The damp smell of the well, mixed with the metallic rust, filled his nostrils. Ivan stood there blankly, his fingertips still feeling the cool, sticky sensation of the black mist tendrils that had clung to him.
He stared at the strangers in front of him, his Adam's apple bobbing as if countless fragments were colliding in his mind, yet he couldn't even grasp his own name.
"The original consciousness is 97% intact, but the memory storage area is 83% damaged." Chu Yao's data stream shrank into a dark blue star cluster in mid-air, and her mechanical voice was unusually soft. "Although his soul has been purified, his memory structure is like a star map torn apart by a storm - it needs external guidance to rebuild."
Long Wu's palm was sweating as he gripped his Tang sword, the scabbard making a soft sound as it struck the rock wall. "How do we guide it? With the memory reversal device we made before?" Before he finished speaking, more black mist suddenly seeped from the rock wall, and fine, hair-like tentacles climbed up Ivan's boots, startling him so much that he immediately held his sword in front of the two of them.
“The energy level of the memory reversal device is insufficient.” A hoarse male voice drifted from the shadows. Xuan Mingzi was standing at the corner of the well shaft, his robe hem still damp with lingering particles of light. “The core of the mother nest has been entangled with his consciousness for three hundred years. The residual corrosive factors will interfere with ordinary reversal techniques.” His withered fingers rubbed the bronze bell at his waist. “Perhaps we can try ‘Faith Resonance’—using the remaining imprint of the first believer to awaken the memory anchor points deep within his soul.”
"How much faith power is required?" Lin Yi's pupils contracted slightly.
He remembered that the last time he used Faith Resonance was when he was conquering the Moon Goddess Ruins. That time, it consumed three days' worth of Faith Points for the entire Time Legion, and even the Time Emblem between his eyebrows darkened for half a day.
Xuanmingzi's gaze swept over the writhing black mist at Ivan's feet, and his Adam's apple bobbed: "At least... 70%."
The air suddenly became quiet.
Long Wu pressed a red mark into his palm with the hilt of his sword. He turned to look at Lin Yi—the boss had recently expanded his faith power pool to support the teleportation of ten thousand people in order to fight against the interdimensional invaders, and now he was taking away seventy percent of it…
"Do it." Lin Yi's voice was like a sword that had been tempered in fire, cutting away all hesitation.
He recalled how, three days earlier, in the ruins of the Mother Nest, this man, once corrupted by darkness, used his last shred of consciousness to protect all the children in the shelter; he recalled his words before being completely purified: "Let me see the sunlight."
"As long as I can make him remember who he is, even if 70% isn't enough, I'll go for 90%. If all else fails, I'll just go on another trip to the major cities."
Xuanmingzi lightly flicked the bronze bell with his fingertip, and the clear, melodious sound shattered the oppressive atmosphere in the well.
“I need the core of your Soul Resonance Bell.” He looked at the silver bell swaying around Lin Yi’s neck. “That is the connection between you and your believers. Use it as an anchor point to accurately locate Ivan’s memory source.”
Without hesitation, Lin Yi reached out and took off the silver bell.
The star patterns on the surface of the silver bell lit up in his palm, like thousands of fireflies breaking free from their restraints and burrowing into Ivan's brow along his fingertips.
Ivan suddenly covered his forehead, and a pale golden light seeped through his fingers—it was the resonating power of his purified soul.
"Hold my hand." Lin Yi grasped Ivan's cold wrist, while pressing his other hand against the rock wall.
The Time-Space Emblem spread from his palm, drawing an intricate six-pointed star array beneath their feet.
The black mist in the well suddenly surged wildly, but when it touched the edge of the star array, it made a sizzling sound, as if it was being repelled by an invisible barrier.
"Memory Corridor under construction." Chu Yao's projection suddenly covered the entire well shaft, and a light blue data stream enveloped the two of them. "Residual fluctuations of the mother nest detected. Highest level of protection activated. Long Wu, hold the array's core."
Long Wu immediately knelt on one knee and placed his palm on the bronze talisman in the corner of the star array.
His skin glowed with pale golden scales, and the blood of a true dragon roared in his veins—this was the strongest defense he could provide.
Lin Yi could feel his soul being pulled away from his body, as if he were being gently dragged into another dimension by an invisible hand.
The scene before my eyes began to distort, the rock walls of the well shaft turned into flowing light mist, and finally condensed into a long corridor paved with fragments of memory.
The light and shadow flickered on both sides of the corridor, depicting battlefields engulfed in flames, laboratories humming with machinery, and more...
"Wait." Ivan suddenly stopped in his tracks.
He gently lifted his fingertips, touching a blurry patch of light and shadow on his left.
The cloud of light, like an activated holographic projection, slowly unfolded—it was a little girl with pigtails, tiptoeing to place a bowl of hot milk on the windowsill.
“This is…” Ivan’s voice trembled, and the faint scar at the corner of his eye trembled with his eyelashes. “I think I… smell cinnamon.”
Lin Yi looked into his shining eyes, and his heart warmed slightly.
He could sense a warmer light beckoning him from deeper within the corridors of memory.
Those fragments buried by time are being pieced together at a visible speed—perhaps around the next corner, they will see young Ivan holding his daughter building a snowman in the snow, or arguing with his wife in the kitchen about who should wash the dishes.
Behind them, the core of the mother nest deep within the well suddenly let out a mournful cry, as if some being had finally realized that it had forever lost its creator.
The light and shadow in the corridor of memory suddenly became clear.
Ivan's fingertips hovered in mid-air, as if touching some kind of transparent membrane.
The girl with pigtails in the light and shadow suddenly turned her head, revealing a faint scar at the corner of his eye—his youngest daughter, Anna.
On her twelfth birthday, she secretly used her three months' worth of pocket money to buy cinnamon powder and sprinkled a full spoonful into hot milk. The result was cloyingly sweet. The laughter of the father and daughter pierced through three hundred years and crashed into his empty chest.
“Anna…” Ivan’s Adam’s apple bobbed, his voice hoarse like a rusty gear, “She always said the milk I made tasted like snow water, but that winter…”
The corridor continues to extend.
The next scene is a battlefield with a metallic feel. Young Ivan is wearing a silver-white combat uniform, carrying an energy cannon on his shoulder, followed by twenty-seven similarly armed soldiers—his "Dawn Squad," which he personally assembled.
Standing before the ruins of the Mother Nest's core, he held up the newly developed purification device and shouted to his comrades, "Once we've dealt with this monstrosity, I'll treat everyone to Anna's dessert shop!"
“That was in 2137.” Ivan’s fingers unconsciously dug into his palm. “We thought the Mother Nest was just a runaway artificial intelligence, and that we could purify it with the power of faith…”
The image suddenly distorted into blood red.
The black mist at the core of the hive tore through the warriors' protective suits like a living thing. The energy cannon blasted half of a comrade's face in the explosion, the vice-captain's neck was wrapped by tentacles, and Anna's face was crying "Daddy, save me" on the communication screen while holding up a dessert shop sign—all the fragments of memory exploded into blinding spots of light in the corridor like glass shattered by a heavy hammer.
“It was me…it was me who insisted on entering the core alone.” Ivan suddenly staggered and crouched down, his forehead pressed against the ground shrouded in light and mist. “I thought I could control it…but it burrowed into my sea of consciousness, devoured the team, devoured Anna, devoured the entire city…”
His shoulders trembled violently, and his tears fell to the ground, splashing golden ripples in the misty light—the resonance of the purified primal force of his soul.
Lin Yi squatted down and patted him on the back.
He could sense that the soul of this man, who had once been shrouded in darkness, was now like a lotus seed that had just been peeled from its shell—fragile yet pure.
“I’m not a monster…” Ivan suddenly looked up, his eyes reflecting the last image in his memory: his twenty-year-old self adjusting equipment in the lab, the first snow falling outside the window, Anna tiptoeing to slip a piece of candy into his thermos. “I am Ivan Sherov, Anna’s father, the captain of the Dawn Squad…”
He grabbed Lin Yi's wrist, his fingertips trembling with excitement: "Thank you... for not making me a puppet of the mother nest forever."
Lin Yi gently pressed his thumb on the back of his hand.
He recalled three days earlier in the ruins of the Mother Nest, when this corrupted man shielded his twenty-three children with his body, his back covered with black mist tentacles; he recalled that before his consciousness faded, he used his last strength to tell him, "Let me see the sunlight."
Seeing the light rekindle in Ivan's eyes, the heat in his chest almost burned through his ribs—this was the meaning behind his insistence on using 70% of his faith.
"We've done everything we could." Lin Yi stood up and took out a fragment of rune shimmering with starlight from his spatial ring. "Now, it's time to send the mother nest on its final journey."
Chu Yao in the well suddenly issued a notification: "The residual consciousness fluctuations of the mother nest have been detected to increase to the critical point. It is recommended to complete the sealing within three minutes." Long Wu's true dragon scales shone even brighter. His palm, which was originally pressing on the array eye, was almost embedded in the bronze talisman. His knuckles turned white from the force: "Boss, I can hold on."
Xuanmingzi's bronze bell suddenly vibrated automatically, its clear sound resonating with the starlight from the rune fragments.
Lin Yi walked towards the central stone tablet at the deepest part of the well. The tablet was covered with the dark purple patterns unique to the Mother Nest, which were slowly fading as Ivan's memories were being restored.
He pressed the rune fragment into the depression in the center of the stone tablet, and felt a slight vibration at his fingertips—it was the rune and the stone tablet vying for dominance.
"In the name of the master of time and space, seal it." Lin Yi shouted in a low voice.
The spacetime emblem between his brows suddenly lit up, and a stream of silver light flowed down his arm and into the runes, instantly covering the entire stone tablet.
The dark purple patterns hissed and burned, twisting wildly like snakes being roasted by fire, before finally turning into a wisp of black smoke and dissipating into the air.
The black fog in the well had completely dissipated, and a damp wind carrying the scent of fresh grass blew in—sometime earlier, the iron plate at the wellhead had been lifted, and moonlight was shining on Ivan's face.
He tilted his head back, letting the moonlight spill over the faint scar at the corner of his eye, and a stiff but genuine smile appeared on his lips.
"It's over?" Long Wu released the array's core, his scales receding in a flurry, but fine beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. "This godforsaken place is finally clean?"
"Not yet," Xuanmingzi suddenly said.
His Taoist robe fluttered without wind, and a hint of surprise flashed in his originally cloudy eyes. "Look over there—"
Everyone followed his gaze.
In the moonlight shining through the well, a semi-transparent figure suddenly appeared.
It was a man dressed in bronze armor, his face blurred as if shrouded in mist, but the emblem on his chest was clearly visible: a six-pointed star encasing an hourglass of time and space—the very symbol of the first believers.
"The real battle..." His voice seemed to come from a great distance, echoing with a metallic scraping sound, "has only just begun."
Before he finished speaking, his figure vanished like morning mist.
Silence returned to the well, with only Ivan's breathing clearly audible.
Lin Yi touched the empty space around his neck—where the Soul Resonance Bell used to hang, but now it felt as if a piece of it had been scooped out.
He gazed at the night sky outside the well and felt that something was quietly descending upon this world that had just returned to peace, following the path of the moonlight.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com