Zhang Shan took a few steps forward but eventually slowed to a stop, leaning against the wall as he came to a standstill.
The sensation was bizarre—the effects of “Tian Xing Jian” were clearly still active, yet his mind was already in a daze.
Countless memories blazed like meteors across his consciousness.
In these fragments, he wasn’t on the “Train” or at “Paradise Port,” but rather in a blood-soaked city.
There were no “Ants” in its nights, but the streets were littered with burning ruins and corpses at every turn.
The stench of rot and decay mingled with the acrid smell of smoke, clinging to everyone as they sat silently by the roadside in the dead of night, too exhausted to speak.
Their faces were etched with weariness as they stared blankly at the ground—perhaps at the dried blood caked between the cobblestones, or perhaps lost in thoughts of their own crumbling, desperate lives.
At the city’s center stood a towering mountain of corpses. In his memory, Zhang Shan was sitting atop it with another man.
Beneath them lay not just the bodies of “Participants,” but also those of “Zodiacs.”
“Dashan… we… are really going to lose,” the man said.
Zhang Shan turned to look at him—a clean-shaven buzz cut, a lean and weathered face, and wounds covering his entire body.
“Should we surrender?” Zhang Shan asked.
“There’s no such thing as surrender,” the dark-skinned man replied, his eyes filled with despair.
“But you’ve seen the situation for yourself…” Zhang Shan sighed. “It’s only a matter of time before we’re wiped out. How much longer can we hold on? A few cycles? A few months? What’s even the point of—”
“My dictionary only has ‘die fighting,’ not ‘surrender,’” the man interrupted. “But… even if this city falls, the ‘Participants’ will win in the end.”
“‘Participants’ winning?”
“The battlefield is bigger than we imagined,” the man said. “The reason this city has fought so hard is to weaken the ‘Zodiacs’ as much as possible—to pave the way for victory later.”
“What…?” Zhang Shan felt as though the man was speaking of things he had never heard before.
“There are more cities than just ours,” the man continued, gazing at the lifeless bonfires below. “Our sacrifice isn’t meaningless. I lied to all the ‘Ripple Soldiers’ here—holding out will lead to victory, but none of us will live to see it.”
He shifted his weight slightly atop the corpse pile, turning to face Zhang Shan fully.
“Dashan, only you,” he said. “You might be the only one who gets to see that victory.”
“Me?”
“I made a deal with someone,” the man admitted, wiping dried blood from his face with a bitter smile. “When the city falls, we’ll find a way to get you out.”
In that memory, Zhang Shan felt the situation escalating beyond comprehension.
Until now, his life had been nothing but leading squads through the city, fighting and dying. Just as their resistance was on the brink of annihilation, he was suddenly being told of a larger war?
“You’ve been fighting alongside me since the day we first remembered anything,” the dark-skinned man said with a faint smile. “You remember almost every fallen soul in this city. We need someone with the longest memory to make it to the end.”
“What are you talking about…?” Zhang Shan frowned. “Damn it, the more you say, the less I understand. What do you mean ‘get me out’?”
“Send you to another city—let you live under a new identity.”
“Why not send you instead?! You remember them too!”
“‘Tian Xing Jian’ is more suited for this than ‘Eagle Eye.’ I can oversee the battlefield, but I can’t intervene effectively. You have a better chance of surviving.”
“Damn it, but your ‘Ripple’ is more stable!” Zhang Shan argued. “Mine might look strong, but it doesn’t always activate… What if I forget? What if one day I don’t remember our comrades—what then?!”
“It doesn’t matter,” the man said. “I’m willing to gamble.”
“Gamble…?”
The man pointed upward, toward the sky.
Zhang Shan followed his finger. The heavens were pitch black, devoid of stars.
“Today, I learned something,” the man said. “Someone cast a strange ‘Barrier’ over all of us.”
“‘Barrier’?” Zhang Shan squinted at the empty sky, feeling the conversation growing more abstract by the second.
There was nothing there—no sign of any “Barrier.”
“It’s been active this whole time,” the man explained. “It helps the ‘Land of Endings’ sever our memories. Ordinary people reborn there don’t retain their memories anyway, but this ‘Barrier’ makes the effect even stronger.”
He tried to summarize the news he’d heard, but Zhang Shan—never the sharpest thinker—only grew more confused.
“Think of it like this…” The man lowered his hand. “Back when I was in school, I heard that all energy in the world is conserved, fixed. But I always wondered—when a person dies, their flesh returns to the earth, but where do their memories and thoughts go?”
Zhang Shan blinked. “Damn it, are you saying… memories float in the sky?”
“Close enough,” the man nodded. “Memories are like lost children… drifting in the air, searching for their owners. But we—we keep being reborn.”
Zhang Shan followed the logic and quickly grasped his meaning. “You’re saying… the memories of my past self might drift into me now?”
“Exactly,” the man grinned. “We survive here through will and reason. We know who we are, and our subconscious knows which memories to accept. But once we enter a ‘Deep Ripple’ state—in other words, when we’re on the verge of madness—we might receive jumbled memories.”
Zhang Shan thought for a moment before countering, “So when I feel like I’ve been somewhere before… or done something before, it’s because I’ve absorbed the wrong memories?”
“You’ve got the gist of it,” the man agreed. “That’s why I’m not afraid of you forgetting everything. As long as you’ve lived through it, those memories will flood back into your mind someday—even the words I’m saying now.”
“But didn’t you say there’s a ‘Barrier’ up there…?”
“The person who told me said the caster of the ‘Barrier’ will die, and it’ll vanish instantly,” the man replied. “When that happens… everyone’s sanity will waver. The old memories will rush in—including those of Qinglong and Tianlong.”
Tai Sui Yellow Amulet Paper FuLu Taoist Love Talisman Traditional Chinese Spiritual Charm Attracting Love Protecting Marriage