Chapter 543: Cycle

How could this... be like this!?

The spirit loses control.

「Pat」

The mechanical compass that had been spinning fell straight down as if broken.

Beside the water well, next to the shattered pagoda.

Chu Ren Mei, and the three corpses with severed heads that had died.

The scene submerged in boundless deathly silence, as if frozen.

The whole body stiffens.

Lin An dared not turn back; he could feel Chu Ren Mei behind him blowing air at him.

That face, like a hole poked in white paper, was staring fixedly at him.

If he turned back, his mind would instantly collapse.

This is a fear beyond comprehension.

Vitality and life force seemed to be drawn away.

A strong sense of weakness surged into the limbs.

Life force drained away in large amounts.

Chu Ren Mei...

A spiritual anomaly, or rather one far beyond the level of a ghost infant.

As if an enlightenment before death.

Lin An let out a bitter laugh in his heart, filled with bitterness and unwillingness.

The horror of the supernatural incident can only be felt by those who have experienced it firsthand.

It seems the ghost infant is merely an incomplete form.

The mission was done wrong.

At the moment the system mission was completed, Lin An realized he might have made an irreparable mistake.

He realized why his unease arose.

The Moebius riddle... the desolate village old corpse...

The former represents cycles, the latter represents the terror Zhang Tie fears.

"Lin Dui!?"

Behind Lin An, Xiong Hanzi's eyes bulged with extreme fear as he looked at the blue-clad woman behind him.

He instinctively wanted to step forward to help, but Lin An stopped him with his voice.

Useless; even if Zhang Tie came over, it would just be one more death.

Facing away from him.

Lin An felt he could not resist at all.

He simply could not break free from Chu Ren Mei.

He recalled the water stains inside the thatched hut.

Perhaps from the moment he entered the Secret Realm, Chu Ren Mei began to cling to him.

Perhaps this mission should not be undertaken.

What should I... do.

Who can break the situation...

Another me...?

"... hard to hold..."

Lin An only felt his abdomen swell, as if a lump of meat had been stuffed inside.

In his peripheral vision, that was the flesh on his own arm.

Am I... eating myself...?

The digested meat, converting into life force "supplied" for Chu Ren Mei to devour?

A voice rose from the depths of his heart.

It seemed that, in the instinct of consciousness, the Second Lin An sensed the aura of death, sensed that Lin An was loosening his seal.

This time, it was Lin An who let him out.

The voice was weak, yet unusually calm.

(Now you know fear?)

(You know you let me out?)

This time, the Second Lin An who appeared had no mockery in his speech, only weariness.

After quickly scanning his main body's memories, the Second Lin An's voice calmly communicated with him in his mind:

(You guessed correctly, but it's too late.)

(The She Sha God, representing the ouroboros in Brahma's legend, means endless cycles and temporal disorder.)

(Likewise, Moebius represents an erroneous cycle.)

(If nothing unexpected happens, this desolate village is indeed...)

(As Zhang Tie put it, the village from the old corpse mountain village movie.)

Lin An sighed, and his skin vanished at a visible speed.

His belly, however, kept bulging and then quickly digested.

His hair turned gray-white.

Whether it's the breath of the River of the Underworld or the Eye of Fear, both can only heal his wounds, but they cannot slow the loss of his vitality.

I feel like a piece of... constantly regenerating flesh...

Chu Renmei.

It is devouring his vitality.

Exactly, the meaning of the second Lin An's words—he only realized it a second ago.

The village incident is Chu Renmei! It's the old corpse of the mountain village!

He had indeed wondered why the village incident and the Secret Realm's name were so similar to the mountain village corpse Xiong Hanzi spoke of.

They are very likely related, or even outright the same thing.

Only the era of the village incident and the Yingying event misled him.

Exactly, the mountain village corpse is modern, while the village's Yingying is ancient.

The differences between them are too many, so afterward he never even considered they could be the same thing.

But now he has figured it out.

Chu Renmei's appearance... is fundamentally after the Yingying event.

This desolate village has experienced two terrifying incidents.

One was the Yingying Meme incident.

One was Chu Renmei.

A simple inference.

This Secret Realm is actually just the special Secret Realm that Huang Shaohua spoke of.

It changes the scene according to the entrant's inner state.

And the source material is Zhang Tie.

Xiong Hanzi had once fantasized before entering whether it would be armored cavalry battling zombies.

So the desolate village world appeared with ancient-era blood corpses, though they haven't encountered them yet.

Zhang Tie also fears the mountain village corpse.

So before entering, he had seen the Langya and also heard Liang Shaoguang's account of the mountain village.

In his subconscious, he believes this Secret Realm is a combination of those points.

Thus, upon entering the Secret Realm, they are effectively facing the manifestation of Zhang Tie's fear.

(Lin An, actually you should be able to think of this.)

For some reason, the second Lin An inside the Secret Realm speaks with a tone much calmer than outside, completely lacking the feeling of wanting to compete with himself for the body.

(This Secret Realm is one that Gao Tian has entered.)

(In your past life's memory, you know that after Gao Tian came out of this Secret Realm, he became solitary and taciturn.)

(Compared to when you first met Gao Tian, you should realize that his having entered this Secret Realm caused his personality to change drastically.)

(Otherwise, given your current understanding of him and the memory of the demon hunter Gao Tian, they simply wouldn't match.)

"What should I do..."

His body hunched, chunks of flesh continually disappearing into his stomach, then regenerating.

His wounds can heal, but the lost vitality cannot be made up.

Lin An doesn't know how much longer he can endure.

This way of dying is simply too gruesome.

A brief silence.

The second Lin An replied to his question indifferently:

(Break the cycle.)

(This mission has set a trap.)

(All kinds of clues are misleading you into destroying the pagoda and resolving the Yingying.)

(Actually, there's no need to worry about the Yingying at all.)

(You only need to kill everyone in the village, and the desolate village will be erased from history.)

(The village incident can be resolved from its source.)

(Once the 'grandfather paradox' appears…)

(Then naturally there will be no further village incidents.)

(Chu Renmei, probably after you resolved the Yingying, the villagers unexpectedly survived.)

(So, a hundred or even several hundred years later, a scene from a movie occurred.)

(Because of the meme's lingering effect, or perhaps other reasons, the tragically dead Chu Renmei became a vengeful ghost.)

(She broke through the limits of time and appeared at the present moment.)

(Or simply put, we 'created' her.)

(This Secret Realm world is a point of endless loop; thus, any action taken is instantly fed back.)

The second Lin An's explanation was like a sudden blow to the head.

Just during the conversation, Lin An watched helplessly as the Apocalypse Ring suddenly slipped from his hand.

No...

It didn't fall from my hand; I have no hand.

Hard to hold on...

Under Chu Renmei's possession, the speed of self-devouring is rapidly accelerating.

"Lin Dui!"

Zhang Tie behind him almost collapsed.

He could only watch Lin An's limbs constantly disappear and then regenerate.

He could not understand what had happened.

But he knew one thing: that Lin Dui was about to die.

We can't drag this on any longer!

A hint of resolve flashed in Lin An's eyes.

Dragging it out any further, there is no hope at all.

Chu Ren Mei had obviously just appeared, attaching to his body and devouring him to gain power.

Rather than continue dragging it on, it's better to go all out!

Without hesitation.

Lin An directly controlled the Apocalypse Ring and threw it toward Zhang Tie:

"Use Causal Sequence!"

"Replay history!"

"Kill the villagers..."

The voice cut off abruptly.

After expending his last strength to convey the information to Zhang Tie, Lin An stared into the endless silence of death.

"Lin Dui!!!"

"What does that mean!!"

At a loss, Zhang Tie, almost panicking to the point of madness, stared blankly as the ring was thrown into his arms.

The system notification in his ear struck like a bolt from the blue.

"Beep, Captain Lin An has died."

"Beep, player Zhang Tie has obtained the Apocalypse Ring."

The icy river water submerged his ankles.

Mournful Cantonese tunes echoed by the riverbank, and the battered Lin An, his eyes dead white, walked step by step into the riverbed.

Beneath the gloomy riverbed, over a hundred identical corpses were arranged in a row.

Hands on shoulders.

The man at the end of the troop suddenly turned his head, looking at him as he once again stepped into the riverbed.