"Yu Yuan!"
A distant call broke through the waves, rain, and darkness, the voice urgently trying to pull Xie Feng back, to stop her from sinking further, from slipping into the endless depths of the dark sea.
But it was too late.
Her mother, her sister, her closest friends, her partner... they were all drifting away, sinking into the waves, and all she could do was follow them down. There was no other choice.
"Yu Yuan, it's me. Are you okay?"
The voice didn't give up, didn't fade, but instead drew closer in an instant. From the churning black currents beneath the surface, someone firmly grasped her shoulder. That hand pressed against her skin and clothes, surprisingly dry, snapping her back to reality with a jolt.
Yu Yuan slowly blinked.
The night disappeared, the ocean disappeared, and bright daylight filled his vision. For a moment, he didn't know where he was, nor did he know where Dong Luorong had gone. No, something was wrong; the data seemed scrambled.
He had never known a woman named Dong Luorong.
That was a memory packet from "Xie Feng" running in his mind by accident. It hadn't even finished before he was abruptly pulled out of it.
"Yu Yuan?"
The woman who had forcefully woken him from that dream-like state—he recognized her now as Lin Sanjiu—was bending over him, her face deeply lined with worry, surprise, and... was that happiness?
Was she happy to be reunited?
Though the Veda rejected emotions, with enough pattern analysis, one could still recognize human facial expressions. As his data processing stabilized, Yu Yuan quickly remembered everything, so precisely that he could even pinpoint it to the second—he had accidentally triggered someone's memory. At first, he had a sense of self-awareness and even thought about doomsday on those two planets. But then, what happened?
When did he start truly believing he was Xie Feng?
To the point where he even felt a strange emptiness in his arms—as if someone he was supposed to be holding tightly wasn't there and had no connection to him at all.
As Yu Yuan mentally traced back through the "background log," Lin Sanjiu suddenly knelt down beside him with a thud, and he realized he was half-lying on the ground.
Yu Yuan blinked again. Lin Sanjiu's expression was truly peculiar.
She reached out a hand, slightly trembling, hesitant, but she brought it forward and gently touched his face.
In a daze, Yu Yuan felt her fingers lightly brush across his skin.
"You... you're crying," Lin Sanjiu murmured softly, looking down at her fingers damp with his tears.
When she looked up, her eyes were slightly red; she unconsciously pressed her lips tightly together. All these little details suggested that she was on the verge of tears herself.
It was utterly baffling.
As a Veda, Yu Yuan shedding tears was already a sign that something was wrong within him. But the fact that Lin Sanjiu, upon seeing his tears, seemed ready to cry as well—this was something he found completely incomprehensible.
However, an even stranger thing happened next: Yu Yuan lifted his hand to touch his face, only to realize that the tears were still flowing, warm and relentless. They blurred his vision in waves, obscuring Lin Sanjiu's face. He couldn't make out his surroundings clearly, nor did he know how to process this error. All he could do was sit there, helpless, as tears continued to roll down his cheeks.
"It's all right, it's all right," Lin Sanjiu murmured, her tone as if she herself had been wounded. She fumbled to pull out a pack of tissues, pressing several tea-scented sheets against Yu Yuan's face in a flurry. "You were probably affected by someone else's memories—that's all they were, just memories. You're back now... you'll calm down soon."
Such a simple conclusion. Yu Yuan had already thought of it as soon as he regained awareness. He didn't need Lin Sanjiu to tell him that. Yet, he remained silent, allowing her to dab at his face with tissues, her hands pushing his head back slightly each time.
He cried for exactly seventeen seconds.
When his tears finally stopped, Lin Sanjiu seemed to let out a sigh of relief. She tucked away the tissues, leaned in to examine Yu Yuan's face. By then, he had fully regained his composure, and he was sure his expression had returned to his usual blank state.
Lin Sanjiu seemed to be searching his face for something, and, finding nothing, sat back down with a hint of disappointment. "It's okay now," she said again, patting his hand. "You won't fall into another memory. I've made sure that we're safe."
Had she managed to decode this strange space and find a completely safe path?
Before responding, Yu Yuan took a moment to look around.
Not long after falling into this strange space, he'd analyzed it enough to understand its general nature. The memory scenes themselves did not mean the memory data was actively running; he assumed there was a "core" that required activation for the memory data to start functioning.
He didn't know what or where this "core" was, so as he moved from one "bubble" to another, he remained cautious, sticking to the edges of each space—a path he deduced was likely safer.
But taking such a path naturally imposed certain limitations. When Yu Yuan stepped from the edge of one bubble into the next, he found himself above an endless ocean, standing on a narrow dock stretching out toward the sea. Other than walking along the dock toward the open water, he had no other options.
Yet now, with his tears dried, he realized he was no longer on that dock.
The dock, along with the ocean and sky, had vanished. In fact, he was now sitting on an unremarkable patch of ground, with a pale gray sky overhead. Lin Sanjiu was beside him, and when he looked out beyond ten or so meters, everything faded into an indistinct haze.
It was all so strange, because he couldn't tell what exactly he was seeing.
No matter how plain a piece of ground is, it should still have some kind of texture—cement might have a gray, smooth finish, soil might be dark or light, with or without weeds. But after staring at the ground beneath him for a long moment, Yu Yuan realized he couldn't describe it at all.
He couldn't discern what this floor was like; it was so ordinary, so nondescript, that even if he focused on it without blinking, it seemed to slip away from his attention, like it could vanish between the cracks of his awareness.
Noticing his gaze, Lin Sanjiu seemed to understand his confusion and explained, "These memory territories, before they're shaped by someone's memories, exist in this initial, primordial state... I can't really make out what it is either, but I think it's this chaotic nature that allows it to be molded into all sorts of scenes."
Yu Yuan wasn't used to Lin Sanjiu being the one providing the answers.
He needed to ask her how she managed to break through this space and gather as much information about it as possible. That was what he intended to say when he opened his mouth.
Yet, what he heard himself say was, "She's dead."
"Who?" Lin Sanjiu paused, then quickly understood. "The person from the memory you triggered?"
Yu Yuan nodded. Although he still didn't understand why he kept slipping up, once he started talking, it felt natural to keep going. "From early on in the memory, I recognized Xie Feng's planet and knew what would eventually happen there... both of those planets are in my database."
For some reason, he went on to recount Xie Feng's story to Lin Sanjiu.
"The cause of Dawnstar's doomsday, as Xie Feng suspected, was the giant red maple trees native to that planet. Part of their root system spread across the surface, and when dead bodies appeared on the ground, the trees absorbed them, assimilating the biological data... to put it in terms you'd understand, after absorbing enough corpses, the trees 'awoke.'"
"Where did so many corpses come from?" Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but ask.
"Frequent random deaths due to extreme climate changes," Yu Yuan answered briefly. "But that was just the lead-up. What ultimately destroyed the human world was the frenzy of the red maple trees, which wanted to absorb even more biological data—specifically human data."
The part removed from the video sent from Dawnstar must have contained this information. The people of Noonstar thought they were safe, as long as they kept an eye on the posthumans who seemed to appear alongside the abnormal red maple trees. Little did they know how gravely mistaken they were.
"Frenzy?" Lin Sanjiu asked, surprised. "And... and what about Xie Feng's world?"
Yu Yuan hesitated for a moment. "That's an exceptionally unique cause of doomsday. Even in my database, Xie Feng's planet is the only one where this specific element led to the end of humanity."
Lin Sanjiu was engrossed, leaning slightly forward, her amber eyes glinting with curiosity. He remembered that look from when they'd explored the dream pocket dimension together; it seemed unchanged after all these years.
"It was water toxicity."
"Huh?"
"An excess of rainfall over a short period caused the planet to become water-toxic. This is the simplest way for humans to understand it." Yu Yuan explained in a matter-of-fact tone. "You see, Dawnstar is a standard planet, but Noonstar isn't. Noonstar is a living organism, though none of its inhabitants realize it."
Lin Sanjiu's eyes widened, and she murmured, "Like... like Silvan's Queen Mother planet?"
"Something like that," Yu Yuan explained. "Just like a human body hosts countless microbial colonies, the planet and its people could originally coexist. But after Noonstar became water-toxic, it experienced a series of... physiological changes. The toxins it produced began multiplying and spreading through the continuous rainfall, eventually contaminating every part of the planet.
"The memory hadn't run to the very end before I was pulled out," Yu Yuan said as he glanced around. "But I think it was close... Dong Luorong had already died, and I doubt much else happened after that. What I truly don't understand is why I was so deeply affected, to the point of fully accepting Xie Feng's identity... But, that can wait. How did you find me?"
At this question, Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but smile.