The metal casing of the control panel was still hissing and emitting blue smoke, while the door formed by light mist in mid-air became increasingly clear.
A purplish-black chaos surged behind the door, each pulse feeling like an invisible hand gripping Lin Yi's heart—the spacetime rift key in his palm was burning hot, the star patterns flickering with the rhythm of the door, those were the star trail totems he had personally carved at the entrance of "God Realm-a" three years ago in the other-dimensional ruins.
"Lin...Lin Yi." Ivan's fingers almost dug into his wrist. This man, once parasitized by the core of the Mother Nest, was trembling all over, his body temperature as low as ice. "The frequency of the Mother Nest's spatial channel...completely overlapped." His Adam's apple bobbed, his pupils reflecting the surging purple light behind the door. "Back then, they used this kind of fluctuation to transform me into...transform me into a monster."
Lin Yi's gaze swept back and forth across the door.
He saw blurry images flashing back in the light and mist at the center of the door: himself in a lab coat standing in the Nest Laboratory, in front of him was a culture chamber labeled "Subject 0," the glass covered with fog, and the huddled figure inside looked like an unformed shadow—those were fragments of his memory that had been deliberately sealed away, but now, with the pulse of the door, they were being stuffed into his brain as if being pinched with tweezers.
"Beep—" Chu Yao's projection suddenly froze by the door, with lingering blue smoke still clinging to the ends of her hair.
Her fingers flew across the virtual keyboard, the sound three times faster than usual: "Main power restart complete 73%, image data transferred to the 17th layer cache—but the space inside the door is fluctuating abnormally, currently matching the coordinates of Divine Realm-A from three years ago..."
Before the words were finished, a crisp sound like bones grinding came from behind the door.
A second hand emerged from the purple light. This time, it wasn't a semi-transparent mist, but a real arm covered in scales. Black blood seeped between the dark blue scales, and the fingernails were half a foot long. When it grabbed the door frame, the door formed by the mist was scratched with spiderweb-like cracks.
"They've finally arrived."
A sinister voice, mixed with a muffled thud from inside the door, exploded outwards.
Lin Yi's pupils constricted sharply—it was the voice of the Obsidian Commander!
The old adversary, who had disappeared for three months, was now squeezing out of the door. A crack had appeared in the shoulder armor on his left shoulder, revealing writhing purple tentacles beneath. The metal eyepatch over his left eye was gone, and a crystal shimmering with starlight was embedded in its socket. "I knew it. Those eyes of yours, always eager to uncover the truth, would break down this door for me."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Long Wu's furious shout came from behind.
The man who had awakened the bloodline of a true dragon was grabbing Lei Yao by the back of his collar, twisting Lei Yao's arms behind his back like a pretzel. But Long Wu's attention was entirely on Hei Yao, whose dragon scales on his neck were already glowing with golden light, ready to pounce at any moment.
Obsidian didn't even glance at Long Wu.
He stared at Lin Yi, a twisted smile spreading across his cracked lips: "You think you're looking for the truth?" He raised his hand, the black blood seeping from his fingertips drawing a star trail pattern in the air, identical to the one on the key. "From the day you picked up the spacetime rift key, from the day you opened the incubation chamber of the Mother Nest Laboratory—" He suddenly pointed to the key on Lin Yi's chest, "all the choices were scripts written by advanced civilizations."
You're nothing but a... self-righteous puppet on a string.
"Bullshit!" Long Wu's dragon breath was already rolling in his throat, but Lin Yi raised his hand to stop it.
Lin Yi's breathing suddenly became very light.
He stared at the crystal in the obsidian eye socket, whose pulsating frequency was exactly the same as that of the spacetime rift key—he had seen the same starlight flowing three years ago at the entrance to the Divine Realm-A.
A suppressed thought exploded in his mind: "You triggered the resonance of the key?"
So this door...
"Clever." Obsidian's fingernails scratched across the door frame, and the light mist seeping from the cracks wrapped around his arm. "The seal of the Divine Realm-A requires the resonance of two cores. The core of the Mother Nest is in Ivan's mind, and the key to the spacetime rift is in your hands—" He suddenly grabbed the door frame and fell into the doorway. "Now, I've pressed the activation button for you."
"And you'll come in too, after all..." His voice trailed off as his body was swallowed by the door, "You're best at cleaning up other people's messes."
"Brother Lin!" Long Wu's dragon scales almost pierced his skin. "Let me chase after him!"
That bastard just talked about some marionette, I'll tear him to shreds!
"Wait." Xuanmingzi's voice suddenly came from the ceiling vent.
The game's mastermind, who always wore a Taoist robe, was now pale, with talisman ash still clinging to his cuffs. "We can't let him into the Divine Realm." He strode to the control panel, his fingertips tracing runes on the still-hot metal surface. "It contains the core data of the 'Faith Project,' the final evaluation criteria used by advanced civilizations to select Earth."
If it is tampered with...
"So he was in a hurry to go in and tamper with the data, to make the evaluation results biased in their favor?" Lin Yi stroked his chin, his gaze never leaving the still trembling door.
He recalled the fragmented chapter Chu Yao had analyzed: "When the key resonates with the core, the sealed door will open for the greedy." So, the "greedy" didn't refer to him, but to the person who exploited him—Obsidian exploited his obsession with the truth, triggering the dual-core resonance.
"But the problem is..." He turned to Ivan, "wasn't the Mother Nest core destroyed by you?"
Ivan's face was even paler than before.
He touched the old scar on the back of his neck, where the hive had once been a parasitic site in the core of the nest: "Perhaps... they left a backup." His voice was hoarse, "Like Subject Zero..."
Experiment subject 0.
This word was like a needle piercing Lin Yi's memory.
Three years ago in the Nest Lab, he did open the culture chamber labeled with that tag, but it was empty—at the time he thought it was a failed experiment, but now he thinks it might not have been a failure at all, but rather...
"Chu Yao!" Lin Yi suddenly raised his voice, "Check the surveillance footage from the Mother Nest Laboratory three years ago, the data from the culture chamber of Subject 0!"
"Retrieving data." Chu Yao's projection suddenly flickered, the blue smoke in her hair turning red. "But the space inside the door is interfering with the signal... Main power restart complete 98%... Abnormal energy fluctuation detected, suspected to be..."
"Suspected of what?" Long Wu leaned closer.
"Suspected..." Chu Yao's voice suddenly faltered, and the data stream in her pupils scrolled frantically, "Calculating... 17 seconds required."
Lin Yi stared at the door.
The purple light behind the door stopped surging and instead became unusually calm, like a clean mirror.
He could see his own reflection in it, overlapping with the image from the lab three years ago—himself in a lab coat, reaching out to touch the switch on the culture chamber.
"Brother Lin, what are you planning to do?" Long Wu's hand rested on his shoulder, the warmth of his dragon scales seeping through his clothes. "To go in or not?"
Lin Yi took out the Time Rift Key.
The key was no longer hot, but the star pattern shone brighter than ever, as if urging him to make a decision.
He recalled what Xuanmingzi had said three days ago: "The gate to the Divine Realm-A will only open for those who can bear the truth." And now, the truth within the gate might hold Ivan's past, the secrets of the Mother Nest, or even the true purpose of an advanced civilization in selecting Earth.
"Go in." He hung the key back around his neck, looked up at Xuan Mingzi, and said, "You stay and set up the spatial barrier to prevent energy from leaking out from behind the door; Long Wu, keep an eye on Lei Yao and the rest of the scum; Ivan..." He turned to the still trembling man, "and with me, find the truth that belongs to you."
Ivan's Adam's apple bobbed.
He looked down at his hands, hands that had been transformed into killing tools by the Mother Nest's core, now slowly clenching into fists: "Fine." His voice was as soft as a sigh, yet carried the power of breaking free from a cocoon, "This time... I choose for myself."
"Chu Yao, how's the data analysis going?" Lin Yi turned and walked towards the portal.
"17 seconds have elapsed." Chu Yao's projection suddenly stabilized. She stared at the data stream at her fingertips, her eyebrows twitching sharply. "Detected... vital signs of Subject 0."
"What?" Long Wu's eyes widened in surprise.
"But the coordinates..." Chu Yao's voice suddenly lowered, "...are inside the door."
The portal suddenly beeped.
A third hand emerged from the purple light. This time it was a human hand, pale and slender, with a faded red string on its wrist—a string that Lin Yi knew all too well, the one he had left in the Mother Nest Laboratory three years ago.
"Brother Lin!" Long Wu unleashed his full dragon breath.
Lin Yi stepped to the door.
He stared at the hand, his throat tightening—the lucky charm on the red string gleamed warmly in the purple light, overlapping with the warmth of a girl tiptoeing to put it on him on a snowy night in his memory.
"Let's go." He grabbed Ivan's wrist and placed his other hand on the door frame.
The time-space rift key was pressed against his chest, so hot it felt like it would burn through his skin. "Whatever's inside, I'm going to tear this damn script apart with my own hands."
The purple light inside the door suddenly reversed direction.
The moment the two figures were sucked in, Lin Yi heard Chu Yao's voice boom from behind: "Wait!"
New data was analyzed—the gene sequence of experiment subject 0, and...
The rest of the conversation was drowned out by the roar from inside the door.
Lin Yi felt a cool liquid wash over his ankles. When he opened his eyes, they were standing in a space composed of star trails. Directly in front of them floated a crystal tablet with three bloody characters engraved on it:
"Cabion 0: Lin Yi" The cold light of the star track space crawled into Lin Yi's pupils along the edges of the crystal monument. He stared at the reflection of the three bloody words, his Adam's apple bobbing violently twice - the huddled shadow in the Mother Nest Laboratory three years ago finally appeared in his memory.
It was him, himself in a hospital gown, with the same red string wrapped around his wrist as he did now, looking at "himself" through the fogged glass of the incubation chamber with the same gaze he had now.
“This is impossible.” The moment Ivan’s fingertips touched the crystal monument, the entire monument suddenly rippled like waves of blood.
He recoiled as if burned, a familiar burning sensation emanating from the old scar on the back of his neck—the resonance of the remnants of the Mother Nest's core. "The Mother Nest's experimental subject number... how could it be your name?"
Lin Yi did not answer.
His gaze was fixed on the surging images on the monument: a stranger in a white coat was injecting purple reagent into the culture chamber, and the gene map jumping on the monitoring screen gradually overlapped with his current DNA.
A mechanical voice boomed from the depths of memory: "Subject 0, 99.7% compatibility with the spacetime master, initiate the 'Faith Project' rehearsal."
"Brother Lin!" Long Wu's roar suddenly came through the communicator, "Chu Yao has finished analyzing the data!"
Lin Yi then realized that the headset signal had been restored at some point.
Chu Yao's projection emerged from the time-space wristwatch on the back of his hand, the red light from her hair stinging his eyes: "The fluctuations inside the door just now weren't random!" She swiped her fingertips across the virtual screen, bringing up two sets of overlapping waveforms, "Your brainwave frequency perfectly matches the spatial resonance of the Divine Realm-a—they are calling you in a targeted manner."
“Summoning?” Ivan’s voice trembled. “Like the Mother Core summoning a host?”
“More precise.” Data streams condensed into star trails in Chu Yao’s pupils. “The star pattern you carved in the Divine Realm-A three years ago is essentially a ‘response code’ left by an advanced civilization. Every time you get close to the truth, your brainwaves will activate the response, drawing the ‘observer’ inside the door over.” She suddenly pointed to the crystal tablet. “Now they’ve even revealed the truth about Subject 0—this is not a coincidence, it’s bait.”
Lin Yi's fingernails dug into his palm.
He looked at his name on the monument and suddenly laughed: "So what Obsidian said about the marionette is true?"
“Not necessarily.” Xuanmingzi’s voice came from the other end of the communicator, carrying the acrid smell of burning talismans. “The evaluation criterion for the Faith Project is ‘autonomous choice.’ If they use real shackles, and you insist on breaking free… that would be the most perfect answer.”
"Brother Lin, what are you planning to do?" Long Wu's breathing was heavy. "The commotion outside is getting louder and louder. I can hear the engines of armored vehicles—that kid Obsidian might have brought a large force!"
Lin Yi's gaze swept over his image on the crystal monument.
The "he" trapped in the incubation chamber was mouthing to the glass, the trajectory of his lips opening and closing exactly the same as when Chu Yao tied the red string for him on a snowy night three years ago: "Don't be afraid, I'm here to pick you up."
“Go.” He took off the spacetime rift key from his neck; the star pattern on the key was dazzlingly bright. “They’re waiting for me to dismantle the script, so I’ll just flip the stage.”
“Wait.” Ivan suddenly grabbed his wrist.
The man, who had been transformed into a monster by the Mother Nest, now had tears welling up in his eyes. "Do you remember when we first met? In the ruins of the newbie village, you stepped on the Mother Nest's tentacles and said—'Fate should not be written.'"
Lin Yi looked down at their clasped wrists.
On the back of Ivan's hand, the scars from when the tentacles gnawed at him were fading, as if healing with his heartbeat: "That's why I have to go in." He took Ivan's hand in return, "This time, it's not about cleaning up someone else's mess, it's about ourselves."
A sharp, metallic screeching sound came from the communicator.
Long Wu roared, "They've broken through the outer defenses! Brother Lin, hurry—"
"Let's go." Lin Yi grabbed Ivan and rushed towards the crystal monument.
As they approached, the monument automatically cracked open, and the wind that rushed out carried a familiar smell of rust—the smell of the ventilation ducts in the Mother Nest Laboratory.
He glanced back at Chu Yao in the projection on his wristwatch. The girl was giving him an "OK" sign, and the red light in her hair turned into a determined blue.
The moment Lin Yi stepped through the crack, he heard Long Wu's dragon roar from outside the door, Xuan Mingzi's low shout as he chanted the incantation, and Chu Yao's clattering sound as she typed on the keyboard.
These sounds seemed to be slowed down, gradually blurring into a buzzing sound.
He felt cold tentacles wrap around his ankles, not the malice of the mother nest, but... a kind of expectation.
"My consciousness... is about to crack?" He vaguely saw countless versions of himself flashing before his eyes: himself wielding a sword in the newbie village, himself establishing a time-space legion, himself holding the injured Chu Yao.
Every "he" is shouting the same thing: "Don't believe the endings they wrote."
In his last moments of lucidity, he heard the crystal tablet close softly behind him.
A voice chuckled softly in the darkness: "Welcome to the final exam hall of the Faith Project."
The next second, his consciousness, like a star thrown into a shredder, shattered into billions of light fragments, scattering in different directions of spacetime...
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