"Abnormal backup detected."
"Begin retrieval."
The emotionless voice echoed throughout the entire Archive Room.
Before Lin Ye could even react, the white-masked figures before him all stepped forward at the same time.
They didn't run.
There was no preparatory movement.
In the next instant, they vanished into thin air.
"Get down!"
Xia Wei's voice rang out abruptly.
Lin Ye ducked almost instinctively.
Boom—!
The bookshelf that had been behind him exploded.
The heavy wooden boards shattered into pieces, and sheets of paper filled the air, raining across the entire room like a blizzard.
Lin Ye's pupils contracted.
If he'd been one second slower...
It would have been his head that was smashed apart.
"What the hell is this?!"
Xia Wei grabbed him by the wrist.
"Run!"
The two of them charged toward the bookshelves on the other side.
Behind them, the masked figures didn't give chase.
They simply advanced one step at a time.
Their speed seemed slow.
Yet in the blink of an eye, they always managed to close the distance.
Lin Ye couldn't help looking back.
One of the masked figures vanished again.
The next moment,
it was already standing in front of him.
There had been no warning.
A pale hand reached toward Lin Ye's forehead.
Xia Wei's expression changed.
"Don't touch him!"
She shoved Lin Ye away.
Bang!
The hand grazed Lin Ye's shoulder.
In that instant,
Lin Ye felt as if something had slammed hard into his mind.
Countless unfamiliar images flashed before his eyes.
Someone was crying.
Someone was laughing.
Someone was calling roll in a classroom.
Someone was clasping another person's hand beside a hospital bed.
The next second,
they all turned into white fragments.
They vanished without a trace.
Lin Ye dropped to his knees, gasping for breath.
"What... was that?"
Xia Wei stood in front of him, staring intently at the masked figures.
"Memory correction."
"If it had touched your head,"
"you would have forgotten yourself."
Lin Ye froze.
"Forgotten... myself?"
"Yeah."
Xia Wei didn't turn around.
"Your name."
"Your family."
"Your friends."
"All your memories."
"In the end, you'd become just like them."
Lin Ye followed her gaze.
The masked figures continued closing in one step at a time.
Their movements were perfectly synchronized,
as if a single person were controlling countless bodies.
"They're not human,"
Xia Wei said quietly.
"They're Correctors."
"Reset's execution terminals."
"No emotions."
"No names."
"No sense of self."
"They exist for only one purpose."
"Correct anomalies."
Lin Ye's heart sank.
"The anomaly... is me?"
Xia Wei didn't answer.
Her silence was an answer in itself.
Boom!
Another bookshelf collapsed.
Countless light cards flew into the air.
Only then did Lin Ye notice.
A person's face appeared on every card.
Old people.
Children.
Students.
Doctors.
Office workers.
People of every age and profession.
Every one of them wore a smile.
The next second,
their names began disappearing one character at a time.
Finally,
their faces dissolved as well.
"No!"
Lin Ye reached out instinctively,
but there was nothing he could grasp.
Xia Wei watched the scattered points of light, her eyes dimming.
"These are all backups."
"Once the Archive is destroyed,"
"the last proof that they ever existed will disappear too."
Lin Ye stared at her.
"So..."
"The Archive isn't preserving data."
"It's preserving..."
"People."
Xia Wei nodded gently.
"The real people are already gone."
"All we can do is protect the last traces they left behind."
Just then,
the Corrector at the front stopped walking.
It slowly raised its right hand.
The entire space began to shake violently.
Lin Ye was shocked to discover
that the bookshelves around them were slowly turning transparent.
The floor began to crumble.
More and more cracks spread across the walls.
The entire world...
looked like a file being deleted.
"Is it... modifying this place?"
Xia Wei gritted her teeth.
"Not modifying it."
"Overwriting it."
"Archive and Reset were originally the same system."
"One preserves."
"The other deletes."
"Now they're going to zero this whole place out together."
Lin Ye suddenly thought of something.
"Wait."
"If the Archive preserves memories..."
"does that mean..."
"the people who disappeared still have a chance to come back?"
Xia Wei fell silent.
She didn't answer.
Only a trace of sorrow flashed through her eyes.
"In theory,"
"yes."
"But so far..."
"no one has ever succeeded."
Lin Ye clenched his fists.
"I'll find a way."
Xia Wei was stunned for a moment.
She couldn't help looking at the boy in front of her.
He had only just stepped into this world,
yet escaping hadn't even crossed his mind.
Instead, his first thought had been to bring those people back.
At that very moment,
a burning sensation suddenly spread through Lin Ye's chest.
"Ugh...!"
He looked down.
A faint white glow had appeared beneath the inside of his uniform.
Xia Wei's face changed drastically.
"How is that possible..."
"Awakening already?"
Before she could finish,
a strange symbol appeared on Lin Ye's chest.
It was a white mark shaped like a folder—or perhaps a leaf.
The instant the mark lit up,
the entire Archive Room,
and every light card within it, burst into dazzling white light at the same time.
The Correctors stopped moving.
For the first time.
Not just one.
All of them.
They stood in formation as if someone had pressed a pause button, their white masks turning toward the light on Lin Ye's chest in perfect unison.
The only sound left in the room was the faint trembling of the light cards.
Xia Wei stared at the white mark emerging on Lin Ye's chest, shock appearing in her eyes for the first time.
"Impossible..."
"That mark... should have disappeared long ago."
Lin Ye looked down.
The symbol on his chest was slowly rotating.
It wasn't like a tattoo.
It was more like a three-dimensional sigil made of light.
Like a tree.
Or an open folder.
With every rotation, tiny white motes drifted into the air around it.
The bookshelves that had begun collapsing slowly returned to normal.
The cracks in the floor began to heal.
Even the light cards in the air stopped dissolving.
Xia Wei's pupils contracted slightly.
"The Archive... is protecting you."
Just then,
all the Correctors raised their right hands at the same time.
Without any warning,
the cold electronic voice rang through the entire room once more.
"Reevaluating target."
"Anomaly level increased."
"Identification complete."
"Archive core backup."
"Highest-priority retrieval."
As the voice fell silent,
all the Correctors vanished at once.
"Look out!"
Xia Wei shoved Lin Ye away.
Boom—!
The spot where they had been standing exploded.
A crack several yards long tore across the floor.
Before the smoke and dust had even cleared,
a Corrector appeared behind Lin Ye.
Its pale palm reached toward his forehead again.
Lin Ye raised his hand to block it almost instinctively.
The next second,
the white mark erupted with dazzling light.
Bang!
The two forces collided.
For the first time, the Corrector was knocked backward.
Its body skidded several yards before smashing through an entire row of bookshelves.
Lin Ye himself was stunned.
"I..."
"I knocked it flying?"
Xia Wei didn't answer.
She only stared intently at Lin Ye,
as if she were getting to know him all over again.
"You have no idea what you are."
She spoke in a low voice.
"What does that mean?"
"A normal Archive can only preserve memories."
"But what you just did..."
She paused.
"You preserved 'existence' itself."
Lin Ye didn't understand at all.
But the Correctors had no intention of giving him time to think.
The entire space suddenly darkened.
All the Correctors formed a circle.
They raised both hands in unison.
The next moment,
the scene before Lin Ye began to warp.
The library disappeared.
Xia Wei disappeared.
The Correctors disappeared too.
In their place was a familiar living room.
A steaming dinner sat on the table.
His mother, wearing an apron, leaned out from the kitchen.
"Xiao Ye."
"What are you spacing out for?"
Lin Ye froze.
"Mom...?"
His mother smiled and carried the dishes to the table.
"Didn't you say you'd come home early today?"
"Go wash your hands."
His father sat on the couch watching the news.
A familiar anchor's voice came from the television.
Everything was exactly the same as usual.
Lin Ye stood rooted to the spot.
His eyes grew hot.
"I... I'm home?"
He slowly walked toward the dining table.
Just as he was about to touch his mother,
Xia Wei's frantic voice suddenly came from beside his ear.
"Don't believe it!"
"It's correction!"
Lin Ye stopped abruptly.
His mother looked at him in confusion.
"What is it?"
"Xiao Ye?"
Her smile remained gentle.
But...
For some reason,
Lin Ye suddenly noticed
that his mother had no shadow.
It wasn't just his mother.
His father had no shadow.
The table had no shadow.
The entire house...
had no shadows at all.
A chill ran down his spine.
The smile on his mother's face slowly stiffened as well.
The corners of her mouth stretched wider and wider.
Finally,
they split all the way to her ears.
"Xiao Ye."
Her voice began to overlap,
as if many people were speaking at once.
"Come back."
"Forget the people who don't exist."
"Forget the Archive."
"Forget Xia Wei."
"Forget yourself."
She walked toward him one step at a time.
With every step,
her body began to warp.
Her skin peeled away like paper,
revealing a pure white mask beneath.
Lin Ye's pupils contracted.
"You're fake!"
Boom!
The mark on his chest lit up again.
The entire world shattered like glass.
Crack—!
The Archive Room returned before his eyes.
Lin Ye dropped to his knees, gasping for breath.
Xia Wei immediately caught him.
"Are you okay?"
Lin Ye's forehead was slick with cold sweat.
"What... was that?"
"The ability Correctors are best at."
Xia Wei spoke heavily.
"They don't kill people directly."
"They alter your perception."
"As long as you believe it's real,"
"your memories will begin to be overwritten by the world."
Lin Ye finally understood.
That was why everyone forgot.
It wasn't because the world forced them to forget.
It was...
because the world gave them a more reasonable answer.
Once everyone accepted that answer,
the real memories would disappear completely.
Just then,
from deep within the Archive Room,
a deep bell began to toll.
Dong—
Dong—
Dong—
All the Correctors stopped moving at the same time.
They even took one perfectly synchronized step backward.
Xia Wei's face instantly turned pale.
"This is bad..."
It was the first time Lin Ye had seen her make that expression.
"What is it?"
Xia Wei didn't answer.
She only stared fixedly into the darkness behind the Memory Tree.
A tall figure
was slowly walking out of the darkness.
Unlike the other Correctors,
it wasn't wearing a white mask.
Instead, it wore a pure black one.
The Archive's tree-shaped mark was carved into its chest as well.
Except...
that mark had already split in two.
It stopped walking.
Then it slowly looked toward Lin Ye.
And in a voice almost human, it calmly spoke.
"I've finally... found you."
"Seventh Backup."