Revolving lantern, back to zero

That hand was cold.

It wasn't the kind of coldness you get from ordinary people; it was the kind of coldness you get from a freezer, completely devoid of body temperature. Five fingers gripped Lin Shen's wrist, not with much force, but very steady, like an iron hoop holding his bones in place.

Lin Shen did not struggle. He had been a criminal investigator for seven years and had faced danger countless times. His body's instinctive reaction had long been trained into a calm conditioned reflex—to assess the situation first, then act.

The darkness was as thick as ink. He couldn't see the other person's face, only the outline of their hand. The length of the fingers, the thickness, the position of the joints—it was exactly the same as his own hand.

"Who are you?" Lin Shen asked.

There was no answer in the darkness, only the sound of breathing. Light, even, like the breathing of someone fast asleep. But the hand was awake, gripping his wrist, motionless.

Su Wan's voice came from a corner of the room, as if through a pane of glass: "He's here."

"Who?"

"The person you're looking for."

As soon as Su Wan finished speaking, the hand released its grip.

The darkness began to recede, like the tide going out, and light seeped in little by little, starting from the edges of the room. First from the gaps in the curtains, then from the cracks in the door, and then into the entire room.

When the light was fully restored, there was a person standing in front of Lin Shen.

He was wearing a dark gray hoodie, the hood off, and his hair was rather long, covering half his forehead. His face was thin, with prominent cheekbones and deep-set eyes, as if he hadn't eaten or slept properly for a long time. But his eyes were bright—not the kind of bright that a normal person would have, but an unnatural, light bulb-like brightness, as if something inside his eyeballs was glowing.

Lu Ming.

Lin Shen had seen this face countless times in photographs. The prime suspect in the Black Rose case, he disappeared three years ago, and the city police's files were overflowing with his information. But the Lu Ming in the photographs wasn't like this—three years ago, Lu Ming was young, clean-cut, and had gentle eyes, like an ordinary college student. But the person standing in front of Lin Shen now seemed to have been hollowed out from the inside out, leaving only an empty shell.

"You shouldn't have come to me," Lu Ming said. His voice was low and hoarse, as if he hadn't had water in a long time.

"I didn't come looking for you," Lin Shen said. "You came looking for me."

Lu Ming glanced at his hand—the hand that had just grabbed Lin Shen's wrist. His wrist was clean and free of tattoos.

"You're the one who dragged me in here," Lu Ming said. "You opened the third key."

Lin Shen looked down at his hand. He still clutched the bronze key Su Wan had taken from the black door—the key to cabinet 317. But the key had changed. The original dark green rust was gone, the bronze surface was smooth and shiny, and the three numbers "317" on the label were gone, replaced by a symbol.

An ∞. The infinity symbol.

"This key isn't for locker number 317," Lin Shen said.

"It never was," Lu Ming said. "317 is just a coordinate. A coordinate that makes you think you've found the answer. But the key is never the one that opens the door; the key is the one that opens your own door."

Lin Shen raised his head and stared into Lu Ming's eyes. Those glowing eyes reflected his face—not just one face, but many faces, layered upon each other, like fragments in a kaleidoscope. Each "Lin Shen" had a different expression: some fearful, some angry, some calm, some already dead.

"Who exactly are you?" Lin Shen asked. "You're not Lu Ming from three years ago. Lu Ming from three years ago has disappeared. You're from another world."

Lu Ming did not deny it. He walked to Su Wan's window and drew back the curtains. Sunlight shone on him, but strangely, he cast no shadow.

"I am Lu Ming," he said, "but not the Lu Ming you know. I am a collection of fragments of consciousness from all the Lu Mings who have died, pieced together. You call me 'Ghost'."

Su Wan stood in the corner, leaning against the torn-down web of relationships. Her complexion was worse than before; her lips were pale, and the gauze on her wrist was soaked with blood again. But she didn't look at her wound; she kept staring at Lu Ming, her eyes holding an expression Lin Shen had never seen before.

That wasn't fear, nor sadness, but rather—waiting.

She waited for him for three years.

"Su Wan has been looking for you," Lin Shen said.

"She's not looking for me." Lu Ming turned around and looked at Su Wan. "She's looking for the Lu Ming who disappeared three years ago. The Lu Ming who's still alive, still has body temperature, and can still hold her. I'm not him. I'm what he left behind after he died."

Su Wan swayed, like a piece of paper fluttering in the wind. She opened her mouth, as if to say something, but ultimately said nothing.

As Lin Shen watched this scene, all the pieces of the puzzle in his mind suddenly began to spin.

Lu Ming is dead. He died three years ago. Not missing, but dead. But he was a "magic lantern" user—when he died, he entered the magic lantern, his consciousness didn't dissipate, but scattered in parallel worlds, becoming a "ghost." Su Wan knew this, so she didn't give up; she kept searching for him. She cut her wrists, jumped off a bridge, pushed herself to the brink of death, not to enter the magic lantern, but to—die.

She wanted to die. She wanted to become like Lu Ming.

"You're using her." Lin Shen turned to Lu Ming, his voice turning cold. "You knew she was looking for you, you knew she would do anything for you. You sent her to the industrial park, to the mental health center, to locker number 317. You made her pass on the key, made her the 'door.' You made her cut her wrists."

Lu Ming did not deny it. His expression remained unchanged, and his shining eyes were as calm as two stagnant pools of water.

"I need someone," he said. "An anchor. Someone who lives in the real world, to help me transmit information, to help me guide the next ability user. Su Wan is the only one willing to do that."

"You told her that you could come back if she helped you?"

Lu Ming was silent for a few seconds, then said, "I told her that as long as she helped me, I could find the Lu Ming who disappeared three years ago. I lied to her. The Lu Ming of three years ago is dead, dead in the flashback, dead because of his own choices. No one can bring him back."

Su Wan's tears finally fell. There was no sound, only two lines of tears sliding down her pale cheeks, dripping onto the documents on the ground, spreading into a small dark stain.

Lin Shen clenched his fists.

Why are you telling me all this?

"Because you asked," Lu Ming said. "Because you're the first person to ask 'Who are you?' Everyone else—Old Zhou, Shen Ruo, those who call themselves 'Guardians'—when they see me, they only want to know what I can do. Only you want to know who I am."

He walked up to Lin Shen, only a step away. Lin Shen could smell his scent—not the scent of a living person, but the scent of old books, dust, and a room that hadn't been opened in a long time.

"You're not the first person with the 'Lantern Revolving' ability, Lin Shen. You're the seventh," Lu Ming said. "Before you, six people awakened the same ability. The first was me. The second was Shen Ruo. The third through the sixth, they're all dead."

"Old Zhou said he was a 'failure who went through a revolving door'."

"Old Zhou isn't an ability user," Lu Ming shook his head. "Old Zhou is just an ordinary person, an ordinary person who got caught up in this mess. The slideshow he saw was fragments of memories Shen Ruo implanted in his brain. He thought he had awakened, but he hadn't. He didn't even get close to the slideshow."

Lin Shen's heart raced. "Then who's the third one?"

Lu Ming looked at him but did not answer.

The light in the room suddenly dimmed. It wasn't a problem with the lamps, nor was it that the sun was obscured by clouds; rather, just like before—the light itself was being absorbed by something. Darkness surged out from all four corners of the room simultaneously, converging towards the center like a tide.

"Time's up," Lu Ming said.

"When?"

"How long can I stay in the real world?" Lu Ming's body began to turn transparent, like a photograph being submerged in water, its outline blurred and colors fading. "Each time I appear, I can only stay for a maximum of fifteen minutes. This is a rule set by Shen Ruo—she added a lock to my consciousness when I became a 'ghost.' This lock protects me from completely dissipating, but it also restricts my freedom."

Why did Shen Ruo do this?

"Because she loves me." Lu Ming's voice grew softer and softer. "Because she knows that if she doesn't put this lock on, I will wander through all the parallel worlds until my consciousness completely collapses and I become a real monster."

His body had become so transparent that it was almost invisible, leaving only his glowing eyes, suspended in the air like two lamps about to go out.

"Lin Shen." His last words were as soft as a sigh, "The third key is with you. You already know what it is. The revolving lantern isn't the door, it's the key. You are the door. Open yourself up, and you'll find the answer."

Those eyes went out.

The room was lit again. Sunlight streamed in through the gaps in the curtains, illuminating Su Wan's face and her silent tears.

Lin Shen stood there, still clutching the key engraved with the ∞ symbol in his hand. He looked down at it and suddenly realized something.

This key is not metal. It's not copper, not iron, not any known material. Its surface subtly distorts in the light, like a reflection on water, like a scene from a memory.

It is breathing.

He was breathing at the same frequency as him.

Lin Shen put the key in his pocket and walked up to Su Wan.

"Will he come back?" Lin Shen asked.

Su Wan wiped away her tears, her voice hoarse: "Yes, he will. Every time you turn on the scrolling light, he will appear. Because your scrolling light and his fragment of consciousness are connected. You are using the same network."

"The same network?"

"Shen Ruo is the core," Su Wan said. "The consciousness of all the 'Carousel' ability users is connected to her. She is the server, and you are the terminals. Every time you enter the Carousel, you activate the entire network, and all the 'ghosts' are awakened."

Lin Shen recalled Shen Ruo's suddenly opened eyes in ward B7. Those black eyes without pupils.

Why did Shen Ru fall into a coma?

Su Wan walked to the wall, picked up a photograph from the ground, and handed it to Lin Shen. The photograph showed a young woman in her early twenties, with a bright smile, standing on a university campus, holding a book in her hand. That was Shen Ruo three years ago—before she got her tattoos, before she fell into a coma, and before she became a "core" member.

"Three years ago, on the night of the Black Rose case, Shen Ruo cut her wrists at the mental health center," Su Wan said. "She didn't die, but her consciousness went to a place—the place where all the people with the ability to travel through time have been. There she saw the 'Holy Spirit'."

"The Holy Spirit?"

"That's what Lu Ming called it," Su Wan said. "A consciousness that exists in the deepest part of the revolving lantern network. It's not a person, not a ghost, not anything within our comprehension. It's the sum of all parallel worlds, the beginning and end of all possibilities. Shen Ruo saw it, and then she couldn't wake up."

Lin Shen returned the photo to Su Wan.

"I want to go to the mental health center again," he said. "I want to see Shen Ruo again."

Su Wan looked at him, her eyes filled with a complex emotion. It was a mixture of worry and relief—finally, someone was willing to step into that abyss.

"You will die," Su Wan said.

"I've already died once," Lin Shen said. "Dying again won't make any difference."

He turned and walked towards the door.

"Lin Shen," Su Wan called out to him.

He stopped, but didn't turn around.

"The third key," Su Wan said softly, "you know what it is, right?"

Lin Shen paused for three seconds, then said:

It's myself.

He walked out of room 402 and into the stairwell. One motion-activated light turned on, then went out. His footsteps echoed in the empty stairwell, like a heartbeat.

My phone vibrated.

Unknown number:

"You've found three keys. The first is in locker 317, the second is on Shen Ruo, and the third is on yourself. Now, you need to open that door. That door isn't on Su Wan's wall, it's not in the mental health center, it's not in any physical space. That door is in your first death. Go back to the warehouse. Go back to the moment you were killed. This time, don't close your eyes."

"—Another You"

Lin Shen put his phone in his pocket, went downstairs, opened the car door, and started the engine.

The car drove towards the Chengbei Industrial Zone.

Drive towards the warehouse.

Heading towards his first death.