When Wen Xuqing opened her eyes to the scent of locust blossoms, she thought she had simply wandered into a stretch of misplaced time. She had no idea that every step she took was landing on a fate-driven chessboard laid out long ago. She and Chu Suming met again and again in countless “anomalous spaces.” One was clear-headed and composed, seemingly able to unravel any dead end by instinct; the other was sharp and decisive, always able to seize the one path to survival through the fog.
They crossed silent streets and deserted buildings side by side. The trust they exchanged in the narrow spaces between life and death became their only glimmer of light against the unknown. Yet every so often, Wen Xuqing would freeze for a moment: a melody, a scene, even a whispered phrase felt like a fragment sunk in the deep sea of memory, stirring an inexplicable pang of fear in her heart.
No one knew that the rules trapping them in a cycle, and the “dead ends” that had defeated countless people, had all begun as clues she herself had planted. She was a “survivor” walking across the chessboard, the forgotten creator of the game, the source of every danger, and the only one who could bring it all to an end.
When the ashes of memory were scattered by the wind, and Chu Suming saw the abyss hidden in the eyes of the person before her, an abyss even she had never noticed, the bond they had risked their lives to protect would finally resound with its heaviest echo, caught between “truth” and “survival.”
