Lin Yi was awakened by the reversal of time.

He felt cold liquid trickling down his cheeks to his temples, as if someone had shattered his memories into fragments and was then pouring them into his brain, mixed with the tides of time.

When his consciousness barely coalesced into a line, what first struck his retina was an inverted starry sky—purple turbulence coiled like a swarm of snakes, with countless translucent shards of light floating within it, each reflecting his own face.

"This is..." He tried to raise his hand, but found that his arm passed through the nearest light slab.

The light suddenly trembled violently, and the screen began to play: May 14, 2035, 1:07 AM. He was awakened from his bed in his dormitory by the notification sound of the game's arrival. The blue light from the screen made his eyes shine, and the option "Accept default warrior class?" in the system prompt box was flashing red.

"First job change." Lin Yi's Adam's apple bobbed.

In his memory, his fingertip hovered above the "No" button, sweat beading on his forehead—at the time, he had no idea about the existence of hidden professions; he just inexplicably felt that this option was wrong.

The light suddenly solidified, transforming into another version of him, wearing a wrinkled t-shirt, but with eyes as cold as ice: "Stop. You shouldn't have come here."

"Who's speaking?" Lin Yi took a half step back, only to stumble into another memory.

Three days ago, he stood in the golden hall projected by the Destiny System. The system, in his mother's voice, coaxed him: "Accept the mythological template, and you will have a perfect growth trajectory, with all risks avoided." In his memory, he clenched the Time-Space Emblem, the emblem burning a red mark into his palm: "I want to write my own trajectory." This memory transformed into chains, "whoosh," wrapping around his ankles.

"The Abyss of Time..." Lin Yi suddenly realized.

He had seen this term before in the inherited memories of the Time and Space Ruler—the deep memory area of ​​the Fate System, specifically used to seal the "wrong choices" of those being selected.

Those seemingly insignificant little things began to surface: the ten minutes he wasted helping a lost little girl find her mother, giving his last healing potion to a dying player in the newbie village, and even changing his major inexplicably when filling out his college application... Each memory materialized into obstacles, some like thorny vines, some like poisoned arrows, and most absurdly, the healing potion transformed into a player wielding a bone blade, roaring, "You should have died in the newbie village long ago!" as it slashed at him.

"Enough!" Lin Yi said in a low voice.

His pupils shone with a starlight-like light, and the Time-Space Emblem burned on his chest. "These are all paths I chose myself, why should you deny them?" Suddenly, a rift was torn open in the purple turbulence, and his figure darted through the rift, causing fragments of memory to explode into stardust wherever he went.

The external shocks were almost simultaneous.

As Long Wu's dragon scales brushed against Chu Yao's data stream, a string of blue sparks flew up. "The coordinates have been corrected?" His voice was hoarse as he stared at the three-dimensional star map projected by Chu Yao—the originally chaotic timeline was being broken down into countless light trails, eventually converging into a rotating purple vortex icon.

"The Abyss of Time." Chu Yao's data stream changed from a red alert to a deep blue, and her virtual projection revealed a tense expression for the first time. "A prison constructed by the Fate System using the memories of those selected."

To save him, we must connect to an edge node.

"What do you need?" Xuanmingzi suddenly stood up straight.

The data stream behind his neck stopped surging and instead solidified into silver chains, signifying that he had deliberately severed his connection with the fragments of the Destiny System.

Long Wu noticed that his knuckles were turning white, as if he were fighting against some deep-seated repulsion: "I was once the incarnation of the game's mastermind, and my remaining permissions allow me to open the node interface."

"But you'll be marked by the system." Chu Yao's fingertips rapidly tapped the virtual panel. "Your soul will be treated as an invading virus; at best, it will cause memory damage; at worst..."

"Do it." Xuanmingzi interrupted her.

He looked at Long Wu with a sense of relief in his eyes, "Back then, as the core of the system, I personally sealed away 3,700 'mistakes' like his."

Now it's my turn... to find the mistakes.

Suddenly, all of Long Wu's dragon scales stood up.

He stared at the still-swirling purple vortex above his head, and vaguely saw a blurry figure in the center of the vortex splitting apart fragments of memory—it was Lin Yi, with that fierce determination to charge forward even if torn apart by the reverse flow of time, exactly the same as when he slashed down twenty elite monsters in the newbie village three years ago.

"I'll guard the entrance." He drew his dragon-patterned battle sword, the blade humming as it shook off a patch of scales. "Anyone who dares to tamper with the node will have to get past me first."

Ivan suddenly pressed his temple.

The brood totem burned on the back of his neck, and that familiar corrosive sensation surged up again, but this time he did not resist it as usual.

He watched Xuan Mingzi's retreating figure as he walked towards the node control panel, then glanced at the rapidly processing data stream from Chu Yao. His Adam's apple bobbed, but in the end, he simply touched the totem on his chest and murmured, "The Mother Nest... perhaps it's time to find a new way to exist."

In the Abyss of Time, Lin Yi's steps suddenly came to a halt.

The last fragment of memory floated in front of him, showing his twelfth birthday. His mother pushed the last half of the cake in front of him, while she ate dry bread and said, "Mom isn't hungry."

In the video clip, the mother suddenly turns her head, her gaze piercing through time and space: "Ayi, the path you've chosen, your mother has never been afraid of."

"Mom..." Lin Yi's eyes welled up with tears.

He raised his hand and touched the light plate. This time, the light plate did not condense into an obstacle. Instead, it turned into warm light, carrying him towards the center of the vortex.

Just as his consciousness was about to reach the core, he heard a subtle vibration from the outside world—the sound of the node interface being forcibly connected.

"You're here?" Lin Yi smiled.

His temporal emblem burst forth with dazzling light, melting all the fragments of memory into a key. "Then I'll tear down this broken prison of fate completely."

Meanwhile, in an underground research facility thousands of miles away, Ivan stood alone in front of the core module of the Mother Nest.

His fingertips hovered above the start button, the whispers of the Mother Nest echoing in his mind: "Helping him is the same as letting me out."

Are you sure?

Ivan gazed at the moonlight outside the window and suddenly pressed a button.

As the red alert blared inside the core module, a slight smile played on his lips: "I'm only sure... he needs me."

As the piercing shriek of the red alert shattered into pieces inside the Mother Nest core, Ivan's palms were already soaked with cold sweat.

Liquid metal seeped from the dark patterns on the bulkhead, solidifying into a translucent humanoid shape before him—a manifestation of the Mother Nest's consciousness, its scarlet pupils churning with billions of years of chaos.

"You're smarter than those fools I corrupted." The Mother's voice was like rusty gears grinding together. "Trading a brief resurgence for the ability to enter the Abyss of Time?"

Tell me, what makes you think I will abide by the agreement?

Ivan's fingers unconsciously caressed the totem on his chest, where the warmth of Lin Yi's pat on his shoulder still lingered.

Three days ago, at the meeting of the Time Legion, this man, who was always called a "monster," simply rubbed the ovarian markings on the back of his neck and said, "I believe in Ivan's choice." At this moment, these words suddenly struck his eardrums, and when he looked up, the wavering in his eyes completely solidified into iron: "Because you know better than anyone else—what is locked in the Abyss of Time is the key that can rewrite the entire selection rule."

The freedom you want, he can give you.

The mother nest's pupils suddenly contracted to thin slits.

It extended a finger made of liquid metal, its tip touching Ivan's brow. A corrosive, burning sensation coursed through his body, but this time Ivan did not tremble.

When that cold consciousness invaded his mind, he even laughed: "Go look at his memories."

Look at how he had several ribs broken by elite monsters while trying to save the little girl crying for her mother in the newbie village; look at how he could have chosen the perfect template, but he squeezed the Time Emblem until it bled and shouted, "I want to walk on my own."

Would someone like that really let you get stuck in this crumbling core module?

The mother nest's liquid body suddenly trembled violently, as if it had been burned by something, and withdrew its hand.

When it reformed into human form, its voice held a hint of suppressed excitement: "Three hours."

I will withdraw my power in three hours. If you are still not out by then—

"That's enough," Ivan interrupted, turning and heading towards the hatch.

The moment the door opened, he heard the Mother Nest whisper behind him: "Remember, you opened Pandora's box first." He didn't turn around, but just gripped the time-space communicator that Lin Yi had given him tightly—it still held the other person's warmth.

At the same time, Long Wu's battle blade was cleaving open a time rift that glowed with a ghostly blue light.

"Dragon scales resonate!" he roared, and golden flames rose from the dragon pattern on the back of his neck.

The fragments of memory that had been swimming at the edge of the crack scattered like a school of startled fish, revealing a colossal creature curled up inside—a giant serpent covered in bronze scales, each scale engraved with distorted spacetime runes, its closed eye sockets swirling with starlight.

"Time Guardian, it's time to wake up." Long Wu knelt on one knee, dragon blood dripping from his fingertips, drawing an ancient contract array on the ground.

Three years ago in the starting village, when he was cornered by an elite monster, Lin Yi used a spacetime rift to pull him out; three months ago, when fighting against the interdimensional vanguard, Lin Yi took the hit of that spatial slash to save him, and the wound on his back has not yet fully healed.

These images flashed before his eyes, and his dragon blood suddenly ignited into gold. "I swear in the name of the true dragon's descendant, with my life as the bond—"

The giant snake's eyes snapped open.

Amidst the earth-shaking roar, Long Wu was thrown against the rock wall by the shockwave, but a grin spread across his face.

The giant serpent's tongue swept across his battle blade, and the blade immediately gleamed with a bronze light the same color as the serpent's scales. The time vortex that was originally teetering on the brink of collapse suddenly stabilized, and the purple light trails no longer intertwined chaotically, but instead rotated in an orderly manner into a star map.

"Done." Long Wu wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and looked up at the center of the vortex.

There, one could vaguely see Lin Yi's figure splitting apart the last few fragments of memory, much like the young man who had gone berserk in the newbie village three years ago.

Deep within the abyss of time, Lin Yi's steps suddenly halted in a void.

All the fragments of memory disappeared, and even the purple turbulence retreated to the far distance.

Standing before him was another "self"—wearing a faded blue and white school uniform, with a silver bracelet on his wrist, a gift from his mother when he was in high school, an old item he had stuffed into his drawer before his first job change.

The other person's gaze was indifferent, yet it reminded Lin Yi of the half-cake his mother had pushed towards him on his twelfth birthday.

"You've finally arrived," the other man spoke, his voice like a spring breeze blowing through an old cassette tape. "The prison of memories for the selected; not everyone can get here."

Lin Yi's throat suddenly tightened.

He recalled the “wrong choices” that tried to stop him in the Abyss of Time, his mother’s words in the memory film, “Mom has never been afraid,” the dragon blood when Long Wu cleaved the time rift, and Ivan’s back as he pressed the Mother Nest button.

He reached out and touched the other person's shoulder, feeling the real warmth of his touch: "You are... the part that was erased by the system?"

"It's you, and yet it's not you." The other man grasped his hand, the warmth of his palm overlapping with the hand of his mother in Lin Yi's memory. "The system chose a 'perfect trajectory,' but every 'wrong choice' you made was like giving me a lifeline."

The question now is—"His eyes suddenly became as deep as the galaxy in the Time Emblem," "Are you ready to take on the responsibility of 'Domination'?"

It's not the power to control time, it's... the responsibility to keep going even when you see those you care about getting hurt, when you see the world you cherish crumble.

Lin Yi's pupils gleamed.

He remembered the little girl he had protected in the starting village, who was now the best healer in the Time Legion; he remembered Xuan Mingzi's white knuckles when he severed the connection with the system, which was the former judge atoning for his sins; he remembered the trace of worry hidden in the data stream when Chu Yao first showed a tense expression.

He smiled, a smile that held the stubbornness he had displayed three years ago when he pressed the "No" button in his dorm room, and the determination he had shown when he rejected the perfect template in the prestigious academy: "The path I've chosen has never needed to be perfect."

His other smile slowly faded.

Just as Lin Yi's fingertips were about to touch his brow, the entire Abyss of Time suddenly emitted a piercing tearing sound.

The purple turbulence began to collapse violently, and fragments of memory scattered everywhere like crushed stardust. Lin Yi heard Chu Yao's exclamation from the outside world: "Star orbit deviation!"

All satellite positioning systems have failed, and the aurora borealis belt is showing abnormal distortion!

In the real world, star clusters that were originally moving in an orderly manner are now reorganizing in bizarre trajectories.

Dragon Five's Time Guardian suddenly let out a mournful cry, and spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the bronze scales of the giant serpent; Ivan's time-space communicator was burning hot in his palm, and the cold laughter of the Mother Nest consciousness pierced through the electricity: "Having fun?"

Your choice is shaking the very foundation of the entire screening mechanism.

Lin Yi was thrown away by the impact in the collapsing Abyss of Time, but his hand remained firmly gripping the wrist of another "self".

Just before his consciousness was swallowed by darkness, he heard the other person whisper: "Remember, the true master... is the courage to choose."

As darkness completely enveloped their vision, everyone in reality who was staring at the time vortex had their pupils widen in shock—a figure vaguely appeared at the center of the rotating purple light trail.

His outline was still blurry, yet it caused Long Wu's dragon blood to boil uncontrollably, made Ivan's mother nest totem glow with a warm light, and made the system chains behind Xuan Mingzi's neck make a crisp breaking sound.

That's... a sign of return.