Before the End

Lu Xiaogu is a young man who smiles heartlessly, but he has had the same type of dream for fifteen years - fire, shouting, hands, and the sentence "live on". He didn't know whose voice it was, or why he wanted to cry when he heard those words. He just went to school, made friends, and tried not to singe his classmates' bangs in spell class. Until one day, when he got close to the crystal that had been sleeping for a hundred years, something in his chest woke up. Some people are born with a destiny older than themselves. Some stories begin before you are born. # Prologue Bai Mangming Nothing. Not darkness, darkness is at least a color. There is no color here, only white, endless white, up and down, left and right, front and back, far and near, all the same white, as if someone has taken away the background of the world, leaving nothing behind. A boy huddled in white. He doesn't know where he is or who he is, he just exists, like a stone forgotten somewhere, with no weight, no temperature, and no memory. He tried to move his fingers, and they moved. He tried to open his eyes, and white light rushed in. There was nothing, not even the light source, just white, white everywhere. He sat up. There was no ground under his feet, but he did not sink. He just sat there, as if sitting on air, sitting on something invisible. He looked down at his hands - his black hair hung down, blocking his sight. He pushed it aside and spread his palms. There was a shallow line on his palms, like some kind of mark or a scar left by something, so light that it was almost invisible. He stared at the pattern and couldn't remember where it came from. He couldn't remember anything. He doesn't know his name, he doesn't know where he comes from, he doesn't know where this is, he doesn't know why he is here - his memory is blank, as white as this space, without even an outline. He stood up. I took a few steps forward, but there was nothing in the white. No matter how far I walked, I didn't seem to go anywhere. He stopped, raised his head, and looked up - it was still white, no sky, no light source, just white. Then he heard a voice. The voice didn't come from outside, it came from within his own body. It was low and a bit gritty, like someone who had said the same sentence so many times that his vocal cords were worn out and he was still talking. He heard that sentence clearly—— *Start again. * He was stunned for a moment. It started again. This sentence is strangely familiar, as if he has said it so many times that I don't know how many times it is, so much that the familiarity itself has become a kind of numbness. He stood in the white and felt something slowly sinking from his chest. It was not sadness, not fear, but some emotion older than these two things. He couldn't name it, but he just felt its weight, pressing on his chest for a long, long time, so long that it seemed to be longer than the existence of his body. He lowered his head and looked at the endless white beneath his feet. Nothing. But soon, there will be something. He didn't know how he knew this, he just knew, like knowing how to breathe, like knowing how to beat his heart. He didn't need a reason, he just knew that this piece of white would soon disperse, there would be light and sound somewhere, and there would be a world he didn't remember opening up to him. Then he will forget about it. He forgets this place every time. He took a step forward, and white began to flow under his feet, like water, like light, like something he had never seen before, spreading upward from the soles of his feet. The temperature was neither high nor low, as if someone had covered him with an invisible quilt. He didn't resist, just stood and let the whiteness submerge him. Before he was submerged, he felt the lines on his chest heat up slightly, just like a dying candle that was touched by the wind and jumped one last time before going out. He thought: *Can this time be different? * Then, there was nothing. --- *Text begins——* --- *(End of Prologue)* Intention: Growth and choice - find your own answer in the endless reincarnation