Rules-related weird stories: 4016.

Chapter 652 Lin Yi's... Origin?
"...Sizzle..."

“Ryoko…we have been drifting here for a long and unknown period of time…When I recorded ‘time’ for about ten years, I found that my body had not aged…but my mind had developed some problems…”

"Sizzle... sizzle..."

"My condition... is no longer able to accurately record time..."

"...The navigator may have already deviated from a certain course..."

"When you see this message I left behind... I may already be dead, or perhaps... I've fallen into some kind of eternal sleep..."

"Sizzle... sizzle..."

"When you wake up, if you are alone, don't be afraid... and don't feel lonely..."

"You will be safe, because the navigator will wake you from hibernation under absolutely safe conditions..."

"The coordinates from where we came have been erased... The navigator seems to have undergone some kind of change that I cannot comprehend over an infinite period of time..."

"Sizzle... sizzle sizzle..."

"..."

"We...may really find a habitable planet...some world..."

"Sizzle... sizzle sizzle sizzle..."

"Sizzle..."

"..."

……

As the noisy current gradually subsided and faded, eventually all the sound disappeared.

Lin Yi remained stunned for a long time.

Because he realized that it was his voice.

Navigator...

"Red Star"...

Coordinates from where we came...

What do you mean?
Interstellar travel?
What the hell is going on?
Before Lin Yi could process what was happening, the black world slowly became brighter, and his perspective shifted to a place resembling an operating table.

The light shining directly in his face was so bright that he could barely open his eyes.

From his perspective, there was a group of people wearing white coats. He could recognize one of them, just by looking at the sly eyes between his mask and hat, as Wei Liang.

He looked around, but seemed to be nailed to the operating table, unable to move.

"It seems to have succeeded..."

Someone nearby spoke up.

"A big step forward..." Wei Liang's voice rang out, his tone unreadable, neither happy nor sad, "They're alive... but not fully alive..."

……

The world turned dark again, and before it went dark, he looked around with all his might, trying to capture as much of his surroundings as possible.

Then he indeed saw traces of other buildings in that almost pure white world.

Because the lights were too bright, his vision appeared overexposed white, but once those lights and shadows were removed, he found everything around him to be so familiar...

The light source seemed to be the huge chandelier in the lobby of the art building, and the patterns on the surrounding walls matched the image in the lobby. Even... not far from him was the World Tree that seemed to be living towards death.

However, in his fleeting glimpse, it appeared to be the World Tree, which seemed quite different from what he had seen before.

All the people around him were wearing white coats, and although each of them was very distinctive, he didn't recognize them at all, except for one of them—a little girl.

When "he" awoke, the little girl was one of the people surrounding him!

It is clear from this that all of these people, except for Wei Liang, are—"the original apostles"!
The world dimmed, leaving only the sound of the wind blowing the waves.

……

I don't know how much time passed, but gradually, new sounds began to emerge from the darkness...

"That's too late……"

"It's really too late..."

It was the voice of a young man who was both strange and familiar, or perhaps the magnetic voice of a middle-aged man—but no matter whose voice it was, it was not Lin Yi's voice.

"Don't worry, there's still hope! Don't worry!" This time, it was Wei Liang's voice that rang out.

“I told you… it’s not too late! Don’t fucking save me… just now… I think I’ve seen the ‘Root’…”

“None of you saw it… but I saw it… perhaps even the Supreme Being didn’t see it, only I saw it…”

“I have seen the truth of the ‘Root’… With our current strength, we are not yet able to… fight against it… We need time to develop… We need… a very, very long time…”

“We have no time left, but… you have… only you, only all of you, can transcend time…”

“‘Holy Sun’…” Wei Liang’s voice rang out, but was immediately interrupted by this voice, “…‘0’…I’ve also thought of a solution for your experiment…After I die, I will merge my essence into it…”

“You won’t die yet… No one can completely kill ‘The Beginning,’ including…!” A clear, bell-like voice rang out, filled with anger and resentment.

But "Holy Sun" interrupted again: "No need to persuade me! My situation is far more complicated than you imagine... I have been burned by the 'Root,' but in my final moments, I can use this power to ignite myself, steal a wisp of the 'Root's' power, and integrate it into my origin..."

"But I will also die—I will die completely because of this, because only in this way can I truly deceive everyone..."

"I will defy Heaven!"

"Not only must we avoid the burning of the 'root cause,' but we must also deceive Heaven—deceive that 'angel'!"

"I will use my extinction to completely sever the perception of the 'Root' and the 'Angels' that permeate dimensions..."

"The Supreme Ones have escaped, but they will return sooner or later..."

“They were comrades…I believed in them from the beginning…but after setting sail, coupled with supreme obsession and madness…they may not still be comrades in the future…”

“If we take everything into account, we still have a chance to eradicate the threat posed by the ‘Root’ to this world…” “Do you understand, Ryōshin?! You are the smartest person here. I don’t believe you don’t understand even after I’ve explained it to you… My plan, everything I’ve said, you should know it all…”

“I… understand…” Wei Liang’s voice, tinged with helplessness and dejection, slowly rose, accompanied by a long sigh. “When the time is right… I will gather everyone once more… and set sail…”

"Hehehe... On behalf of the world, thank you..."

"The rest... I'm leaving it to you..."

"You've worked hard too... I know better than anyone that compared to simply saying a few words and passing away, those of you who bear the weight of all humanity's lives on your shoulders have a life harder than death itself..."

"Thanks a lot……"

"Fusheng...Wei Liang...Tianzun..."

In the gray world, the final whisper of "Holy Sun" echoed:
"The black sun will fall, but its withered ashes will once again shelter this world..."

"Forward...forward..."

Even if... those who chase the light through the mist... ultimately become illusions...

……

After the sound of "Holy Sun" came a long silence.

I don't know how much time passed, but the sound of waves crashing on the beach echoed in the gray world.

"Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—"

The sea breeze came in gusts, and the cold world was filled with icy fog and wind.

Finally, a voice appeared in Lin Yi's mind.

"Finally... finally it's come to this..."

"This is the answer you wanted to know... Old Lin..."

This is Tian Bufan's voice.

The gray world unfolded as if a curtain had been drawn back, revealing a coastline. On the coastline stood a sword-like mountain peak, and atop the peak was the towering black castle, "Black Moon Outpost."

"The answer may be incomplete... but I will explain the rest to you clearly..."

"Let's go...it's time to go back..."

Before the words were even finished, and before Lin Yi could react, the gray mist spread out once more, giving Lin Yi no chance to linger in the scene...

……

X023年5月12日，2：34，「校长室」。

Just a minute after leaving, Mao Feiyang, who was crouching on the ground with a splitting headache, felt that the intense pain had dissipated considerably.

Immediately afterward, as if he had understood something, he looked towards the place where the vortex had disappeared.

Sure enough, the bird's nest lamp and the "Starry Dream Crystal" trembled again. One began to scatter stardust, and the other began to emit mist, and they immediately began to reform the vortex, as if they had completely connected with the previous scene...

Soon, countless sheets of paper flew out from it, filling the sky like a storm, while Lin Yi's will was bounced out from it like rubber.

Immediately afterwards, the vortex disappeared, and the countless fluttering papers seemed to converge together like ten thousand swords returning to their origin, restoring themselves on the table formed by the gnarled branches and roots of the old tree into Lin Yi's not-so-large notebook.

The current laptop is a full third thinner than the original one... that difference in thickness was lost in this operation.

Upon returning, Lin Yi's will touched the "Star Dream Crystal," and then, he and Tian Bufan's will materialized in the "Principal's Office" in the form of a genie.

"I'm back!!" Lin Yi breathed a sigh of relief. The lingering in the gray world just now gave him an extremely long feeling, as if he had been locked in time and drifted for an unknown time scale.

Immediately afterward, before he could carefully recall the conversations in the gray world, the memories he had experienced in "Guixu" rushed into his mind like a delayed train.

The two memories kept overlapping, like consuming a large batch of compressed memory files in a short period of time, and then the files began to decompress, making Lin Yi's brain a bit of a crash.

After a while, Lin Yi was the first to realize what had happened in "Guixu". He then took a deep breath and said with emotion, "I originally felt quite defeated, but after hearing what you said, although we were unable to bring the principal back directly, at least we retained some hope and did not do nothing."

Tian Bufan was slightly taken aback, then immediately realized that Lin Yi's reaction was a matter of memory sequence. Just as he was about to speak, Mao Feiyang asked first, "How is it? I mean... the Gray Mist Sea matter. As for other matters, we'll talk about them after Old Lin has recovered."

Tian Bufan nodded slightly and said frankly, "Overall, the principal's situation in the Gray Mist Sea is indeed alright; no major mistakes have been made."

Lin Yi's lips twitched. What do you mean by not making any major mistakes? I clearly felt I did it perfectly...

"Where is the principal?" Mao Feiyang asked.

“He won’t be coming back for now,” Tian Bufan said. “The ‘Mist Whisperer’ manipulated the black mist to corrupt him, leaving him in the sea of ​​gray mist.”

"However, one thing is certain: the 'Original Ash Apostle' we encountered on the night of the 6th was the Principal who returned after infiltrating time, but at the time, we had no way to deconstruct him."

Lin Yi asked, "Can I penetrate myself through the 'Dream Boundary'?"

Tian Bufan glanced at him and said calmly, "Dreaming is easy to get lost in, and self-infiltration is the most dangerous area for getting lost... Throughout history, countless people have tried to reverse the future by learning how to build dreams... But unsurprisingly, they have all gotten lost in the river of time, including..."

Lin Yi paused for a moment, then tentatively added, "Including... 'us'?"

Tian Bufan narrowed his eyes: "We...were indeed lost. Fusheng Weiliang Tianzun helped us break free from the curse of 'time' through his methods, but...traces of our existence still remain there, observed by a small group of beings at the security level who are infinitely close to the 'Black Moon Apostle' level, through the enhancement of kerosene lamps."

"Time is a curse."

Do you remember this line?

Lin Yi's heart trembled: "That sentence the Great Emperor of Security said to me!"

"Even among security guards, there are differences. That security guard... he had been corrupted by 'time,' and he knew about some of the attempts you had made in the past, no, in the future... Therefore, he regarded the you of that time as 'you' returning to the 'boundary of dreams' once again, trying to stop your infiltration."

“No wonder…no wonder that security guard kept noticing me from day one…” Lin Yi’s heart was in turmoil. “But…how did you know? Our future failed attempts…how did you know about things that haven’t even happened yet?”

Tian Bufan shook his head helplessly: "The pollution of time... permeates every dimension. We used amnesia to block the pollution of 'time' on you, allowing you to carry out this operation with a completely new attitude. But we... as time goes on, we are constantly being baptized by 'time' again."

"Seven days is not the limit for the campus, but the limit of our tolerance for the pollution of 'time'."

Listening to Tian Bufan's words, Lin Yi felt as if countless insects were slowly crawling and wriggling on his cerebral cortex, making him so itchy that he wished he could peel off his scalp and rub it properly.

Those flashbacks are more like a pseudo-concrete manifestation of the pollution of "time," and the blurred texture is his protection from "amnesia."

"Don't overthink it," Tian Bufan said. "The more you recall, the less impact the amnesia will have, and it will be extremely detrimental to our operations."

(End of this chapter)