"Encore isn't afraid."
Under Rover's surprised gaze, Encore skipped up to the two of them, raised her small fist, and waved it in the air.
"Encore has the sheep to protect her, so Encore isn't afraid of anything."
As she spoke, her big sparkling eyes looked at Rover. "Big sister, are you afraid? Encore can protect big sister."
Hearing this, Rover gently shook her head, raised her hand, and softly rubbed Encore's fluffy pink hair. A kind of maternal glow radiated from her whole body.
"Big sister isn't afraid either. Besides the sheep, big sister can also protect Encore."
"Mhm." Encore nodded, and the big pink bow at the back of her head bounced up and down with her movements.
"Will big brother protect Encore?"
"Yes, big brother will protect Encore too."
"Then will Brother Zane protect big sister?"
Rover froze at this and didn't know how to respond. She subconsciously turned her head.
But Zane stepped forward before her, coming to the two of them. With both hands, he gently rubbed the hair of the big and small girl on either side.
"Brother Zane will protect big sister, and will also protect Encore. And all the people of Jinzhou, big brother will protect them well too…"
Until this body collapses, until everything burns to ashes.
Of course, Zane didn't say the latter half out loud.
Feeling Zane's touch, Rover's body stiffened, and her heartbeat suddenly skipped a beat. Before she could react, he had already withdrawn his hand.
Looking again at that handsome face with a gentle smile, an emotion called panic suddenly rose in her heart.
She didn't know where this feeling came from.
Looking at Zane again, he had already started walking toward Court of Savantae.
"Let's go. Finish this job and go home early. If we wait any longer, it'll start raining."
As he spoke, Zane slightly turned his head and calmly looked at the three people standing there in a daze.
"After all, I'm a man who's going to become the Pirate King! Heh heh heh…"
Following the path between the beacons, Zane and the other three quickly arrived in front of a massive steel structure.
Only when they got close did they see clearly that aside from the huge steel beast, the ground in front of the ruins also seemed to be paved with some kind of metal.
Irregular pieces spread across the floor formed something that looked like an abstract painting.
At least, Zane couldn't understand the patterns on the ground.
"This is it." Aalto raised his hand and pointed at the large metal gate blocking their way. "These people always like making these strange puzzles."
Following the direction of Aalto's finger, Zane saw a large door that looked like a clock. In front of it was a machine console, and on the console hung a smaller clock similar to the one on the door.
No need to guess, this was definitely the mechanism to open the door.
At this moment, a light drizzle had already begun to fall from the sky.
"This security system is really strict…"
Aalto wanted to explain that this door wasn't as simple as it looked, but Encore immediately exposed him without hesitation.
"Aalto, didn't you accidentally trigger the security system earlier and cause the door to close again?"
In an instant, Aalto, who was walking at the front, felt like there were thorns on his back. He could already vaguely sense that the man and woman behind him had secretly raised hidden weapons, ready to give him a hard hit.
"Well…"
'As the saying goes, if I don't turn around, the fear can't catch up to me.' Aalto stiffened his neck and didn't dare look back.
"Anyway, we need to find a way to open this door first."
"Bro, seriously?"
Zane quickly walked to the small clock and pointed at it with a shocked expression.
"You're telling me you can't open this? Isn't it obvious? You just align the hands on this small clock with the one on the door, right?"
"Uh… well…"
Aalto wiped the cold sweat on his forehead, unable to say a word.
"You're not planning to find a tool person to solve the puzzle for you and then take the benefits for free, are you?"
Zane narrowed his eyes dangerously, and the riot baton appeared in his hand again.
Just when Aalto didn't know how to explain, Rover, who had already solved the mechanism in a few quick moves and opened the Court of Savantae gate, walked between the two and gently patted Zane's shoulder.
"Alright, alright. Aalto must have his own reasons for doing this."
But this time, Zane acted as if he hadn't heard her at all and continued insisting on teaching Aalto a lesson.
Fortunately, Rover still held him back tightly, preventing Aalto from becoming "Aalto."
"Exactly, exactly, I… I call this planning ahead." Seeing that Zane couldn't reach him for the moment, Aalto had just taken out a handkerchief to wipe his sweat when he suddenly heard Rover shout, "Think of something, Aalto! I can't hold him back much longer!"
Hearing this, Aalto didn't care about anything else anymore. He quickly raised three fingers and immediately promised that everything found in the Court of Savantae ruins, except for the data beacon records, would belong to Zane.
The moment Aalto finished speaking, Zane, who had been shouting and acting aggressive just a second ago, immediately put away his weapon. Then he and the smiling Rover jumped up and high-fived in midair.
"Wait, you… you tricked me!?"
At this point, if Aalto still couldn't tell that everything just now was an act put on by Zane and Rover together, then he really didn't deserve to be a qualified businessman.
Hearing Aalto's aggrieved protest, Rover giggled, her slender body trembling with laughter.
Zane walked over to Aalto, his expression serious as he patted his shoulder.
"What do you mean we tricked you? We opened the door, so the stuff inside naturally belongs to us. Right, Encore?"
"Big brother is right."
Aalto looked at the little girl standing beside Rover, hands on her hips and face full of seriousness, and for a moment, he was speechless.
"Encore, we're on the same side, okay?"
"Oh right." Encore nodded. "But big brother already agreed to split everything in Court of Savantae fifty-fifty with Encore, and it can also be exchanged equally for lollipops."
"Big brother and big sister give Encore lollipops, they're good."
"Uncle Aalto accidentally triggered the security system, Aalto is bad.".
The four of them walked into the Court of Savantae ruins. What came into view was a huge cube floating in midair, along with droplets of water hovering around the metal cube.
Newton once again angrily lifted his coffin lid.
"So that's it."
Aalto rubbed his chin. Behind his sunglasses, a look of understanding appeared in his eyes, while inwardly he marveled at how crazy these people's research really was.
"These Court of Savantae guys were actually studying Retroact Rain."
So-called Retroact Rain was essentially high-density echo energy from the Etheric sea. Within this energy, events from different times and spaces were recorded.
Those who came into contact with it could see illusions of events that had once occurred in the rain.
Of course, where exactly this Retroact Rain came from still had no definite conclusion.
But in Zane's view, this Retroact Rain was actually more like a large-scale time reversal phenomenon.
"Generally speaking, the formation of Retroact Rain has three stages.", Sensing Rover's confusion, Zane patiently went through his memory.
"In the first stage, Retroact Rain is no different from ordinary rain. And the phenomenon of these droplets floating in the air inside the lab is the second stage of Retroact Rain, suspension."
As for the third stage, it was reversal, where the raindrops return to the sky before even hitting the ground.
'Aren't these three stages just time flowing backward?'
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