The rain of shattered crystals from the time dome hadn't yet dried, but Future Old Zhang had already leaped onto the suspended platform, stepping onto a rainbow staircase. The lollipop on her fingertips suddenly unfolded into a holographic map, projecting an inverted pyramid floating in a sea of ​​quantum clouds. The spire of the Forgotten Library was oozing inky mist, and each layer of pages devoured any memory bubble that tried to approach.

"Be careful of those 'blank spines.'" Old Zhang lifted a wisp of black mist with a candy wrapper. Black cat ink suddenly shot out from her sleeve, transforming into chains in the mist to entangle a fallen tome. "The Administration has created a void trap using 'collective amnesia', which will drag all 'unallowed history' into entropy."

Xia Zichen gripped his swords tightly. As the star-patterned blades sliced ​​through the mist, he suddenly saw countless faces resembling his own in the cracks—these were the lingering fragments of consciousness from the erased "possible clones." The double helix on Lin Yue's wrist suddenly felt hot. She pressed against the oracle bone script that had emerged on the stone wall. "The diary of the first guardian... They knew of the memory double helix long ago, but used the star-patterned bloodline as bait to trap us in the 'corrector' cycle."

Ah Fu's sword suddenly echoed with multiple reverberations. The afterimages of seven generations of guardians overlapped and materialized. The leading young man plunged the broken sword into the ground, and yellowed archives emerged from the cracks. "When we began to question the 'sole official history,' the Administration launched Project Dusk—using the black hole of the Forgotten Library to devour all divergent memories." His gaze swept over the yin-yang fish in Xia Zichen's palm. "And you are the anchor connecting all parallel time and space."

The suspended platform suddenly vibrated violently, and the bronze door at the bottom of the inverted pyramid burst open, sending thousands of blank books swooping down like a flock of birds. Old Zhang swung out an ink-stained chain to entangle the group. The candy wrapper map suddenly ignited, revealing bloody words within its inner layer: The true key lies on the 404th floor, where the first day of being eaten is hidden.

"404th floor?" Xia Zichen swung his sword, splitting the besieged blank book. The pages transformed into black butterflies and burrowed into his sleeves, unexpectedly spelling out his childhood graffiti beneath his skin. "Was there also such a memory worm in the iron box on the night of the fire?"

"That's a tampered memory." Lin Yue caught a black butterfly, and its wings unfolded into a fragmented surveillance footage—on the night of the fire, both the adult Lin Yue and the teenage Lin Yue appeared in the basement. The kerosene lamp they knocked over during their argument was completely different from the "accidental fire" record in the Administration's archives. "Look! The real source of the fire was... the rift in space-time when the prayer wheel was activated."

Old Zhang suddenly pushed everyone into a vortex of pages: "There's no time! The black hole of oblivion has swallowed up the memory trees of three parallel universes." During the fall, Xia Zichen saw countless bubbles passing by - in a certain time and space, he was an archivist wearing round-frame glasses; in another time and space, Lin Yue's star-patterned scar turned into a galaxy necklace; and in the brightest bubble, a man in a black robe was sitting under a cherry tree, drawing a new star map on a blank scroll with an ink pen.

The floor of the 404th floor was composed of countless shattered mirrors, each reflecting a different version of "The Beginning." Ah Fu's sword, suddenly drawn by some force, pointed toward the crystal coffin at the center of the mirror array. Within lay none other than the "First Guardian," etched into the history books of the Administration. Hanging around her neck was the other half of the yin-yang fish in Xia Zichen's palm.

"She is the first 'Memory Twin.'" When Lin Yue touched the coffin, the double helix resonated with the light within, and a dense network of timelines began to emerge from the mirror array. "The Administration sealed her shadow side in the Forgotten Library, using the legend of the 'Guardian of Light' to tame all her successors... until we broke the shackles with the resonance of our twin swords."

The crystal coffin suddenly cracked, and a memory seed fell from the fingertips of the first guardian. On the mirrored surface, it grew into a towering tree, each leaf bearing a record of erased history: streets where robots and humans danced together, parliaments presided over by talking animals, and interstellar routes woven from dreams. Xia Zichen finally understood the black-robed figure's dying smile—she didn't mean to destroy the world, but to remind it of its own myriad possibilities.

A black hole suddenly opened in the ground, and Lao Zhang's black cat, Momo, darted in and out, clutching half a charred book in its mouth. The lingering gold inscription on the spine made Lin Yue's pupils shrink: Genesis Apocrypha. When the pages unfolded, instead of words, countless colored glass beads fell out, each containing a moment "corrected": the rainbow at a baby's first cry, the path of migratory birds flying against ocean currents, even the last blink of two stars before they collided.

"This is the universe's first cry." The afterimage of the first guardian brushed past the glass beads, and the timeline within the mirror array began to grow and fork wildly. "The Authority fears not chaos, but life's instinctive desire for creation—every thought that 'doesn't fit the narrative' has the potential to grow into a new cosmic tree."

Xia Zichen plunged his two swords into the center of the mirror array, and the star patterns and ink transformed into roots that penetrated the earth. The inverted pyramid of the Forgotten Library began to tremble, and each layer of pages spat out imprisoned memories: mermaids in medieval manuscripts swam out from illustrations, the gears of steampunk cities intertwined and coexisted with the data streams of cyberspace, and even the dinosaurs in prehistoric rock paintings taught primitive humans to calculate the calendar using starlight.

Old Zhang suddenly pointed at the dome, where a galaxy made up of memory bubbles had appeared at some point. Each bubble reflected "them" from different time and space - some were repairing broken star maps, some were coloring the blank spines of books in the forgotten library, and in the farthest bubble, a man in a black robe was holding the hand of young Xia Zichen, walking towards a field full of flowers of memory.

"Here are the fragments of the Zero Core!" Lin Yue picked up a diamond-shaped crystal from the pile of glass beads. Inside it was the black-robed figure's final obsession. "She exchanged her existence for the 'awakening of possibility'... Now, it's time to show the Administration's 'Single Truth' what the true memory spark is."

My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!