Casting aside undue complacency and pride, Ronald methodically reorganized the whole incident’s clues.
Alone in the data room.
The original tome, whose appearance was still unknown, was the culprit behind everything that had happened.
Both he and Patricia had headed to the data room, up until they had entered it.
The entire process had been unguarded, undisturbed, and unobstructed.
The dust on the original tome indicated it had been present in the Greenwich train station for a long time, and it had gone undetected.
Therefore, it was highly likely that something had accidentally stimulated the Magic Book, triggering the power to run amok.
In this light, the existence of a puppet master behind the scenes could be tentatively ruled out.
All he needed to do was to stop the Magic Book’s rampage.
From the previous explorations the two had undertaken, it could also be understood that the timeline of the Greenwich train station had been neatly...
Recalling this, Ronald suddenly turned his head toward the train tracks.
The small amount of time he had just spent washing his wound and reflecting on himself, although brief, should have been more than 4 minutes and 48 seconds.
So why hadn’t the Orient Express returned yet!
When he had been tossed around by the power of the original tome, that train was still undergoing "Time Retrospection"!
Could it be that some change had occurred at the train station again?
After a few seconds of silence, Ronald took his kettle and returned to the edge of the platform.
He then simply jumped down.
The Orient Express had already vanished beyond sight.
The winter sun scattered across the quiet station, and the spacious platform was home to only a few trains that were refueling, quietly stationed without any workers in sight.
He walked straight to the spot where the time division line had previously been marked.
Ronald stopped in his tracks, his gaze sweeping over what appeared to be an empty space in front of him.
He remembered it clearly.
When initially searching for the location of the time division, he and Patricia had verified the trajectory of this line multiple times to ensure the data’s accuracy.
Right there in front of him was that position.
"I hope there won’t be any more accidents..."
Muttering as if to reassure himself, Ronald extended the kettle he was holding.
The kettle was halved—
This cautious action had served its intended purpose.
Now Ronald was only holding the upper half of the kettle in his hand; the lower half had vanished into thin air, leaving no trace.
Pulling back his hand—
The entire kettle reappeared, showing no sign of damage.
The situation was exactly like the experiment Patricia had conducted in the data room.
"So that’s how it is..."
Eyed the seemingly empty air thoughtfully.
Estimating the structure of the train station in his mind, Ronald adjusted his position before stretching out the kettle again.
After confirming there were no obstructions on the other side, he took a step forward.
His feet found purchase.
Consequently, the view before him dramatically shifted.
Moments before, Ronald had been at the platform of the train station; now, just one step away, he already stood in the plaza right in front of Greenwich train station.
"It really is like that..."
Seeing the scene before him, Ronald couldn’t help but utter a remark.
His previous actions had caused the distortion of the train station’s timeline to become spatial distortion; meanwhile, the data room had likely gone from spatial distortion to temporal distortion.
There had been a swap in the space-time discrepancies!
"Anyway, we need to go check out the data room first."
With a sigh, Ronald headed towards the office building.
Regardless, since the rule of dividing the area into fan-shaped sectors hadn’t changed, the center of this power likely hadn’t shifted either.
The path he normally took to and from work now felt utterly different.
In less than five minutes, Ronald was back in front of the office building he hadn’t left for long.
Since the last time he saw them,
both the office building and the data room showed no obvious changes.
The sunlight poured down from a slant above the train station, casting long shadows on the buildings and the ground, everything around was eerily quiet.
There was no one here either.
More precisely, even a sparrow was missing from the deserted train station, eerily reminiscent of the opening of a horror film.
And there, on the first floor, the door to the data room remained wide open.
As if nothing had changed here since he was thrown out by the power of the Magic Book.
But compared to the worst-case scenario,
things were actually not so bad now.
The space, divided into 24 equal parts around the data room, was not as cramped as inside the room, sparing him the bizarre experience of being physically divided. Ronald walked intact up to the storeroom entrance.
Adjusting his position outside the hallway, he looked inside.
a platinum figure came into view.
Unlike himself, who had been thrown around, Patricia was inside the room, alone as well.
Because the spatial division had turned into time, the girl had escaped the freakishly segmented state from before and now stood whole in the room.
Facing the Magic Book in front of her, her brows were still tightly knit.
She couldn’t decipher the power of the original text.
At that moment, the sound of Ronald’s footsteps approaching outside the room reached her ears.
Patricia immediately turned her head towards the door,
"How did you disappear all of a sudden?"
"I was a bit too rough with my approach earlier, so I got thrown out by the power of the original."
He stepped forward to the doorway.
Seeing his companion Ronald safe and sound, he breathed a sigh of relief but didn’t forget to ask,
"How have you been in there during this time?"
"Have you found anything new?"
She was about to reply when her figure suddenly flashed within the room.
Without any intermediate process, she went from facing Ronald to facing the Magic Book.
The girl leaped backward as if she had encountered something incomprehensible.
Before leaving her previous spot, she looked down at her hands and then quickly surveyed her surroundings.
At that glance, Ronald, who had only just reached the doorway, also predictably came into view.
Then, as if seeing Ronald standing outside the data room for the first time, Patricia took two steps back before asking in a tense voice,
"Weren’t you just in front of me, why did you run outside suddenly?"
"And what about the spatial division in this room?"
"Patricia, calm down first!"
Seeing the girl’s guarded expression, Ronald couldn’t help but understand what the scene before him meant.
He showed his hands and took two steps back to signal he meant no harm.
Then he loudly explained,
"The state of distortion in the data room and the train station has changed, time is now reversing inside the data room!"