Chapter 169: She Was Left Behind

No matter how hard Tong Yin tried to probe further, Linglan simply couldn’t grasp what exactly she was getting at.

"Tong Yin, let’s just be straight with each other here. It’s only the two of us — what is there to be afraid of, really?"

"Lan Ruoling. Do you remember who you actually are? Do you remember where you originally came from?" Tong Yin’s eyes stayed fixed intently on Linglan’s face as she asked.

A chill ran straight down Linglan’s spine under that gaze, as though something terrible would happen the moment she failed to answer properly.

But... what exactly was Tong Yin even trying to say with a question like that?

Of course she remembered who she was. She was Lily of the Valley. Wasn’t she simply a native of this amusement park, same as always?

"Tong Yin, I..."

"I’ll ask you one more time. Do you remember your real name? Do you remember who you actually are?"

"Lan Ruoling."

Tong Yin didn’t call her Linglan this time. She addressed her solemnly, deliberately, by her original given name instead.

"I... I’m called Lily of the Valley."

Lily of the Valley’s voice trailed off weakly as she spoke.

In truth, she’d always simply assumed Tong Yin calling her "Lan Ruoling" was just some private little nickname she’d invented between the two of them.

The light in Tong Yin’s eyes dimmed at once, all at once. So, out of all the survivors who’d taken these part-time jobs, was she really the only one left unaffected?

Or maybe, she thought grimly, the whole part-time job offer had simply been a pretext from the very start.

The locals running this amusement park had no real way of telling outsiders apart from their own kind — but by dangling this kind of bait in front of them, they could sort the outsiders out easily enough.

And even if they couldn’t quite tell them apart at first glance, well — it hardly mattered. They could simply assimilate everyone into their own ranks regardless.

"Lily of the Valley. Would you mind if I took a look at your employee badge?"

After a long, heavy pause, Tong Yin finally looked up and asked to see it.

Linglan suspected nothing at all, though she still couldn’t manage to remove the badge from around her neck, so she simply pulled the cord out from beneath her collar and handed it over as it was.

She felt genuinely terrified underneath it all. Though she got along fine with plenty of people, deep down, Tong Yin had always been her very best friend.

If there was any way to avoid it, she desperately didn’t want things between them to fall apart now.

Tong Yin, for her part, didn’t particularly care whether the badge could actually be removed or not. She simply pulled a small knife out from somewhere on her person.

"Yinyin, what exactly are you doing?"

"I remember you’ve always liked lilies of the valley. Figured I’d carve one onto this for you real quick with the knife — shouldn’t take long at all." Tong Yin said it lightly, almost offhandedly.

Linglan let out a small, unsuspecting "oh" in response, never once doubting that Tong Yin might be trying to pull something over on her, and simply accepted the explanation at face value.

Tong Yin, meanwhile, recalled what the clown NPC had mentioned earlier — how he’d managed to scratch several cuts into his own badge with a pair of scissors. He hadn’t been able to actually damage the tag itself, true, but he had recovered a handful of his memories in the process regardless.

So... worth giving it a shot, then, she figured.

And it wasn’t entirely a lie, either — Tong Yin genuinely did carve a small lily of the valley onto the badge as promised. But in the process, she also slipped in two sharp, deliberate little cuts right alongside Linglan’s engraved name.

After all, mistakes happen sometimes while carving, don’t they?

"Yinyin, are you finished yet?"

Lily of the Valley glanced down, watching Tong Yin’s careful movements the whole while — and honestly, the little carving itself turned out remarkably lifelike.

"There. All done." Tong Yin finally let go and set the badge back down.

Linglan snatched it up immediately to admire it. "Wow, it’s really beautiful."

"I didn’t hold the knife quite right and ended up nicking myself twice by accident in the process — hope that’s not a problem?"

"Oh, it’s nothing at all, don’t worry — you honestly can’t even tell." Linglan noticed the faint marks Tong Yin mentioned well enough, but paid them no real mind.

"Ruoling."

Tong Yin suddenly called out sharply.

"What’s wrong?" Linglan glanced up at her, startled.

"Do you remember now?" she asked again, more insistent this time.

Linglan froze, the earlier questions Tong Yin had asked suddenly rushing back to her all at once.

She... she did remember, didn’t she?

So then what exactly was wrong with her? Why was she acting like this?

How could she have possibly forgotten who she truly was? How could she have forgotten where she’d originally come from?

Linglan scrambled desperately to pull up her personal panel, but no matter how urgently she called out for it, nothing responded. She’d lost all contact with the system entirely, as though it had simply ceased to exist.

Linglan’s face drained of all color, turning ghostly pale. She genuinely couldn’t pinpoint exactly when she’d begun gradually forgetting about her own personal panel and the system in the first place.

Tong Yin simply watched in silence as the color drained from her friend’s face, watched her spiral into complete, disoriented loss.

"Yinyin, I... I don’t know, I honestly don’t know what’s happening to me..."

Linglan looked up at Tong Yin, only to find something unsettlingly unfamiliar staring back at her from those eyes.

She grabbed hold of Tong Yin’s arm tightly, terrified she might sever their friendship entirely over this. "Yinyin, what do I do now? I never wanted any of this to happen, I swear — I genuinely don’t understand how things ended up this way!"

"It’s because you chose the name Lily of the Valley. You’re the one who chose to become her."

Tong Yin felt just as devastated as Linglan looked, understanding all too clearly the sheer weight of what losing one’s personal panel and system truly meant out here.

And Lan Ruoling was still, after everything, her closest friend.

The two of them had passed through three separate worlds together in total, this amusement park marking the third.

Across all three, they’d been fortunate enough to always end up placed together in the same location, leaning on each other every step of the way to make it this far.

But Lan Ruoling...

Hearing all of this laid out plainly, Lily of the Valley simply froze in place.

Her thoughts churned in a chaotic blur for a moment, but everything gradually began clicking into place at once.

So they never should have agreed to take those staff positions in the first place, should they?

From the very instant those green vests had first asked whether they wanted part-time work, a trap had already been quietly set in motion for them — and they’d simply been too naive to see it coming, walking straight into it without a second thought.

"Yinyin, I’m so sorry, I..."

"It’s fine. What’s done is done — there’s really no point dwelling on it any further now." Tong Yin’s tone came out flat, indifferent; she genuinely had nothing left to say on the matter.

The time the system had allotted her was rapidly running out, and she’d be leaving soon enough. What would happen to Lan Ruoling once she was gone? What was she even supposed to do about any of this?

Linglan found herself thinking the exact same thing, her lips trembling faintly, though in the end she said nothing more about it at all.

Worried that Linglan might simply forget everything all over again, Tong Yin deliberately chose not to mention anything further about the employee badge itself.

After a brief, subdued conversation, she finally let Linglan go on her way.

Linglan was consumed with guilt the whole walk back. Why hadn’t she simply stood firm and refused Nalan’s suggestion about the name from the very start? She felt equally guilty for having dragged several of her own friends into this same mess without realizing it.

She’d since learned from Tong Yin that everyone else caught up in this was suffering the exact same fate as her — everyone, that is, except the clown NPC, who had somehow managed to retain a handful of fragmented memories.

The day arrived before either of them quite expected it, and Tong Yin made up some excuse to stay confined to her room.

She needed to wait quietly for the system to finally come and pull her out of this world.

Her only real sorrow was that her dearest friend wouldn’t be able to leave alongside her.

Tong Yin waited, and waited, and finally, midnight arrived at last.

The system’s familiar voice finally crackled to life — but after only a handful of words, the mechanical tone abruptly dissolved into nothing but a harsh, buzzing static.

A terrible feeling of dread washed over Tong Yin all at once. She called out to the system frantically, again and again, but received nothing back except more of that same relentless electrical buzz.

The system had vanished entirely.

She couldn’t leave this world after all.

Tong Yin sat there, utterly stunned, unable to comprehend how any of this could possibly be happening. Her personal panel and system had still been perfectly intact just moments ago — so why couldn’t she leave now?

The system had been functioning normally, practically joking around with her not long before this. How could it simply vanish into nothing so suddenly, without warning?

Tong Yin refused to accept it. She sat alone in her room for an entire day straight, but the system’s voice never returned, no matter how long she waited.

She’d been left behind after all.

Trapped in this world now, just like everyone else around her.

But she clearly hadn’t been assimilated like the rest of them...

She still remembered absolutely everything, every last detail...

So why? Why had she been the one left behind, of all people?