My original idea was for this to be a passive ability that only awakens in the abyss as he grows stronger. He considers it completely useless until he meets Shizun again, and it starts being at the forefront of his mind alongside Shizun at all times. On which you stop hiding in the comments
On the other hand, if we have the ability already active pre-abyss, that gives us soooo many options depending on how early he gains it.
First of all, if it's already active during Shen Jiu: Although absolutely determined to escape with Qi-ge, I do believe that Shen Jiu could've still subconsciously been the type of kid who believed they wouldn't make it past 12, then 16, then 18, and so on, given how he grew up. He has been incredibly close to death as long as he can remember, which only carried on into his Peak Lord days as he suffered potentially lethal qi deviations on the regular. So I imagine his counter never showed more than a few years at best. This could also be confusing enough that Binghe doesn't figure out what it means for a good while.
Then Shen Yuan shows up. And I believe in chronically ill Shen Yuan propaganda. So he wakes up in a much healthier body, the body of a cultivator, and the counter shoots into the hundreds. Until the System chimes in and it drops, until he unlocks OOC and it goes back up, and so on and so forth.
For the sake of plot, I'd like to imagine the ability being fairly unstable and difficult to use before the cradle seal is broken, so Binghe only ever gets quick glimpses in high-stakes situations when his senses are turned up to 100 from the adrenaline. He was on edge all the time with Shen Jiu, so he was more easily able to use it then. He gets to see the jump to the hundreds, after which he slowly relaxes under Shen Yuan's care.
He sees the counter briefly drop to zero when Shen Qingqiu saves him during the demon invasion and gets poisoned with without-a-cure. Omg shizun saved me, thinking he'd pay with his life for it!! After which he pretty much relaxes fully and basically loses the ability for a long while.
And when the cradle seal is broken, and he stands between the abyss and his shizun, he sees the counter again for the first time in years as it violently fluctuates between seconds and just around 5 years.
And Binghe realizes he is the reason.
Whether or not he figures out that the 2 years left when he sees him in Jin Lang city are just those 5 years from the day the abyss opened or not, in other words, that shizun believed he'd come back from the abyss to kill him, depends on whether the mental illness sword is feeling like fix-it or angst that day.
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