Rowing

Five years. Over a thousand deaths.

If these absurd conclusions were all true, then continuing to crawl into that cave was indeed no different from lining up to die.

But the problem brought them right back to the beginning.

“What do we do now?” Ryan stared at the two unconscious figures in the distance, his brow furrowed in a tight knot. “Do I actively take them in to die a few more times? See if we can use this loop to fast-forward the outside world to 1865?”

“No,” Chris replied with absolute certainty. “Absolutely not.”

“Why? Since one death passes a day, isn't wasting the time away the easiest way?”

“Because you will go mad,” Chris said, his voice entirely flat. “To be precise, your vessel of consciousness will completely fall apart.”

Ryan curled his lips. “Do you think I look like a normal person right now?”

“Far from it,” Chris said, mercilessly popping his bravado. “Right now, you merely have too many overflowing pre-death memories, causing a cognitive bias. If you die a few hundred more times, your spirituality will completely lose the ability to distinguish between 'now' and 'then.' By the time you reach several thousand deaths... you might not even remember who you are. You will just become a living corpse on this bone beach, endlessly repeating the act of suicide.”

In truth, he had already sensed this terrifying feeling of detachment. For a few moments just now, he couldn't even tell how many times he had sat here.

Some memories were already beginning to overlap and melt uncontrollably. They were like sheets of paper soaked in seawater, the ink bleeding out and the edges gradually blurring.

Chris's inhumanly rational voice continued to whisper in his mind:

“And there is a more practical problem.”

“What?”

“If you really use this method to die until 1865, the me of that time might not be willing to help you anymore.”

Ryan froze, his gaze turning slightly strange. “What do you mean? You would change your mind?”

Chris sighed again. “The timelines are different. In this distorted dimension, every time I am pulled out, a shift occurs. The one you see right now is the 'me' sitting here at this very moment, barely managing to reach an agreement with you. If a few more cycles pass, who knows what completely unreasonable thing the next 'me' dragged out will be.”

Ryan's eyelids twitched.

In their current context, this extremely absurd reasoning was actually damn convincing.

After all, this Chris in front of him had admitted himself that he was already split into four. Who could guarantee that after being bombarded by high-frequency loops for a few more years, he wouldn't split into eight or sixteen pieces and end up fighting himself in his own head?”

“So,” Chris coughed weakly in his mind, forcing the topic back on track. “My suggestion is very simple. If the land route is blocked, take the water route.”

“The water route?”

“Row across,” Chris spat coldly.

Ryan almost thought his hearing had been damaged by the frequent deaths. “What?”

“I said, row across. Tell that Forge user to build a bone boat and row back.”

Ryan slowly turned his head, looking at the boundless sea before him. He took a deep breath, his tone turning completely cold. “Chris, has your brain completely rotted? Rowing across an entire ocean in a small boat?”

“Of course I know it's an ocean. A few days without food and water should be enough.”

He fell silent for a moment, suddenly thinking of another question.

“Wait, tell me this... how can you remember so clearly? You even have the exact count down to the single digits?”

“Are you sure you didn't miscalculate?”

His mind fell dead silent for a second.

Then, Chris let out a few awkward, slightly neurotic chuckles.

“Actually... I lose my memory every time too.”

“...”

The veins on Ryan's forehead throbbed violently, his fists clenching until his knuckles turned white. “Then why did you just tell me all that crap? Are you playing me for a fool?”

“Don't be so hasty, child. I told you, I'm different from you crude lumps of meat. My deaths involve a bit more occult finesse,” Chris said righteously. “Every time, I only die 'halfway.'”

“What do you mean, die halfway?”

“Literally. Since I'm an incomplete fragment to begin with, I can split my spiritual body when facing erasure. One half dies and is wiped clean like a blank slate, but the other half remains alive. That living half holds onto the memory of everything that happened here for you. Then, in the next loop, the living half goes to die, and the previously dead half revives.”

“...”

Ryan stood in place, not uttering a single word for a full dozen seconds.

He found himself utterly unable to comprehend this process with normal human logic. It was like a person constantly slicing off their left and right brain, taking turns to die and taking turns to remember.

And Chris seemed to realize his struggle to understand, actually explaining patiently:

“For example, the 'me' speaking to you right now is composed of 'Fragment A' and 'Fragment B.' When you walk toward the cave to seek death, A is responsible for bearing the cause and effect of death, and A is erased. Meanwhile, B hides deep inside and remembers the entire process. The next time you open your eyes on the bone beach, the dead A will precipitate back from the bottom of the dream, and B will transfer all the recorded memories to A. Then, next time it's B's turn to die, and A does the recording.”

“So from the perspective of overall occult causality, 'Chris' has never forgotten a single thing in this loop.”

Ryan listened, only feeling his cerebral cortex ache even more. Staring at the dark sea in the distance, he said hoarsely in his mind:

“You know what?”

“What?”

“You sound... completely unlike a living person, or any kind of rational creature.”

Chris immediately sounded displeased, his voice turning cold. “No shit. From the day that lunatic in reality threw me into the deepest layer of the dream, I stopped being a fucking human. But that's not the point, Ryan. The point is, my dual-soul swap can still hold up, and I remember the way. But your vessel of consciousness is about to leak completely dry. You are about to forget everything.”

Chris's voice suddenly dropped, stripping away all of his bizarre playfulness, becoming incredibly serious, even carrying a shivering coldness:

“Ryan, don't enter that cave again. There is no door to leave through either; it's just a death loop. The real path is on the sea. While the season outside is still favorable, wake Simon and Alvin.”

“Let's get out of here.”

Ryan did not answer immediately.

He slowly turned around, looking at Simon and Alvin who were still lying on the bone sand, then raised his head to look at the skeletal cave shrouded in mist.

Tragic scenes of being evaporated by The Glory and melted by time countless times flashed through the depths of his mind like a revolving lantern, ultimately turning into a shudder in his subconscious.

Finally, he slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air.

“Fine.” Ryan closed his eyes. “I'll trust you this once.”

In the depths of his mind, Chris immediately let out a satisfied, neurotic chuckle. “Very good. It seems after dying over sixteen hundred times, you've finally learned the most important law in this long night.”

“What law?”

Chris said in a slow, almost sighing tone:

“The greatest weakness of the Lantern Principle is always thinking one can control everything through 'understanding.' But in occultism... sometimes, knowing too much is truly inferior to running away as fast as you can.”