Chapter 36

Panda Planet, ink-bamboo pavilion time bamboo forest, Cosmic Era year 51. Chen Mo stepped onto a floating time bamboo raft, parting the bamboo leaves entangled with pocket-watch gears. Carved into each bamboo shoot was a different unit of time: "instant," "brief moment," "flash." The amber sap oozing from the bamboo joints was the unique "Memory Resin" of Panda Planet. Wearing bamboo goggles, Zhu Qing was repairing a cracked bamboo shoot with an "Error Knife." Resin overflowed from the crack, condensing in the air into a phantom of a young Chen Mo chasing a spirit butterfly: "Time glitches are like the knots in bamboo. The more you try to sand them flat, the more they become the marks of growth."