Chapter 548: Sand in the Box

By the river.

A wailing cold wind blew, stirring up ripples.

Looking at the familiar river before him, Zhang Tie couldn't help but zone out.

Before entering the Secret Realm, he had seen this river in a movie.

After entering, he repeatedly tried to swim out in despair.

To him, this place was both the beginning and the end.

"Captain Lin, what are we doing here?"

"That reward... it's not in the river, is it?"

Xiong Hanzi looked at Lin An, puzzled.

There was nothing in the river, not even a fish.

Besides water, just water.

In the silence, Lin An spoke directly, his gaze fixed on the riverbed.

"There are corpses."

"The reward is my corpse..."

"What?!"

Startled, Zhang Tie's muscles tensed instantly at the sound, and he felt his hairs stand on end.

What kind of reward is this?

What does this have to do with attributes?!

If it weren't for confirming that Chu Renmei was dead and the mission completed...

He even wondered if Lin An had been possessed by a ghost again.

"Splash"

Before he could panic too long, Lin An reached out with his right hand, directly using telekinesis to drag corpse after corpse from the riverbed.

The scene was eerie and mysterious.

Hundreds of corpses surfaced, and splashing water droplets wetly slid off the armor.

Pale skin, eyes hollow and whitened.

Same equipment, same face, same posture.

Seeing hundreds of Lin An's corpses levitated by telekinesis, Xiong Hanzi was nearly scared stupid.

"What the fuck! I... what the hell!"

The impact of the scene was too strong, leaving him unable to recover for a while.

By the river, Lin An looked at his own corpse with a complex expression and gave a bitter laugh.

"Bang!"

When the telekinesis withdrew, the corpses that had been lifted into the air instantly smashed to the ground.

Seeing hundreds of his own dead selves, this experience...

... was also quite stimulating.

"Captain Lin?!"

"What the hell is going on?!"

"How... how can there be so many of you?!"

Stammering, Zhang Tie stared wide-eyed and couldn't help but shrink his neck.

Otherwise, if the living Lin An were beside him, he would surely be scared to death.

His brain felt like mush; he simply couldn't figure out where these corpses came from.

"Captain Lin... is this... a ghost transformation..."

He stammered.

Having regained his senses, he cautiously approached the "little hill" of piled corpses and couldn't help but wipe at it.

They were real corpses, not an illusion...

Lin An hesitated a moment, then walked over to Xiong Hanzi and simply explained:

"Don't overthink it; these corpses are indeed all me."

"Or rather, they are me from another timeline."

"I've died... probably over a hundred times..."

Hearing Lin An's words, Zhang Tie blinked and shook the corpse in his hand.

He felt utterly bewildered.

"What does that mean?!"

"Captain Lin, you've died over a hundred times?!"

"No way! I didn't just save you once?!"

In disbelief, he clearly remembered Lin An dying only once, and then he cleverly figured out a way to break the situation.

Although Lin An gave him a hint, he truly felt his progress was skyrocketing!

"You've just forgotten, or rather, your current self has no memory of failure and cannot have any."

Lin An replied in a calm, soft voice, though a hint of helplessness flashed in his eyes:

"Actually, I don't know exactly what happened either; I'm just guessing."

"I'm inferring based on the number of corpses that appeared."

"You must have failed over a hundred times before finding a solution; otherwise I wouldn't have died so many times..."

The corner of the mouth twitched.

Lin An also, in the memory, found a fragment of having seen hundreds of corpses before death, and only then realized he had died so many times.

I don't know why this Memory was preserved.

Perhaps it was due to a special step of the Supernatural Incident.

After all, he clearly remembers seeing his own dead self staring blankly at him.

That feeling of dead silence and despair remains unforgettable.

Zhang Tie was stunned, his face suddenly feeling hot.

Holy shit!

I've failed so many times!!

"Wrong! Lin Dui!"

"I clearly remember I only tried once!"

"Even if I didn't succeed, my Memory wouldn't be retained, so how is your corpse preserved?"

"According to you, the time loop has cycled hundreds of times, but the villagers died and stayed dead!"

"What about their corpses?"

"If yours can stay, then they shouldn't have piled up tens of thousands of corpses!!"

"The village is about to rot!"

Not sure if he became "addicted" to the pleasure of thinking, Xiong Hanzi asked doubtfully.

Lin An put down the corpse in his hand, his eyes flickering.

"Xiong Sheng", you've found the blind spot.

That's right, Zhang Tie's question does indeed exist.

If the cycle restarts, there's no reason his corpse would be retained.

After a brief pause, Lin An directly spoke to explain:

"Whether it's your memory issue or the extra corpse issue, it can actually be explained with just one point."

"Zhang Tie."

"Have you played with sand, or building blocks?"

Zhang Tie heard the voice, nodded, and scratched his head:

"I've played, playing with mud counts too, right?"

"What does this have to do with this matter?"

Nodding, Lin An casually summoned a bit of dust, freely controlling the mud to deform and reshape:

"It's very simple."

"Everything in this Secret Realm is like the mud or sand in a box."

"In the Secret Realm, the villagers, no matter what form they take—whether plants, trees, people, or ghosts—are essentially composed of the 'sand' within the 【Secret Realm】."

"Just like the basic unit of matter is the atom."

"The 'sand' being destroyed and then reshaped, for them, is just a reenactment of history."

While speaking, Lin An shaped the mud ball in his hand into a little figure, pinched it apart, then reshaped it.

"Just like this."

"No matter how it's destroyed, just needing to reshape it once can restore it to its original state."

"Similarly, this Secret Realm's 'sand' is only this much; you pinching a new one doesn't mean duplicating one."

「Reverse... cycle.. \"

"It's a reenactment, not an extra repetition."

Zhang Tie's brows tightened after hearing that.

He understood Lin An's analogy.

But doesn't that even more show that Lin Dui's corpse shouldn't appear so many times?

It's just that an event occurs hundreds of times, looping continuously.

Lin An, seeing he couldn't understand for a moment, gave a light laugh, tapped him, then tapped himself:

"Still not getting it?"

"We're outsiders!"

"The rule of this Secret Realm's cyclic reenactment is reshaping!"

"But the 'sand' that makes up us does not come from the Secret Realm!"

"We are real-world players, with spiritual energy and systemic power inside our bodies!"

"So..."