The quiet room deep in the Ye family's residence was filled with the light, bitter fragrance of herbs and the almost inaudible hum of precision instruments.
The air was stagnant, with only the occasional rustling sound of Ye Qingliu flipping through the pages of the encrypted report.
He was half leaning on a specially made medical bed, his face a cold pale from blood loss. The gauze on his forehead and wrists had been removed, leaving light red marks, like medals, but also like cracks.
Gray-blue eyes lowered, their gaze fixed on the report sent by Duan Shuce, which included the spectrum analysis of the remaining Qishang energy and the increasingly frequent gravitational disturbances caused by the "Covetous Council" at the edge of the space-time folds...
Each data point is like an icy needle, piercing the fragile nerves that have just awakened.
Bai Zhiye sat in an armchair beside him, with a book in his hands, but his eyes were fixed on Ye Qingliu for a long time.
Hua Jinyue was forcibly taken away by Ning Xiwan to rest, and Ning Xiwan herself dragged her injured body to deal with the pile of family affairs. Before leaving, the look she gave Ye Qingliu was full of protective desire as if she wanted to stuff him back into her womb.
There were only three of them and Duan Shuce left in the quiet room - the latter was sitting opposite Ye Qingliu with a cup of tea.
The curling heat blurred the eyes behind his frameless glasses. Deep in his eyes, there was scrutiny, concern, and a hint of indescribable, heavy complexity.
"How do you feel?" Duan Shuce's voice broke the silence, as steady as a routine matter.
"Recovering." Ye Qingliu didn't even raise his head, his voice hoarse from not speaking for a long time, his eyes still focused on a line of data in the report.
That was a molecular-level analysis of the residues of Qi Shang's spiritual pollution. The half-life of one of the inert markers was surprisingly long.
His slender fingers tapped unconsciously on the edge of the report, making a very regular "tick, tick" sound, like some kind of precise logical gear turning.
"Among the remnants of Qi Shang's mental contamination, there's an inert marker with a half-life of over ten years. This substance... is very special."
His voice was quiet, as if he were stating an insignificant discovery.
Duan Shuce's hand holding the teacup paused imperceptibly, and tiny ripples appeared on the surface of the tea.
"Well, the Rift Walker's unique tracking mark is difficult to remove. However, the Sky Dome's purification field can handle it."
Ye Qingliu finally raised his eyes. His gray-blue eyes, like the tranquil polar sea, were completely still, accurately capturing Duan Shuce's slight pause.
"It's a tracking mark, that's right." He slowly closed the report, his movements neither hurried nor slow, but his eyes fell on Duan Shuce's face as sharp as a scalpel.
"But it's also commonly used in another scenario—as a stabilizer for 'logical sutures' after high-level memory interference. Its function is... to reinforce the tampered memory barrier, preventing it from collapsing due to external stimuli or deep subconscious recall."
The air in the quiet room seemed to have been drained of all oxygen in an instant.
Bai Zhiye's fingers holding the book suddenly tightened, and her knuckles turned white. She raised her head in surprise, looked at Ye Qingliu, and then at Duan Shuce, her eyes filled with confusion and a hint of foreboding.
The calmness on Duan Shuce's face finally cracked. His pupils constricted slightly behind his glasses, and the knuckles of his fingers gripping the teacup turned white from the force applied.
He remained silent, neither refuting nor admitting it immediately.
Ye Qingliu's gaze swept across Duan Shuce's instantly tense body lines, across Bai Zhiye's doubtful face, and finally, fell back on the bright and tightly wrapped red rope on his wrist.
The observer's cold logic and Ye Qingliu's emotional fragments collided and merged silently in the sea of consciousness.
Countless overlooked details, like scattered puzzle pieces, are instantly pieced together seamlessly under the connection of the key clue of "inert markers"!
Why was there a vague, huge gap in his memory of the period after the high school entrance exam? As if a large part of it had been forcibly erased?
——Why is it that every time Duan Shuce mentions Bai Zhiye’s “past”, there is always an inexplicable flash of heaviness and avoidance in the depths of his eyes?
——Why, when he first met the "transfer student" Bai Zhiye in his second year of high school, the throbbing and familiarity that came from the depths of his soul was so strong that it seemed like a fateful reunion?
——Why did Ning Xiwan occasionally look at the red rope on his wrist with an expression mixed with confusion and pity, as if recalling some forgotten fragment?
——And Duan Shuce... When he looked at Bai Zhiye, that complicated look, filled with scrutiny and a hint of subtle guilt...
A cold chain of logic was clearly constructed in Ye Qingliu's mind, and every link pointed to that suffocating possibility.
He didn't need Duan Shuce's confirmation.
The observer's authority operated silently in the depths of his consciousness, like a top-level decryption program, instantly piercing through the carefully woven curtain of lies.
"The car accident after the high school entrance examination," Ye Qingliu's voice sounded, still terrifyingly calm, as if he was reading out an experimental report that had nothing to do with him, and every word was clearly heard in the dead silence of the quiet room.
"The goal isn't to cause an accident, but to eliminate it. The world line's basic logic is issuing instructions to eliminate 'abnormal variables'. The target of the elimination is Bai Zhiye."
Bai Zhiye's body trembled violently, and the book in his hand fell to the ground with a "click".
She widened her eyes in disbelief, her face instantly drained of color, her lips trembled slightly, but she couldn't make any sound.
The huge amount of information pierced her mind like an icicle.
Ye Qingliu turned his gaze towards her, a trace of extremely faint pain flashed across his gray-blue eyes, and then was covered by a deeper coldness.
"Your injuries at that time were undoubtedly fatal." His voice was flat, "And the supervisor Duan Shuce was present."
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