Ordinary Chapter 104: Skeleton

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: KarateChopMonkey

 

Shen Si knew for the first time what it felt like to be chosen as the master of a dream, and to be awakened.

He was entangled, tightly bound there, flowering vines twisted from his feet to his head. Countless vines blocked his view, and the glittering white skeletons grabbed his arms from behind, so forcefully that he suspected his arms had been bruised. Of course, these weren’t the most important issues, the most important thing was what swallowed him up.

Was it himself? No, just a dream, not even close to the cognitive dummy.

The white figure was just an evil thought that evolved by devouring his memories.

“Be angry, be resentful, be vengeful!” The white shadow screamed in Shen Si’s ears.

Shen Si frowned tightly, the voice disturbed him, but his body made him unable to even move. The flower vine painfully strangled his arm, his fingers began to numb because of the cut blood flow, and pause time and reverse time weren’t working.

Because he was sleeping. Sleeping people were unable to use their abilities.

But since the owner of the dream was him, Shen Si understood something, something that even he couldn’t figure out at this stage.

He was the one who was afraid of the spikes, the hand Jian Nian saw after swallowing the spike was his. The person who hated the plants was also him, and even the skeletons were all manifestations of his innermost being. Shen Si lowered his head and closed his eyes, and began to think about why he was in this state.

Shen Si didn’t remember why he had a fear of thorns, but no memory didn’t mean that it didn’t happen. After all, he went backwards in time seven times, and even erased his own memories. If this was true, then he may have had such a past before he cleared his memories.

In the tangle, Shen Si seemed to hear a voice. He opened his eyes slightly dazed, and from the side, a familiar figure walked past; it was Shen Si himself, or rather his childhood self.

In the dream, the playfield would reenact what the dream owner had experienced in front of him in order to stimulate the dream owner.

The more emotional the dream owner was, the more powerful the playfield would be.

“Suffer, scream, be afraid!” The white shadow was still hissing.

Shen Si saw his infant self, as he climbed up the hill towards his parents and waved, but because of his unstable body, he rolled straight down the hill. Although the hill was not too steep, it was full of thorns, and he fell heavily on the thorns, black spikes sticking all over his body.

In the moment of seeing this image, fear instantly returned to Shen Si, the feeling of countless thorns poking into his skin.

“Is that why I’m afraid of spikes?” Shen Si murmured, he lowered his head, “Is that why?”

【Of course. You are just a human being, so there will be psychological shadows, there will be fear, and there will be things that you can’t do. Shen Si, you are just a human being.】

A mechanized voice sounded, and Shen Si looked up, surveying his surroundings a bit confused, “Who is talking?”

【It should be a first time meeting for you. I am the rule incarnation of the unlimited flow world, the center of the unlimited flow world.】

There was still no one in sight, but Shen Si could hear the voice. The voice spoke directly in Shen Si’s mind, obviously just a mechanized voice with automatic pronunciation no different, but Shen Si after hearing this voice felt an indescribable sense of disgust.

He hated this voice and the meaning it represented.

The rules of the unlimited flow world incarnate. Was that like a main god described in a novel?

【All the playfields are created by me, so I can communicate with all the playfields. I came here to ask you a question. By now seven times have passed. How many more times do you plan to do it?】

“Do what several times?” Shen Si totally didn’t get what that meant, “I don’t understand at all.”

【This time the memory erasure is indeed more thorough than the previous times. In the past you recovered immediately after hearing my voice. It looks like I need to do an explanation this time.】 The mechanized voice spoke very calmly.

【I am the rule incarnation of the world of unlimited flow, and I came here to assimilate the world with the world of unlimited flow, and you, Shen Si, the time-user, reset the world seven times to avoid this ending.】

Shen Si raised his head to look around, and only after a moment did he speak, “I reset the world seven times so that the world would not be assimilated?”

【That’s right.】

In the rules of the program it has never seen such a human, so much so that after encountering it, it was slightly overwhelmed. In the millions of years of time wandering, those rebellious races disappeared one by one, and finally became a new playfield. He came here just for a new playfield named ‘Human’.

It stimulated their potential, let the human and unlimited flow world combine, and finally step by step eat them, assimilating the whole world, making it his new playfield. This is what it has been doing, until it came across this human named Shen Si.

Shen Si was a very powerful human, powerful because of his time ability, and human because he could never escape the human sphere and couldn’t fight against the unlimited flow world.

So history repeated itself once again, the real world was assimilated by the unlimited flow world nibbling away, the wild flowers bloom all over the land, and just at the moment when he was ready to take over the victory, this time ability person rewound time, and he turned the whole time back twenty years ago.

Although it caught it a little off guard, it didn’t work. According to the course of time, the unlimited flow world would still appear, and the end of this world wouldn’t change.

But instead of ending the farce, Shen Si rewound time again and again.

“Me? Rewind time? To keep the world from assimilating?” Shen Si muttered, “Is that why I did that?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, some fragments suddenly flooded into Shen Si’s mind, and he frowned as the fragments in his mind kept flashing like a TV with a bad signal.

He saw a world full of flowers, swaying on the ground, and Shen Si recognized one of them; it was a spiritual playfield that he had experienced, it was the flower that could inspire human obsession. The rest of the flowers Shen Si did not recognize, but thought they weren’t anything good either.

The flowers were blooming and spreading, humans were screaming and fleeing, there were crying and fearful people everywhere, and people who had been inspired by obsessions were going crazy.

Chaos, bickering, and the endless scent of flowers.

This was the future, a miserable future that had already been predetermined.

【And please give up this foolishness, fate is already predetermined, it’s useless even if you struggle. It’s easier to accept the reality.】

“You’re talking to me about accepting reality?” Shen Si raised his head, “Accept that the future will be destroyed and everyone will die?”

【Of course.】

He would give up and accept this.

The program was telling him all this.

Humans were herd animals, and fragile, if left alone they would likely die outright, and when unable to communicate with normal people for long, humans would also get sick. Shen Si wouldn’t be able to bear it, because he had always been alone.

A person going backwards in time, a person walking in time, a person thinking of ways that could change the future. Shen Si’s loneliness had always been imprinted in time, a short period of effort may be tolerable for the time being, a century of effort and getting no results was something unbearable.

He may still try now, but once he recovered his memory, his frustration would reach its peak when he remembered the useless efforts after seven time reversals.

No one would want to endure the next twenty years after a hundred and forty years.

But looking at Shen Si’s fearless eyes, it suddenly wanted to see the man crumble.

Although Shen Si would fail as a ‘matter of course’.

“What are you talking about?” Shen Si was in a bad mood, more than knowing the reason why he had arrived to retreat through the world seven times, the words of the guy whom he had never even seen and told him that the future was gone and that fate couldn’t be changed simply disgusted him to the core.

He now fully understood why he began to loathe when he heard this voice, because he really, really hated things like fate.

Being written, forced to walk on a path without any freedom, as if walking on a prescribed route, Shen Si always hated such things!

He wanted to be able to make all the decisions himself. To be able to buy the things he liked, to learn about anything he liked, and finally to have someone he liked enough to reap the surprises in the unknown future. Not some fate, some future that had already been decided.

【So? Do you want to do it again? Rewind time.】

With a tick, Shen Si barely twisted his neck, and behind him, the skeletons made a click-click-click sound as they put their hands on Shen Si’s body. Countless skeletons came forward and backward, struggling and twisting, with broken bone joints falling down from time to time.

But they were still struggling to touch Shen Si.

【Do you want to know why skeletons appear in your dream world? It’s because of the guilt you feel from reversing time many times.】

Shen Si froze for a moment, “Guilt?”

As soon as the words fell from his tongue, Shen Si instantly understood what it meant. His eyes opened, and his dark eyes took on a bit of a daze.

Guilt, is it? So it was because of guilt… 

In the original world line, a person died only once; they die for one thing or another and never open their eyes again. But Shen Si’s time rewind caused them to open their eyes again, as they had life again, walked in the timeline again, and died again for the same reason.

Those who should be buried because of him kept on waking up and dying, as if the meaning of their life was just that.

Skeletons meant death, and Shen Si was bound by the death of those people, so his dreams were filled with skeletons, and the guilt of the dead was always there, never fading away.

【If you rewind time once more, there will be twice as many skeletons here. Constantly opening your eyes again out of your own selfishness… What a pitiful life.】

… 

“Shen Si is the dreamer? That shouldn’t be right? The playfield had the sign of the unlimited flow world, so the dreamer must be Survivor and Shen Si is not a Survivor!” Xia LeYu no longer cared to go back to the headquarters, as he walked around the car with anxiety in his voice, “Something is wrong. Jian Nian, are you sure that the dreamer is Shen Si?”

“There is no moment when I am more sure than now.” Jian Nian stood on the scorched earth and looked around. After a moment he smiled to himself, “He has been awakened and the playfield has entered the second stage.”

Xia LeYu struggled to recall what had happened before, “There must be something that we have overlooked.”

“Then what exactly is the matter?”

“Is there something Shen Si is hiding from the Special Unit, such as the last time his personality changed. Where did he go and what did he do? Why did he quickly change back to his old self? He didn’t tell the Special Unit anything at the time, but you should know.” Xia LeYu’s voice was rare with a bit of seriousness, “Jian Nian, it’s already like this, don’t hide it from me. What happened then?”

“Must you know?”

“Of course! We’re talking about why Shen Si became the playfield’s dream master! Don’t you want to save him? The only way to save him is to understand him!”

Jian Nian frowned slightly, “Eight years ago.”

“Eight years ago?” Xia LeYu quickly found Shen Si’s information in the system, and looked up what Shen Si experienced eight years ago. There was nothing particularly peculiar that happened during that period, the only thing that could influence Shen Si was the unexpected death of his parents.

“Shen Si told me that eight years ago he had rewound time to try to change the fate of his parents’ death, but unfortunately even rewinding time twice didn’t save them.”

Xia LeYu was taken aback, as he stood in place for a long time without reacting. In a somewhat silent atmosphere, Xia LeYu also kind of understood why Jian Nian and Shen Si hid this matter from the Special Unit.

Eight years ago, the Special Unit believed that the world of unlimited flow didn’t appear, and Shen Si had never been to the world of unlimited flow, but he used the ability to rewind time for no reason in an attempt to save his parents. Although it failed, this kind of thing would definitely cause a huge shock in the Special Unit.

“Eight years ago Shen Si used the time ability to rewind time? Then forgot about it until that day when he realized something was wrong and went to retrieve the memory?” Xia LeYu tried to sort out the matter, “After recovering this memory Shen Si suddenly changed his personality and became less aloof, right?”

“That’s what I mean.”

Xia LeYu began to search for news from eight years ago, but the information he could find was very limited, and it was estimated that only Shen Si himself knew what had happened.

“Why do you think that is?” Xia LeYu spoke in a low voice, “Jian Nian, as an S-Rank Survivor, what do you think happened here? Why did Shen Si as an ordinary person have the ability to rewind time eight years ago?”

Jian Nian stood quietly in place and bowed his head for a moment before speaking, “…I don’t know.”

“Then would you like to hear my thoughts?” Xia LeYu opened his mouth, his voice low, because he knew very well that Jian Nian’s saying he didn’t know was just his own desire to say he didn’t know.

As a person who was close to Shen Si and could be counted as the one who knew Shen Si best, Jian Nian probably had a guess the moment he knew about this matter.

“Shen Si has always been clear about his powers, he has said that the timeline is something that extends infinitely forward and that the future is an indefinable unknown, but I remember you and Bai JunYi once told me that in the dummy playfield, Shen Si accelerated the parasite’s time, causing the rootless doddering grass to wither. It’s only logical that he couldn’t pull time forward, and it seems that Shen Si accelerated time only at that time.”

“What are you trying to say?” Jian Nian spoke.

Xia LeYu closed his eyes, “Did Shen Si ever go backwards in time, the kind that goes back a whole few decades? For us it’s the future, for Shen Si it’s the known past, that’s why he can make time go forward. That’s the only explanation, right?”

“Probably.” Jian Nian sounded wretched, he reached out and used his sleeve to cover the lower half of his face, as if that would hide his expression, but everything in front of him was telling Jian Nian that even if you pretend not to know, it’s no use, time was such a merciless thing.

The only person with the ability to be invalidated in time was Shen Si, who had reset the world with what in mind?

“The fact that Shen Si is the dream master is an established fact, and we can now speculate why the playfield is in such a state.” Xia LeYu barely kept himself sane to analyze what was happening now, “First of all, it was the fear spikes, which Shen Si’s current profile didn’t find in the slightest, so it was probably his fear before resetting the world. And then there’s… hating plants.”

Xia LeYu said reluctantly, although he had doubts whether Shen Si liked plants that much, he never thought that Shen Si hated plants.

“According to the previous idea, Shen Si has reset time, then perhaps the last ending is the same as in reality, countless flowers symbolizing death blooming all over the real world. If Shen Si therefore hates flowers and plants, and therefore creates a herbicide that can destroy these flowers, it is plausible.”

“What about the skeletons?” Jian Nian spoke up, “What are those skeletons?”

Xia LeYu didn’t continue to speak, because he couldn’t think of anything.

He didn’t even dare to open his mouth to conclude the obvious answer that Shen Si was a Survivor before he reset time.

“There is no use in guessing anymore. Shen Si’s the dream master now, and he was taken away, I want to take him back. I have to find the weakest point of this playfield and take him back.” Jian Nian closed his eyes, “It has nothing to do with whether he has reset time or is a Survivor.”

Xia LeYu fell silent, and only after about ten seconds of silence did he speak. “I get it, even if what we speculate is true, it doesn’t matter because there’s no way to implicate who is right and who is wrong. You can definitely bring him back.”

The car stopped just as the communication hung up, and Xia LeYu watched as the door was opened and he got out of the car holding his equipment. A cold wind blew by, and his hands were instantly cold to the point of pain, and this cold wind seemed like a concerto of doom, with a desperate cold.

Xia LeYu stood in front of the Special Unit headquarters and looked outside. The surrounding flowers had been sprinkled with herbicide and those flowers were cleared away in a circle, but further ahead, a few hundred meters from the Special Unit headquarters were still growing and flourishing flowers. Those flowers were in full bloom, and the swaying frost brought them a little dew.

This wasn’t something beautiful, but a weapon to destroy mankind.

Was Shen Si also looking at this scene at that time?

Shen Si was a man who detested fate, even his cognitive dummy could break from the chains of fate, and he probably hated this doomed destruction.

The Special Unit had asked Shen Si to go backwards in time to find a solution to the problem of unlimited flow world assimilation, and it looked like Shen Si also thought of this solution, but he did even more than the Special Unit. He knew there was no way to solve it in one month or two months, so he went backwards twenty years.

“Xia LeYu, what are you doing standing here?” Ning Yangze got out of another car, and he shouted Xia LeYu’s name, “Hurry back to the office for the meeting!”

Xia LeYu nodded and followed Ning Yangze back to the office. In the office, He Xin and others were already waiting, this time it was a big issue concerning the whole world, there was no more organization to mess up.

For an ordinary person, living was more important than anything else.

“The world of unlimited flow is merging with our world so fast, it’s as if it’s on several times faster.” He Xin frowned and distributed the data he just detected to everyone here, “And the playfield is still opening, there is almost no completely safe location. Just now it has been reported that there is a refuge point that was swept into the playfield.”

Ning Yangze slammed the table hard, “Why is this happening?!”

“I don’t know the best way to put it, but, but…” Wu Qiu’s voice trembled a little, “but now the assimilation speed of the world is very similar to the fluctuations of Shen Si’s awakened ability. Both are growing rapidly immediately after manifestation.”

Xia LeYu looked at Wu Qiu, “Are you serious?”

“That’s right, and, we can’t stop it.” Wu Qiu’s face was pale, “Team Leader He tested the data, and in about three more days, the world will completely merge with the world of unlimited flow. By then, our world will no longer exist.”

“What about Shen Si? Is he still in the playfield?” Ning Yangze looked at Xia LeYu, “Neither he nor Jian Nian came out of the playfield in time?”

Xia LeYu shook his head, “The person who dreamed was Shen Si.”

The people present froze for a moment, and only after a moment did they react.

Dream playfield, and the dream master chosen this time was Shen Si? That was why it was so bad that they couldn’t come out for so long.

“Have you guys ever thought about one thing?” Xia LeYu opened his mouth and looked around, “If the future really can’t be changed, we can let Shen Si go backwards in time, backwards by a decade or two, and find a way in time, so that one day we can avoid such a disaster.”

“No way!” He Xin refused outright, “As long as time is rewound we will forget everything, as if nothing has happened, and the only one who can remember all this is Shen Si. It’s too unfair for Shen Si to walk through time alone with such a thing on his back.”

Xia LeYu smiled a little reluctantly, “Is it unfair? Isn’t that something that is taken for granted? No one will believe his words, so he is the only one who is trying.”

Xia LeYu clenched his hand tightly, his nails sunk into his palm, but he couldn’t feel the pain.

…It was such an unfair thing.

Shen Si, however, had already done it at least once.