After a few seconds of silence, the girl’s cheeks moved as she chewed.
Swallowing the dry bread in her mouth, Patricia’s serious expression did not lose the awkwardness it entailed,
"Due to personal habits, I’m quite sensitive to numerical matters."
It was evident that someone who could quickly calculate the figure of 70 hours, 50 minutes, and 24 seconds would be sensitive to numbers.
Both of them found themselves unable to break the stalemate hanging in the air.
Honestly, even a thoughtless brute would not be as fixated as they were.
As for the current situation...
It was like two tactical theory experts suddenly thrown into a battlefield with bullets flying, and these two folks started to study the tactics of the commanding officer on-site.
It was utterly absurd.
It wasn’t until they finished the food in their hands that they silently rose from their chairs and walked together to the trash bin, awkwardly disposing of the garbage.
Looking at the bin in front of him, Ronald shook his head slightly.
He chose to forget the prior awkwardness and straightforwardly began to analyze,
"Since the known time zones are all fan-shaped, and the areas are remarkably consistent, the innermost point of their starting line should be the same location."
"This is likely the source of the time chaos."
"That’s right," Patricia nodded and turned to walk into the station, "The four areas we checked totaled 60 degrees in angle, which means there are 24 such time divisions..."
At this point, Patricia suddenly fell silent,
Her eyes seemed to be pondering some problem.
Following the girl’s steps,
Ronald also realized what this number might imply.
It was easy to associate with the 24 hours of a day when it came to time.
Could it be that this type of division had some esoteric significance?
Just as Ronald began to ponder, Patricia suddenly spoke up.
With certainty in her eyes, she confidently said,
"These 24 areas symbolize the 24 hours of a day."
"4 minutes 48 seconds, 9 minutes 36 seconds, 14 minutes 24 seconds..."
"4 minutes 48 seconds equals 288 seconds."
"And if you break down these times as multiples of 288 seconds and add them up in increasing order until the twenty-fourth multiple of 1 hour 55 minutes and 12 seconds, which is 6912 seconds, the total time amounts to 86400 seconds."
"That’s the exact duration of a full day!"
Could she be some particularly impressive mathematician of this world?
Such a level of mathematical computation, while not difficult, definitely requires quite some time for the average person.
Not to mention that Patricia calculated the result and discovered the pattern in less than three seconds.
Noticing the surprised look in Ronald’s eyes as he looked at her, Patricia’s cheeks reddened for a rare moment.
But it quickly faded.
The girl’s confident demeanor returned instantly, with a hint of apology in her expression:
"I’ve embarrassed you seeing me get carried away by such a trivial matter."
"We Nicholas family members always obsess over strange things."
"Don’t say that." Ronald immediately waved his hand, showing he understood Patricia’s love for mathematics, "The language of truth such as mathematics is never strange."
"This information might come in handy for us later."
Patricia did not respond to Ronald’s continued conversation.
But from that moment on—
Something in her eyes had changed.
If previously, to escape from this time-distorted zone, Patricia had regarded Ronald only as an ordinary partner,
Now, there was a hint of friendship in her gaze.
Just like before, the changes in the station’s timeline could not affect Ronald and his companion.
They reached the interior of the station with little resistance.
The innermost part of the fan-shaped structure, which is the center of all 24 time segments, happened to be the Greenwich Train Station office building.
Standing in front of this building where he worked every day, Ronald looked it over.
From this position, he could even see the hallway outside the second-floor conference room.
The scene at his departure earlier that day hadn’t changed; Martina was still shivering in the winter chill, and there were hardly any people moving around in the office building.
The cycle of time was still in effect here—this was the most direct proof.
At this moment, Patricia turned to Ronald for advice—after all, he was a train station employee and much more familiar with the layout.
"Ronald, should we go to the first floor or the second floor?"
Mentally simulating the position of the time-divided lines, Ronald’s gaze quickly shifted from the second floor to the first.
"Let’s head to the first floor; it’s unlikely the problem is on the second floor."
Ronald was that confident.
After all, even if the villain behind the scenes was completely deranged, they wouldn’t be causing trouble by hanging from a lamp post extending from the second-floor wall, right?
Patricia didn’t ask further questions and followed him into the office building.
Walking down the corridor with its freshly painted walls, Ronald’s colleagues greeted him.
"What do you need the storeroom key for?"
"There’s a slight issue with the timetable this morning; I’m going to check the records in the archive."
After dealing with several inquiries from colleagues,
Ronald led Patricia to the ground floor’s archives storeroom.
This room stored a large quantity of paper records, which had been accumulating since the day Greenwich Train Station opened.
If this incident was caused by the Magic Book,
Finding the problem among such a volume of documents would indeed be a task requiring physical strength.
The intersection of the timelines was right in front of them. Ronald took out the archive room key, inserted it in the lock, and gave it a gentle twist.
Seeing that everything in front of him was still peaceful, Ronald pushed open the door.
The winter sunlight outside the office building could barely send its rays into this room, so the two of them could see the interior from the doorway.
Files were piled high on neatly arranged racks, and age-old paper materials were covered in grey dust on their yellow covers.
Although people occasionally came to store or consult documents here,
The dust and the stuffy air were the true masters of this room.
Standing at the doorway of the archive room, Ronald and Patricia dared not step inside.
Because right in front of them—
The space inside the archive room was divided into 24 fan-shaped segments.
At this moment, they were swapping places with each other at a rapid pace, in a clockwise direction!