# 868
Chapter 869: A Fishing Village Trapped by Time
Hearing these words, everyone present froze simultaneously.
"Disjointed era, sealed region, materials appearing out of thin air..." Cao Yuan murmured to himself for a moment, as if something had occurred to him. "Why does this sound so familiar..."
"'Human Enclosure'?!" Lin Qiye's pupils slightly contracted.
Originally, Lin Qiye hadn't realized this at all. Once An Qingyu mentioned it, Lin Qiye immediately recalled his experience in Japan.
As An Qingyu had said, all the special characteristics they'd discovered were extremely similar to those of the "Human Enclosure." The only difference was in scale—the two were on entirely different levels. Japan's "Human Enclosure" housed tens of millions of people with a terrifying land area, whereas this small fishing village had at most less than a hundred people and was only the size of a palm.
"But this doesn't add up, does it?" Lin Qiye thought for a moment and shook his head continuously. "Shouldn't the 'Human Enclosure' be attached to some divine artifact? Also, where does the energy source maintaining this 'Human Enclosure' come from? There shouldn't be a massive soul consumption reserve like there was in Japan, right?"
"What Seven Night says is correct. Although this place is very similar to the 'Human Enclosure,' it is not actually the 'Human Enclosure.'"
An Qingyu took out a crumpled piece of paper from his怀中 and spread it on the ground. Everyone crowded around to take a close look.
"Last night, I snuck into the village's small shop and found this invoice." An Qingyu pointed at the entries on it and said seriously, "This shop restocks every three days. Where each item comes from and the cost are all clearly written here."
"What does that prove?" Baili Pangpang asked, puzzled.
"It proves these supplies aren't appearing out of thin air." Lin Qiye answered. "If this were an 'Human Enclosure,' these supplies should all appear in some inexplicable form. To those living inside, it would be similar to a miracle. Like in Japan's 'Human Enclosure,' all the electrical energy came from the Yata Mirror burning souls, which then powered the other electrical equipment in the city entering the 【Pure Land】.
But it's different here. The supplies here are genuinely produced elsewhere and then transported into this village."
"But... isn't this place sealed? How are these goods being transported in?" Cao Yuan was growing more confused. He pointed to several names on the invoice. "Also, didn't these companies go bankrupt long ago? How can they still be delivering supplies?"
"That's exactly the problem." An Qingyu took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. "I thought about this all night. After sorting through all the possibilities, there's only one explanation that accounts for everything..."
Everyone held their breath, waiting for An Qingyu to provide the answer.
"This place is trapped by time."
Looking at the bewildered expressions of the crowd, An Qingyu continued to explain, "Based on all the signs we've seen so far, this is indeed a village that existed over fifty years ago. A small shop that restocks every three days, fishermen who go out to sea to fish every day, a father waiting for his son who went out to return... They work at sunrise and rest at sunset. If we ignore the boundary around the village, this is just an ordinary fishing village.
However, for some reason, time here has become disjointed from the outside world, forming a closed loop."
An Qingyu picked up a twig from the ground and drew a straight line and a circle.
"If normal time flow is a straight line moving forward, then time in this village is a circle with its head and tail connected.
While time passes normally in the outside world, the people here are continuously repeating a certain period of time. When this period reaches the end of the closed loop, it's as if someone pressed the restart button here—everything and everyone returns to the starting point and continues cycling.
This period could be one day, two days, or three days... While over fifty years have passed in the outside world, everything here has been cycling within just these few days. Supplies are inexhaustible, people don't age, and everything that happens within these days replays over and over again."
Hearing An Qingyu's bold speculation, the other members of the 【Nightfall】 squad were stunned. Even Lin Qiye found it hard to believe:
"A time loop that has existed for over fifty years? Is that even possible?"
"Humans can't do it, but a god... perhaps can." An Qingyu glanced at this fishing village and continued, "I suspect that within this fishing village, there is someone or something that is manipulating the laws of time and maintaining the operation of this time loop."
Time...
Hearing these two words, for some reason, the image of that silver-haired old man drifting alone in a boat among the sea waves appeared again in Lin Qiye's mind.
Could this Wang Mian, who seemed to have come from the future, have some connection to the current situation of this fishing village?
"But if all of this really is man-made, what's his purpose?" Shen Qingzhu, who had been silent all along, suddenly spoke up. "This is just a small fishing village on the border of Great Xia with nothing special about it. Why would someone go to such great lengths to create a time loop here?"
"Other than time, is there really nothing special about this place? Or haven't we discovered it yet?" An Qingyu asked rhetorically.
Just then, Lin Qiye seemed to have thought of something. "There is."
Everyone turned to look at Lin Qiye.
"Last night, I communicated with the nocturnal creatures in this fishing village and had them scatter in all directions to search for clues, but I quickly discovered..."
A trace of night spread across Lin Qiye's eyes. He reached out and made a grasping motion toward the dirt beneath his feet. The night tore open the surface of the earth, revealing—
buried in the soil, insects and ants lay scattered in pieces, their limbs broken and torn, their deaths miserable.
"They're all dead." Lin Qiye continued, "First the ants, then the centipedes, then the bats... In one night, all the nocturnal creatures died."
"It's not just the nocturnal creatures." An Qingyu closed his eyes to sense for a moment, his expression grave beyond measure. "The several mice I planted 'fish seeds' in last night are also dead..."
"What's going on here?" Baili Pangpang scratched his head and said half-jokingly, "Is the special thing about this place that it automatically eliminates pests?"
Before Baili Pangpang could finish speaking, something landed heavily on his head, then fell to the ground, making him wince in pain.
"What ambushed your lord?"
While rubbing his head, Baili Pangpang looked down. His entire body suddenly jolted.
At his feet, a bird covered in wounds lay weakly on the ground. Its eyes were tinged with a red hue as it crazily flapped its almost completely severed wings, rolling to the edge of Baili Pangpang's shoe and用力 pecking him twice.
A few seconds later, this bird lay motionless on the ground, losing all signs of life.