Chapter 294 The Truth about Crow Shadow
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Lin Xi sank into darkness.
Her body fell into unconsciousness, but her soul seemed to be awake, patrolling the wonderful realm of the brain.
As she continued to fall, she felt a sense of déjà vu: it seemed as if she had had this experience before.
But soon, her feet were on solid ground.
The vision became wider, and the world seemed to suddenly usher in daylight from darkness. Everything around suddenly became brighter, and almost everything was glowing.
In order to adapt to the sudden light, Lin Xi had to squint her eyes. After a long while, she dared to open her eyes.
This seemed to be a spacious space, all pure white. At the end was a bench, and a figure sat with his back to her.
She stepped forward.
"Who are you?" she asked.
The feeling here was very peaceful and tranquil. The voice of "Lin Xi" that had been bothering her had also disappeared. If possible, Lin Xi wanted to stay here for a while longer.
"Who am I?" the man repeated strangely, and then laughed.
The laughter was also very friendly, making Lin Xi feel relaxed. She walked to a place not far from the bench, wanting to see the man's face directly. However, there seemed to be an insurmountable wall of air between her and the bench. She wanted to get closer but could not move an inch. She could only stare at the man.
"Did you drive Lin Xi away?" Lin Xi asked.
She felt that the sigh she heard at the fire scene yesterday seemed to come from this person.
"Ah, yes, that's right." The man snapped his fingers, his back to Lin Xi. "That was the initial consciousness of this body. Although I used hypnosis to temporarily keep her dormant, as you've learned more and more recently, she's naturally reappeared."
"So, she is indeed the real 'Lin Xi'?" Lin Xi rubbed his brows, "I stole her body?"
"Haha, it's not like you're stealing it." The figure laughed. "Besides, Lin Xi is your name. She's not Lin Xi, she has another code name."
"My name? Then what's her name?" Lin Xi asked confusedly.
"Hmm...actually, we usually refer to her by her experiment number." The man paused for a moment. "What's her number? 004753?"
Lin Xi was silent for a while, trying to understand the current situation.
"What exactly did I do before?" she asked. "Did I conduct... human experiments on a group of people? You mentioned the experiment number, which means there are many people like 004753."
"Well, how should I put it?" the man laughed. "What you did wasn't just kidnapping a bunch of people, locking them in a room, and giving them all kinds of injections—like what happened thirty years ago at Baijiu Pharmaceutical. You used specific genes to create a group of clones, nurturing them from embryos into healthy fetuses in vitro, and then raising them. Does that count as human experimentation? Haha... In a sense, those clones are all your children."
"If the number 004753 is arranged from the beginning of the sequence, then it means... I have created at least 4,753 clones." Lin Xi frowned, "What is my purpose?"
"Stay alive." The man snapped his fingers again. "Isn't it strange? Expending so much effort to cultivate these clones, finding the perfect receptor, and implanting your thoughts into her brain, all for such a simple purpose. But it's understandable—for ordinary people, staying alive is just a simple prerequisite for facing life, but for you, staying alive is something you must fight for with all your might."
A flash of inspiration seemed to appear in Lin Xi's mind.
"Why? Why is it so hard for me to survive?"
"Haha, you've truly forgotten a lot since losing your memory six months ago." The man shook his head. "Even if I don't remind you, you can figure it out on your own, right? You should understand the nature of this world by now, right? This is a comic book, and you're the villain. You'll eventually be discovered by the protagonists, defeated, and killed. That's how storybooks are written."
Lin Xi's heart ached inexplicably.
The protagonists...will Ai also want to kill her?
But wasn't that what he had been planning to do? To take over the boss's position in the first instance, to complete the entire story in the shortest possible time and with the highest possible efficiency...
"Do you think that if you hadn't killed Karasuma Renya, you wouldn't be the boss now?" The man seemed to see through her thoughts. "No, you being the boss has nothing to do with whether Karasuma Renya lives or dies. Well, let me explain it to you."
"You are the boss of the Black Organization. Your influence spans the globe, your assets are vast, and you secretly manipulate numerous leads and figures in the political, economic, and scientific communities around the world. You have loyal and capable subordinates, some of whom even consider you more important than their own lives. You have spies in official organizations around the world, such as the FBI, CIA, M16, and the Japanese Public Security Bureau, and their actions cannot escape your surveillance. It can be said that in this world, anything you want to do is possible under your watch."
"However, after the appearance of 'Edogawa Conan', things changed. Your members became foolish and your own luck became extremely bad. When facing him, it seemed that the whole world was on his side. Even the members you thought were loyal were strangely influenced by him and secretly helped him."
"Your criminal empire began to crumble and fall. You didn't understand why it turned out this way, but it happened just like that - you were almost forced into a dead end by a little kid. According to the plot, you would eventually die at their hands - either while escaping or while being punished. Later, you finally understood why things turned out this way. It was just because of an absurd reason - you were the villain, and he was the protagonist!"
"So you began to struggle against fate, unleashing the preparations you'd made in your leisurely days. 'We are both God and the devil. We want to reverse the flow of time and bring the dead back to life...' This appears to be a single goal, but it actually represents preparations in two different directions. The first is to bring the dead back to life. The APTX series of drugs and 'Dead Water' you invented came in handy. No matter how severe the injury, or how close to death, an injection of 'Dead Water' can instantly revive a person... even those whose heart and breathing have stopped, but whose brains are still alive."
"The second one... is reversing time. Sound familiar? Haha, anchoring a point in the river of time, and going back when a bad ending comes—in other words, in gaming terms, this is 'save/rewind'."
"The software you ordered Itakura Taku to create is the 'system' you have now. Don't be surprised. You don't really think you're an alien, do you?"
"But..." Lin Xi said blankly, "I remember... my original world, my family..."
"Haha, really? Do you *really* remember?" the man's voice was tinged with pity. "You remember you had parents, and you remember you were a student. So, what were your parents' names? Where did you go to school? What city are you from?"
"I……"
Lin Xi wanted to refute, but found that he couldn't speak.
What were her parents' names? What did they look like? She clearly remembered them, but she couldn't even pronounce their names.
Where did she go to school? Which school? She couldn't even remember the name. She didn't even know which city she was from.
"These are the 'system presets' you set for yourself," the man said. "To help you quickly adapt to your recent amnesia, you transformed the software into a game system, set initial settings for yourself, and told yourself you were a time traveler. In reality, you've always been in this world, and you've always belonged to it."
Lin Xi's breathing stopped.
The reality that lay before her almost destroyed all her efforts to return home.
"What's wrong? Is it unbelievable? ... Things just develop in such a strange way. You have to learn to accept reality - you don't have a distant home to return to. Your hometown is right here, in the comic books."
The man sighed, and the sound came from the drifting mist.
After saying this, the man was silent for a while, giving Lin Xi some time to digest it.
"So... I've gone back in time before. Is the current timeline actually the result of my going back in time?"
"That's right," the man said. "In order to deceive the world, you erased your previous memories and returned to the beginning of the story. You left yourself almost no hints, but you still became the boss, because you were originally the boss."
Lin Xi lowered his head.
"So, I am indeed a murderer."
"More than that," the man said curiously. "According to the moral standards of human society, you've committed countless crimes, unforgivable. And now you're just obsessed with whether you're a murderer... No wonder you're experiencing so many adverse reactions as your memory begins to return, and even have to rely on medication to alleviate them. I guess your thoughts have changed since you lost your memory! You've actually started to cultivate relationships with your subordinates and actually treat that child as your younger sister. But you can't forget your past self!"
The man tilted his head slightly, as if wanting to look at Lin Xi.
"You are extremely possessive and controlling, possess a bad taste, are arrogant, and are unwilling to form close relationships with others. You regard the world as a game, and the people who walk in it as empty shells made of lines and blocks of color. They are all your pawns, destined to bow to you - you will break fate and become the villain who kills the protagonist."
Her head turned completely around.
The fog dissipated and Lin Xi saw her face.
"Back to the original question - who am I?"
The man smiled softly:
"—I am you. The you of the past."
She has a face that looks exactly like Lin Xi's.
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