Chapter 201
<Previous Chapter<Table of Contents>Next Chapter>
Duan Zege slowly raised his head and asked blankly, “Li Sanxin is here too? Where is he?”
Lou Yan looked at him silently without speaking.
Duan Zege stood up from the bed, looked around, and said, “Li Sanxin? Li Sanxin? Lou Yan, where did Li Sanxin go? Why didn’t I see him?”
Lou Yan clenched his fists tightly, his eyes slowly turning red.
Duan Zege didn’t look at him, perhaps because he didn’t dare to. He stood up, wanting to leave while naturally questioning, “Lou Yan, are you lying to me? Li Sanxin didn’t come, did he?”
He’s pretending not to understand; he doesn’t want to acknowledge his identity to Lou Yan.
“Li Sanxin…” Lou Yan said, “Are you going to hide things from me too?”
Duan Zege stopped in his tracks, listening as Lou Yan, behind him, asked angrily and tremblingly, “Fu Xuezhou didn’t tell me anything, and now even you? What is there between us that we can’t talk about?! Li Sanxin!”
Duan Zege’s Adam’s apple rolled twice, and it felt like saliva had turned into blades, cutting him from the neck to the chest, causing unbearable pain. He slowly turned around to look at Lou Yan, his long hair covering his face, and hoarsely said, “Lou Yan, do you have some misunderstanding? I really am not Li Sanxin.”
Lou Yan felt a surge of anger rush to his head. He walked over in large strides, grabbed Duan Zege’s collar, and slammed him against the wall, pulling out the five sealed diaries to interrogate, “Then what is this?! Explain this to me, what is it?!”
As soon as Duan Zege saw these papers, he panicked at first, then calmed down, “You’ve already found them, I was planning to give these things to you after finding you in the North Pole.”
Lou Yan sneered twice, the veins on the back of his hand bulging, “These are written in my handwriting, and the diary is from the future. How do you explain this? You’re obviously—”
“Lou Yan!” Duan Zege interrupted Lou Yan’s words, gasping for breath as he looked up, “Do you remember what I said when I first met you? I said the tarot cards told me that you were the person I would follow in the future. Actually, it wasn’t the tarot cards that told me, but something I experienced firsthand.”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I didn’t say anything before because I didn’t know how to say it. I also knew that even if I did, you wouldn’t believe me and would still be on guard against me. It might even provoke your rebellious mentality and be more eager to kill Fu Xuezhou… But now, nothing has changed. I was wrong, I worried too much…”
Duan Zege pulled Lou Yan’s hand off his collar, and he slid down the wall to sit on the ground, despondently. He held his head in his hands and said softly, “I accompanied you all the way to the end, but we failed. When the world was on the brink of destruction and you were about to lose control and become a terrifying anomaly, you didn’t want to become a disaster, nor did you want the world to be destroyed. So you used the power of [Time Reversal] to go back to the day before the great battle, hoping that the Li Sanxin at that time would kill you before you completely became an anomaly. And then… then…”
He gripped his hair tightly, collapsing, “You wanted Li Sanxin to eat your heart and continue to resist the anomaly.”
“You told Li Sanxin that this was the only way. You placed all your hopes on him, but sorry, that coward Li Sanxin didn’t dare to kill you at all! Not only did he not dare to kill you, he didn’t even dare to face the great battle the next day! Li Sanxin is a coward! He was scared out of his wits by the anomaly under the willow tree in the village, and since then, he has not dared to face giant anomalies, let alone integrate so many anomalies into his own body! You entrusted this task to him, but it was completely the wrong person!”
Duan Zege’s emotions suddenly became agitated, tears dripping from his chin to the cement floor. Lou Yan could even hear the grinding sound of his teeth.
“That b*stard Li Sanxin didn’t dare to tell you his fear. Under your plea, he reluctantly agreed to your request. But when it came time to really kill you, he fled at the last moment, I don’t know where he went… At that time, it was the eve of the great battle, the anomalies had already launched their attack, and you were forced onto the battlefield, once again falling into a frenzied state where the anomaly couldn’t stop. When you were about to collapse and explode as an anomaly, I came to you… I told you that I was willing to kill you and eat your heart, but the environment was too dangerous for me to have a chance to digest your ability, so I asked you… if you could go back in time again, even if only half an hour earlier…”
“You agreed. And at the moment when you were preparing to use all your strength to go back, I saw countless chains on you. Those chains bound the giant anomaly that you had become. For a moment, I thought I was seeing things. But unexpectedly, for some reason, one of the chains wrapped around you was suddenly pulled a few times by a hand, and then you began to slowly disappear, disappearing before my eyes!”
“I admit that I am a b*stard like Li Sanxin. I am just as cowardly as him… At that moment, I thought you were going to die, and I didn’t want to face this terrible, chaotic world alone. I forgot all your goals and warnings, and I went forward and hugged you, disappearing with you into that world.”
“I thought we were going to die, and I walked away very easily and decisively. But I didn’t expect that you and I would come to another world, an abandoned factory in that world… This world has not been destroyed, it is so calm and safe.”
“Then, Lou Yan, you appeared there. I watched as another identical you appeared downstairs, entered the building where the other anomaly version of you and I were, and at that moment, I finally understood. This was a parallel world identical to ours.”
“The anomaly version of Lou Yan also discovered this fact. He quietly looked at me, unable to speak at that time, but I understood what he meant. He wanted me to help you kill him and eat his heart. And then… with my help, you killed the other anomaly version of yourself, you ate his heart, and he merged into your body.”
Duan Zege held his head tightly, his shoulders trembling. Even though Lou Yan couldn’t see his expression, he could feel his immense pain.
Lou Yan’s vision darkened, and he stumbled backward, taking a step back. “The anomaly I ate… was actually another version of myself?”
Duan Zege remained silent for a long time before hoarsely saying, “Later, I found that there was an additional Lu Haoxiu by your side who shouldn’t exist. This person has never appeared by your side in our world. I extracted information from Lu Haoxiu and only then did I understand why another Lou Yan and I appeared in this parallel world. Because you saved Lu Haoxiu, who should have died on the night of the bizarre revival, he gained the talent of ‘Void Grab’. On the night he first used ‘Void Grab’, the Lou Yan in my world happened to begin time regression. Time and space intertwined at the same moment, and Lu Haoxiu’s ‘Void Grab’ had the function of traversing space. He grabbed hold of the chain entwined around another you, so that’s why another you and I arrived in this timeline at that moment.”
Lou Yan remembered the golden meteor that streaked across the sky when Lu Haoxi demonstrated [Void Grab] to him that night, shocked to the point of almost speechlessness. “…That meteor…”
“Yes, that meteor was the result of a collision between our two timelines,” Duan Zege’s voice was so low that Lou Yan almost didn’t hear it.
Lou Yan was momentarily speechless.
Now recalling it, Lu Haoxi had mentioned to him at that time that he had touched a chain, but neither of them had paid any attention to it.
But everything, all the differences, seemed to start from this moment.
Lou Yan stood there absentmindedly. He had made a wish upon that golden meteor, “Bless me to successfully kill Fu Xuezhou.”
But he would never have imagined that the meteor was actually the arrival of another version of himself and Duan Zege. And the other version of himself regretted killing Fu Xuezhou.
In the courtyard, only the sound of rustling leaves could be heard. The sun had moved from the east to directly overhead, casting a warm glow that should have made one feel pleasantly warm, but between Lou Yan and Duan Zege, there was a silent and icy silence.
Lou Yan’s pupils shifted slowly to Duan Zege.
Even though Duan Zege denied being Li Sanxin, Lou Yan was now certain that Duan Zege was definitely Li Sanxin.
When he cursed Li Sanxin as a b*stard and a coward, he was also cursing himself as a b*stard, a coward. Suddenly, Lou Yan understood why Li Sanxin pretended to be someone else in front of him. He suddenly understood why Duan Zege refused to admit that he was Li Sanxin. Because Li Sanxin had fled at the last moment before the great battle in another world. Even if he returned later, he believed that he had harmed Lou Yan. Because he thought he was a coward, because he was afraid, he didn’t have the face to appear in front of another Lou Yan.
And also because… he helped the other world’s Lou Yan kill his childhood friend, Lou Yan.
What kind of emotions did Duan Zege experience when he watched himself kill another Lou Yan? What was his mood when he ate the heart of another Lou Yan?
Lou Yan didn’t know. He couldn’t imagine the pain in Duan Zege’s heart, couldn’t imagine what kind of decision Duan Zege had made to approach him as “Duan Zege,” to be suspected by him, and to silently change their lives forever, watching him laugh and chat with Li Sanxin.
…Just thinking about it, Lou Yan felt his breathing become difficult.
“You…”
Lou Yan’s eyes became hot. He bent down to pull Duan Zege up, but Duan Zege, as if startled, dodged away, then looked up at Lou Yan with eyes exactly like Li Sanxin’s, filled with pain and pleading. “Lou Yan, believe me, I am not Li Sanxin… I really am not Li Sanxin…”
Lou Yan couldn’t hold back his tears. He turned his head aside to hastily wipe away the tears on his face and hurriedly said, “I know you are not Li Sanxin… I want to go to that abandoned factory and take a look. You rest well, and I’ll come back to find you tonight.”
With that, Lou Yan immediately left Uncle Li’s house.
Behind him came Duan Zege’s suppressed sobbing. Lou Yan paused for a moment and hastened his steps away.
On the way, Lou Yan’s mind was blank. The cold wind blew against him, making his face pale.
Lou Yan didn’t take any transportation, instead leaping straight across rooftops towards Chengjiang City. When he was tired, he let the water carry him, which was much faster than taking a car. By six o’clock in the afternoon, as dusk fell, Lou Yan followed his memory to the abandoned factory.
The abandoned factory had also been flooded by the water ghost before, but now, although the water was gone, the wooden boards, waste paper, and other debris inside had all been washed away, and the ground had been washed clean by the water. The place on the second floor where the giant anomaly had stayed no longer had the nauseating smell of black water.
The wall where the anomaly leaned against was covered with green moss, emitting a faint damp smell. Lou Yan stood in front of this wall and, with an indescribable feeling, reached out his hand to gently stroke it.
The Lou Yan who had been nurtured in luxury, who had been exquisite and luxurious in every aspect of life, had turned into such a repulsive, slime-covered anomaly in another world.
Lou Yan could actually understand what the other him would be feeling. If he really reached that point, he wouldn’t care if he looked ugly or not anymore. He would only worry about whether his existence would become a disaster for this world.
“You must have been in pain back then,” Lou Yan muttered to himself, “So when you saw me trying to dig out your heart, were you happy?”
“No wonder you didn’t resist me,” Lou Yan sneered, his eyes complicated. “Killing you was actually a kind of release for you.”
The spacious corridor was quiet. Lou Yan took a deep breath, but suddenly caught sight of a faintly visible word under the moss on the wall.
He scraped away the moss on the wall, revealing the clumsy handwriting underneath:
“Do not kill, Fu Xuezhou.”
“Humanity will never die.”
<Previous Chapter<Table of Contents>Next Chapter>
