Chapter 594

【Are you going to give up on your original goal?】

That voice had returned.

【…Do you really want to stay here forever, trapped in an eternal cycle?】

Again and again.

Over and over.

Like a broken record, repeating itself without end.

The voice drowned out his heartbeat and muddled his thoughts.

…So loud.

Really…

So loud!

“Stop talking!”

Fang Qi suddenly raised his head and shouted at the empty wooden cabin.

“Let me think!”

Yet the instant he finished speaking…

The voice really did disappear.

Fang Qi: “…”

He instinctively rubbed his ears, then tilted his head and listened again…

Nothing.

It was really gone.

…That obedient?

And besides…

He blinked as he stared at the tightly shut wooden door. He felt…

His current state was rather strange.

The voice had appeared out of nowhere, then vanished just as abruptly, yet he hadn’t felt even the slightest bit frightened.

He wasn’t even surprised.

From beginning to end, he had been calm to an almost absurd degree, as if…

He had known all along that such a voice would appear.

No.

He gently shook his head.

He knew very well that he had no ability to foresee the future. He had had no idea this was coming.

But…

It was probably his subconscious.

His body, his instincts, and the fragments of his memories that had been sealed away… all of those things…

Perhaps they had known long ago that this voice would come, and had prepared him in advance.

Fang Qi let out a soft breath and used the wall to pull himself to his feet.

The cabin was so quiet that he could hear the faint creak of his knees.

The platform beneath him still swayed gently with the waves.

He looked around. It was pitch-black.

Only a few shafts of light slipped through the cracks around the window, swaying faintly across the wooden wall opposite him.

There was indeed no one else in the dim cabin.

Hmm…

Fang Qi pursed his lips.

This scene was getting a little strange, wasn’t it?

A sealed wooden cabin. Darkness. Solitude. And then…

A mysterious voice suddenly ringing out, repeating the same sentence again and again.

If this were a horror movie, the audience would have started screaming by now, right?

Yet here he was, bizarrely calm, and he had even shouted the voice into silence.

Fang Qi walked to the door and pushed it.

It didn’t budge.

He knocked on it a few times.

“Liguang?”

There was no response.

He went over to the window, leaned close to the crack where the light came through, and cleared his throat…

“Liguang! Open the door!”

He called out:

“There’s a strange voice in here!”

The light beyond the crack swayed again.

“Your husband is alone in here with another weirdo!”

He pounded on the window.

“Hurry up and open the door!”

Still, there was no response.

Fang Qi: “…?”

Couldn’t she hear him?

Normally, if Liguang had heard him say something like that, she would have kicked the door open on the spot, wouldn’t she…?

Fang Qi waited a while longer, but there was still no answer.

…Why?

He didn’t know.

But he felt not the slightest bit anxious. He was so calm.

With a helpless shake of his head, he walked back to the wall and sat down.

He leaned his back against the rough wooden boards and drew up his legs, returning to the familiar position.

The voice did not return.

So he began to space out again.

Come to think of it… what had that voice said just now?

No, wait. The first thing he should think about was…

Where had that voice come from?

This was Liguang’s world.

Liguang was the goddess of this world. Not a breeze, drop of water, or grain of sand here could escape her perception.

She had only just thrown him in here and locked him up as punishment, and she had sealed this cabin herself.

If anything had gotten inside, there was no way she wouldn’t have noticed.

Unless…

Fang Qi tapped his fingers against his knee and narrowed his eyes slightly.

Crazy Girl, you wouldn’t have set this up just to scare me, would you?

But then he shook his head.

No.

Although his wife was crazy, she wasn’t that bored.

Whenever that Little Yandere wanted to scare him, she always did it personally. If she wanted to bite his neck, she bit his neck. If she wanted to flash a knife, she flashed a knife…

She had never played these sorts of cheap ghost tricks.

So…

Only one possibility remained.

Fang Qi’s thoughts suddenly became clear—so clear that even he found it surprising.

That voice was an “invader.”

It had taken advantage of the brief moment when he was alone and secretly come looking for him.

But…

He looked around the dim cabin.

That raised another question.

This was Liguang’s world, so how had that thing bypassed Liguang and sent its voice inside?

Fang Qi couldn’t figure it out.

He wasn’t clever enough to solve problems like that. When he encountered something he couldn’t understand, he had always simply given up.

But there was one thing he had noticed.

…He wasn’t afraid of the voice.

Not only was he unafraid, he even found it somewhat familiar.

Fang Qi blinked.

Familiar… Was it because he had heard it before he lost his memories?

That was certainly possible.

After all, the “future him” had experienced far too many things. It was perfectly normal that he might have dealt with this voice before.

But…

He frowned slightly.

It seemed to be more than that.

He still felt that this voice had nothing to do with his sealed memories.

He had personally heard it at some point in time.

But where…?

…Ah.

Fang Qi slowly straightened.

His eyes gradually widened!

…That voice.

【Clear the game and reach the true perfect ending, “Eternal Love,” and you will be able to leave this world.】

【Otherwise, you will be trapped here forever.】

【You will remain in an eternal cycle, enjoying the yandere you love most until the end of time.】

…That was it!

That was definitely it!

The voice that had told him the “rules of the game” at the very beginning!

Wasn’t it?

Fang Qi blinked, then slowly leaned back against the wall again.

…What had it just asked him?

Oh, right. It had asked whether he intended to give up on his original goal.

Whether he intended to give up on Eternal Love.

Whether he truly wanted to stay here forever, trapped in an endless cycle.

…It all matched.

Every last bit of it!

What a…

Nostalgic voice.

After so long, he was hearing it again.

But then…

Fang Qi raised a hand and rubbed his brow vigorously.

Strange. This was really strange.

Logically speaking, after figuring all this out, he should have been utterly shocked.

Yet all he felt was…

“Oh, it’s you.”

As if he had only met an old acquaintance yesterday.

He blinked.

He was so calm. Calm to the point that it was almost as if…

As if he were like that time in the previous cycle, when he had possessed Liguang’s “authority.”

Back then, the authority had suppressed his emotions, leaving him terrifyingly composed.

The feeling now was somewhat similar.

Still…

There was nothing wrong with that, right?

Liguang’s authority really was inside him now.

And it wasn’t the only one.

At present, he possessed three sets of authority!

His own, Liguang’s, and…

Fang Qi’s gaze trembled slightly.

Oh.

He seemed to understand now.

“Hey, strange voice.”

He spoke softly. In the deathly silent cabin, his voice sounded especially clear.

“You… should be that third set of authority, right?”

But as soon as he said it, he shook his head.

No.

Authority was merely authority—a privilege, a tool.

It had no consciousness or sense of self.

Just as Liguang’s authority now belonged to him, Liguang was still Liguang. Nothing about her had changed.

She had simply lost her authority.

So…

He narrowed his eyes, his gaze settling on a small patch of wavering light on the opposite wall.

“…You’re the one who slipped in along with this authority?”

The voice gave no reply.

But Fang Qi felt that his guess had been right.

The one who had slipped in with the authority.

The presence that had brushed past him in the depths of the sea.

The one that had just fought Liguang…

The “Sea Beast”!

Liguang had said it herself: it hadn’t resisted at all.

It had remained there quietly, handing over all the remaining fragments of authority as readily as a defeated soldier surrendering his weapons.

So…

Had it done that on purpose?

Had it deliberately refused to resist, deliberately allowed Liguang to take the authority, deliberately hidden itself within it?

And then, while he was locked up here alone, it had come looking for him just to…

Ask him those questions?

—Are you going to abandon your original goal? Then what were our sacrifices for?

Fang Qi fell silent.

Sacrifice… was that what this was?

Even though he had lost his memories, he still understood the weight of those two words.

Gu Xi.

Officer Sister.

She had nearly sacrificed herself before.

She had almost offered up her “soul.”

If he hadn’t screamed with all his might at the time, forcing those ghostly blue lines of code back into her body…

She would have become an empty shell by now, no different from those wandering “watchers.”

So…

The “watchers” were the same.

Those people had no self-awareness, like puppets.

They had once possessed complete souls. Perhaps they, too…

Had once given up everything for that forgotten “goal.”

Fang Qi slowly closed his eyes.

He didn’t even know the full shape of that goal yet. He didn’t know why it mattered, or how many people had staked their lives on it.

But he knew that he had once made them a promise.

Now he had awakened. Now he had fallen in love with Liguang. And so he had said:

The plan has changed.

But what about the things that had already been sacrificed?

Could they be returned to their owners?

【Do you really intend to stay here and repeat this cycle for all eternity?】

The voice sounded again. Only one sentence, as though interrogating him.

【Then… what were all the sacrifices we made along the way for?】

Fang Qi pressed his lips together.

An eternity of reincarnation?

To be honest, he didn’t think there was anything wrong with repeating the cycle in this world alongside Liguang.

If anything, the option itself held no threat for him.

He and Liguang had already gone through so many cycles together—death, rewinding, death again, another rewind, repeating over and over…

Every time, he could once again see the silver-haired girl kneeling across from him at the tea table, holding out a cup of tea with both hands.

“Master, your tea.”

He had long since grown accustomed to it. He thought it was rather nice.

If this was what eternal reincarnation meant, then he accepted it.

But he couldn’t ignore those sacrifices.

The scene of Gu Xi offering up her soul was still vivid in his mind.

So…

He could almost imagine how Gu Xi would question him.

“So… we sacrificed ourselves for nothing?!”

“All for your… feelings?!”

“Then what was everything we did for?!”

“We can sacrifice ourselves, but Liguang can’t—is that it?!”

Fang Qi instinctively leaned back, the back of his head knocking against the wall.

This really wasn’t easy to deal with.

“Future me… you…”

He murmured, staring at the ceiling.

“How are you going to fix this?”

“Hmm. Let me think for you…”

After thinking for a while, he slowly spoke.

“Maybe…”

His voice echoed through the wooden house.

“We can find a solution that satisfies both sides?”

His ultimate goal should be…

To build a beautiful “new world,” right?

Lin Xiaoyou had said something similar before—to create a perfect new world.

It sounded… the same?

If they were working toward the same thing, then they should be able to cooperate, right?

Lin Xiaoyou was the smartest person in the world. With her around, perhaps…

They could find a way that didn’t require Liguang to be sacrificed.

They would still reach that goal, and the sacrifices of the past wouldn’t have been in vain. It was just that…

Fang Qi’s gaze suddenly trembled.

Why was Gu Xi’s relationship with Lin Xiaoyou so terrible?

If they were both loyal to the same goal, why did Gu Xi grit her teeth in hatred every time she saw Lin Xiaoyou?

Could it be… that their goals weren’t the same after all?

“The new world…”

Fang Qi murmured those two words, his voice growing quieter and quieter.

What exactly did “the new world” mean?

He shook his head, casting the increasingly maddening question from his mind.

He couldn’t figure it out.

With the state of his mind right now, getting this far was already an extraordinary effort.

But there was one thing he knew for certain.

He could never sacrifice Liguang.

Besides, that wouldn’t be called a sacrifice!

A sacrifice had to be made with self-awareness and by one’s own choice.

Otherwise, it wasn’t a sacrifice.

It was murder.

Liguang didn’t know about this. All she wanted was to be with him.

She would never willingly give herself up for something like this.

So…

There was nothing to discuss.

“We’ll think about it carefully.”

He spoke softly.

Think about it carefully…

【Is this your choice?】

The voice suddenly rang out again in his ear.

…Huh?

Fang Qi froze.

Had it changed? It wasn’t repeating the same words anymore?

But before he could think about it, he heard—

“Click.”

The door opened.

Ah!

Fang Qi turned his head and saw the wooden door pushed open a crack.

Then Liguang’s little head poked through. A few strands of her long silver hair fell through the gap as she peered cautiously into the room.

“Master, Liguang has finished talking things over with Miss Lin.”

Her voice was soft, carrying a hint of embarrassment.

“Master can come out now. We…”

She stopped halfway through her sentence.

Her mismatched eyes widened slightly as her gaze passed over Fang Qi and swept across the dim wooden room.

“Huh?”

She let out a quiet exclamation.

Fang Qi rose from the corner, stretching his numb legs as he said,

“Liguang, something’s gone wrong on my end…”

“Ma… ster…?”

Liguang murmured, her voice suddenly seeming distant and unsteady.

Her gaze continued to wander around the room, yet…

It never once landed on Fang Qi!

A flash of ghostly blue code flickered through her amber left eye. The crimson in her red eye suddenly flared.

“Master!”

Fang Qi saw her pupils expand abruptly. He saw her face turn deathly pale in an instant.

“Where are you?!”

She charged straight into the room!

“Master?!”

“Master, are you… on the second floor?! But the second floor is…!”

She suddenly rushed past Fang Qi!

Fang Qi: “?!”

He instinctively reached out to grab her.

“Liguang, I’m right here! What are you—!”

His outstretched hand passed through empty air.

Huh?

“Master!!”

Her voice came from behind him as she rushed toward the stairs.

Fang Qi’s hand remained frozen in midair.

Slowly, he lowered his head and looked at his palm.

There was no sensation at all on his fingertips.

“Master!! Where are you?!”

Liguang’s shout came from the second floor, shrill enough to crack.

Fang Qi looked toward the wooden staircase, then at the light filtering in through the window.

Huh?