Lin Yi was awakened by the cold, hard touch of the mirror.
He knelt on the ground, his knees pressing against some kind of glass-like material, the coolness seeping into his flesh through the fabric.
The moment he looked up, his breath caught in his throat—there were mirrors on all four sides, and he was reflected in every one of them.
Some wore blood-stained battle armor, their shoulder armor torn to pieces; others had bandages wrapped around their foreheads, their eyes still filled with the confusion of their recent awakening; in the nearest mirror, "he" was blinking in sync with himself, his eyelashes fluttering at the exact same frequency.
\"Who are you?\"
The hoarse whispers came from all directions, like countless fine needles piercing the eardrums.
The "Lin Yi" in the left mirror suddenly raised his hand, his fingertips touching the mirror surface, causing ripples: "Are you the master of fate, or its prisoner?" The "Lin Yi" on the right then spoke, his voice overlapping into a buzzing sound, "The 99th experiment failed. Sample number 100... how do I become the template?"
Lin Yi suddenly stood up, his back hitting the mirrored wall behind him.
The "he" in the mirror also staggered, his palm pressed against the mirror surface, the warmth of his palm transmitted through the cool material—it wasn't an illusion.
His Adam's apple bobbed, his fingertips dug into his palms, the pain gradually clearing his mind: "This is the ultimate trap of the Fate System." The encrypted logs he had seen in the lab moments before suddenly exploded in his mind. The words "Fate resets sample consciousness" cut through the fog like sharp blades. So the so-called "master of spacetime" was nothing more than an experiment in the screening mechanism of an advanced civilization?
"You must choose a 'true' version of yourself." Xuan Mingzi's voice suddenly rang in his mind, with a metallic scraping sound. "The Fate System is extracting your data from all timelines; it's looking for the most stable template."
If you don't actively choose, it will erase your current existence and replace you with a template.
Lin Yi's pupils suddenly contracted.
He recalled the burning sensation of the jade pendant around his neck during his first awakening; he remembered the light in the boy's eyes as he used a spacetime rift to save Long Wu from the monsters' attack in the starting village; he remembered Chu Yao's first human-like smile, saying, "Host's emotional fluctuation detected +15%"; he remembered Ivan struggling to crawl out of the core of the nest, covered in blood but desperately protecting a crying little girl on the street—were those memories he treasured all "stable data" deliberately created by the system?
"No." He hissed, his nails digging into his palms until blood beaded. "The pain was real, the laughter was real. The sword I took for Su Qing still hurts." He turned to look at the countless reflections, suddenly noticing that the one at the very edge was different—the "him" in the mirror was wearing a faded school uniform, just like before he entered the game. His left wrist still bore the scar from a basketball fall in high school. He remembered that scar clearly; back then, Chu Yao had complained, "Human bodies are so fragile."
"Because this is who I truly am." Lin Yi's breathing gradually calmed, a warm light appearing in his eyes. "Not a template shaped by the system, but someone who has walked this path step by step on my own... Lin Yi."
\"Bang!\"
The mirror space suddenly trembled violently, and the mirror above cracked with spiderweb-like patterns.
Lin Yi staggered two steps and caught a glimpse of Ivan's figure appearing and disappearing in the crack at the edge of space.
The man who had been parasitized by the core of the Mother Nest was now shrouded in black smoke. His left eye was a deep brown, like a human's, while his right eye shone with the eerie blue unique to the Mother Nest. He was pounding on an invisible barrier with his fist: "I...I'm not a clone!" His voice was broken and tearful. "I remember my mother's borscht, I remember the test tubes I smashed in the St. Petersburg University lab, I remember...I remember the feeling of my daughter's little finger hooking around my index finger when I first held her!"
"You chose to be yourself." Lin Yi rushed over and placed his palm on the barrier.
He could feel Ivan's warmth on the other side of the barrier, like a flame struggling in a snowstorm. "Those memories aren't data; they're proof you lived." He bit his tongue, blood mingling with golden faith power flowing from his palm—the power born from the trust the Time Legion members had placed in him. "Take this and burn through the label the system gave you!"
Ivan's right eye suddenly closed, and his dark brown left eye glistened with tears.
He caught the golden light, and a pale golden flame ignited in his palm, sizzling as it burned the black smoke: "Thank...thank you."
"The spatial stability has dropped below 30%!" Long Wu's voice exploded from the communicator, carrying the unique tremor of a dragon's roar. "The mirror wall is collapsing, and I see the outermost mirror starting to devour its reflection!" Lin Yi looked up and, sure enough, saw in the nearest mirror, a "self" being swallowed up by darkness little by little, only managing to show a look of terror.
Long Wu's dragon-scale arm armor gleamed silver outside the spatial rift. He knelt on one knee, using his dragon tail for balance. "Boss, I can't hold on much longer!"
Lin Yi turned and rushed toward the mirror on the edge.
The "he" in the mirror also moved, raising a hand to press against the other side of the mirror, a thin, icy barrier separating his palm from his own. "You've finally come," the person in the mirror spoke, their voice carrying a youthful familiarity—it was his high school self. "I've been waiting for you for a long time."
"Because I almost forgot where I started." Lin Yi laughed, tears falling onto the mirror and splashing up tiny ripples. "But now I remember—my name is Lin Yi, I am the leader of the Time Legion, the host of Chu Yao, the brother of Long Wu, and the comrade-in-arms of Ivan."
These identities weren't given to me by the system; I chose them myself.
He poured all his faith into his palm.
Suddenly, the mirror emitted a blinding white light, and the figure in the mirror began to blur, eventually turning into specks of starlight that merged into his brow.
The entire space emitted a dying scream: "Fate Template 99... Confirmed... Rebooting..."
The next second, everything went black before Lin Yi's eyes.
When he opened his eyes again, he was standing in the command center of the real-world base.
Chu Yao's holographic projection floated perfectly before him, her hair still tinged with the blue light of flowing data: "All abnormal data streams have been cleared; the core program of the Destiny System has completely collapsed." Her voice, unusually, carried a hint of emotion. "The jade pendant around your neck... has disappeared."
Lin Yi touched his neck and found it was indeed empty.
But he wasn't heartbroken—the jade pendant contained the chip the system used to monitor him.
\"bite--\"
The monitor screen suddenly flickered.
Lin Yi frowned and looked at the holographic screen on the wall, which displayed real-time monitoring of the base's corridor.
Just as he was about to look away, a familiar figure flashed by in the shadows in the corner of the screen: wearing blood-stained battle armor, shoulder armor shattered into pieces, silently watching the surveillance camera.
"Chu Yao, replay the surveillance footage from three seconds ago." Lin Yi's voice deepened.
"Retrieved." The image on the holographic screen reversed, and the figure in the shadows reappeared—was that...another version of myself?
An alarm suddenly sounded in the command center.
Lin Yi stared at the monitor screen, his fingers slowly clenching.
He knew that this battle with fate was far from over.
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