SOP 2
by Soothing Jelly2026 was a year with special meaning for the Time Entropy Group.
After monopolizing time travel technology, the group sent countless rebels, people who blocked its interests, and those deemed useless into brutal eras of the past. Some had their heads bitten off by ferocious Carcharodontosaurus in the Cretaceous. Some were pierced through the body by the spears of medieval heavy cavalry. Others were abandoned in corners of cities where the Black Death spread unchecked, waiting for death to arrive. Every spark of resistance was extinguished by scavengers who moved across different timelines. The Time Entropy Group had become a shadow hanging over the entire world.
In churches and temples everywhere, the statues being worshiped were replaced without exception by Chronos, the primordial god of time from Greek mythology. Many people who refused to submit gathered beneath the three headed, dragon bodied statue, lamenting a world where time no longer flowed in a linear way. The seed of resistance was quietly planted. Some called this spontaneously formed rebel force “Clepsydra,” named after an ancient Chinese timekeeping device that measured time through water dripping from a bronze vessel.
The rebels stole part of the time jump technology, fled, and regrouped in 2026. This moment in time became their final stronghold. The year 2026, a dark age for the Time Entropy Group, was instead the age of glory for Clepsydra.
And the swindler Fangpian was a dim but impossible to ignore glimmer of light wandering through this era.
At this moment, in a dark alley, a fierce battle was unfolding.
The white haired swindler held a modified Mauser pistol with a retro design and bubble patterned engravings. He pulled the trigger swiftly, but after the gunshot rang out, the target in front of him vanished without a trace.
“Fangpian, above!”
The burly gentleman warned. Fangpian looked up and saw the black clothed young man jump in an instant, his legs kicking off the narrow alley walls, agile like a bat in the night.
Fangpian frowned and twisted the muzzle, but he couldn’t catch sight of the scavenger.
“This kid is definitely a rat, a flying rat,” Fangpian laughed, then dialed a call. “Meihua Mao1, hasn’t the vehicle you’re commanding arrived yet? We’ve run into big trouble.”
A high pitched voice came through the earpiece. “Fuck you, Fangpian. You usually feed me cheap cat food, and when it really matters you want me to risk my life?”
“What do you want to eat?”
“Caviar, botan shrimp, metal chicken…”
“Drive the car over. I’ll buy you all of it.”
“Really?” The voice sounded a little pleased.
“Yes. I never lie to you.”
The next moment, the call was hung up. The swindler sighed. “A kitten’s heart really is impossible to read.”
“Believing you don’t lie is less believable than believing you’re Qin Shi Huang2,” the gentleman laughed.
Fangpian curled his lips. “Maybe I really am. Hongxin-ge, send me some more time and I’ll summon mechanical terracotta soldiers3 to help you get out.”
“I already transferred you 1 year and 1 week of lifespan. Where did you even use it?”
Just then, a black shadow suddenly jumped down from above. It was the time scavenger Liusha. The file-axe in his hand gleamed with cold light, like a nightmare.
“I used it all on this handsome kid,” Fangpian said.
He dodged the attack, pressed a hand to his top hat, and smiled at Liusha. “Mr. Scavenger, what kind of grudge do you have against me? Why are you trying to kill me the moment you show up?”
The black clothed young man said coldly, “You’re an enemy of the Time Entropy Group. You stole a massive amount of time from the Group and even impersonated one of the Group’s clients.”
“You took 1 year and 1 week of lifespan from a swindler. That’s impressive,” Fangpian said. “How about this. You give me back 1 year and 1 week, and I’ll return 5 centuries to the group.”
The axe blade shot out, cutting precisely toward Fangpian’s neck with lightning speed, not off by even a fraction.
“No need,” Liusha said coldly. “Transfer the 5 centuries directly to me. I’ll be Qin Shi Huang.”
But in the next instant, the blade tip stopped just before touching skin. The scavenger felt his movements slow as if time itself had been stretched infinitely. He looked down and saw his arm touching a transparent bubble.
This was a bubble created by the miniature singularity reactor embedded in the firearm. It could interfere with spacetime structure and slow down any object that touched it. It was commonly known as a time lag bubble.
The source of the time lag bubble was the Mauser pistol in the swindler’s hand. The shot he fired earlier wasn’t an ordinary bullet. Liusha suddenly realized that more than a dozen time lag bubbles were floating in midair, glittering like translucent ice floes. This was a trap meant to lure him in. He struggled, but saw the swindler flash him a provocative smile, cunning like a fox.
At the same time, an autonomous unmanned car stopped at the mouth of the alley.
“Goodbye, Mr. Qin Shi Huang. You can hang here all night. Don’t catch a chill,” Fangpian said as he took off running.
In the next instant, a violent explosion detonated in midair. Shockwaves surged outward, forcing both men to stagger. When they turned back, they saw the scavenger swinging his long handled axe. Wherever the blade passed, space seemed to tear apart, and every time lag bubble shattered.
“That’s a scavenger weapon. It triggers explosions by amplifying quantum foam fluctuations. They’re professionals when it comes to killing,” the gentleman said, looking back as cold sweat broke out.
“Compared to that, what does our era have? Kitchen knives, pitchforks, and small pistols? The technology gap is huge.”
Fangpian muttered as continuous explosions rang out behind them like countless grand fireworks. His eardrums shook and the back of his head throbbed. He could barely open his eyes. At that moment, an overwhelming killing intent emanated from behind.
Fangpian drew his gun and fired a time lag bubble over his shoulder without looking back. Liusha dodged at blinding speed. He realized that unlike the brain type impression people had, the swindler’s movements were nimble and agile, like an uncatchable gust of wind.
The file-axe chopped down viciously, but a pair of hands caught it. The gentleman’s left hand, belonging to a silverback gorilla, bulged with veins. This beast’s muscle strength was 6 times that of a human and could easily twist steel bars apart. Under that overwhelming force, the blade couldn’t advance even a bit.
“Fangpian, go,” the gentleman roared.
“Thanks, Hongxin-ge, but I’ve already slipped away.”
A lazy voice drifted over, making the two men locked in place jolt. When they turned, they saw that Fangpian had somehow already gotten into the car at the alley entrance. Greasing his feet was his specialty.
The next instant, the swindler turned the steering wheel and drove the car straight into the dark alley.
It was a rusty old taxi, its body sprayed with fluorescent graffiti of twisted stairways, vortices, and explosions. It smashed through trash cans and water pipes along the way. Fangpian leaned half his body out the window and shouted, “Hongxin-ge, isn’t your body in great shape?”
“What?”
“Your muscles are sturdier than this old junker, right?” Fangpian grinned. “Sorry about this.”
By the time the gentleman realized something was wrong, the taxi was already roaring toward them and slammed brutally into the two men who were grappling. The massive impact sent them flying into the air.
The gentleman’s body trembled violently, his prosthetics clanking. He landed on the roof, and after the taxi burst out of the alley, he barely managed to open the door and shove himself into a seat. He swung an elbow at Fangpian’s neck in fury. “Couldn’t you give a warning before ramming people with a car?”
Fangpian tilted his head to dodge the blow and kept a firm grip on the steering wheel.
“Didn’t I warn you just now?”
“That didn’t count,” the gentleman said through clenched teeth.
“Relax. This car has insurance.”
“I don’t.”
“If that scavenger catches up, we’re really dead.”
The gentleman sighed. “With just that impact, he shouldn’t be dead. He’ll chase us.”
“You know he wouldn’t die. That kind of impact is basically a massage for you types. Don’t worry. Someone will clean things up for us.”
Fangpian glanced at the rearview mirror and smiled.
“Your people, Clepsydra, have already surrounded him.”
***
When Liusha climbed up from the ground, the world spun around him. His body was fine, but the cavity in his skull where a chip had once been implanted couldn’t handle too much shock. In his flickering vision, a group of people had silently appeared around him.
They wore leather armor and headbands, their expressions hostile. Bronze vessel tattoos marked their exposed arms. They held iron pipes and heavy hammers, closing in on Liusha like a dark cloud.
They belonged to Clepsydra, an army formed by those dissatisfied with the Time Entropy Group’s dictatorship over time. Liusha immediately understood.
Someone muttered quietly, “Is this the time scavenger Hongxin-ge mentioned?”
“Look at that weird mask and weapon. It’s definitely him. Ge also said time scavengers are future people. They all dress like weird punks.”
The crowd advanced cautiously. They had heard this was an unprecedentedly dangerous enemy.
Someone hurled a Molotov cocktail at the young man wearing a painted mask. Raging flames filled the alley. In the next moment, they saw him tear through the wall of fire completely unharmed. More firebombs were thrown. The black clothed young man spun his file-axe, whipping up a violent gale. He wrapped the bottles in the time lag bubbles Fangpian had fired earlier and hurled them back into the crowd.
The rebels screamed amid the flames. They had never seen a time scavenger with a body like steel and bronze, yet moving with such agility. Their eyes could only catch his afterimages.
His speed was too fast, like lightning tearing across the sky in an instant. Wherever he passed, blood sprayed.
Someone flipped open a manhole, weapon in hand, and launched a sudden attack from below. The young man swiftly reversed his axe handle and swung. Every weapon that touched his file-axe rapidly corroded and shattered. From windows on both sides of the alley, a large group of figures jumped down like a torrential rain, crashing onto him. After exhausting every tactic, the rebels chose close combat.
In the blink of an eye, people cried out and fell. The scavenger’s axe made the bodies it touched rapidly age. The rebels realized in terror that this black clothed young man was like death itself, easily harvesting lives.
An injured rebel youth felt someone seize him by his neck and lift him. Choking, he opened his eyes and saw his companions lying scattered all around. The scavenger stood before him, eyes cold as frost.
“Where’s the swindler? Tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
Liusha shifted his axe handle, his gray eyes locking onto the youth’s sweat drenched face like a hawk.
“Then I’ll beat you until you do.”
***
The lower levels of Spiral City were branched into dark alleys, like a vast ant nest. After exiting one alley, the battered taxi quickly plunged into another narrow path.
The swindler Fangpian and the gentleman called Hongxin sat in the car. Seeing no pursuers in the rearview mirror, they finally relaxed.
“Fangpian, what do you think that time scavenger came here for?”
“To kill me. I’m too famous. That’s one of the troubles that comes with fame.”
“I’ve been wanting to ask. Wasn’t this car being controlled by Meihua Mao? Why are you driving now?”
“Ge, your body was too hard. You smashed the car just now and cut off the connection with Meihua Mao. I had no choice but to drive manually,” Fangpian said, chewing gum.
Hongxin scratched his head, uneasy. “You’re not lying, right? Should I cut back on training a bit? This car is an important asset of Clepsydra. Meihua Mao is going to scold us when we get back.”
Fangpian blew a bubble, then suddenly pressed a button on the seat. The seatback tilted backward. At the same time, a cold gleaming axe blade stabbed down through the roof, barely missing the tip of his nose.
“Fangpian!” the burly gentleman shouted.
“The roof’s ruined. We’ll tape it up later. In this era we’re short on everything, so we fix cars with clear tape,” Fangpian said.
He slipped nimbly from the driver’s seat to another seat, clenched the Mauser in his mouth, and grabbed the edge of the car with both hands through the window.
“You drive, ge. The Group’s hunting dog won’t let go. I’ll chase him off.”
On the roof stood a black clothed young man wearing a flame patterned mask, holding a long handled axe.
Moments earlier, using explosive muscle strength, he had sprinted through the cramped paths, caught up, and jumped onto the car like a ghost, piercing the roof with his axe.
Liusha was the Time Entropy Group’s best hunting dog, one who never let go once he locked onto a target. Yet this time, when he thrust his axe down, he didn’t feel it pierce flesh. The axe suddenly felt as heavy as a mountain.
What was going on? Before he could figure it out, he caught a lightning fast shadow in the corner of his eye, jumping onto the roof and kicking him.
“Mr. Scavenger, I didn’t order door to door service. You don’t have to chase me so enthusiastically.”
Liusha raised his arm and blocked the kick. The newcomer was Fangpian. The wind howled. White hair fluttered in the air. That inscrutable, frivolous smile still played on his face.
Liusha said flatly, “I’m here to package your life and deliver it to hell. Mission guaranteed.” He added, “What did you do to my axe?”
“Nothing much. I just stuck a time lag bubble on it so it’d take a bit longer to pull out.”
Fangpian smiled and fired several shots at him. Liusha dodged the time lag bubbles. At that moment, two rebels who had been lying in wait on buildings on both sides of the alley jumped down, daggers raised, stabbing at the black clothed young man.
Liusha reached back, grabbed their ankles, and swung them like hammers, smashing them toward Fangpian. Fangpian jumped in shock and crouched to dodge. The two rebels screamed as they fell off the roof. Fangpian quickly fired two time lag bubbles around them so they wouldn’t crash onto the ground.
In the split second Fangpian was distracted, Liusha forced his arm and finally pulled the axe free. He chopped through a roadside water pipe. Water exploded. Every droplet accelerated the moment it touched the axe blade, shooting toward Fangpian like bullets.
Fangpian realized that the scavenger’s weapon could accelerate an object’s own time and motion, the direct opposite of his time lag bubbles. He fired multiple shots. The time lag bubbles stuck together, forming a transparent shield that blocked the high speed droplets.
At the same time, Fangpian fired a shot into the air, snapping the ropes overhead. A long string of cloth fell, blocking Liusha’s vision. The latter slashed through it, only to find Fangpian already in front of him.
“Since you’re here, Mr. Scavenger, want to try my personal special blend? Free today,” the swindler laughed. His left hand flicked, and a canister of capsaicin spray appeared.
A cloud sprayed out. Liusha felt searing pain in his eyes and his vision blurred. He didn’t retreat. He swung the axe in front of him. He felt a kick slam into his chest and abdomen, then he was sent flying.
The swindler kicked him off the speeding taxi.
Fangpian stood on the roof for a moment to confirm the scavenger was shaken off, then slipped back into the car.
“All done?” Hongxin asked.
“Easy.”
“Pepper spray alone probably won’t stop him for more than a minute.”
“Of course it wasn’t that simple. I left myself a backup.”
Fangpian snapped his fingers. At the same time, Liusha, lying on the ground, heard the sound of bubbles popping around him. During the fight, Fangpian had discreetly wrapped both of them in time lag bubbles. Everything they did had been happening in slow motion. When Fangpian kicked him off the car and escaped, Liusha was left alone inside the bubbles.
Once the time lag bubbles vanished, everything outside resumed normal time. In Liusha’s reddened vision, dozens of lead bullets fired earlier by the swindler flew toward him.
He hadn’t expected such a dirty trick. He gritted his teeth and spun the axe at high speed. The blade light wove into a vortex, blocking each bullet. At that moment, he heard a strange sound above him.
He looked up and saw hundreds of neon signboards suspended overhead. Earlier, when Fangpian fired into the air, he hadn’t only snapped the ropes but also shot through the metal pipes supporting the signs. When the time lag bubbles vanished, the signs crashed down like a multicolored torrent.
Bang!
Inside the taxi in the distance, Fangpian aimed at the rearview mirror and smiled, making a finger gun gesture.
At the same time, a deafening crash sounded behind them, dust billowing into the air.
Hongxin saw the rising dust in the mirror. After hearing Fangpian’s brief explanation, he sighed.
“That was quite a spectacle.”
“No choice. He’s the Time Entropy Group’s Chief Time Scavenger. Wherever he goes, nothing survives. What I used just now was barely play fighting to him.”
“What about all those broken signs?”
“Let the Clepsydra members tape them back later.”
“Why tape again?”
“This is 2026 after severe resource plundering. Even super glue is hard to find.”
Hongxin sighed. “You’re being hunted by a vicious dog. Your days ahead won’t be peaceful.”
Fangpian sat in the passenger seat, gazing out the window, and said softly, “People like us at the bottom, who’ve had everything taken from us, were never meant to live peacefully.”
Hongxin looked at him from the corner of his eye. The young swindler’s side profile was lit by flowing neon lights, dreamlike, smeared with sadness. Hongxin suddenly felt that this swindler was like a bubble too, glittering on the surface, yet fragile enough to pop at a touch.
“That scavenger is incredibly agile. Ordinary eyes can barely follow him. He can leave someone covered in wounds in an instant,” Hongxin said.
“Damn it,” Fangpian suddenly said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ge, I forgot what you just mentioned.” The relaxed smile Fangpian had shown earlier vanished. His face went pale. “That weird punk really is fast.”
“So what?”
“In a time lag bubble, the time of all people and objects is slowed. But once the bubble pops, the wounds made by his axe will appear. I really did bring this on myself.”
Fangpian’s speech slowed, like a tape jamming. Hongxin turned and saw his face drained of color. The white suit was torn with more than a dozen savage gashes, blood soaking into the seat.
“Hey, Fangpian.”
“Ge, you’ll have to drive from here. Let me sleep for a bit. Wake me when we arrive. And I guess I have to admit it now.”
Cold sweat trickled down the swindler’s delicate face, but he managed to smile. Even in danger, a spark of excitement lit up in his eyes.
“I’ve run into the most troublesome enemy in history.”
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