Chapter One: Deliver Noodles to a Dead Man at Midnight

The day Grandma was buried, rain drowned Linjiang City. Lin Yan returned to her clock shop carrying the urn. A power-cut notice was wedged under the door—dated tomorrow. He folded it into his pocket. As a former data labeler for Guanlan Technology, he hated anomalies that arrived before the system created them. More than three hundred clocks had stopped at 11:57. Only the dust-covered 486 computer in the corner showed any life. It had no network card and an eighty-megabyte drive. Grandma used to slap his hand away whenever he touched it. Her will contained one sentence: “Turn it on. Do not trust the first person who speaks through the screen, including me.” Lin pressed the switch. Green text filled the black display.