Chapter 436: The Dead Memories Begin to Attack

It seemed as if someone had taken a hammer and smashed a mirror.

The shards sprayed outward in all directions, each fragment reflecting a different scene.

Then the darkness swallowed all the shards.

When light returned, the sky was red.

It wasn't sunset glow. It wasn't fire‑burned clouds.

It was a moon missing more than half of its disc, hanging at the exact center of the firmament, its pitted surface oozing crimson ichor that soaked the whole canopy into a rotting flesh‑red.

Lu Yu stood amid the ruins.

Beneath his feet lay broken concrete and twisted Reinforced Steel Bar. In the distance, what had once been skyscrapers was now only jagged broken spires, like bones half gnawed away.

The air was both fetid and damp, each breath filling his lungs with rust‑laden water.

He was far too familiar with this place.

Jiang Hai City. No, it had once been Jiang Hai City.

A city of four million people, now without even a single lamp.

On the distant skyline, several massive black silhouettes moved slowly, each step causing the ground to tremble once. Their outlines were vague, the full shape indiscernible, only the joint bends—unlike any known creature—could be recognized.

Those things no longer needed to hunt.

They were strolling.

Strolling through a city that belonged to them.

Cough—

The sound came from the left.

Very close.

Lu Yu turned his head.

In a gap of the ruins, a half‑collapsed load‑bearing pillar leaned against a broken wall, and at the wall's base a figure was curled up.

His black combat suit was nearly shredded, the Investigation Bureau emblem on his chest reduced to half an eagle wing. His left leg was missing below the knee, the stump burned and cauterized, the charred flesh rolled outward.

Su Ming.

He was a dozen years older than the Su Ming Lu Yu knew.

His eye sockets were sunken, cheekbones protruding, half his face smeared with dried blood crust. So gaunt he seemed to lose his shape, his jawbone lines unnaturally sharp.

But those eyes were unchanged.

Their pupils were extremely dark, and under the red moon's light they still resembled a wolf.

Only a wolf whose teeth had been pulled, leg broken, dragging its entrails as it crawled out of a trap.

"You... have come."

Su Ming's throat sounded as if sandpaper had been rubbed over it; each word he spat out was accompanied by the pop of bubbles in his throat.

He coughed once.

What dribbled from his mouth wasn't just blood. There were fragments. Fragments of entrails.

Lu Yu crouched down.

He knew this was a dream.

He also knew this wasn't a dream.

It was a memory.

It was the memory he carried back to the present, sealed by the timeline deep within his consciousness, surfacing periodically and pushing him back to that night.

"Sai Men is dead," Su Ming said, leaning against the wall, his gaze shifting to the massive silhouettes slowly moving along the distant skyline.

"Jiang Yuan killed them with his own hands, detonating them together with fifty‑seven thousand Shadow Ghost soldiers. All perished together."

He paused.

"Liang Wen's last Rewind, he turned the time back by seven minutes. Seven minutes—just enough for Director Qin to arrange the escape of fewer than a thousand civilians from the city."

Su Ming's Adam's apple bobbed, "But handing the position to her was right for Wei Gong. If it were me, perhaps not even a hundred people could be saved."

He seemed to be reciting a running account.

His tone was unnaturally flat.

It was also like reading a Casualty List.

When you read it to the point of numbness, it no longer hurts.

In the end.

Su Ming smiled.

That smile was uglier than the red moon.

"But we never won," he said.

Another mouthful of blood‑foam coughed out, splattering onto the broken stones.

"Sai Men can be created by a god. We killed one, and it forged ten more. The victory Jiang Yuan bought with his life was instantly erased."

Su Ming lifted his hand, wiping the blood from his mouth corner. Two fingers were missing from that hand.

"Did you understand?"

He stared at Lu Yu.

"The guy standing behind all the Weird. He is not the Deceiver, not a monster, not a product of any Weird Domain. He is the Rules themselves. He is the origin. He created the original Weird, can forge Rule Ghost Stories, can sit in a corner unseen by anyone, using billions of people as petri dishes."

Su Ming's breathing quickened for two seconds, then he forced it back down.

"Every step of humanity's resistance plays out on the chessboard of that behind‑the‑scenes god."

"Only by returning to the past, before the god who created the Weird and drove humanity to this point had fully spread its wings and become all‑knowing and all‑powerful—must we assassinate it."

"Otherwise the Weird will never be eradicated; humanity's future will forever be shrouded in the Weird's shadow, and countless people will die repeatedly."

This time, the God noticed us in advance, so we failed.

If we go back to the past, we must secretly uncover the God's identity, exploit the asymmetry of information, catch the opponent off guard and kill them, in order to end all this.

Wind poured in through the cracks of the ruins. It was fetid.

The dark silhouette in the distance halted.

The massive skull turned toward us, and dozens of eyes of varying sizes opened in succession under the red moon.

Su Ming didn't look at that thing.

He lowered his head and took something out of his chest.

The movement was slow. Not on purpose. He truly had no strength.

A worm.

It was finger‑joint long, completely transparent, with a faint azure glow flowing over its surface.

Time Marrow Worm.

Lu Yu recognized this thing.

That was the Weird that Su Ming initially fused. It was the source that allowed him to manipulate time, and also the sole reason he had survived until now.

Take it.

Su Ming shoved the worm into Lu Yu's palm.

The worm's body was icy, its texture slick, it curled once in the palm and emitted a faint buzz.

Lu Yu didn't take it.

Or rather, his fingers wouldn't close.

"You give this to me, what will you do?"

"I have nothing left to do," Su Ming said.

The tone was still that flat.

"If you crush it, your consciousness will be pushed back."

Su Ming's hand pressed down on Lu Yu's fist that was gripping the worm.

The force of three fingers was unexpectedly great.

There was no wolf‑like ferocity in his eyes any more. Only a very thin, almost dissipating light remained.

"Find the true form of the 'God' within human society, while he is still merely a human and can still be killed."

"—Kill him."

"Try not to let anyone know you're looking for him. And don't let anyone know where you came from."

"Each fragment of Intelligence from this timeline that you leak lowers our chances, and once the opponent senses it they will definitely prepare defenses."

Su Ming's fingers relaxed.

It wasn't a voluntary relaxation.

It was just a lack of strength.

The crippled hand slid off Lu Yu's fist, brushed the broken‑stone ground, palm up, fingers slightly spread, and then moved no more.

The eyes were still open.

The pupil color remained deep.

But the light was gone.

Lu Yu knelt there.

His mouth was open, his throat trembled, but no sound came out.

The worm writhed in his palm.

The azure glow reflected in the center of his pupils.

The massive shadows in the distance began to move.

The ground trembled.

They came this way.

Lu Yu lowered his head and looked at the worm in his hand.

He glanced at Su Ming again.

There was no expression on Su Ming's face. The dead have no expression.

But Lu Yu remembered the way he looked at him with his last glance.

It wasn't fear, nor resentment.

It was a entrustment.

He threw the fate of tens of billions of people onto a twenty‑something kid.

Because there was no one else.

Lu Yu crushed the worm.

There was no hesitation. Not even force.

The moment his finger bones contracted, the worm's body shattered, and the azure light surged out from between his fingers, engulfing his whole body.

Time collapsed.

It wasn't a metaphor.

The ground beneath his feet receded, the red moon overhead spun backward, the distant ruins elongated in reverse, those massive shadows shrank, shrank, shrank, and finally vanished behind a city skyline that had not yet been torn apart.

All the scenes rewound at breakneck speed.

It was fast enough to make his retina burn.

It was fast enough to tear his cerebral cortex.

He heard countless people's cries and shouts playing in reverse—first a wail, then silence, then laughter, then the far‑earlier bustling street noise.

Then everything was gone.

The ward.

White ceiling. Disinfectant.

The monitor was beeping.

Not the normal ticking; it was the long‑wailing alarm after the electrodes fell off.

Lu Yu's eyes snapped open.

His pupils dilated to the maximum, the irises almost filled with black.

Cold sweat soaked the Patient Gown, clinging to his back, rising and falling with each breath.

The three electrodes on his chest had, at some point, been ripped off by himself; the wires dangled over the edge of the bed, swinging.

He stared at the ceiling.

What churned in his mind was not the earlier dream—it was the feeling of Su Ming's hand slipping from his fist. Three broken fingers, bone against bone, the last warmth cooling completely within two seconds.

Every time he had this dream, that temperature would scorch him anew.

Lu Yu's teeth slowly clenched.

His masseter muscles tightened into angles.

Beneath the eyes of a fourteen‑year‑old boy, something completely mismatched with that age was roiling.

It was not sorrow.

It was the residue left after sorrow had been passed through, pierced, chewed up and swallowed.

More bitter, harder, and longer‑lasting.

He raised his left hand and covered half his face.

Five fingers slipped into his drenched hair, fingertips pressing against his scalp; the faint dark pattern on the back of his hand quivered slightly under the cold sweat.

The ward was very quiet.

Quiet enough that he could hear his own heartbeat.

One. Two. Three.

Each beat told him—You are alive. You have returned. You have another chance.

Lu Yu's lips moved.

His voice was pressed down to the lowest pitch, low enough that the vibration traveled only between his vocal cords and chest cavity.

"I will find you, I will definitely find you."

"I will take the Federation as a blade, Eden Garden as a shield, and every usable person, resource, and rule in this world—and turn them all into chips in my hand."

"Then I will pull you down from that self‑proclaimed throne with my own hands."

"For that I am willing to lose everything…including my humanity."

The dark pattern spread from the back of his hand to his fingertips, emitting a faint sheen in the shadows, then was pressed back by his will.

The giant python inside him seemed to sense the host's emotional shift and settled quietly.

It was not fear.

It was tacit understanding.

Lu Yu lowered his hand.

He steadied his breathing.

He wiped his expression clean.

All the killing intent, resolve, and the blood‑stained aura he had brought back from the apocalyptic ruins were folded layer by layer and pressed into the fourteen‑year‑old boy's flesh.

No one outside knew.

This pitiful child, lying in the Investigation Bureau's high‑risk ward, biting his lip until he was exhausted, softening Su Ming's heart—

Who had once stood on the skeletons of civilization, receiving the last living person's chip that the city handed him—

And then, with that chip, wagered the entire timeline.

Just as he wiped the last ripple of motion from his face, the heavy isolation door of the ward let out a muffled hiss as the air pressure released.

The electromagnetic lock disengaged, and the door opened outward by fifteen centimeters.

Su Ming stepped aside and entered.

He held a deep‑blue File folder in his hand.

His expression was much the same as when he left—cold, but beneath the cold shell a faint, not yet fully concealed softness.

"Lu Yu."

He placed the folder on the nightstand.

"Your discharge assessment is ready."