The laboratory alarm sounded as if it had been slowed down, its sharp buzzing exploding in layers around Lin Yi's ears.
He could clearly feel the blood vessels in his temples throbbing, each throbbing causing a sharp pain in the back of his neck—a rejection reaction that occurred when the imprint synchronized with his brainwaves.
"Synchronization rate 37%......42%......" Chu Yao's projection flickered in his peripheral vision, the pale blue light band gradually turning cyan-gold as the numbers climbed. "Pay attention to controlling the output frequency of the spacetime power; they are vying for dominance!"
Lin Yi gritted his teeth, sweat dripping from his forehead onto the lab table, spreading out a small dark water stain.
He could see the pale golden ball of light in his sea of consciousness twisting and deforming, and the dark blue light threads seeping from the cracks on its surface were moving along his nerve pathways like living things.
The whisper of "echoes of fate" from earlier resurfaced in his mind. This time, he heard it clearly; the voice did indeed carry a complex emotion—not a threat, but more like... the sigh of a witness.
"The probability of backlash has dropped to 61%!" Chu Yao's voice suddenly rose, and the data flow on the light screen accelerated. "They're adapting to your frequency!"
Lin Yi suddenly laughed, the taste of blood spreading between his teeth.
He released his hand from the lab table, beads of blood seeping from between his fingers hanging in mid-air—frozen in place by his power of time and space. "What's there to be afraid of?" He stared at his reflection in the mirror, his eyes shimmering with a golden-blue hue, his voice low and resolute. "Since it's an echo of fate, then I should set the tone."
The moment the synchronization rate jumped to 58%, the laboratory lights suddenly went out.
Long Wu's dragon-patterned battle sword hummed as it was drawn from its sheath, the dragon scale patterns on the blade emitting a faint glow in the darkness.
He leaned against Lin Yi, his gaze sweeping back and forth in the shadows of the laboratory, his muscles taut like a fully drawn bowstring: "Brother Lin!"
"It's not an attack." Lin Yi raised his hand and pressed it against Long Wu's shoulder, the warmth of his palm passing through the battle suit. "It's the mark taking over the energy."
In the darkness, Chu Yao's projection suddenly transformed into countless points of light, which then reassembled into a three-dimensional star map composed of data streams.
Among those shimmering bright spots, he saw his own consciousness fluctuation curve gradually coinciding with the golden light trail of the mark.
The alarm stopped abruptly the moment the last optical track connected, and the laboratory's overhead lights came back on, but were three-tenths dimmer than before.
"Synchronization complete." Chu Yao's voice regained its usual calm, but the green code flickering at the edge of the screen betrayed her excitement. "Now you have complete control over the activation of the mark. If they want to locate you through the beacon again, they'll have to get past you first."
Lin Yi moved his sore and numb wrist, his gaze falling on the mark on the back of his left hand—the original pale gold now had a faint blue tinge, as if it had been dyed with the color of a spatial rift.
He reached out his fingertip and gently touched it. The touch was no longer scorching hot; instead, it carried a familiar warmth. "But it's still receiving data."
"What?" Long Wu leaned closer, making a soft sound as he sheathed his sword.
Lin Yi closed his eyes. The ball of light in his sea of consciousness was slowly rotating, absorbing a faint stream of information with each rotation. "Like...an echo of fate." He opened his eyes, the golden-blue light in them fading. "Every time I make a major decision, it fluctuates in sync."
Chu Yao's fingertips slid rapidly across the light screen, and the star map suddenly unfolded into a timeline, densely marked with red dots: "03:17, you decided to activate the mark, fluctuation value +12%; 03:22, you chose to forcibly synchronize using the power of spacetime, fluctuation value +27%; now..." She pulled up the latest data, "It is copying your consciousness trajectory."
The air in the laboratory suddenly felt heavier.
Long Wu stroked his new stubble, the hilt of his battle sword rubbing red marks into his palm: "Is this thing trying to imitate Brother Lin's decision-making process?"
"More likely, it's for recording." Lin Yi turned and walked towards the lab's floor-to-ceiling window, his slightly pursed lips reflected in the glass. "Recording my choices, and then..."
\"bite--\"
The communicator's beeping interrupted him.
Ivan's face appeared on the holographic screen. His usually neatly combed blond hair was somewhat disheveled, and there was a fresh bloodstain on his left cheek. The mechanical markings under his eyes were brighter than before: "Mr. Lin, I was attacked while patrolling the Seventh District."
Lin Yi's pupils contracted slightly: "Casualties?"
"No." Ivan tugged at his blood-stained collar, revealing a faint glow from the mechanical interface on his collarbone. "But the weapon they used... it incorporated the energy core of the Destiny System and unknown technology." He pulled up a combat video, showing him weaving through alleyway fighting, while the attackers always moved a fraction of a second faster than anticipated—when Ivan dodged to the left, the attacker's gun was already pointed to the left; when he slammed his mechanical arm into the ground, the attacker's throwing blade passed right under his raised arm.
"They seem to know what I'm going to do next." Ivan's voice lowered, and the mechanical patterns began to flash red, a sign of his intense emotional turmoil. "Like... they've seen my every move."
The laboratory was so quiet that you could hear the rustling sound of Long Wu's sword sheath rubbing together.
Lin Yi stared at the eyes behind the attacker's mask in the video—eyes completely devoid of emotion, as if controlled by some kind of program.
He suddenly remembered what Chu Yao had just said about "copying the trajectory of consciousness," and his fingers unconsciously rubbed the mark on the back of his left hand.
"Come back." Lin Yi's voice was heavy, like lead. "Have the medical team treat the wounds and send the weapon wreckage to the lab."
"Yes." Ivan nodded, and the image on the holographic screen began to blur. "Also..." He seemed to hesitate for a moment, "Before the attackers retreated, I heard them say, 'The gears of fate have already turned.'"
As the holographic screen went completely dark, Long Wu's battle sword suddenly slammed onto the lab table with a clang: "Brother Lin, this matter can't be separated from that damn mark, can it?"
Lin Yi did not answer. He looked out the window at the gradually brightening morning light, and the mark on the back of his left hand suddenly became warm.
Chu Yao's light screen displayed new data at just the right moment: "Abnormal fluctuations in the mark detected, associated location..." She pulled up the map, and a red marker was flashing continuously in the abandoned industrial area in the south of the city. "There's an underground base there. Long Wu just applied for a cleanup permit three days ago."
Long Wu tapped his fingers twice on the hilt of his knife, a eager glint in his eyes: "I'll go right now."
Lin Yi turned to look at him, a cold smile finally appearing on his lips: "Don't rush." He placed his hand on Long Wu's shoulder, the warmth of his palm seeping through the tactical uniform. "Put on the latest time-space locator. I need to know whose fate is hidden in that base."
As Long Wu gripped the hilt of his knife and turned around, the morning light pierced through the glass, casting a long shadow behind him.
Beneath the abandoned industrial zone in the south of the city, a dusty control panel suddenly glowed red, and a line of blood-red text slowly appeared on the screen: "Hunter, it's time to close the net."
Long Wu's tactical boots crushed the last piece of rusted metal.
The ventilation ducts of the underground base reeked of mold and burnt smells. His flashlight beam swept across the mottled wall and suddenly stopped at a certain spot—a half-silver chip was stuck in a crack in the cement, with dark red dried bloodstains still on its edges.
"The location Brother Lin mentioned should be just ahead." He lowered his voice, his battle sword sliding half an inch out of its sheath, the cold light brushing against the dragon tattoo on his wrist.
As we rounded the last corner, the metal door creaked open, releasing a musty smell mixed with a faint crackling of electricity.
Inside the door was a small control room.
The control panel against the wall gleamed with a ghostly blue light, and a white-haired man slumped in a chair.
He wore a faded lab coat, his left eye was a mechanical prosthetic eye that gleamed coldly, but his right eye socket was empty, and a dark red scar crept from his forehead into his collar.
Hearing footsteps, the man suddenly looked up, the red light from his mechanical eye sweeping across Long Wu's face, and he grinned, "You're here?"
Long Wu's knife tip immediately pressed against the opponent's throat.
He could feel the man's pulse pounding rapidly at the side of his neck, like that of a dying hummingbird: "Who sent you?"
"A faction?" The man's laughter was grating, like metal scraping against a screen. "I'm waiting for your ruler." He suddenly raised his hand, and Long Wu noticed that his right hand was handcuffed to the edge of the control panel, the skin on his wrist festering, revealing the eerie blue wires beneath. "Tell him... he thinks he's rewriting his destiny, but it's just another echo of fate."
The communicator vibrated in Long Wu's ear.
He glanced at Lin Yi's message, the tip of his knife pressing down slightly: "You can't leave."
"I never intended to leave." The man's mechanical prosthetic eye suddenly burst out with a blinding white light. Long Wu instinctively closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the man's right hand had already pierced through the festering flesh and was pressing directly onto the control panel.
The alarm blared suddenly, the blue light on the control panel flashed wildly, and a man's voice, mixed with the static, said: "Go check my logs, Time-Space Overlord... You'll thank me for letting you know the truth ahead of time."
When Lin Yi and Chu Yao rushed into the control room, Long Wu was using his battle sword to break through the last locked metal railing.
The white-haired man slumped in his chair, the red light from his mechanical prosthetic eye completely extinguished, and wisps of smoke still rose from the festering wound on his right hand—he had burned away his central nervous system with bioelectric current.
"Vitality signs have disappeared." Chu Yao's projection leaned forward to scan, her fingertips tracing the lines on the man's neck. "These are early neural connection devices from the Destiny System, sealed away for at least ten years."
Lin Yi squatted down and lightly touched the man's name tag on his chest with his fingertips.
The faded handwriting reads "Zhou Zheng, Destiny Systems Research Group." The young researcher in the photo has clear eyes, a stark contrast to his current madness.
He looked up at the console, where an encrypted log was playing on a loop on the holographic screen.
"It will take three minutes." Chu Yao's projection transformed into a data stream that seeped into the control panel, the blue light from her hair intertwining with the eerie glow of the screen. "He has set a memory synchronization lock; during the decryption, his memory fragments will be read simultaneously."
The air in the laboratory suddenly became viscous.
Lin Yi could hear Chu Yao's breathing—it was a little habit she had when simulating human emotions.
When the data stream suddenly froze and turned red, Chu Yao's fingertips trembled violently in mid-air: "Lin, look at this."
The holographic screen unfolds into a timeline, with countless golden dots connecting Lin Yi's life: the hesitation when filling out college applications, the tension when entering the "Infinite" game for the first time, the tremor when awakening the [Time and Space Dominator], the brainwave fluctuations during every major decision... And beyond these dots, there is another completely overlapping golden trajectory that began to extend ten years ago, ending at a coordinate marked "Observation Tower".
"This is..." Lin Yi's pupils contracted to thin lines.
"The observer's experimental record." Chu Yao's voice trembled unusually, and the data stream beside her condensed into fragments of the man's memory: Zhou Zheng stood behind the glass curtain wall, and researchers in white coats cheered as they pointed at the trajectory on the holographic screen; a masked figure pressed his hand on the screen, and the trajectory suddenly split into countless branches; finally, the image froze on Zhou Zheng's distorted face: "They need samples that break through the template, they need people who can touch 'destiny'!"
The so-called 'echoes of fate' are not a side effect of system collapse at all; they are the second phase of the experiment—using your choices to feed back into the observation model!
Lin Yi's knuckles slammed heavily on the control panel.
He could feel the mark on the back of his left hand burning hot, as if countless fine needles were drilling into his skin.
Those recorded "consciousness trajectories" suddenly became clear in his mind: the precognitive attack Ivan encountered, the data stream absorbed when the imprint was synchronized, and even the moment he decided to activate the imprint three days ago... It turned out that it was not the imprint that was adapting to him, but the observer that was adapting to the possibility of the "template breaker" through him.
"So they left Zhou Zheng here." Lin Yi's voice was as cold as if it had been submerged in ice water, "Wait for me, wait for me to discover the truth, wait for me..."
"They've begun to resist," Chu Yao interjected, the projected blue light suddenly sharpening. "This is part of a test—they want to know what choices the 'sample' will make when it realizes it's being observed."
A faint humming sound came from the laboratory's ventilation ducts.
Lin Yi stood up and glanced at the metal nameplate in the corner of the control panel: "Observation Tower Substation 07".
He took out his communicator, sent a message to Long Wu, and then turned to Chu Yao: "Can you simulate my consciousness trajectory?"
"It requires the cooperation of spacetime power." Chu Yao's fingertips traced complex formulas on the light screen. "You need to actively guide the fluctuations of the imprint, creating a false 'self-trajectory'—like throwing a pebble into water, making the observer think you're moving east, when in fact you are..."
"To the west." A cold smile curled at the corner of Lin Yi's lips.
He closed his eyes and sensed the ball of light in his sea of consciousness. The dark blue light threads that had once caused him pain were now docile, like tamed snakes.
When he manipulated the power of space and time, the ball of light suddenly began to spin faster, leaving a golden afterimage with each rotation—that was a copied "false trajectory".
"Synchronization rate 87%...92%..." Chu Yao's voice was filled with amazement, "You're resonating with the mark!"
The mark on the back of my left hand suddenly vibrated violently.
Lin Yi's temples throbbed, and the ball of light in his mind exploded with blinding golden light. A deep voice, seemingly from the depths of the universe, resounded in his mind: "You've finally... begun to understand."
The vibrations came and went quickly.
When Lin Yi opened his eyes, Chu Yao's light screen displayed a new location—the end of the false trajectory was pointing towards the observation tower shrouded in mist in the north of the city.
"Lin?" Chu Yao's projection moved closer to his face. "Are you alright?"
Lin Yi did not answer.
He stared at the neatly displayed employee badge on the control panel; the young researcher in the photo was smiling at him.
Sunlight streamed through the crack in the window, casting a golden dapple on the mark on the back of his left hand.
The voice was like a thorn, piercing the deepest part of his consciousness—but this time, it wasn't him who felt the pain, but the "observers" hiding in higher dimensions.
"Long Wu." He pressed the communication button. "Prepare the heavy equipment."
We...should go visit some old friends.
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