Liaocheng · Chat

Residual Order World · Chapter One: Suffocation and Silver Lines Suffocation is a prolonged torture. His trachea was pressed hard, his lungs crumpled like wrinkled paper, and every struggle only let him inhale cold nothingness. Liaocheng could feel his consciousness peeling away; the blood-colored spots before his eyes gradually spread, and the scene of the final case, the unclosed case files, the hollow eyes of the victims' families—all sank into the darkness. He was a trace examiner, a man who had spent his life searching for traces, yet at the final moment, even his own trace was about to disappear. "Everything that has happened leaves a trace." The words his mentor had left behind were the last light to flicker on in his consciousness. The next second, the suffocation abruptly vanished. It was not relief—it was being dragged. As if his soul were yanked violently out of the mire of reality by an invisible hand, passing through a cold, viscous, soundless membrane. There was no light, no sound, no up or down, left or right—only a bizarre sensation of being "disassembled" and then "reassembled." When Liaocheng landed again, he found himself standing in a strange, dead silence. Beneath his feet was gray-black concrete, cold and hard, covered with aged cracks. Around him rose towering, sealed gray walls with no doors or windows, like a giant, abandoned box. Fine white dust drifted in the air, smelling like the stench of rotting time. No wind. No sound. No breath of any living thing. This was not a hospital, not a police station, and certainly not the warehouse where he had been attacked. This was—another world. Liaocheng did not panic. Years of professional instinct made him suppress his fear at once and begin observing calmly. His body was still his own, his clothes intact, no wounds—only his fingertips were slightly cold. The only anomaly was his left wrist. There, a faint, icy silver line quietly emerged, like a thin mark carved by moonlight. It did not hurt or itch, yet it was too distinct to ignore. He touched it instinctively. A silent stream of information poured straight into his mind—no sound, no words, yet he understood it as naturally as instinct. [Soul Anchor Successful] [Order Walker: Liaocheng] [Order Value: 100] [Current Access: Residual Order Space · Terminal Time Cage] [Core Order Rule: Undeciphered] [Status: Alive] No panel, no prompt sound, no so-called Main God. Only a piece of cold cognition carved into his soul. Liaocheng slowly closed his eyes. When he opened them again, nothing but extreme calm remained in the depths of his gaze. He was dead. Or rather, in reality, he had been close enough to death to be "dragged in." This was not an illusion, not a dream, but a real other-space with independent rules. And he had become an existence known as an "Order Walker." The silver line on his wrist was his life, and his only credential. When the Order Value reaches zero, that is complete annihilation. Just then, the silence was broken. On the gray wall not far away, a line of dark-red words slowly seeped out, as if written in blood: "Time will not forgive those who tamper with it." "The cycle will not spare those who miss something." "All who remain here must find the 'Terminal Time Core.'" "Those who fail to find it—Order Value reaches zero." The moment the words finished seeping out, the entire sealed space shuddered violently. It was not an earthquake. It was time. Liaocheng's pupils contracted slightly. He could clearly feel something rewind by one second at that instant. The flow of the air, the falling of the dust, even the rhythm of his own heartbeat—all of it eerily, precisely, receded for a single moment. Cycle. Time cage. He instantly seized the most dangerous keywords of this world. As a trace examiner, his greatest strength was reconstructing truth from fragments, finding rules within disorder. And now, what he had to face was no longer a crime scene, but a death world built on the destruction of civilization, with time as its cage. Liaocheng raised his left hand and looked at the quiet silver line. The justice left unfinished in reality, the unsolved mystery, the people he failed to protect... he could not simply vanish like this. He had to survive. He had to decipher the rules. He had to walk out of this cage. In the gray, sealed space, the young man stood straight, his gaze as calm as ice. The first Residual Order trial officially begins.