Chao Youye stood under a bare old locust tree at the entrance of the park. The stand-up collar of her black cashmere coat was raised, barely covering her chin. The exposed side profile of her face looked even colder and paler against the backdrop of the snow.
Violet eyes looked through the dense snow curtain at the path deep in the park that was covered with light snow and almost untouched by people.
He didn't know why he came here. It was an almost instinctive pull, a call that whispered deep in his bones and could not be ignored, before his consciousness had fully sorted it out.
The body had already made the choice - walking out of the small, cold, cage-like rental house, crossing half the city, and coming to this desolate street park forgotten in a winter corner.
Several months have passed since the torrent of memories on Wutong Road.
Time did not smooth anything out, but only settled the turbulent chaos and pain into something deeper and colder, like the surface of an ice-covered lake, calm on the surface but with turbulent undercurrents underneath, freezing countless broken images and sharp questions.
He clearly remembered the blood-stained throne, the worship and fear of billions of lives, and Mu Xinrong's eyes, frozen with despair and disbelief amidst countless deaths...
"This time...it must end."
The voice that echoed deep in his soul was like a brand that burned to this day.
Ending what? How? He still had no answer. But the sense of resoluteness brought by that voice was like an icy anchor, allowing him to barely maintain his direction in this chaotic ocean called "Mortals Towards Youye".
He is no longer the ignorant high school student who was bullied by his family and schemed against by illegitimate children.
Countless fragments of memories from different world lines, like cold weights, pressed down on his consciousness layer by layer, reshaping his cognition.
He is a creation conceived by the world's own rules, born from the cracks in the world line. He is the cold embodiment of the law of causality and the correction program responsible for erasing all abnormal variables - a mindless god.
And Mu Xinrong, the boy who once made him instinctively approach but was forced to push away, the boy who left the outline of Shenzu's signature in the physics notebook, his identity was also about to be revealed in those broken fragments of memory - the repairer of the world line, the biggest abnormal variable itself.
How ironic. They were born in opposition, like light and darkness, life and death. One was responsible for eradicating anomalies, the other for repairing them.
And "love"? That was just a sophisticated but doomed-to-fail simulation experiment conducted by the gods in a certain world line after they observed the strong emotional fluctuations of the repairer.
He imitated the strength of the hug, the angle of the kiss, and the frequency of sweet words, but he could not understand the thing called "heart" beating behind the data.
His "love" is the program's observation report on variables, and it is cold logical deduction, which ultimately leads to the execution of the program - erasure.
Countless reincarnations, countless killings, countless betrayals.
And now, in this final, collapsing worldline, they meet again, as mortals, with scars of memories that haven't fully awakened yet are already deeply etched in their hearts.
The snow fell even more heavily, and the view was a vast expanse of gray.
At this moment, at the end of the path, deep in the snow, a figure slowly walked towards them.
He didn't hold an umbrella. Snowflakes landed on his dark down jacket, quickly forming a thin layer of white. His scarf was dark gray, wrapped high, almost covering the lower half of his face, revealing only a pair of eyes and the tip of his nose, red from the cold.
His short black hair was covered in snow, which shone faintly in the dim light. He walked slowly, his steps even heavy, each step sinking deeply into the soft snow, leaving clear footprints that were quickly covered by fresh snow.
It’s Mu Xinrong.
Chao Youye's breathing stopped at that moment.
His heart felt like it was being gripped by an invisible hand and then thrown into an ice cellar. It wasn't a throbbing sensation, it wasn't anticipation, but a near-suffocating, icy torrent of sharp pain and heavy fear that instantly swept through his limbs.
The light in his purple pupils shrank rapidly, like a frightened animal.
After not seeing him for a few months, Mu Xinrong seemed to have lost some weight. His figure looked a little frail under his down jacket.
Those eyes that were once as bright as the little sun, always showing unreserved warmth and smile, now looked over through the falling snowflakes, and there was a silence and dead water in them.
It wasn't anger, nor sadness, but something deeper and more profound—the desolation that comes with despair. Like a field that had been burned countless times, only cold ashes remained, unable to ignite a single spark.
I have seen that look in Chao Youye's eyes before.
In those violent fragments of memory, in every moment of piercing, annihilating, and cutting off Mu Xinrong, what finally solidified in the pupils that reflected his cold and divine figure was the dead silence after complete burning out.
Mu Xinrong also stopped, about seven or eight meters away from Chao Youye. Through the silently falling curtain of snow, his sight accurately caught the figure beneath the locust tree.
There seemed to be not even a ripple in those silent eyes. No surprise, no resentment, none of the emotions that should accompany a reunion. Only a cold, scrutinizing calm.
Time froze in the silent falling of snow, with only the gentle whimper of the wind through the dead branches and the patter of snowflakes falling to the ground.
Finally, Mu Xinrong moved first. He raised his hand extremely slowly, his movements carrying a deliberate sense of sluggishness, as if every joint was resisting invisible resistance.
He gently brushed off the snowflakes that had accumulated on his scarf, revealing his entire face. His cheeks were slightly red from the cold wind, and his lips were pale and slightly pursed.
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