The moment they entered the room, the atmosphere changed completely. The corridor outside vanished the instant the door closed behind them, not with sound but with absence, as though the hallway itself had never existed.Lin Chen turned instinctively toward the door they had just entered through only to stop abruptly. There was no door anymore. Only an unbroken wooden wall covered in old water stains and deep cracks running across the surface like veins. "No!" Lin Chen said immediately, unease flashing visibly across his face as he stepped backward once. "No, absolutely not."
Yan Luo's eyes narrowed sharply while Chen Yu remained unnaturally calm, though his gaze had already darkened slightly. "The room sealed itself," Chen Yu said quietly. Zhao Ming slowly walked toward the place where the door should have been and pressed his hand against the wall "Interesting." he murmured softly. "I preferred the corridor."The room itself looked deceptively normal at first. It was large, circular and empty except for a long wooden table near the center and dozens of chairs surrounding it unevenly beneath dim lantern light. But after several seconds,every chair faced a different direction. Some pointed toward walls others toward corners. One faced the ceiling somehow despite resting normally on the floor. Lin Chen stared at it for several seconds before quietly saying," Where we end up? " No one responded.
Then Xu Yang noticed something else. There was table. Its slowly, silently, the wood surface was changing. Scratches appeared across it one line at a time as though invisible hands were carving directly into the wood. Everyone saw it happen. Fresh marks spread violently across the table in uneven strokes. There were names half-finished names and erased names. Deep scratches crossing through them hard enough to split the wood beneath. Wang— H...— Qi...— X...—
Xu Yang's chest tightened painfully the moment he saw it. Yan Luo stepped closer immediately, his expression visibly sharpening now. "These names were removed intentionally." Chen Yu crouched slightly beside the table, studying the fresh scratches carefully. "No!" he corrected quietly. "They're still being removed." The moment he finished speaking, another violent scratch tore itself across the wood directly in front of them. Lin Chen flinched backward instinctively. "Okay, that's worse." Then suddenly every lantern in the room extinguished at once. Darkness swallowed the space instantly. Then children laughing echoed again softly around them.
Lin Chen's voice immediately cut through the dark. "Xu Yang?" No response came. Panic flickered visibly across his expression even though nobody could fully see it. "Xu Yang?"
Then the lanterns reignited violently all at once. The room had changed. The chairs were occupied now.Figures sat silently around the table beneath dim lantern light. Their faces blurred unnaturally like damaged memories refusing to fully form. None of them moved but all of them were looking directly at Xu Yang. The entire room went still. Xu Yang's breathing tightened slightly as the rose mark beneath his sleeve suddenly burned hard enough to send pain through his entire arm.
One of the seated figures slowly tilted its head toward him then another. Then all of them together in synchronized.Lin Chen immediately moved closer to Xu Yang without realizing it, tension obvious in every movement now. "Don't move." Chen Yu said quietly, though even his calmness had thinned slightly. Then one of the blurred figures spoke. Its voice cracked strangely, like several overlapping voices trying to speak together at once. "You forgot us." Xu Yang froze completely. Another figure spoke immediately afterward. "You left first." Another. "You opened it."
The lanterns flickered violently overhead. The room trembled slightly. Xu Yang stared at the seated figures as fragments flashed briefly through his mind warm sunlight, children running, blood across wooden floors, someone crying, black Threads tearing through darkness. Pain slammed through his head suddenly. He staggered half a step backward. The figures around the table slowly began standing one after another.Their chairs scraped loudly across the floor in unnatural synchronization. Lin Chen immediately grabbed Xu Yang's wrist. "We're leaving." "There's no exit." Yan Luo replied sharply without taking his eyes off the figures.
Zhao Ming looked colder than before as he stared at the standing figures around the room. "These aren't ghosts." Chen Yu's gaze darkened immediately. "No." Small pause. "They're memories." One of the figures suddenly appeared directly beside Xu Yang. Its blurred face leaned slightly toward him. Then whispered softly beside his ear. "Why did you open the door that day?" Xu Yang's pupils contracted violently. Blood flooded across his hands instantly again.Dripping heavily between trembling fingers.
The room vanished around him for one fractured second. Screaming echoed somewhere nearby. Black Threads twisting violently through darkness. A door standing open ahead of him. Xu Yang staggered backward violently as the vision shattered. The lanterns exploded overhead at the exact same moment. Darkness crashed down across the room again while distant laughter echoed again somewhere inside the walls.
Qing Li stood completely still in the middle of the mountain path, one hand still pressed against the old stone marker.His breathing finally slowed slightly after several long seconds, though his expression remained tight as his eyes lifted again toward the shifting fog ahead. "No!" he muttered quietly to himself. "I'm not doing this." His voice sounded strained now beneath the sarcasm. "Absolutely not." He lowered his hand slowly from his temple and folded his arms tightly instead, trying to force some sense of normalcy back into himself. "First the Threads start destroying reality, then mysterious children start yelling my name from ghost memories…"Qing Li clicked his tongue irritably. "Rude." he could still hear that voice clearly inside his head. 'Qing Li! Hurry up!'
His chest tightened again unexpectedly. Why did it feel familiar? Why did hearing it feel less like discovering something new and more like remembering something i had lost?Qing Li slowly looked down at his own hand. It was trembling slightly. He stared at it for several seconds before quickly clenching it into a fist. "That's embarrassing." The fog shifted suddenly. Qing Li's head snapped upward instantly. Black Threads flickered briefly between the trees again. Thin strands twisting silently through branches before vanishing behind the fog. Qing Li's expression hardened immediately. "Enough hiding." Spiritual energy surged sharply around him, blue light flickering faintly across his fingertips as he stepped forward. "If you're trying to scare me, your timing is terrible."
The Threads appeared again. Three of them this time hanging motionless between the trees ahead like cracks in reality itself. Qing Li stopped his eyes narrowed slowly because once again they weren't attacking. They were watching him. The Threads twisted slightly in the air as if reacting to his presence uncertainly. One moved closer then abruptly recoiled the moment Qing Li took another step forward. His expression shifted faintly. "You're avoiding me again."
Qing Li stared at the flickering black strands carefully now, suspicion growing beneath his confusion. Every other Thread encounter so far had been violent but these… hesitated around me like they recognized something they did not understand or feared. The thought unsettled him instantly. "Okay!" Qing Li said quietly, forcing calm into his voice despite the unease crawling steadily beneath his skin now. "That's significantly worse."
Then suddenly footsteps echoed somewhere behind him. Qing Li spun around nobody there. There was only fog, trees but several seconds later the footsteps echoed again. Qing Li's eyes sharpened. "Thread distortion." He had heard enough from Wang Xio and Yan Luo to recognize the signs now. The mountain wasn't stable anymore. Which meant whatever had happened here was spreading faster than they thought.
Then softly very softly someone laughed nearby. Qing Li froze not children this time. It was male voice.The sound drifted through the fog like an old memory surfacing beneath water. Qing Li's pulse spiked violently. "Who's there?" No answer came. Then the fog shifted again. For one second Qing Li saw another figure standing several steps ahead on the mountain path. He was tall,dressed in dark robes and white flowers hanging loosely from one hand. His Face blurred beyond recognition but Qing Li's breath caught anyway because the figure felt familiar enough to make his chest ache.
The person tilted their head slightly toward him. Then spoke softly. "You still don't remember." Qing Li moved instantly. "Wait!" The vision shattered before he reached it. Fog rushed violently across the mountain road. The figure vanished completely. Qing Li stopped abruptly, breathing uneven now as silence crashed back down around him. "Who are you?" he whispered.Why did part of him feel guilty? The wind rose sharply through the trees at last, carrying distant whispers through the mountain fog. Black Threads flickered restlessly between branches again.Qing Li frowned deeply. "Okay." His voice lowered slightly. "That's concerning."
Then he heard it footsteps again.Walking several paces behind him. Qing Li turned instantly. There was nothing there only fog drifting between dark trees. Silence. Then three seconds later his own footsteps echoed behind him.Qing Li stared into the empty fog for a long moment before speaking flatly, "Great." Small pause. "Now reality itself is broken." His irritation was becoming increasingly genuine now. Qing Li turned and began walking back down the mountain path toward the village, his pace quick and deliberate. "Fine." he muttered under his breath while brushing branches aggressively out of his way. "I tried helping people. Terrible decision. Never doing it again." The fog thickened around him as he continued downhill. The mountain road curved sharply between trees before finally opening slightly ahead. Qing Li exhaled quietly in relief. Then stopped completely.
The path behind him no longer existed. Only fog. Endless fog twisting silently between dark trees. "No!" Qing Li said immediately. "Absolutely not." He turned sharply and walked in another direction instead, this time cutting directly through the forest instead of following the road. Branches scraped against his sleeves as he pushed through thick fog and tangled roots, irritation gradually giving way to something more unstable beneath the surface. His breathing remained steady, but his thoughts no longer did.
The deeper he walked, the stranger everything became. Trees shifted whenever he looked away from them. Shadows stretched too slowly across the ground. Once, Qing Li distinctly saw movement ahead through the fog only to realize moments later it had been his own silhouette walking several steps out of sync with him. He stopped instantly.Qing Li swallowed once. "I really hate this place." The mountain answered with distant laughter somewhere far away. Qing Li froze immediately. Children laughing.His chest tightened painfully before the sound vanished again. "No!" he whispered sharply this time, almost angry now. "Stop doing that." His voice echoed strangely through the fog, returning several seconds too late.
Qing Li's pulse was beginning to quicken despite himself. This wasn't normal Thread activity anymore. This felt Intentional like the distortion itself was searching through his memories. The thought unsettled him enough that he immediately began walking faster. "Think!" he muttered under his breath, forcing calm back into himself. "Thread distortion zones trap perception. Which means there's a center point somewhere." He looked around carefully at the shifting fog and endless trees. "Find the center and break the distortion."
Far above the mortal realm, deep beneath the silent layers of Heaven's restricted archives, Wang Xio stood alone between towering shelves of ancient records while dim spiritual flames flickered weakly across endless corridors lined with sealed history. The forbidden archive level felt colder than the rest of Heaven.Wang Xio moved quietly through the endless shelves, black robes brushing softly against the stone floor while loose scroll fragments floated slowly around him beneath the pressure of unstable spiritual energy.
Wang Xio slowly unrolled another damaged scroll between his fingers. Half the ink immediately blackened and dissolved into ash the moment air touched it. His gaze darkened slightly. "Again."Wang Xio's fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the scroll before he calmly placed it aside. Then another line hidden beneath the ruined ink slowly revealed itself. 'The house remains outside correction'. Wang Xio stopped completely.His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as he read the sentence again. 'Outside correction.'
Wang Xio's expression changed."So it still exists." he murmured quietly. The pale flames around the archive flickered violently the moment the words left his mouth. Then another damaged line slowly surfaced beneath the scroll as though reacting to his attention. The ink twisted unnaturally across the parchment before reforming itself briefly into new words. 'Memory convergence point active.' Wang Xio's pupils contracted slightly.
Wang Xio lifted his gaze slowly the realization hit him immediately. The abandoned house was not merely connected to the Fourth Day. It was the center point. He moved toward another shelf, pulling down several sealed records at once while fragments of old Heaven seals cracked beneath his hands. More damaged text revealed itself between broken correction marks, convergence triggered by recognition. Identity instability increasing.Wang Xio's eyes sharpened dangerously. "Recognition of who?" he muttered under his breath. But deep down, he already knew the answer he did not want confirmed.
Wang Xio closed his eyes briefly, forcing his thoughts into order. The Fourth Day incident had supposedly ended decades ago. Heaven declared the anomaly corrected,contained and erased. Yet now memories were resurfacing across multiple people simultaneously.Then suddenly another scroll behind him burst open violently. Wang Xio turned sharply. Pages scattered across the archive floor before one torn fragment slid directly to his feet. Only a single sentence remained visible beneath heavy burn marks. 'If memory restoration reaches completion, correction will collapse entirely.' Wang Xio stared silently at the line. His expression finally shifted properly.
Heaven was not trying to protect reality from the Fourth Day. Heaven was trying to protect the Fourth Day from being remembered. The realization settled coldly into his chest. Then somewhere deeper inside the archive, something moved. Wang Xio lifted his gaze immediately toward the darkness beyond the shelves. Footsteps echoed softly once then silence. His expression hardened instantly. "Who's there?" No answer came but the spiritual flames dimmed lower across the archive corridors while black Threads slowly appeared between the shelves, twisting silently through the ancient records like living cracks spreading through Heaven itself. Wang Xio stood perfectly still, gaze fixed on the darkness ahead while loose pages drifted slowly around him beneath unstable spiritual pressure. Then softly from somewhere beyond the shelves a familiar voice spoke quietly through the dark. "You were never supposed to find this far." Wang Xio's eyes narrowed sharply.
Elsewhere Qing li the deeper he moved into the Thread distortion zone, the less stable his thoughts became. It felt as though the mountain itself was pressing against his mind, searching through memories he could not fully reach. Qing Li dragged a hand slowly through his hair in visible frustration before muttering under his breath, "This entire night is cursed." His voice sounded quieter now.
Black threads flickered occasionally between the trees before vanishing again the moment he focused directly on them.
Qing Li's eyes narrowed sharply toward the darkness ahead. "If one more hallucination starts talking to me." he muttered irritably, "I'm genuinely going to lose my temper." Then softly "You're late again." Qing Li froze completely. The voice came from directly beside him this time.His breathing stopped for half a second. Then the world around him fractured violently.
Sunlight flooded through the mountain forest instantly. The cold disappeared and warm grass stretched beneath bright skies while laughter echoed somewhere nearby. Qing Li's eyes widened slightly as the vision formed around him before he could stop it. Boys were running through the clearing ahead. One tripped over uneven ground while another laughed loudly beside him instead of helping immediately. "That's your own fault." the laughing boy said between breaths. "You were running too fast." "Shut up!" the injured boy snapped back while sitting in the grass holding his scraped knee.
Another figure crouched beside him calmly, holding white flowers loosely in one hand while trying unsuccessfully not to laugh too. Qing Li stared at them silently. Their faces remained blurred again no matter how hard he tried focusing. Yet emotionally the vision hit harder this time.Qing Li staggered backward hard enough that his shoulder struck a tree trunk behind him.
He pressed one hand hard against his forehead as though trying to physically stop the memories forcing themselves upward. "No…" His voice sounded strained now beneath growing panic. "No, what is this?"Qing Li slowly slid down against the rough bark behind him until he was half leaning against the tree, breathing shallowly while trying to regain control over himself. "Why…" he whispered quietly. "Why do I feel like I forgot something important?"Qing Li stopped abruptly in the middle of the empty path, breathing hard now while unease settled deeper and deeper into his chest. His gaze slowly lowered toward his own trembling hand again. Then he whispered into the silence, "…What did i forget?"