Golden sunlight streamed across the cloud-thunder pattern on the secret door, casting tiny shimmers of golden light. The star map imprint on Xia Zichen's palm suddenly heated up, resonating with the door's pattern. Ah Fu pressed the fragment of number 404 against the crack of the door. Dark red ink seeped through the yellowed paper, outlining the door lock like a living thing. With a soft click, the secret door burst open, and a cool breeze mingled with the scent of worn paper blew in. The wall of the corridor behind the door was covered in glowing reliefs of star maps, each with a star painted blood red.
"These are tampered spacetime anchors." Xia Zichen pressed down on the relief, his fingertips brushing against the blood star. The image of Lin Yue being dragged into the flames by the black-robed figure flashed through his mind. "Old Zhang said memory is light... Perhaps we need to overwrite these false anchors with real memories." Ah Fu suddenly tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword. The twisted oracle bone script on the blade began to grow in reverse, re-forming the complete character for "guard." "Judging from the sword's reaction, the black-robed figure might be hiding in the deepest depths."
At the end of the corridor was a circular stone chamber, its dome inlaid with twelve crystal coffins. Within each coffin lay a woman bearing the same face as Lin Yue, their wristwatches displaying "00:00" from different years. On the central stone platform, the complete file No. 404 hovered, its cover bearing Xia Zichen's photograph. Just as Ah Fu was about to touch the file, all the crystal coffins suddenly vibrated violently, and the women within simultaneously opened their eyes, their pupils swirling with black ink.
"Welcome to the cemetery of memory." A man in black robe walked out from the shadows, his face blurred under the hood like a melted wax figure. "Do you think destroying the prayer wheel can prevent history from being rewritten? Each coffin is an independent anchor point in time and space, and she--" he raised his hand and pointed to the central stone platform, and the photo on the cover of the file turned into Lin Yue's smiling face, "is a living container connecting all the anchor points." Xia Zichen suddenly remembered that Lin Yue always said that she "had a special sensitivity to old things", and a fishy sweetness rose in his throat - it turned out that her existence itself was a historical loophole that had been tampered with.
The black-robed figure waved his sleeve, and twelve coffins opened simultaneously. The women mechanically approached Xia Zichen, the thud of his pocket watch spinning back on its wrist making his temples throb. Ah Fu swung his sword at the nearest woman, only to see the blade pierce through her body. The woman scatters like pages in a book, each containing a fragment of altered history. Suddenly, Xia Zichen's mind struck. He snatched up the scattered pages and pressed them against the blood-red star relief. True memories flooded over the false anchor point, and the bloodstains on the relief began to fade.
"You're courting death!" Ink-colored chains flew from the black-robed figure's sleeves, entangling Xia Zichen. Amidst the excruciating pain, the star map imprint on his palm suddenly projected fragments of Lin Yue's memories: the night of the archives fire, when Lin Yue had protected him as a child. The burns on her back mirrored the scars now visible on the black-robed figure's sleeves. "So you're..." Xia Zichen looked up in shock. The black-robed figure's hood slipped off, revealing a face identical to Lin Yue's, except for his left eye, which was covered in spiderweb-like ink patterns.
"That's right, I am 'Lin Yue' who was swallowed by ink, and 'another possibility' who was removed from official history." She condensed the ink sword on her fingertips and pressed it against Xia Zichen's throat. "When you were born, fate gave me two choices - to rewrite history with the power of your star pattern, or let the world collapse with the old history." Ah Fu took the opportunity to slap fragment No. 404 on the stone file. The yellowed paper suddenly burst into a strong light, and all the "Lin Yue" in the coffins suddenly disappeared.
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