This Spiritual Energy is Lethal!
Chapter 490: Reversing Time and Space

Chapter 490: Chapter 490: Reversing Time and Space

Chen Ke came to the hanging clock, whose dark wooden body had already begun to fade and whose plastic dial cover had yellowed. His grandfather had bought it when he was still in his prime, almost half a century ago.

The pendulum swung methodically, but the second hand refused to move. Curious, Chen Ke moved a stool next to it and climbed up, eager to study it closely.

After feeling around the side of the clock, Chen Ke opened the cover and held the pendulum, stopping its motion. Beneath the pendulum box, he found a winding key.

This type of old wall clock needed winding intermittently, or else it would slow down, making the time inaccurate.

Chen Ke inserted the key into the hole in the dial, mimicking how his father used to wind the clock, and he turned it vigorously a few times. In an instant, the sky outside released a ringing ding-ding-ding-ding of a bell.

After the bell had rung seven times and stopped, Chen Ke didn’t know what it meant. But when he looked at the dial, he suddenly saw that the hour markings weren’t numbers from one to twelve but a densely packed array of years.

Where twelve o’clock should have been, it read 2009, and at six o’clock, it was 1859. At nine o’clock, a row of crossed-out numbers read 2006.

These were the three time periods Chen Ke had visited, and outside of these years, the dial was empty.

On the minute markings, between 2009 and 1859, there were twelve small markings which Chen Ke guessed represented the months. There were only twelve months, out of which the first three and the last three were red, while from April to July, the markings were black.

Chen Ke stroked his chin and thought briefly. He somewhat understood that this clock was a record of his time travels, marking the years he had visited on its dial. That meant... could he manually adjust the hour and minute hands to travel back?

How then, was this clock different from the Life Transfer Gate? Chen Ke wondered if using this clock for time travel required a soul.

But Chen Ke saw something was not quite right; the clock had to be more complex. He studied the dial again and suddenly grasped the difference between the clock and the Life Transfer Gate!

The ability of the Teleportation Gate allowed him to return to eras he had previously visited, but time itself was uncontrollable.

He recalled Xu Jing taking him through time, using a pocket watch to target the time and a mirror to shift between worlds; this hanging clock before him was Chen Ke’s pocket watch.

He tried to adjust the hour hand on the dial. Chen Ke first attempted to move the longest hand, the minute hand, but couldn’t. It seemed he needed to follow a specific order... He then slid the hour hand to the year 1859.

Nothing happened...

Chen Ke fiddled with the minute hand again, finding it immovable, so he gave up and gently nudged the pendulum, setting the clock back in motion.

Then, the sky rang out once more with twelve chimes and, when the ringing ceased, he heard the sounds of horse carriages and pedestrians talking outside the window.

Curious, Chen Ke jumped off the stool, walked to the window, and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. The glass seemed fogged, blurring the scenes outside.

Through the hazy window, Chen Ke could see the continuous flow of horse carriages and pedestrians. He could also hear a newsboy shouting that day’s news at the crossroads, and a few laborers hurriedly carrying long objects and buckets.

"This is... Langdon!" Chen Ke recognized the familiar street scene immediately. He wondered how Jacob’s eyes were doing.

He had the pocket watch, but where was the mirror? Xu Jing used a mirror to shift through time and space for travel. What should Chen Ke do? He walked to the door and pulled out the ring of keys, thinking maybe he just needed to open a simple door.

Chen Ke grasped the door handle, composed himself, then pushed the door open.

A chill hit him as he opened it; the pallid sky cast down white sunlight, and a mix of coal dust and dirt rushed into Chen Ke’s nostrils. Outside, the incessant flow of pedestrians and carriages confirmed it was indeed London, 1859.

Chen Ke wanted to step out, but there seemed to be an invisible barrier on the door frame, forcefully keeping him inside.

"Not allowed out?" Chen Ke wondered.

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The corner of his eye displayed a small message: Your life span is 0.

Oh...got it. This life countdown refers only to how long one can stay in various time spaces. It’s just that the gods have a different grasp of human language, using words they think are similar to convey meaning, thus causing confusion in understanding.

Chen Ke pounded his chest in frustration. Had he not been misled by this countdown prompt at the West Gold Building, he might have entered the Illusion Dream Center first, acquired the Dimension Pocket and the ability to actively travel through time, and listened to the old man from the Divine Descent Sect explain the worldview—it might have simplified everything at the start...

"Can I change the text display of this countdown?" Chen Ke muttered to himself.

Of course, no one answered him.

"Change it to World Residence Time," Chen Ke thought after a moment.

The countdown text in the corner of his eye changed from "Your Remaining Life Span" to "World Residence Time."

"Alright, this won’t cause panic now," Chen Ke said as he crushed a painful soul, earning 50 hours, just like adding time at an internet cafe. This allowed him another 50 hours to enjoy in the outside world.

After recharging, the air wall disappeared. Chen Ke stepped out the door and looked down the street. Some passersby looked at him strangely, but quickly averted their gaze.

He turned around and found himself standing in front of a small café, where the patrons inside were loudly discussing something.

"This is my first time actively traveling through time... It feels quite mundane," Chen Ke mused out loud in Mandarin at a low volume, so no one understood him.

Chen Ke realized when he opened the door and traversed to 1859, that door had borrowed from this small tavern. This meant he hadn’t conjured a door out of nowhere. To the outsiders, Chen Ke had emerged from a building of their era.

This made things much easier, he no longer needed to worry about hiding the traces of his time travel.

"The question now is, how do I go back?" Chen Ke pondered quietly.

He thought again, perhaps he really had to wait until the 50 hours were exhausted to return home. That would be too cumbersome and inconvenient.

In 1859, Chen Ke had nothing particular to do nor was he like now trying to find Jacob. He turned around and closed the café door.

"Let’s give it a try, see if my guess is right." Chen Ke muttered to himself and opened the café’s door again. Instead of the café scene, it was a room in the Illusion Dream Center apartment.

"It worked...it worked... This is absolutely the safest safe house in the world!" Chen Ke exclaimed joyfully, laughing out loud as he stepped inside.

After he closed the door, a few Langdon City inhabitants, having witnessed Chen Ke’s odd behavior, ran to the café door, opened, and closed it, their faces full of puzzled expressions.

Chen Ke returned to the room and climbed back onto the stool, starting to tinker with the clock dial. This time, he wanted to return to Opportunity City.

In Opportunity City, not only could the hour hand be moved, but minutes too, though Chen Ke found that he could only adjust the minute hand between April and July, the period right after the bank robbery and after returning with Xu Jing from 1859.

Chen Ke moved the minute hand to July. According to Xu Jing, those transcendent of time would not be affected by time alterations, so even if he went back to an earlier time, the other Chen Ke was destined to die.

"No, no... I can’t go back to July," Chen Ke shook his head. He had already seen through Future Observation Diana being killed by Bader and Lucina being tortured by Yasla’s people. He needed to return to an earlier time to prevent all this.

He moved the minute hand to April, around when he returned from the dead world of 2006, and before he met Li Moyang.

Corporations, foundations, the Divine Descent Sect, and Yasla—all these forces had their own schemes. In the past, Chen Ke didn’t understand these complex relationships nor his own place within them, hence he had no position of his own.

Back then, he only wanted to be the knife for others, to infiltrate the Transcendent level, to obtain more information to figure out how to erase the life countdown. But now, Chen Ke knew his fate, and his significance extended far beyond these organizations.

Chen Ke adjusted the clock properly; Opportunity City, 2009, on that bright afternoon when he first met Li Moyang. The sky outside tolled with bell sounds. This time, he wanted to start anew and reverse the fate of two women and the world.

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