I woke up in the city of Nanjing in 1402.
A System panel appeared before my eyes: Players 47/100. Main Quest: Survive three days.
Gu Heng said, “Everyone who remembers the resets disappears.”
In the ruined temple, Jiao Qi had been digging for three months. Every skeleton he unearthed was himself. Su Nianqing wrote June Thirteenth every day. The mute girl wrote on my palm, “He's crying.” Wuxiang had waited six hundred years and said, “He's waiting for you.”
Later, I discovered this wasn't a game. It was a prison. The players' obsessions were its fuel, and the man standing on the city wall for six hundred years, whom everyone called the Jianwen Emperor, was using himself to trap them all.
And my data was blank.
Because my name wasn't on the player list.
Gu Heng's hand trembled. “In twenty-three years, you're the first person who's made me remember.”
Jiao Qi handed me his Luoyang shovel. “No need to keep searching.”
The mute girl leaned against my shoulder, leaving one final line of writing on my palm.
Gu Heng said, “If you're alive, then my death wasn't in vain.”
On the final day, I walked toward that wall. He turned and looked into my eyes.
His face was exactly like the one I saw in the mirror.
Six hundred years ago, before he walked into the flames, he hid a secret inside someone's body.
Now, I've come to find it.
