The Gate of Destiny slowly closed behind Lin Yi. The giant gate, interwoven with light and darkness, did not disappear, but rather merged into the void like a mirage, leaving only tiny, almost imperceptible ripples in space.
The moment the door closed, the air in the entire base seemed to freeze, and everyone's eyes were fixed on Lin Yi, as if he were a god who had returned from hell.
His face was pale, not from exhaustion, but from a profound weariness that came from the soul.
Those eyes, which had once pierced through countless futures, now held an unprecedented solemnity, and in their hands they tightly gripped a peculiar crystal that was entirely black, yet its surface flowed with a star-like radiance.
The light was not a reflection, but rather emanated from within the crystal, as if imprisoning a real, miniature universe.
"Behind the door..." Lin Yi's voice was hoarse, each word seemingly squeezed out with difficulty from his throat, carrying a chilling aura, "It's a graveyard. The graveyard of all failed timelines."
One sentence sent a chill down everyone's spine.
Chu Yao's fingertips paused slightly on the holographic keyboard, and a crack appeared on Long Wu's perpetually icy face.
“At the end of each cycle, every world that we abandoned or failed in did not truly perish.” Lin Yi’s gaze swept over everyone, finally landing on a certain point in the void, as if he could see the scene behind that door. “They were dragged, compressed, and crushed by an irresistible force, turning into a pile of chaotic data remnants, piled up on the other side of the door. That is the end of all errors.”
He paused, took a deep breath, as if gathering the courage to speak the even more brutal truth: "And the 'me' that attacked me is an aggregate of the remains of all the 'Lin Yi's' who were corrupted and alienated by the higher-dimensional will in the previous sixteen reincarnations. It... or rather 'them', is no longer me, but a monster that desires to devour everything. Now, it is trying to infiltrate our real world through the crack left when the door opened."
These words struck like a heavy hammer blow to everyone's heart.
They are fighting not only against an unknown enemy, but also against the nightmares born from their own past failures and shadows.
"Give me the crystal." Chu Yao was the first to recover from the shock. Her eyes were sharp as knives, and her face was filled with the calm and fervor unique to an analyst.
Lin Yi handed over the cold crystal.
The moment the crystal touched her fingertips, Chu Yao's body trembled almost imperceptibly, and a massive flow of information rushed into the data terminal.
On the holographic screen, countless lines of code refreshed like a waterfall, so complex it was dazzling.
“The data structure…unprecedented.” Chu Yao murmured to herself, her fingers flying across the keyboard so fast they almost left afterimages. “But the underlying logic…marks our civilization. It’s an encrypted command stream, shrouded in a fog of multiple layers of spacetime paradoxes…I’m trying to peel it away…I’ve found it!”
In the center of the screen, a line of highlighted coordinate data clearly appears.
Those coordinates do not point to any location on Earth, but to an invisible space station located in geosynchronous orbit.
"The Ark Core!" Chu Yao exclaimed in shock. "That's a backup node of the original 'Oracle' game server! It's been abandoned long ago!" She looked up abruptly, her eyes flashing with a mixture of realization and fear. "I understand... The higher-dimensional will didn't appear out of thin air. It's not the creator, but the tamperer! It found the source of our civilization—the game that digitized the world, and by tampering with the oldest system protocols, it forcibly incorporated our reality into the game template it set!"
The revelation of a corner of the truth brought only deeper despair.
They are not fighting invaders, but struggling in a game whose rules have already been changed.
At that very moment, a sudden change occurred!
"Ah—!" An uncontrollable roar of pain burst from Ivan's throat.
He suddenly knelt down, clutching his head tightly with both hands, his body convulsing violently.
His pupils contracted rapidly, and circles of complex and eerie unfamiliar runes appeared out of thin air, shimmering with an ominous light.
"Ivan!" Lin Yi rushed forward in one stride.
"Don't come any closer!" Ivan's voice was distorted and unfamiliar, as if several people were speaking at the same time. "It...they are calling me...the template...I am the container of the template..."
He gasped for breath, his words breaking into a chilling truth: "I...I am not human...at least, not entirely. I am the 'Mother Nest'...a vessel specially created by a higher-dimensional will to house the consciousness of the 'Template Breaker'..."
"The real Ivan died in the very first cycle of reincarnation..."
As soon as he finished speaking, the runes in Ivan's eyes shone brightly, and a terrifying pressure far exceeding his own limits suddenly erupted, even distorting the surrounding air.
"Lin Yi...seal me!" Ivan roared, using the last ounce of his willpower. "Before it...completely takes over me...hurry!"
Lin Yi clenched his fist instantly, his nails digging deep into his palm.
He looked at his comrade-in-arms struggling in pain, the partner who always encouraged everyone with his sunny smile, now turned into a shell of an enemy about to descend.
his
He remained silent for a moment, a brief silence that felt as long as an eternity.
Finally, he slowly nodded.
"I'm sorry, Ivan."
The moment he finished speaking, Lin Yi stretched his right hand forward, and a cube made of countless silver rays of light appeared out of thin air in his palm.
Each face of the cube is engraved with intricate spacetime runes, exuding an aura of freezing everything.
[Time Freeze Box]!
"No—!" Another sharp, inhuman roar came from Ivan's body.
But it was too late.
The stasis box expanded in the wind, instantly enveloping Ivan.
A flash of light, and Ivan's struggling movements came to an abrupt halt. The pain on his face and the runes flashing in his eyes were frozen in that instant forever.
The cube rapidly shrank, eventually transforming into a palm-sized silver box that floated silently in front of Lin Yi.
Lin Yi reached out and caught it; the surface of the box was icy cold.
He personally sealed away his comrade-in-arms.
The atmosphere at the base was extremely oppressive.
However, no sooner had one wave subsided than another arose.
"Captain, something's wrong." Long Wu's deep voice broke the silence.
He was in charge of guarding the outer camp, and at this moment, his holographic communicator was displaying several real-time monitoring images.
“In the survivor camp, there are three people…behaving very strangely.” Long Wu pointed to the screen. “Starting half an hour ago, all their movements—drinking water, wiping their weapons, turning around…are perfectly synchronized, like a mirror. Not a second off.”
Lin Yi's gaze sharpened instantly. He immediately realized that this was no coincidence.
"I'll go take a look." Long Wu's figure flashed and disappeared from the spot.
Lin Yi didn't move; he just stared at the monitor quietly, his brain working at a rapid pace.
A few minutes later, footage of Long Wu's stealthy pursuit was transmitted back.
The three survivors, behaving strangely, were like puppets controlled by invisible threads, walking with the same stiff steps toward the dark edge outside the camp.
That darkness is the boundary between reality and the data collapse zone, a blurred area between life and death.
As they ventured deeper, a bizarre scene unfolded.
Their bodies began to become translucent, like images with poor signal gradually merging into the darkness.
"They're going to disappear!" Long Wu's voice was tinged with urgency.
"It's too late!" Lin Yi's eyes sharpened, and his figure vanished from the spot in an instant.
The next second, he appeared at the edge of darkness, blocking the three transparent figures.
Without the slightest hesitation, Lin Yi suddenly pulled his hands to the sides!
[Space Folding]!
The space in front of him seemed to have turned into a soft curtain, which he forcefully tore and folded.
The scene around the three "survivors" instantly distorted and became chaotic. They, along with a small area of space around them, were forcibly separated from the real world and trapped in a closed dimensional interlayer.
Within the dimensional interlayer, the laws of time and space become chaotic.
The process of the three becoming transparent was interrupted, and their bodies flickered between reality and illusion.
Lin Yi's eyes flashed with data streams as he directly scanned and analyzed their soul frequencies.
The moment the analysis results were generated, even Lin Yi's pupils contracted sharply.
On the screen, the soul frequency data charts of the three people and his own data chart showed a striking overlap of more than 99%!
They are not controlled humans, nor are they even independent life forms.
They are crudely copied – “fake Lin Yi”!
A terrifying thought exploded in Lin Yi's mind.
The higher-dimensional will is using the existence information of him, the "template breaker," that was leaked when the Gate of Destiny opened, to replicate him in the real world!
These clones may not be complete yet, but like viruses, they are constantly infiltrating and spreading!
"Trying to pollute this world with my information?" Lin Yi's lips curled into a cold smile. "Then let's see if you can keep up with the real me."
Instead of immediately eliminating the three samples, he made an even bolder decision.
He's going to trace it in reverse!
Lin Yi slowly closed his eyes, deliberately releasing a trace of his own spacetime fluctuations, like bait, along the invisible source of the copying signal.
This subtle yet highly recognizable fluctuation was like a lighthouse in the darkness for the "system" eager to replicate him.
Sure enough, just three seconds later, the surrounding space began to shake violently.
Three figures identical to Lin Yi suddenly leaped out of the void. Their eyes were empty and cold, and their bodies emanated a power of the same origin as Lin Yi but filled with a deathly aura.
They launched a deadly attack on Lin Yi simultaneously from three different angles!
However, the moment they appeared, Lin Yi's eyes suddenly opened, and what flowed within them was no longer a stream of data, but a vast power of time, as boundless as a galaxy!
"Good timing," he muttered to himself.
【Time Echoes: Trio】!
In an instant, Lin Yi's figure became blurry.
A slightly immature "him," draped in fragments of the past, steps out from the long river of history and stands to his left.
A figure with a deep, composed aura, whose eyes reflected countless possibilities of the future, emerged from the mists of the future and stood to his right.
Past, present, and future.
At this moment, Lin Yi, from three different points in time, experienced a perfect resonance at the same coordinate point!
This is an absolute logical paradox!
An existence cannot be both a "past cause" and a "future effect" at the same time.
The three "fake Lin Yi" figures that had just rushed forward, as products copied from the template of Lin Yi's "present," instantly encountered an unmanageable information conflict.
Their core data clashed violently with Lin Yi's "past" and "future," resulting in a logical breakdown.
"Sizzle... sizzle..."
As if an old television signal had been interrupted, the bodies of the three clones began to flicker and distort violently, and data streams were peeled away and scattered from them like a waterfall.
They didn't even have time to utter a scream before they were completely annihilated, turning into countless specks of light in this self-destruction at the information level.
Almost at the same time, in the base's command center, Chu Yao suddenly stood up.
"Intercepted! In the instant before they self-destructed, I captured the final coordinates of the replication signal return!" Her voice trembled slightly with excitement as she tapped the screen heavily.
A global map was unfurled, eventually pinpointing the southernmost point of the Earth.
Three thousand meters beneath the ice sheet in Antarctica lies an ancient ruin marked as top secret.
There lies the main control terminal of the "Ark Core".
All the clues finally converged into one point.
Lin Yi reappeared in the command center, staring at the red coordinate point on the map, his eyes filled with murderous intent.
“They want to use my template to reshape this world…” he said in a low voice, but everyone present could hear him clearly.
“Then let me go myself and burn that ‘key’ completely.”
In an instant, everyone's fighting spirit was ignited.
The grief of sealing Ivan was transformed into an even more resolute fighting spirit.
Chu Yao quickly began assigning tasks and preparing supplies.
The entire base, like a sophisticated war machine, was operating at high speed in preparation for the final battle.
With everything ready, the team gathered in front of the departure platform, the atmosphere solemn and resolute.
Just as Lin Yi was about to give the order to depart, Long Wu, who had been standing silently beside him, suddenly turned around without warning. His hawk-like eyes did not look at Lin Yi's face or anyone else, but stared intently at the shadow at Lin Yi's feet.
Under the bright lights of the base, the black shadow was stretched long and thin.
However, just as Lin Yi leaned forward slightly, preparing to take a step—
His shadow was actually half a beat slower than his real body.
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