It was an extreme sense of detachment, as if consciousness was forcibly pulled from the warm body and sunk into a silence purer than death.
The darkness was not nothingness, but something tangible, like the thickest ink, gently yet cruelly enveloping him and pulling him downwards.
The moment Lin Yi's consciousness touched the black lake, the entire world was turned upside down.
There is no water here, no coldness; instead, the bottom of the lake is a vast and boundless starry sky.
But those "stars" are not distant points of light, but rather crisscrossing, faintly glowing threads.
They intertwine with each other, weaving a vast, boundless web. The origin of each line lies in a forgotten whisper, a fleeting touch, or a tear that has long since dried.
This is an ocean of memories, the final destination formed by countless obsessions.
“...She is no ordinary person…” Ivan’s intermittent voice, seemingly coming from all directions, echoed in Lin Yi’s mind, “...She was the first Keeper of the Lamp…and also…the one who wrote the first Wall Message.”
Lin Yi's gaze was firmly drawn to the thickest and brightest beam of light.
On that line, three gleaming characters are intertwined—Lin Wanqiu.
It is like a surging golden river, its source pointing directly to the deepest core of this sea of memories, the very center of what is known as the "well".
Without the slightest hesitation, his consciousness flowed upstream along the beam of light.
Countless fragments of memories around him turned into streaks of light and receded, until finally, he was pulled into a frozen spacetime by a powerful gravitational force.
The pungent smell of gunpowder and the cold, dusty odor hit us.
This is a city ruin that has just experienced a brutal war. The broken walls and ruins look like the skeleton of a giant beast in the afterglow of the setting sun.
A thin woman stood with her back to him, her white research lab coat tattered and stained with dust and dark red blood.
She was using a sharp metal piece to painstakingly carve a few words into the only relatively intact wall base.
Lin Yi saw it clearly; it was a desperate plea—"Don't forget me."
Just as the characters were finished being carved, a burst of fire shot into the sky in the distance, followed by a deafening explosion!
The terrifying shockwave was like an invisible giant hand, violently sending the woman flying.
She fell heavily to the ground, coughing up blood, but didn't even look at the sea of fire behind her. She just struggled and crawled towards the corner of the wall in a heartbreaking way.
She took the last, simple-looking oil lamp from her bosom, and with trembling hands, carefully inserted it into the crack in the wall.
With her last bit of strength, she lit the wick.
The faint flame flickered, illuminating her pale yet resolute face.
She bent down and whispered in an almost inaudible voice to the flame: "If light can remember people, then let light make a path."
The moment the words left his mouth, a miracle occurred.
The flame of the oil lamp suddenly flared up, no longer burning the oil, but instead began to burn her body!
The woman's figure became transparent at a visible speed, transforming into streams of pure light that surged wildly into the city's earth veins along the cracks in the ground.
Where she completely vanished, a slender plant, emitting a faint glow, sprouted from the soil; its form is the origin of the Wall-Writing Plant.
Lin Yi trembled violently, and he uncontrollably reached out, trying to grab the fading afterimage.
His fingertips just happened to touch her raised wrist.
It felt cool to the touch, yet incredibly real.
On her wrist was a blue and white porcelain bracelet.
The pattern and the texture were exactly the same as the keepsake his mother left him!
"Ninety years ago, the rules of the real world began to shift irreversibly, accelerating the devouring and formatting of humanity's deep memories." Ivan's voice rang out again, this time clear and heavy. "The first generation of 'Night Listeners' discovered that only a sufficiently strong obsession, resonating with a specific environment, could 'anchor' fragments of consciousness to reality, preventing them from being completely erased. Your mother, Lin Wanqiu, as one of the most outstanding memory structure researchers at the time, volunteered to become the first 'anchor.'"
"Using herself as a template, she transformed the human memory from a fragile biological form into a completely new existence that can be reconstructed through light and shadow. What she carved on the wall before her death was not a cry for survival, but an instruction, a supreme instruction written to the entire 'well'—'Let those who come after see it.'"
Lin Yi's consciousness was violently pushed back by a tremendous force, instantly returning to his physical body.
He was panting heavily, his body drenched in cold sweat, as if he had just struggled ashore from drowning.
He opened his palm, and the translucent ear of wheat that had been warm suddenly cracked open from the middle with a "snap".
A soft burst of light shot out from the crack, coalescing into a complete afterimage before him.
That was how his mother looked when she was young, wearing a white coat, her eyes gentle yet firm, just like deep in his memory.
She gave Lin Yi a deep look, her lips moved slightly, and she left behind only one clear sentence: "Your father... is also on this road."
Before the words were even finished, the afterimage vanished like dust in the wind.
Lin Yi's mind went blank, then he was overwhelmed by a wave of shock.
He sprang up from the ground and rushed to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room, frantically searching through it.
Father's file!
He needs to find his father's file!
However, the result left him devastated.
The name "Lin Feng" cannot be found in any of the official member lists of Unit 95, or even in the list of victims.
He was as if he had never existed.
He's not dead... he's not sacrificed... he's just missing!
Lin Yi forced himself to calm down, his brain racing.
He pulled up the filament network density map of the Silent Light Station, a map representing the convergence of countless nameless memory entities.
His gaze was fixed on the third district—the location where his father was last recorded as missing in official records.
really!
The filament density of the entire silent lighting station was quite stable, except for the third zone, where the filament density exhibited an extremely abnormal, super-high aggregation state that far exceeded the threshold!
A terrifying yet plausible deduction took shape in his mind: his father was not dead; he had simply preceded his mother, becoming an unnamed memory in an unknown way, an "anchor" forgotten deep within the Silent Light Station!
The lingering image left by the mother, the truth behind the father's disappearance, the final barrier in the well's heart... all the clues converge at this moment into a clear goal.
He must reach the center of the well; he must see them!
He took a deep breath, and a bold plan began to form in his mind—"Double Fire Resonance".
At midnight, Lin Yi stood at the mouth of the deep well.
He personally placed nine uniquely designed heart lamps around the edge of the well, each representing the will of a colleague in Unit 95.
At the site of the former Jingdeng Station, dozens of kilometers away, he remotely lit seven pre-set, rustic oil lamps, representing countless forgotten nameless people.
The two arrays of lights represent the known acts of protection and the unknown acts of sacrifice.
He stood at the center of the two formations' intersection and gently placed the rusty bell-shaped ear of wheat on the ground.
He closed his eyes, pouring everything into them as the final fuse to ignite the resonance.
In his childhood, his mother told him fantastical stories under the lamp; in his adolescence, his father carried him, running a high fever, through a torrential downpour on a dark night, step by step, towards the hospital; at his bedside, he held his mother's hand for the last time, feeling the warmth of life in its final moments…
Memories, one after another, transform into the purest fuel.
The blue flames of the nine heart lamps and the white light of the seven oil lamps suddenly transformed into a dazzling gold at the same moment!
Two completely opposite, yet fundamentally the same, streams of light surged in opposite directions from the wellhead and the silent lamp station, tearing through the barriers of space and merging fiercely in the bottomless well!
Boom—!
The black lake, which carried countless memories, let out a mournful cry under the impact of the dual streams of light, and then burst open with a deafening roar!
As the lake receded, the true essence of the well's core was revealed—a circular monument constructed from solidified light, magnificent and solemn, as if recording all the obsessions since the birth of civilization.
In the center of the monument wall, a lamp without a handle floats silently, as if it were created out of thin air.
The lamplight was not fire, but a chaotic mass, in which thousands of blurry faces were vaguely reflected, a mixture of joy and sorrow, life and death.
Ivan's voice drifted over, this time carrying a hint of unprecedented amusement: "...Your mother...left you one last question...whoever can explain the true meaning of 'Returning Lamp'...this lamp of origin will recognize that person as its master."
Lin Yi raised his head, his gaze passing over the thousands of faces, and looking at the monument wall engraved with countless memories.
Without thinking, he simply spoke out his truest feelings in a soft voice.
"It's not about illuminating the past, but about letting the past... illuminate the present."
The moment the words fell, the flame of the primordial lamp suddenly surged a thousandfold!
The circular monument wall emitted a loud bang, then crumbled inch by inch, turning into countless points of light, like a reversed Milky Way, which surged wildly into Lin Yi's body!
“...Now…” Ivan’s voice whispered in the deepest part of his consciousness, with unprecedented awe, “...you are the well’s…heartbeat.”
Lin Yi felt his existence was being elevated infinitely; he was no longer an isolated individual.
He could feel the pulse of every thread of memory, and hear the whispers of every obsession.
He is the well, and the well is him.
However, at the very moment he completely merged with this vast and boundless will, in this ocean of memories composed of countless "pasts," he suddenly heard a voice that did not belong here.
It was an extremely faint yet incredibly clear "click" sound, like a brand new thread being forcibly woven into the giant web of memory at this very moment.
Immediately afterwards, a cold, mechanical, yet incredibly familiar voice rang out directly in his consciousness, following this newly formed thread.
"...The second phase of the 'Cicada Molting' project is launched. Target confirmed: Lin Yi. Execution location: Deep Consciousness Supervision Bureau, Central Control Room."
Lin Yi's heartbeat suddenly stopped.
That voice... belonged to the highest-ranking executive of the regulatory agency, the man who had always regarded him as the greatest threat.
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