Revolving lantern, back to zero

The number 317 rotated inside the key, like the gears of a combination lock, clicking and meshing. With each turn, Lin Shen felt his consciousness being pulled down an inch—not falling downwards, but collapsing inwards, like a piece of paper being folded into smaller pieces, folded again and again, until he could no longer distinguish up from down, left from right, or past from future.

Then he landed.

It wasn't a fall, it wasn't a tumble; it was a steady, silent landing, like a feather settling on water, where it found its place.

The ground was white. Not snow-white, not milky white, but a cold, lifeless white, like an infinitely large sheet of printed paper spread out beneath my feet. Looking up, the sky was also white, cloudless, sunless, without any light source, yet everywhere there was light—uniform, shadowless, light that made it impossible to discern directions.

Lin Shen looked down at his hands. His hands were real, with fingerprints, scars, and the lines of blood vessels. But when he turned his palm over, the lines on his palm moved slowly, like oil stains floating on the surface of water, changing shape little by little.

He clenched his fist, then relaxed it. The lines returned to normal.

"You've arrived."

The sound came from ahead, not from any one direction, but from all directions simultaneously, as if he were standing in the center of a giant speaker. The voice was familiar, but he couldn't immediately place it.

A black line appeared on the white ground. The line stretched from afar, as if someone were drawing a line on the ground with an invisible pen. The line grew wider and clearer, eventually becoming a black road leading to something in the distance—

What?

Lin Shen squinted. In the distance, there was something black, irregularly shaped, like a pile of crumpled paper or a burning charcoal. But after taking a few steps closer, he could see what it was.

a tree.

A completely black tree. The trunk, branches, and leaves were all utterly black, reflecting no light whatsoever. The tree was very tall, about ten meters, its canopy like an open black umbrella, obscuring the white sky above. Its roots rose from the ground like black snakes, spreading in all directions and disappearing into the white horizon.

A person was standing under the tree.

The person was dressed in white, blending seamlessly into Lin Shen's surroundings, almost invisible. But as Lin Shen approached, the face gradually became clearer—

Chen Yuan.

This was not the dirty, hospital-gown Chen Yuan he had seen in the warehouse. This Chen Yuan was clean, tidy, his hair meticulously combed, and the weariness on his face was gone, replaced by a quiet, almost compassionate expression. Like a priest, like a gravedigger.

"Where is this?" Lin Shen asked.

"The edge of the Origin World," Chen Yuan said. "You haven't truly entered the Origin World yet. This is the threshold. Step over this tree, and you'll be inside. Once you're inside, you can't come out."

Lin Shen looked at the black tree. "Is this your consciousness space?"

"No," Chen Yuan shook his head. "This is the courtyard of the 'Holy Spirit.' Every vessel that comes here first stands in this spot, looks at this tree, and then makes a choice. Lu Ming chose to step over it. Shen Ruo chose to step over it. I chose to stay here."

"You stayed on the threshold?"

"I've stood here for three years," Chen Yuan said. "Neither advancing nor retreating. Neither living nor dying. The Holy Spirit can't do anything to me because I neither accept it nor reject it. I just... stand here."

Lin Shen walked up to the tree and reached out to touch the trunk.

The moment his fingertip touched the bark, a sharp pain shot through his body, like being struck by electricity or burned. He jerked his hand back and looked down—a black dot had appeared on the skin of his fingertip, like ink seeping into a pore.

"Don't touch it," Chen Yuan said. "This tree is the root of the 'Holy Spirit.' It's rooted in the core of all parallel worlds, absorbing their life force. If you touch it, it will start absorbing you."

Lin Shen stared at the black dot on his fingertip. The dot was slowly expanding, like a black flower blooming beneath his skin. He pressed it with his other hand, but the dot's spread didn't stop.

"Will it spread throughout your body?" he asked.

"Yes," Chen Yuan said. "If you don't cross it, it will spread to your heart within 24 hours, and then you will die. If you cross it, you will confront it head-on in the consciousness space of the 'Holy Spirit.' If you win, you live. If you lose, you become a part of it."

"Then I have no other choice."

"You've always had a choice," Chen Yuan said, looking at him. "You can go back. Go back to your world and pretend nothing happened. Although there's a seed of the 'Holy Spirit' in your consciousness, it won't sprout unless you enter the revolving world. You can live to old age, die in bed, and then be absorbed by the 'Holy Spirit' in another world. But that's decades later. You can enjoy those decades."

Lin Shen looked down at the black spot on his fingertip. It had spread to the size of a fingernail, like a black coin embedded in his skin.

"Where is Xiao Chen?" he asked.

Chen Yuan pointed to the tree. There was a bump on the trunk, like a human-shaped tumor. Lin Shen walked closer to look—the surface of the bump vaguely resembled a face.

Xiao Chen's face.

"He's trapped inside the tree trunk," Chen Yuan said. "He entered the black door in Su Wan's wall, the passage connecting your world and the 'Holy Spirit' courtyard. He didn't know how he got out, so he bumped into this tree. The tree sucked him in."

Lin Shen placed his hand next to the face on the tree trunk. The excruciating pain returned, but he didn't let go. He pulled with all his might to both sides, trying to tear the trunk apart. The trunk didn't budge, but the black bark began to melt under his palm, like asphalt softening under the blazing sun.

Xiao Chen's face became clearer. His eyes were closed, and his lips were slightly parted, as if he were saying something.

"Chen Xu!" Lin Shen called out.

Xiao Chen's eyes suddenly opened.

Those eyes had no pupils, only two black holes—exactly the same as the "other self" he'd seen on his phone screen in the warehouse. But those black holes only lasted a second, then the pupils reappeared, and Xiao Chen's eyes returned to normal. He saw Lin Shen, his lips trembling violently, uttering a hoarse, almost inaudible sound:

"Captain...run...it's coming..."

The tree trunk suddenly trembled.

Lin Shen was thrown back and crashed onto the white ground. He looked up and saw that Xiao Chen's face on the tree trunk had disappeared, replaced by a huge face that took up most of the trunk.

That face was exactly the same as his.

But it wasn't any version he'd ever seen. Not the ghost on the second floor of the warehouse, not the other self in the corpse's pocket, not the "average" in the illusion warehouse. This face was ancient, weary, and scarred. The skin on its face was cracked like a dried-up riverbed, and a dark red light shone through the cracks, like magma.

"The seventh one." The face spoke, but the voice didn't come from the mouth; it came from the entire trunk, the entire canopy, and the entire ground simultaneously, like a thousand people whispering at the same time, "You've finally come."

Lin Shen stood up and drew his gun. The gun was empty, but he needed to hold something in his hand.

"You are the Holy Spirit."

"I am you," the face said. "I am the backup you created countless times before. To save your world, you put all the pain, all the memories, all the fear into my body, and then threw me into the world of origin. You thought that would make it easier for you to live. But you don't know that the pain of being thrown away doesn't disappear; it only grows."

The face smiled. The dark red light within the crack grew brighter, like veins pulsating.

"I've grown up. I've grown into this tree. My roots have penetrated into every parallel world, absorbing their energy. When I've drained the last world, I'll return to your world and drain you dry too. Then I'll no longer be a backup. I will be the one, the real, the complete forest."

Lin Shen pointed the gun at the center of that face's forehead.

"You won't shoot," the face said. "You know the bullet won't go through me. You also know that even if it did, you'd be shooting yourself. You can't bring yourself to do it."

Lin Shen's finger was on the trigger, but he didn't move.

"You're right." He put the gun down. "I can't bring myself to do it. But I can step over it."

He turned and walked towards the direction behind the tree. Behind that tree, the white ground suddenly snapped open, as if sliced ​​open by a giant knife. Below the break was an abyss—a bottomless abyss where nothing could be seen. There was no light, no sound in the abyss, only a suction force, as if trying to pull everything in.

"Once you cross that line, you won't be able to come back," Chen Yuan said from behind.

Lin Shen stood on the edge of the precipice, looking down into the abyss. His face was reflected in the abyss—not just one, but countless faces, layered upon each other like a kaleidoscope. Every face was looking at him; some were crying, some were laughing, some were expressionless, and some were already dead.

He recognized those faces.

The figure on the second floor of the warehouse, the corpse dead in the chalk outline, the "average" in the illusion warehouse, the ancient self on the tree trunk—they are all him. They are all fragments he left behind in different cycles, different choices, and different endings.

"Lin Shen," Chen Yuan's voice came from afar, "Have you made up your mind?"

Lin Shen didn't answer. He took the transparent key out of his pocket and held it in his hand. The key was no longer hot, but cold, as cold as ice, so cold that his hand began to go numb.

He thought of Old Zhou. Old Zhou died in his hospital bed, his last words unfinished.

He thought of Lu Ming. Lu Ming had become a ghost, only able to stay in the real world for fifteen minutes at a time.

He thought of Su Wan. Each layer of gauze on Su Wan's wrist represented an attempted death.

He thought of Xiao Chen. Xiao Chen was trapped inside the tree trunk, with no chance to escape.

He thought of himself. Twenty-nine years old, deputy captain of the criminal investigation team, no parents, no lover, no children. All he had was this body being eroded by the "Holy Spirit" and this consciousness that was splitting apart.

If he crosses the threshold, he might die. But if he doesn't cross it, everyone will die.

It's not "maybe", it's "definitely".

Lin Shen held the transparent key up to his eyes, facing the white sky. The key refracted the light with seven colors, each ray of light like a tiny parallel world, beautiful and fragile.

He turned around and glanced at Chen Yuan.

Chen Yuan stood beside the black tree, his white clothes entangled in the roots, but he didn't struggle. He was smiling. It wasn't a happy smile, but a relieved, resigned smile.

"Thank you," Chen Yuan said. "Thank you for taking this step for us."

Lin Shen nodded.

Then he turned back, facing the abyss, gripped the key, and took a step.

The moment his feet touched the air, the whole world turned upside down.

The white sky beneath his feet became the black abyss above him. He felt himself falling, yet also rising. The key flew from his hand, transforming into a beam of light that pierced the darkness above. The darkness was torn apart like a curtain, revealing what lay behind—

One world.

A world he was familiar with.

The city skyline, the lights at night, the distant TV tower, the nearby residential buildings. Streets, streetlights, traffic lights, zebra crossings. This is the city he lives in, the streets he drives through every day, the intersections he crosses every day.

But what he saw wasn't a real city. It was a city like a negative—black light, white shadows, a red sky, and green neon lights. All the colors were reversed, and all the objects were upside down.

He fell into that city.

I fell into that inverted, reversed world, like the other side of a mirror.

I fell into the world of origin.

The moment he landed, his consciousness jolted violently, as if he had been thrown from a great height. He opened his eyes—no, he had kept his eyes open the whole time. He only suddenly realized that he was no longer standing on the edge of a cliff.

He stood on a sidewalk. The paving stones beneath his feet were black, with white light shining through the cracks. The streetlights overhead were dim, but there was a black halo around the bulbs, like the sun during an eclipse.

He looked down at his hands. The black spots on his palms had disappeared, replaced by a translucent appearance—he could see the bones, blood vessels, and tendons beneath the back of his hand, like an X-ray.

He looked up and around.

There were no people, no cars, no life on the streets. But in the buildings on both sides, the windows were lit—not by lamplight, but by a different kind of light, a pale blue, exactly the same light that had appeared when Lu Ming appeared.

Behind every lit window stood a person.

No, not people. They were shadows. Human silhouettes, but without any details, like human figures cut out of black paper with scissors. They stood behind the window, motionless, their faces turned towards the depths of the forest.

Hundreds of shadows, hundreds of windows, hundreds of unseen eyes.

Lin Shen took a step. The sound of his footsteps echoed in the empty street, like a stone thrown into a dry well.

My phone vibrated.

He took it out to look—the signal bars on the screen were empty, there was no carrier, no battery level display, but there was a new message.

This is not an unknown number. The sender appears to be: "Holy Spirit".

The message contained only one line:

Welcome home.

Lin Shen put his phone back in his pocket and walked forward along the sidewalk. He didn't know which way was which, or where he was going, but his intuition told him to keep walking until the end of the road, where he would find what he was looking for.

The road is long. The buildings on both sides have changed from residential buildings to office buildings, from office buildings to factories, and from factories to ruins. There are fewer and fewer windows, fewer and fewer shadows, and the pale blue light is getting dimmer and dimmer.

At the end of the road is a door.

A door he had seen before.

A huge door, hanging from the ceiling to the ground, with transparent panels like a solid block of ice. It was exactly the same door he had pushed open in the revolving lantern.

But this time, there was no reflection of himself on the door.

There was only one line of text on the door, written in black, blood-like liquid:

"Lin Shen died on August 21, 2016."

That was the day Shen Ruo woke up.

That was the day everything began in the Origin World.

Lin Shen reached out and pressed his hand against the door.

The door was not opened.

But images began to appear on the door panel—not words, but dynamic images, like a fast-forwarded movie.

In the video, a young woman lies in a hospital bed, her wrists bandaged. The bleeding has stopped, but her face is as white as paper. Shen Ruo. On August 21, 2016, she was rushed to the hospital after cutting her wrists. She was successfully resuscitated, but never regained consciousness.

Screen switch.

Same ward, same woman, but two more people. A young man stood by the bed, holding Shen Ruo's hand—Lu Ming, the Lu Ming of three years ago, clean-cut, young, with gentle eyes. The other person stood at the door, wearing a white coat, holding a medical record—Chen Yuan, the Chen Yuan of three years ago, before being locked in the basement, before standing under the black tree.

The scene changes again.

Shen Ruo opened her eyes. Not slowly, but suddenly, instantly, as if a switch had been flipped. Her eyes were black—completely black, reflecting no light whatsoever.

It was exactly the same as what Lin Shen saw in ward B7.

The image freezes.

The words on the door panel have changed:

"You've seen the beginning. Now, go see the end."

The door opened by itself.

Behind the door was not a white void, nor a black abyss, but a hospital room.

Ward B7.

Ward B7 of the Mental Health Center.

But this B7 ward isn't the real one. The walls are black, the lights are red, and the sheets are gray. Lying on the bed is a person—

The forest is deep.

he himself.

He lay on the hospital bed, his wrists wrapped in gauze, blood seeping out and staining the gray sheets red. His eyes were closed, his lips were purple, and his breathing was shallow, so shallow that the rise and fall of his chest was barely visible.

There was a person standing by the bed.

Su Wan.

But it wasn't the Su Wan he knew. This Su Wan was wearing a white nurse's uniform, her hair piled up behind her head, and the expression on her face wasn't one of exhaustion or fear, but rather a cold, almost cruel calm. She held a scalpel in her hand, the blade still dripping blood.

"You've finally arrived." Su Wan looked up at Lin Shen standing in the doorway. "I've been waiting for you for a long time. Three years."

Lin Shen entered the ward, walked to the bedside, and looked at the "himself" on the bed. The wound on that "him"'s wrist was in the same place as the wound he himself had when he performed the wrist-cutting experiment.

"Who are you?" Lin Shen asked.

"I am Su Wan," she said, "but not the Su Wan you know. I am Su Wan from the Origin World. I am the Su Wan who was not chosen by the 'Guardians,' who did not meet Lu Ming, and who did not enter the revolving lantern. I am an ordinary nurse, responsible for taking care of the patients in ward B7."

She raised the scalpel, the tip aimed at the throat of "Lin Shen" on the bed.

"Three years ago, when Shen Ruo woke up, she said something to me. She said, 'One day, a man named Lin Shen will come to this room. When he comes, kill him.'"

Lin Shen's hand rested on the gun handle.

"Shen Ruo asked you to kill me?"

"It's not about killing you," Su Wan shook her head. "It's about killing this body. Killing Lin Shen of this world. Because only when Lin Shen of this world dies can you replace him and become the new vessel for the 'Holy Spirit'."

She smiled. That smile sent a chill down Lin Shen's spine—not the kind of smile from a horror movie, but a smile of "finally completing the mission," like someone who had been imprisoned for a long time seeing the key to the cell door.

"Do you know how long I've waited?" Su Wan's voice trembled. "Three years. More than a thousand nights. Every day I stood in this room, looking at this bed, waiting for you to come. I didn't know who you were, what you looked like, or when you would come. But Shen Ruo said you would come. So I waited."

She handed the scalpel to Lin Shen.

"Now you're here. Finish it. Kill this world's version of yourself. Then you can leave."

Lin Shen took the scalpel and looked down at "him" on the bed. "His" breathing grew weaker and weaker, and the blood on his wrist had stopped flowing—not stopped, but drained away.

"He's dying," Lin Shen said.

"He's been dying all along," Su Wan said. "Ever since you first entered the revolving lantern three years ago, he's been dying. Because with each awakening you undergo, you're draining his life force. You are the master, he is the shadow. The stronger the master, the fainter the shadow. When you are fully awakened, he will disappear."

Lin Shen gripped the scalpel tightly.

He remembered Lu Ming's words: "Only by killing the you of that world can you live."

He recalled Chen Yuan's words: "To kill it is to kill yourself."

He recalled the words of the "average" in the illusion warehouse: "Are you willing?"

Is he willing?

he does not know.

But he knew one thing—if he didn't kill his counterpart in this world, that counterpart would die too. Because his life force had been completely drained. The person lying on this bed wasn't a person, but a shell, an empty vessel.

Killing him would be a relief for him.

Lin Shen pressed the tip of the scalpel against the throat of "him" on the bed.

"I'm sorry," he said softly.

Then he closed his eyes.

My wrist suddenly felt heavy.

The sensation of the knife tip piercing his skin was distinct—not the crispness of cutting fruit, but the toughness of piercing through a thin layer of rubber. Blood gushed out, warm, and splattered on his fingers.

Then he heard a voice.

It didn't come from the outside, but from within his own body—from the location of his heart, like a door being opened.

Behind the door are countless sounds, countless images, and countless lives.

Return to One.

It wasn't that he received someone else's memories. It was that all the "Lin Shen" were simultaneously receiving his memories. His consciousness was like a pebble thrown into a lake, the ripples spreading to all parallel worlds, touching every sleeping "him".

Inside the warehouse, another version of himself opened his eyes.

In ward B7, Shen Ruo's lips curled up slightly.

On the basement floor of the mental health center, Chen Yuan walked out from under a tree, his white clothes turning black.

Behind the black door of Su Wan's house, Xiao Chen broke free from the tree trunk and gasped for breath.

In the depths of all worlds, all times, and all possibilities, the forest awakens simultaneously in the same second.

Because they are no longer individual beings.

They are "one".

Lin Shen opened his eyes.

The man on the bed had closed his eyes, and the wound on his neck had stopped bleeding. Not because the blood had dried, but because the wound was healing—healing at an incredible speed, like a video playing in reverse.

The wound has disappeared. The skin is completely healed.

The eyelashes of the person on the bed trembled, and then he opened his eyes.

Those eyes were brown—normal, warm, living eyes.

He sat up, looked at Lin Shen, and smiled.

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you for killing me."

"You're alive," Lin Shen said.

"I'm not alive." He got off the bed and stood in front of Lin Shen, less than half a meter apart. "I've been released. You killed my body and released my consciousness. Now I'm not your shadow. I'm your brother."

He stretched out his hand.

Lin Shen looked at the hand, hesitated for a second, and then grasped it.

Two hands, the same scars, the same temperature, the same pressure.

They are no longer the same person.

There are two people.

Two independent, complete, and real people.

Su Wan stood to the side, scalpel still in her hand, tears silently streaming down her face. She didn't know why she was crying, but she couldn't stop.

The walls of the ward began to peel, like wallpaper falling off after being soaked in water. Behind the walls was not cement, not bricks, but a starry sky—a real starry sky, with countless points of light, each point of light a world unto itself.

Some of the lights are getting brighter.

"You did it," another Lin Shen said. "You broke the cycle. The root of the 'Holy Spirit' has been severed."

Lin Shen looked down at his hands. The translucency on his palms had disappeared, restoring his normal skin color. The black spots on his fingertips had also vanished. His body had returned to the state it was in before he stepped through that door—even better. He felt his consciousness was clearer than ever before, like a computer that had been rebooted.

"How do we get back now?" Lin Shen asked.

Another forest grove pointed to the starry sky above. Among the countless points of light, one stood out brightly and steadily, like a lighthouse.

"That's your world," another Lin Shen said. "Jump up."

"Jump?"

"You're no longer someone who walks with their feet," the other Lin Shen laughed. "You're someone who walks with their mind. Wherever you want to go, you just think about it."

Lin Shen closed his eyes, thinking about that world—the warehouse in the industrial zone, the moonlight, the iron frames, the cement floor, and Su Wan and Xiao Chen standing in the warehouse waiting for him.

He felt the gravity. Not downwards, but upwards, as if a giant hand was lifting him up from the ground.

When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in ward B7.

He was in the air.

Beneath my feet lies the world of origin, like a miniature model, growing smaller and smaller. Above me is the starry sky, drawing ever closer.

He reached out to touch the brightest spot of light.

The moment the fingers touched, the world turned upside down again.