For three consecutive nights, the same dream, like a cold tide, repeatedly overwhelmed Lin Yi's consciousness.
He stood alone before the grotesque rift in spacetime, a rift like an unhealed scar in the universe, so deep that it swallowed all light.
His left hand held a bright lamp, its light warm and resolute, illuminating countless blurry faces on the other side of the rift.
His right hand, however, was tightly gripping another lamp, whose flame had been completely extinguished in his palm, leaving only a wisp of cold blue smoke.
Sweat soaked his forehead as Lin Yi suddenly woke up from his dream, breathing heavily.
He instinctively reached for the pillow, his fingertips touching something wet, slippery, and cold.
It wasn't sweat, nor was it tears.
It was a viscous, gel-like substance with strange energy fluctuations.
His heart skipped a beat, and he quickly retrieved the miniature testing device. In an instant, the data that popped up on the screen almost froze his blood—its core component was exactly the same as the Seed Liquid-01 Gel that had induced the reverse-growth wheat seedlings.
The memories... are no longer satisfied with external observation and infiltration; they have begun to erode reality from within, from the deepest part of his consciousness.
Lin Yi suddenly understood.
His long-held principle of "not endorsing" and his bystander attitude are not noble protection at all, but a cowardly seal!
He used this seal to isolate himself from those painful memories, locking away the part of himself that was powerless to save everyone.
The night was as dark as ink, but Lin Yi could no longer sleep.
He drove at breakneck speed back to that desolate place called "Shuangbei Yingshui".
The moonlight, like mercury spilling onto the ground, coldly illuminated the two lonely stone tablets.
Guided by memory, he knelt down where the shadows of the monuments met and dug into the damp soil with trembling hands.
Soon, his fingertips touched a hard object—the empty photo frame where he had buried all his obsessions.
He took out the picture frame. Under the moonlight, the soil beneath the glass had already solidified into a translucent amber-colored hard block under the influence of some unknown force.
At the heart of the amber, a drop of dew that never evaporated was sealed away.
He brought the photo frame close to his eyes, and the dewdrop, like a perfect convex lens, clearly reflected a long-forgotten scene: a younger version of himself, with a hint of confusion and fervor in his eyes, on that night of awakening that changed his destiny, tightly gripping that burning-hot professional contract with his trembling right hand.
His throat was dry and sore. Lin Yi looked at the dewdrop and asked in an almost inaudible voice, "What if... I hadn't signed it that day?"
Before the words were even finished, the dewdrop inside the amber suddenly began to boil violently!
Instead of turning into water vapor, it evaporated, twisted, and recombined in the confined space, eventually transforming into a line of ethereal yet clear gaseous characters that caught Lin Yi's eye: "You've long since stopped making that choice."
The moment the text disintegrated, a thunderous roar exploded in Lin Yi's mind.
Meanwhile, at the ruins of a dilapidated house on the other side of the city, a slender figure slowly materialized under the moonlight.
It was Chu Yao; this was her last manifestation.
This time, however, she was not holding the familiar guiding lamp, but rather a framed mirror woven from newly sprouted vines and silver moonlight.
The frame is antique, but there is no mirror; it is so empty that it seems to devour everything.
She walked to the dilapidated wall where the old woman's oil lamp had once hung, and gently hung the vine-framed picture on it, positioning it perfectly.
She stared at the empty frame of the picture, as if whispering to an unseen friend: "Some light must first learn to see itself before it shines in."
Her voice was ethereal and melodious, and as she finished speaking, flowing light and shadow began to slowly emerge inside the empty frame of the mirror.
The light and shadow are a microcosm of Lin Yi's countless nights over the years—lighting the way for firefighters in the rainstorm, supporting hope for survivors under the ruins, and lighting lamps in every corner that needs light... However, in every scene, he himself is always facing away from the light source he created with his own hands, his shadow stretched long and lonely.
As the light and shadow faded, Chu Yao's figure began to thin and become transparent, eventually dissipating in the wind like morning mist, leaving only the vine-framed mirror hanging forlornly on the crumbling wall, quietly awaiting its owner.
Almost at the same moment Chu Yao disappeared, Ivan's intermittent whispers from the ley lines coalesced in Lin Yi's mind for the first time into a complete and clear sentence, like a resounding bell, shaking his soul: "What you protect is also protecting you."
Lin Yi was startled.
He understood.
He was never an observer outside the system. From the moment he signed the contract, from the moment he lit the lights every time, the memory had already incorporated him into the calculations of the entire massive system.
He is not a chess player; he himself is the most crucial piece, a key node!
No more hesitation, no more retreat.
Lin Yi returned to the safe house and took out the twelve ancient pottery shards engraved with the word "listen" from a dusty box.
He took a deep breath, picked up one of the coins, and smashed it hard on the ground!
The pottery shards shattered upon impact.
He picked up the largest fragment, ground it into powder, mixed it into a glass of water without hesitation, and drank it all in one gulp.
That night, he fell into an unprecedentedly deep dream.
There are no visuals, only sounds.
Countless voices, men and women, young and old, seemed to resound from every cell of his body, whispering deep within his soul, converging into a single, crystal-clear sentence: "We remember... all the fears you dared not speak aloud."
The excruciating pain dragged him back to reality from his dream!
Lin Yi suddenly opened his eyes and looked at his right palm.
On the palm of his hand, a wound that had long since healed and disappeared suddenly burst open again!
That was the mark left when he was torn apart by the raging temporal turbulence during the last time he used the power of [Time and Space Domination].
At this moment, instead of bright red blood flowing from the wound, plump beads of blood, carrying a rich wheat aroma, seeped out.
He finally stopped avoiding it.
As the first rays of dawn appeared, Lin Yi arrived at the center of the ruins of the water pumping station.
He lit a brand new oil lamp, and the warm flame dispelled the surrounding chill.
Then, he took out the vine-framed mirror from his pocket, placed it in front of him, and let it reflect the light of the oil lamp.
He stared into the emptiness in the picture frame, exposing his deepest fears to the air for the first time.
His voice was hoarse, but unusually firm: "I'm afraid... I'm afraid I can't save everyone."
The moment the words left his mouth, the empty mirror suddenly lit up!
The mirror was no longer empty, but reflected countless faces—the old woman hanging the lamp, the tired but determined firefighter, the veteran who still saluted despite his broken leg, the gentle nurse… and one more, his own face.
They were no longer silent, no longer ambiguous. Their lips parted simultaneously, and in the same steady and powerful voice, they whispered in unison: "That's why we must stand up for ourselves."
"Boom!"
The ground beneath him cracked open!
Beside that strange wheat seedling growing backwards in the ruins of the pumping station, a brand new sprout broke through the soil.
It doesn't grow backwards, but rather straight up towards the sky, full of vibrant vitality.
What's even more alarming is that on that verdant stem, there is a scar pattern that is exactly the same as the one on his palm!
The next morning, Lin Yi made a decision.
He moved the magical vine-framed mirror to the center of a flower bed at an intersection in the city center, placing it neatly in front of an inconspicuous little tree.
From that day on, he stopped all recording and intervention, and only every morning, amidst the hustle and bustle of traffic, would come here and sit quietly for ten minutes facing that tree and that mirror.
Day after day, the city continues to function, as if nothing has changed.
On the morning of the seventh day, when the first ray of sunlight pierced through the thin mist and cast the shadow of the small tree onto the vine-covered mirror, a strange change occurred.
The ordinary tree shadow, falling on the mirror, was neither absorbed nor reflected, but was refracted, distorted, and reconstructed into a majestic yet illusory architectural outline!
Its outline was incredibly bizarre, possessing both the dilapidated state of a crumbling house and the industrial feel of a water pumping station. At its core, it exuded a grandeur and desolation as if it existed only in the depths of a rift in time and space.
The instant the building's outline took shape, the whispers of the earth's veins, silent for seven days, resonated like the tolling of an ancient bell slumbering for billions of years, rising from the depths of the earth's core and solemnly proclaiming in Lin Yi's mind:
“Unit 93… will be unsealed in the first ray of self-illuminating light…”
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