Genius Club

Chapter 543: Countdown

(This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation)

“Listen, listen, listen!”

The young girl, CC, suddenly stepped back, her face pale with fear.

“There really are ghosts in here!”

“Hey, hold on...”

The bearded man couldn’t help but laugh, albeit awkwardly.

“You weren’t scared of those gun-toting lunatic bandits, nor of the fierce beasts prowling in the jungle, nor even sneaking out at night to steal a gun. But now, you’re trembling just because of some strange crying sound?”

He found it unbelievable.

Those other dangers were far worse than this supposed “ghostly wailing.” Every one of them was a life-or-death scenario, practically invitations to the grave. Yet CC had faced them all without flinching. Now, at the sound of crying, her face was drained of color.

“Don’t you find it terrifying?”

CC looked up, her eyes shaking slightly.

“This crying clearly isn’t normal!”

“Relax, I’m sure it’s not crying.”

The man stroked his beard as he analyzed.

“What kind of hero or ghost cries non-stop for over a hundred years? Forget a hundred years—your father came here just a few months ago. What kind of steel-throated being could keep crying continuously for months?”

“That’s why I’m saying it’s a ghost!” CC, clearly not a materialist, stubbornly insisted on her ghost theory.

The more the man stroked his beard, the more into it he got.

To the point where...

He was actually enjoying it. Shaking his head, he reasoned:

“Even if it were a ghost, crying non-stop for months would tire it out. What kind of ghost has such dull persistence? It’s not a ghost. Stop letting your imagination run wild.”

“...”

Faced with his counterarguments, CC found herself momentarily speechless.

It was a decisive victory for materialism over idealism.

That said, the man’s explanation was both logical and convincing, which helped calm CC down.

Her fear stemmed largely from preconceived notions.

Before this, her father, a highly capable hunter whom she idolized, had claimed there were ghosts here. CC had never doubted him. Thus, at the first sign of crying, her mind leapt straight to ghosts without entertaining other possibilities. ????ãNօ฿ĘS

The bearded man, on the other hand, was different.

He hadn’t even considered ghosts as a possibility from the beginning.

It seemed certain faculties—like logic and judgment—didn’t vanish just because of memory loss.

“Hmm...”

Closing his eyes, the man carefully listened to the cries echoing from deep within the research institute ruins.

“Don’t say anything for now. Let me listen closely.”

He noticed the cries followed a distinct pattern, repeating in a consistent rhythm.

This further convinced him it wasn’t human or ghostly wailing.

As they moved closer, the sound became clearer:

“Woo... woo woo...”

“Woo... woo woo...”

“Woo... woo woo...”

Indeed.

It repeated in a steady pattern.

The man tapped the rhythm with his finger against his gun holster:

Tap... tap-tap-tap. Tap... tap-tap-tap. Tap... tap-tap-tap.

“It sounds like an alert tone,” he concluded, opening his eyes.

“A mechanical tone, or perhaps a warning signal—completely devoid of emotion or variation.”

Listening to his thorough analysis, CC lowered her guard and stepped forward, covering one ear to focus.

“Hmm... You’re right. It’s not as scary when you think about it that way. Plus, considering the geography—these towering, jagged mountains all around—it’s nearly impossible for anyone to get in or out of here.”

“Under these circumstances, the chances of someone surviving inside are practically nil.”

The man stepped out and instructed CC to make two more torches. Then, he handed her a few wild fruits.

“Alright, let’s stick to the plan we discussed earlier. If we encounter any unidentified creature, no matter what it looks like, just toss one of these fruits at it,” he explained.

“If the fruit bounces back, I’ll point my gun at it and see if we can communicate. But if the fruit passes right through its body... well, there’s nothing more to say. We’ll turn around and run.”

“Got it!” CC nodded firmly, clutching her makeshift “solid detector” tightly.

With their preparations complete, the duo advanced deeper into the research institute ruins. The man held his pistol in his right hand while CC grasped a wild fruit—a strange name, a strange setup, and a pair always engaging in strange activities.

The research facility wasn’t very large, and many of its passageways had been severed by the jagged, rising mountains. It took them only about ten minutes to thoroughly explore the first floor.

But then, they hit a dead end.

There were no stairs leading to the second floor, nor could they find an access point to the underground levels.

“VV, what now?” CC, now entirely fearless, rubbed the wild fruit in her hands as she pondered.

“The stairs to the second floor must have been crushed or destroyed during the earthquake years ago. If we want to reach the second floor, we’ll have to figure out how to climb from the outside,” she suggested.

“However... judging by the ‘woo... woo woo’ sound, it seems to be coming from underground.”

The bearded man nodded.

“If the sound is traveling up from below, there must be some kind of passageway. Let’s first locate the spot where the sound is loudest and clearest, then look for an entrance to the underground levels nearby.”

Soon, the two arrived at the spot where the sound was loudest.

Here, the “woo... woo woo” noise became unmistakably clear. On closer listening, it didn’t resemble crying at all but instead sounded more like a mechanical tone: “Doo—doo doo doo—”

“It must be a machine of some sort,” CC remarked.

Beep—beep-beep-beep—

The mechanical sound grew closer and louder, almost piercingly loud at this distance.

Ahead of them lay what seemed to be a machine room , and the grating alarm sound was emanating from within.

“Finally, we’ve found the source.”

The man pointed to a sealed metal door ahead.

Under the torchlight, the door gleamed as if brand new, radiating a faint silver glow, untouched by time.

Made of exceptionally durable material, the door seemed nearly indestructible.

But...

The severe geological upheaval from the Super Catastrophe had torn through the research facility, causing structural deformation.

The gleaming silver door remained intact, but the adjacent wall had collapsed, leaving a large hole. The eerie wailing—actually a mechanical alarm—was coming from the other side of the hole.

“Let’s go take a look.”

The bearded man gestured toward the dark hole, faint red and green lights flickering within.

“Since it’s confirmed to be mechanical sounds, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Mm-hmm.”

CC had long accepted the reality, tucking her wild fruits into her pocket and following the man into the abandoned machine room.

Inside...

Everything in the room sparkled.

The machinery appeared to be made of the same sturdy, gleaming material as the silver door, withstanding the passage of centuries without a single scratch.

It was this durability that had kept the machines operational for so long.

“Is this... a timer?”

The man scanned the room, noticing walls covered in red and green letters that constantly changed. Closer inspection labels revealed in English: days, hours, minutes, and seconds.

The complexity of the numbers overwhelmed him, so he decided to look at something else.

The man stepped into the center of the room.

There, he saw a sealed sphere—a solid, opaque structure. When he tapped on it, it was evident how sturdy it was. Nothing inside could be discerned.

Beneath the enormous sphere lay numerous cables, as thick as an arm, radiating outward to the surrounding walls. Each cable connected to a monitor, creating an image akin to a giant octopus stretching its limbs.

The man bent down and counted the cables. “20... 21... 22,” he muttered under his breath.

At the same time, CC, who was counting the monitors on the walls, finished as well. “VV, there are 22 monitors here on the walls. Each monitor displays a constantly changing string of numbers. Among them, 21 numbers are green, and only one is red.”

The man raised his head to look at the overwhelming display of green numbers, their rapid changes making his eyes blur.

These 21 rows of green numbers were indeed timers. Though they each showed slight variations, the difference was minimal, and all were steadily counting upward.

For instance, the timer on the monitor labeled “1” displayed:

40932 days, 07 hours, 32 minutes, 41 seconds.

After a blink, the numbers shifted to 40932 days, 07 hours, 32 minutes, 42 seconds.

Meanwhile, the timer on monitor “2” was slightly behind, showing:

40932 days, 07 hours, 16 minutes, 11 seconds.

Although slower, it was still ticking upward, second by second.

The man mentally calculated. “The year is 2616 now. Forty thousand days is roughly 112 years. This means these timers began counting from the year...”

“2504.”

He squinted his eyes. “How coincidental. It’s the exact year of the Super Catastrophe. Could there be some special significance?”

“That doesn’t make sense, VV,” CC said, spinning in place to examine the seemingly random timers. “If these timers started from the year of the catastrophe, shouldn’t they all show the same time? But look—every green timer is different, and the time discrepancies have no discernible pattern.”

“What’s even more baffling is... why are all 21 green timers counting up, while the only red timer here is counting down?”

The man and CC turned their heads simultaneously.

There it was: a single red timer on their right.

Unlike the green timers, the red numbers were much smaller—and they were decreasing. It displayed:

2925 days, 11 hours, 54 minutes, 33 seconds.

Then, 2925 days, 11 hours, 54 minutes, 32 seconds.

And then, 2925 days, 11 hours, 54 minutes, 31 seconds.

...

The red numbers, pulsing like a heartbeat, ticked downward second by second.

Moreover, the persistent alarm sound—a “beep... beep-beep-beep”—was emanating from this very monitor.

This was the source of the eerie crying-like noise.

It was unsettling. Out of 22 timers, why was this one counting down?

The cold red glow of the numbers added an inexplicable tension to the room, a creeping sense of urgency.

The man stroked his beard, feeling a growing unease. “If the ascending timers started with the Super Catastrophe in 2504, then the countdown timer... could it be counting down to a future date?”

“Let’s calculate, CC. Based on today’s date displayed on the electronic clock, we can figure out the exact date when this red timer will reach zero.”

The man picked up a piece of paper from the floor. However, it disintegrated into fragments as soon as he touched it, rendering it unusable.

With no other option, he grabbed a sharp stone and began performing calculations on the wall.

Fortunately, his memory loss hadn’t affected his basic skills. His addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division were still precise and fluid.

Line by line, his calculations filled the wall. Finally, he arrived at the answer.

The man took a step back, inspecting the result written on the wall:

“The red countdown will reach zero on—”

2624, August 29th, 00:42:00.