methodically. This vessel representing the passage of time was a rigid, mechanical thing.
Cigarettes burned, ash falling away layer by layer as smoke drifted upward. The burning of each cigarette was also irrefutable proof of time slipping through his fingers.
But these representations did not actually represent anything.
Ji Li saw that the night sky had fallen silent and frozen. The arrangement and flickering of the stars had not changed in the slightest from four hours ago.
According to his watch, a faint trace of white should have appeared on the horizon by now. Yet it remained black as the bottom of a pot, studded with eternal, unchanging starlight.
There was no need to waste time proving anything further. Reality had already provided a precise answer.
Ji Li glanced at the head beside him and slowly rose from the steps. Five paces ahead stood the banner bearer who was about to disappear.
The white funeral banner that had fluttered in the wind all night showed no sign of shedding any of the cheap paper strips tied to it. It seemed that with every cycle, even these props reset.
The situation before him had already become very clear. This event had given him ample time to observe it.
One head was the shared brain of the twenty-person funeral procession. It directed everything as one, serving as both the central hub and the sole controller of this situation.
When trying to solve an event, the greatest difficulty usually lay in "finding the source."