Echoes of Spiritual Light: I Wake up in Ashes

Three days before Li was taken away, he asked me: "What would you do if you knew you were just a copy?" I don't know. All I know is that this city is always falling, like the next funeral that never stops. All I know is the number GX-7742, the conveyor belt in the scrapyard, and the recurring dream - a blue lake with a golden tree beside it. Li said he had dreamed about it too. Then he was taken away. Before being taken away, he put a small piece of soil into my pocket and told me with his last look: That tree is real. Then I found some metal pieces from three hundred years ago. There are words engraved on it: Don't forget your heart, memory, you, heaven, earth, people... That's a tombstone. People three hundred years ago used this method to fight against forgetfulness. From those tombstones, I saw an old man saying the same sentence repeatedly: "That is not eternal life, that is murder." I saw a woman standing under the golden tree, calling my name to the camera. I saw two characters carved on the tree trunk, and I only had time to see the radical of the first character clearly—— people. I am a primal. I should have lived numbly and died numbly. But now I know: the gravel's dirt is real. The words on the tombstone are true. The golden tree is real. And myself - it could be true. Or, just a replica that thinks it is the real thing. The Crystal Corpse Division is hunting me. There is a person waiting for me in the wasteland. The golden tree is waiting for me there. That tree, they said, was called Eden. There is truth there, they say. My name is Chen. This is the story of my rise from the ashes.