The moment I hit the ground, I nearly coughed up last night's instant noodles.
Plummeting from the sky while holding three people wasn't the issue. The problem was that CEN Li, a hulking man weighing nearly two hundred pounds, Mò Wúhén's gu worms were still squirming in his sleeve, and Pèi Zhāo's sword was stuck in a spatial fold, impossible to retrieve. Four of us tumbled down like a stack of acrobats, crashing into a pile of dead leaves, crushing me into a human meat patty.
“Whose… whose knee is digging into my kidney?” My voice was completely distorted.
“Not me,” CEN Li rumbled. “I landed on a tree root.”
“You landed on my hand!” Pèi Zhāo yelped, pulling his hand away. “If you don’t let go soon, my sword will be ruined!”
Mò Wúhén slowly crawled off my back, dusting off his clothes. “That fall just now saved us at least three months of gym membership fees.”
I flipped over, gasping, and fumbled for my phone. The screen lit up blindingly. Full signal. Wi-Fi automatically connected to a network called “Gélán zhī Sēn Visitor Hotspot.” The cloud calendar synced successfully—
April 17, 2013.
I stared at the numbers for three seconds, then suddenly burst out laughing. “We’re screwed. We’ve time-traveled back ten years.”
“What?” CEN Li looked up. “Ten years ago? So I was only twenty? Wait, did I play basketball here?”
“Shut up,” Mò Wúhén slapped the back of his head. “Back then, you were still teaching people squats at the gym.”
Pèi Zhāo leaned over to look at the phone, his face turning a little pale. “This is… the real historical timeline? Not a parallel universe?”
“It should be,” I said, covering the phone with my palm. “When that rift sucked us in, the System popped up a prompt saying ‘Illegal Save.’ Now it’s just playing dead. The eye patch isn’t blinking, and the skill bar is all grayed out.”
As soon as I finished speaking, my left eye patch suddenly felt searingly hot, like a branding iron had touched it. I hissed, raising my hand to touch it, and found the metal casing actually smoking. Several lines of garbled text danced across the lens: [T..i..m..e……S..p..a..c..e……A..l..i..g..n..m..e..n..t……F..a..i..l..u..r..e……R..e..b..o..o..t……U..s..e..r……A..t..t..i..t..u..d..e……]
“User attitude?” I blinked. “I’m not a router.”
“It means don’t take it so seriously,” Mò Wúhén squinted. “Last time the anti-addiction system activated, didn’t you only get past it by yelling, ‘I’m done with this crap’?”
Realization dawned. I immediately collapsed onto the ground, limbs splayed, staring at the sky and sighing, “I’m so tired. I don’t want to move. Whoever wants to save the world can save it. I just want to lie down. Lying flat is the true meaning of life.”
The eye patch beeped. The garbled text cleared instantly, and a green light flashed, restoring the System interface.
[Detected sufficient 'lazy bum' concentration. Historical Silent Mode activated.]
[Warning: Interaction with past individuals is prohibited. Causality contamination risk: 97.6%.]
“Wow, it even gives ratings?” I put away my phone. “Looks like we’re on a ghost field trip. We can see them, but we can’t touch.”
Just as I spoke, a clear complaint echoed from the distance: “Why are these apples cut crooked again!”
We all turned our heads in unison.
At the edge of the woods, a child about ten years old was frowning, holding an unsharpened short sword. Several unevenly chopped wild fruits lay on the ground. He flicked his wrist, and a faint white light shot out from the sword tip. The fruit split in half with a *pop*, but the cut was ridiculously crooked.
“Is that…” CEN Li’s eyes widened. “Young Pèi Zhāo?”
“Nonsense,” Mò Wúhén sneered. “Besides him, what other child wields a sword more seriously than sharpening a pencil?”
Pèi Zhāo himself froze, gazing at the small figure. His lips moved, but he made no sound.
The child practiced a few more times, then flicked his wrist in dissatisfaction. As he looked up, his gaze passed straight through the grey mist and landed on us.
My heart tightened. Instinctively, I pulled up my hood, covering half my face.
He didn’t move, nor did he speak. He just stared for two seconds, then lowered his head to continue chopping fruit, muttering, “Strange, why did I feel like someone was watching me practice my sword just now… Could it be the master sent an inspector?”
“Hear that?” I breathed a sigh of relief. “He thinks it’s an assessment.”
“But he was looking at you,” Pèi Zhāo said quietly. “Not us.”
I froze.
Indeed, that glance seemed to have locked onto me precisely.
“Perhaps it’s because…” Mò Wúhén began slowly, “the pattern on your Ghost Hand resonates with the Earth Vein frequency here. You’re not from here, but the source of your power has long been buried in this forest.”
“So what does that make me now?” I gave a wry smile. “A walking time-space bug?”
“To be precise, it’s a System-erroneously-assigned administrator account,” Mò Wúhén glanced at me. “The code you wrote in the real world became one of the underlying protocols of this world. When you stand here, it’s like plugging a USB drive into a server. The System automatically identifies you as ‘one of us’.”
“No wonder the statue called me ‘root’,” I scratched my head. “But the problem is, what was I doing ten years ago? Writing my graduation project, pulling all-nighters fixing bugs. I never came to any Gélán zhī Sēn.”
“That’s why you’re safe,” Mò Wúhén said. “If there’s no ‘you’ from the past, there’s no paradox. You’re just an external variable, embedded in a historical fragment.”
I let out a long sigh and leaned against a tree trunk. “Good thing I’m not some chosen one. I’m just an ordinary corporate slave. My biggest accomplishment in my four years of university was keeping my succulents alive through finals week.”
As soon as I finished speaking, the System suddenly popped up a window:
[Detected strong affirmation of 'ordinary past' by host.]
[Hidden Achievement Unlocked: Dignity of the Unchosen.]
[Reward: Temporary permission upgrade (allows viewing historical fragment annotations).]
My vision blurred. Semi-transparent tags appeared at the edges of my sight, like in-game quest notification boxes.
A line of text appeared above young Pèi Zhāo’s head: [Future Sword Soul· Eve of Awakening.]
The ground beneath his feet read: [Site of Apostle Remains Burial·Inactive.]
And the outline of the entire forest vaguely formed a giant character, “Sinking” (Chén), exactly like the one I'd seen on the tree spirit’s seal.
“Holy crap…” I swallowed. “Was this place founded after me?”
“No,” Mò Wúhén stared at the ground. “Your name activated this place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever wondered why the System specifically bound you?” he sneered. “It wasn’t good luck. It’s because the program you wrote had already predicted this world’s existence. You’re not a time-traveler, you’re… the developer.”
My mind went blank.
Developer?
Me, a programmer who worked overtime fixing bugs and lived on instant noodles, developed another world?
While I was still stunned, the System chimed again:
[Notification: Detected similar energy fluctuations.]
[Source: Unknown.]
[Distance: 500 meters.]
[Characteristic Match: 83.4%.]
“Similar?” I looked up sharply. “There’s someone else like me?”
“Or…” Pèi Zhāo’s voice tightened, “…another you.”
“Impossible,” I shook my head. “I told you I’ve never been here."""But the System doesn’t recognize location," Mò Wúhén stared at the patterns on my Ghost Hand. “It recognizes ‘state.’ Even though the you of ten years ago wasn’t here, a certain emotion, a certain tendency toward a choice, is exactly the same as you now—for instance, avoiding responsibility, pretending to be lazy, yet always stepping in at critical moments.”
I was speechless.
In the distance, young Pèi Zhāo finally finished chopping the apple. He held it up, examined it for two seconds, and tossed it into the bushes with dissatisfaction.
Then he sat down cross-legged, closed his eyes in meditation, and laid the sword across his knees.
A gust of wind blew, rustling the leaves.
I suddenly felt a chill.
At that moment, my phone vibrated.
I looked down. A notification popped up on the lock screen:
[WeChat Friend Request: User "Jí · Āxiūluó" is requesting to add you as a friend.]
[Message: You stepped on my name with your shoe and think you can run?]