A dream? That was quite a leap in topics.
But Ren Yi stopped. Somehow, he felt he could guess what Evans was about to say.
Evans's narrative was somewhat unexpected.
"In that dream... I didn't exist yet."
"I had no hands, no feet, no bones. I was just a mass of black water."
The youth seemed to have fallen into a nightmare.
"In the dream, I always had a strong intuition that I was supposed to have a physical form."
"That feeling was so painful..."
"It was like I was a shattered, mangled corpse; an embryo not yet fully gestated; the egg white that would never develop after the shell had broken."
"I wanted to wake up. I wanted to exist."
"But it was like being caught in sleep paralysis; you struggle desperately, yet you just cannot wake up."
"I couldn't do it. I could only mix with more, larger, endless masses of black water, drifting with the current."
"Then, after an unknown amount of time, I found a breach."
"Together with countless other black torrents, I fell out defenselessly, like a column of black water."
"Only then did I realize that I had previously been inside a giant 'eggshell' hanging in the sky."
"The moment I smashed into the ground, the dream ended."
"And then, I was born."
"..."
Ren Yi listened to this somewhat stream-of-consciousness description in silence.
After a moment of contemplation, he condensed text once more.
【I've seen the files regarding S-099 within the Sky Eye Organization.】
【The process you're describing seems to have been recorded.】
He then briefly described the series of events: the shattering of the S-002 moon, the crashing debris falling, and finally S-099 being created by the Sky Eye Organization.
【Isn't the scene you're describing exactly that?】
The handwriting flickered. Ren Yi's meaning was blunt.
What does this story have to do with what we are talking about now?
Evans shook his head desperately, denying it.
"No, no, it's not like that. You've misunderstood."
"The dream I'm describing has nothing to do with the event recorded in those files."
"What you're talking about happened after I was 'born' but before I was 'awake.'"
"To be precise, my consciousness was still chaotic when I was born, so the situation you mentioned might have been a reflexive action identical to my dream."
"But my dream occurred before I was 'born.'"
"Let's put it this way: there's one major difference between my dream and what's described in those files."
"The files say S-099 fell from the mutated moon."
"But in my dream, that giant 'eggshell' I fell from..."
"It wasn't the moon."
"It was... the sun."
...
The wind on the embankment seemed to go completely dead at that moment.
The white mist that Ren Yi had become churned in mid-air for a long time, revealing his inner turmoil.
After a long while, a line of text slowly surfaced before Evans's eyes:
【Why are you telling me about this dream?】
"My 'memory' tells me that this dream is the common origin of all our kind," Evans answered.
The white mist in mid-air trembled slightly.
This time, Ren Yi's heart was truly shaken.
He... believed Evans's words.
Actually, he had noticed it before when he got the S-099 files.
The description of S-099's birth felt somewhat familiar.
A shattered celestial body, a black tide, falling...
Of course—he had similar dreams.
The moment he heard Evans mention a "dream," he had a premonition.
It's been so many worlds, and this damn Awakening Ceremony is still haunting me!
But initially, he thought Evans would describe a scene of silence and a world-ending apocalypse, just like his classmates Lu Zihan and Zhang Qiuqiu had.
However, Evans's narrative was beyond his expectations.
The perspective was wrong.
Ren Yi never imagined that one day, he would look at this catastrophe from the perspective of the "black waterfall" itself.
If he aligned the information from both sides...
So, the crashing debris that fell after the "moon" of this world shattered—which was Evans, or rather S-099's original form—corresponded to the "black waterfall" that appeared in the Awakening Ceremony?
This led to a question he had never considered before.
What exactly was the "black waterfall"?
In his past understanding, Ren Yi had always assumed it was just a terrifying elemental disaster symbolizing the end of the world.
High-dimensional aqua regia, a potent poison capable of dissolving rules—nothing was too far-fetched.
But in this world, the corresponding debris clearly pointed to Evans's true form, S-099.
And Evans said they were of the same kind.
He remembered Evans's description.
A shattered, mangled corpse; an embryo not yet fully gestated; the egg white that would never develop after the shell had broken...
Could the "black waterfall" be "us"?
Was it the "Anomalies" themselves, gathered by the hundreds of millions into a dense ocean?
But why was his perspective so different from Evans's?
No, that wasn't right.
The "end of the world" perspective he had seen was a reconstruction by powerful Anomalies like Dr. Lin, not 'his' own perspective.
So, here was the question.
Where were the individuals who were even weaker and didn't have time to be saved when the end truly came for that world?
Where was 'he' at that time?
Setting aside the interference of all disaster concepts and taking his thoughts back to the time before the Alliance was born, when everyone was just a part of an ordinary civilization...
In those past illusionary realms, aside from the scenes Dr. Lin had specifically customized to scare him, he hadn't seen any corpses as "background."
That shouldn't be possible.
Was it that the Awakening Ceremony had intentionally performed some visual "beautification" on the projections of history?
Or was it that their "corpses"...
Had actually been lying right before his eyes, completely unconcealed, from beginning to end?
Ren Yi felt a chill.
After a period of violent churning, the white mist condensed into another line of cold, large text:
【How can you prove that everything you've said is true?】
Evans's eyes lit up. He thought for a moment and then suddenly opened his mouth.
Just as Ren Yi thought he was going to say something, Evans crudely shoved his right hand into his mouth and thrust it down his throat.
That thin arm went deeper and deeper until it was submerged up to the elbow. The entire scene was horrifying.
A moment later, he yanked his arm back and pulled out... a mushroom.
"Phew, I almost choked."
"You probably don't know what this thing does. Here, let me show you."
Evans waved the mushroom in his hand and smiled.
Then, he shouted at the top of his lungs.
"I am a human!"
This was clearly a lie.
Poof!
As soon as he finished speaking, the mushroom in his hand seemed to be violently stimulated and began to expand crazily.
Within a single second, two smaller mushrooms sprouted directly from its base.
"See! You see that!"
Like a child showing off a toy, Evans held the mushroom toward Ren Yi and explained with a grin:
"This thing is called the 'Honest Gift.' It grows rapidly upon hearing a lie."
"If I had been lying earlier, I'd be covered in mushrooms by now."
The youth spread his hands, looking completely aboveboard.
"Now, you should finally believe me... Eh?"
Evans was halfway through his rapid explanation when his voice abruptly caught in his throat.
He instinctively felt the atmosphere shift.
The gray-white being before him had suddenly ceased all movement, as if frozen.
Its current form possessed no facial features and should have been unable to express any emotion.
Yet, for some reason, Evans could inexplicably read the other party's current feeling.
He was angry.
It wasn't directed at Evans, but rather a sudden overflow of emotion after confirming that what he said was true...
A somber, surging, almost tangible...
Rage!
Rate on N.U.
