Thank you @Renea for the Kofi.
Chapter 643: Hearth
“Pinocchio’s memory wasn’t completely formatted.” Orange Candy got straight to the point, completely disregarding what a bombshell she had just dropped.
“Huh? What??”
Zhao Ran looked stunned.
“Don’t make me repeat it.” Orange Candy was somewhat impatient.
Wei Cheng’s expression grew serious: “Wait, so you’re serious about this?”
“Yes.” Orange Candy’s response was brief.
What she had seen in the “dog cage” was so specific and detailed, it absolutely wasn’t something that could be imagined from scratch by someone who had never experienced it.
“However, I don’t think he remembers what happened in previous cycles.” Orange Candy paused.
Even with a shrewdness beyond other children his age, he was still undoubtedly a genuine child.
She furrowed her brow thoughtfully, seemingly searching for the right description:
“It’s more like… afterimages.”
Like nightmares that disappear with the dawn, leaving only some vague emotions lingering in the end.
But… why?
Everyone exchanged glances, their eyes full of bewilderment.
Unclear.
This kind of situation had never appeared before.
“Alright, let’s sort this out from the beginning…”
Zhao Ran pressed his temples and said.
“First, Pinocchio is the key to this instance, that’s not in question, right?”
Even though decryption instances weren’t their specialty, the evidence was now sufficient for them to reach this conclusion.
“Yes.” Wei Cheng nodded.
“However… the multiple loops of this instance are closely related to him, but weren’t actually caused by him personally.” Zhao Ran said.
Wei Cheng agreed: “That’s right.”
Although these five-day loops were inseparable from Pinocchio, the timeline resets weren’t caused by him personally—otherwise, as the escape time moved earlier, the timeline reset would also move earlier accordingly.
“But then what else could it be?” Orange Candy’s brow was tightly furrowed, utterly puzzled.
The three exchanged bewildered glances, seeing similar confusion in each other’s eyes.
“Okay,” Wei Cheng pressed his throbbing temples, trying to approach from a different angle: “Then, what do you think about the earthquake from the last cycle?”
They had always thought the earthquake was the marker of the instance reset, but the last cycle completely overturned that assumption.
After all, the earthquake not only came early, but also occurred more than once!
Yet the timeline only initiated a reset after the most severe one.
“Speaking of which…” Zhao Ran rubbed his chin, “Don’t you think the timing of each earthquake corresponds to when Pinocchio encounters a major event?”
“Hey, that does seem to be true?”
Wei Cheng thought carefully and froze.
Thrown into the dog cage.
Escaping the orphanage.
And finally being tied up on the Negative Fourth Floor.
As the impact of events on Pinocchio increased, the magnitude of the earthquakes also grew larger.
In some mysterious way, Pinocchio, the earthquakes, and the time resets seemed to be interwoven with some incomprehensible logic, ultimately causing the instance to operate in its current mode…
“Ahhh!” Orange Candy clutched her head somewhat frantically, “I don’t want to think anymore! My brain’s going to explode!!”
Why isn’t Pinocchio here when we need him most?!!!
“Wait,” Zhao Ran suddenly had a flash of inspiration, “What if… the earthquake isn’t the marker of the time reset, but the cause of the reset?”
In the ruins of the orphanage’s fourth floor.
Wen Jianyan paused, then reached out and slowly picked up the glass shard from the bottom of the box.
Its edges were sharp, pressing cold against his palm.
His fingers moved slightly, adjusting the angle, looking at the glass shard in the light.
Under the flashlight’s illumination, the interior of the glass wasn’t transparent, but rather pitch black like thick ink, like a crack torn open in an abyss, with not a bit of light able to penetrate it.
“What is this thing?” Chen Cheng’s puzzled voice came from beside him, “Do you know?”
“I…” Wen Jianyan opened his mouth, “I’m not sure.”
However, that brief moment of distraction lasted only an instant.
When Wen Jianyan looked up, he seemed to have already recovered his usual composure and calmness.
“—But I might know how to verify it.”
The next second after his words fell, his fingers suddenly tightened!
“Hey…” Chen Cheng froze, instinctively wanting to stop him, but before he could finish speaking, he saw scarlet, viscous blood overflow from between Wen Jianyan’s fingers, dripping down drop by drop.
The sharp edge of the shard embedded into his skin, cutting even deeper into the wound that hadn’t yet healed. In just a moment, a pool of blood had gathered in his palm.
A rumbling sound rose from beneath their feet, echoing in the floor and walls, growing from weak to strong.
Something seemed to be awakening, and so the building began to shake again, the amplitude gradually spreading, until dust and debris rustled down from overhead.
“What, what’s happening?” Blond steadied himself against the table, looking up in shock, glancing around in all directions.
“Again??” Chen Cheng’s shoulders tensed, cursing through gritted teeth, “Didn’t they just finish a cycle over there?”
How could the time flow rate on both sides differ so greatly?!
Wen Jianyan opened his fingers and looked down.
The surface of the glass was now clean as new, gleaming with an eerie luster in the light. In the blink of an eye, it had greedily absorbed all the blood, leaving not a trace.
Below his collarbone, the golden heart that had just calmed down began to revive again, releasing heat at an irrepressible rate, as if it would scorch the skin pressed against it.
The next second, deep within the pitch-black mirror surface, a golden eye suddenly opened!
“Decai Middle School fragment deployment successful.”
A fragment fell to the ground.
The mirror flickered with a faint light, reflecting pairs of human eyes—desire and love-hate, jealousy and delusion—drops of darkness overflowed from those pairs of eyes, gradually gathering into a river. Each drop of water, each wave, silently screamed and demanded toward the void’s power.
And so, the black lake water gradually rose, until finally it swallowed everything.
Greed birthed obsession, ignorance bred slaughter.
Madness was like a landslide. Just like that, people swallowed by the black water lost their faces. The mirror could only reflect endless shadows. Under the temptation of false faith, they completely lost their human identity and became followers of evil.
Only the mirror remained serene and clean, calmly reflecting this maddened human world.
—”Instance established.”
The Nightmare’s proxy hid in the shadows. It rose and left, heading to the next location, then the next, like an endless viral infection, linking area after area in a chain.
…
“Sweet Dream Orphanage fragment deployment successful.”
A fragment fell into the dust.
A child reached out a thin arm to pick it up, examining it carefully against the sunlight.
The fragment refracted bright colors rare in the gray world, reflecting his light-colored eyes full of wonder.
“So beautiful…”
He carefully placed it in a tin box, like treasuring a piece of broken moonlight.
“Instance not responding.”
“Instance not responding.”
“Instance not responding.”
“…” The Nightmare’s proxy turned from the darkness, looking toward the unexpected blank area.
This situation occasionally happened.
Some instances couldn’t generate automatically and needed external assistance.
Moreover, since the initial contract had been voided, that orphanage no longer had much use—it already had a new plan.
[Mother of the World].
The orphanage was just an old abandoned plan anyway, and could be conveniently discarded at this opportunity.
“So, which one took the lead in escaping?” It bent down, using its indescribable void face to look down at the terrified faces before it.
“…Me.” A small-framed child stood out. He positioned himself in front of all the other children, his shoulders trembling finely with fear, but he didn’t retreat a single step.
“I threatened them that if they didn’t do as I said, I would go make trouble with the mothers—everyone here knows the mothers listen to me. They’re too stupid, they can be easily fooled around.”
“…” The shadow gazed deeply into the child’s eyes.
Those light-colored eyeballs full of fear, trembling slightly.
He was clearly scared to death.
But the mockery never stopped.
From him, the proxy smelled a familiar scent of darkness—but this time, the black droplets didn’t overflow into a river.
It was just treated as a shiny treasure, carried back to the little bird’s shabby nest and cherished as a collection.
No wonder the instance didn’t form naturally.
“How surprising.” The Nightmare proxy slowly revealed a smile. It reached out to pat the other’s head, then withdrew, “Go on, it’s time to go back.”
What an unexpected delight.
If lucky, there might not even be a need to go to that hospital.
“—”
Wen Jianyan sharply drew in a breath and opened his eyes.
…What had he just seen?
It seemed to be a distant memory. Although his own figure appeared in the scene, the perspective was high and distant, as if observing everything from a third-party angle.
Even though he had now escaped from it, his heart was still beating rapidly, the heavy pounding echoing in his ears.
Wen Jianyan raised his hand to press his sweaty forehead, steadying his breathing.
He certainly remembered how he escaped from the orphanage, but from his perspective at that time, he was completely unaware of the Nightmare’s involvement. Until now—upon confirming that his past actually involved the Nightmare’s participation, Wen Jianyan only felt a bone-chilling horror.
Like a tightly woven net, covering his entire being.
Facing that enormous shadow spanning across everything, an individual seemed as insignificant as an insect.
“…”
Wen Jianyan suppressed his wandering thoughts, took a deep breath, and looked up.
He was no longer on the orphanage’s fourth floor.
Darkness surrounded him on all sides, the eerie cold stabbing at his skin, with only deathly silence remaining in his ears.
This place existed independently outside the world, as if even time had stopped.
Though such a strange place, it was so familiar to Wen Jianyan.
In the first instance, he experienced after entering the Nightmare livestream room, he had entered a similar space… This was also where he first met that guy.
Wen Jianyan took a step forward.
The weight hanging below his collarbone was heavy, comfortably pressing against that patch of skin.
Though he hadn’t yet seen that familiar figure, his heartbeat seemed to be infected by the temperature at his neck, beginning to stir slightly.
Since parting on the Lucky Cruise, not much time had passed, yet it felt like an entire century had elapsed.
“Wu—” Wen Jianyan opened his mouth.
Before he finished speaking, he suddenly felt a strong sense of crisis.
The next second, golden eyes flashed in the darkness, sharp as a beast, cold as a knife’s edge.
“…!”
Wen Jianyan’s breath caught.
In that moment of distraction, the surrounding darkness came alive, instantly restraining his limbs, strangling his throat, like a passionate hunt.
“Haha… don’t remember me again?” The young man coughed twice and suddenly smiled.
The deadly stranglehold abruptly stopped.
Wu Zhu lowered his head, steadily examining the other’s face which was slightly flushed from suffocation, seeming… somewhat confused.
“It’s okay.”
Wen Jianyan looked up, steadily studying the tall male figure before him.
“It’s not the first time.”
His eyes narrowed, his voice hoarse with a smile: “Come… closer.”
Not knowing whether bewitched by the other’s voice, face, or breath, Wu Zhu paused in place for a long time, finally approaching slowly and hesitantly.
The human’s bloodied fingers caressed his cheek, leaving several bloody fingerprints on the cold skin white as marble.
The warm fingertips wandered, approaching the corner of his mouth.
“Open your mouth.” Wen Jianyan murmured gently.
“…” Wu Zhu stared at him unblinkingly, his inorganic eyes showing a cold, wild hue. A few seconds later, under the pressure of the other’s fingers, he slowly opened his jaws.
“Yes, just like that…”
His fingers nimbly pried open his lips and teeth, pressing on the cold tongue surface. Blood followed the guidance of his fingertips, being poured into the other’s mouth.
Wu Zhu suddenly gripped his wrist tightly, his Adam’s apple rolling.
Shadows transformed into silky snakes, surging over from all directions.
Feeling the other’s gradually eager licking, Wen Jianyan spoke again: “Now… do you remember?”
“…Mm…” The golden pupils had at some point dilated into circles, breathing rapidly, making eager swallowing sounds, dazed and intoxicated under the impact of newly formed memories, “…Mine…”
“Say my name.” The young man’s voice grew lower.
“Wen… Jianyan…” Wu Zhu’s voice was hoarse and broken.
“That’s right.” He sighed.
The puzzle that had been troubling them was revealed.
Since the Xingwang Hotel instance, Wu Zhu had set Wen Jianyan’s existence as his anchor point, which meant that as long as he was there, “he”—whether the main body or fragments—would automatically begin assimilating.
And this instance was very unique.
The core here was Wu Zhu’s fragment, but at the same time, Wen Jianyan’s childhood also existed.
So, after that, this instance could no longer continue operating.
The core’s turbulence caused the instance to shake.
And precisely because the core kept fluctuating, the instance had to reset again and again.
As long as the instance restarted, the fragment’s state would be formatted along with it, and everything would start over from the beginning—so when Wen Jianyan first entered this building, Wu Zhu’s mark showed no movement. Instead, it only began reacting after the first earthquake.
This was why this seven-day instance always restarted on the fifth day.
Due to the core’s unruliness, it became a “semi-finished product” that could never progress to the end—but Orange Candy and the others didn’t know the key point, so they mistook cause for effect, wrongly believing the earthquake was the marker of the timeline reset.
Similarly, this also represented one thing.
As long as Wu Zhu no longer tried to interfere with the instance’s operation, Orange Candy and the others could end the loop and leave this instance.
“Stop trying to influence things you can’t control,” Wen Jianyan withdrew his finger from the other’s mouth, pulling his face closer, “What’s left here is just a segment of past memory. My past is already an established fact. No matter how much you try to change it, it’s futile.”
Wen Jianyan had always known how to make people comply with his will.
Orange Candy cared about her companions, but likewise, she was also a rational person.
But Wu Zhu couldn’t be treated with the same method.
“Moreover, I’m already standing here, aren’t I?”
He pressed against Wu Zhu’s forehead, eyelashes lowering, casting shadows on his face. His voice had somehow grown even lower, half-true and half-false,
“…Haven’t seen you for so long, don’t you miss me?”
“Mm.” A suppressed response rolled from Wu Zhu’s throat.
“Then end all of this.” Wen Jianyan said softly.
In the darkness, the child was abandoned among corpses and blood, all sounds swallowed up.
He no longer called for help, just silently accepted everything.
Don’t come save me.
Look forward, we have more important things.
“…”
Wu Zhu raised his eyes, golden eyes unblinkingly gazing at Wen Jianyan’s face so close at hand.
“No.”
“…” Wen Jianyan froze, somewhat shocked as he looked up.
The non-human answered again, with no room for negotiation.
“No.”
Author’s Note:
Finally wrote this scene.
This is also one of my original intentions for writing this CP.
Wen Jianyan is too clever and understands human nature too well. He knows very clearly what kind of person has what kind of weakness, what methods can make others follow his suggestions. Whether forceful or gentle, sincere or deceitful—all can become his means to make everything conform to his wishes. He can always find the cracks in a human soul, customize the most suitable rhetoric for them, pry open a gap, and secretly implant his ideas inside.
And he always succeeds.
But with Wu Zhu, none of this works.
His excuses can fool all his teammates, but cannot deceive Wu Zhu.
His rhetoric can persuade Orange Candy, but cannot persuade Wu Zhu.
Wu Zhu doesn’t weigh pros and cons, doesn’t consider consequences, doesn’t employ tactics.
He isn’t human, and doesn’t have human complications—only the most pure and fierce, unreserved genuine heart.
What he wants, he must obtain.
What he wants to protect, he will definitely guard.
No matter what others say, and no matter what price must be paid.
Both of them are powerful—one is changeable flowing water, the other is immovable bedrock.
They are each unique to the other.
Wu Zhu’s overwhelming terror has no effect on Wen Jianyan, and Wen Jianyan’s manipulative tactics cannot work on Wu Zhu.
That’s why they’re a perfect match.
