“Begin retrieval.”
The cold electronic voice rang throughout the entire Archive Room.
A dozen Correctors took another step forward.
No shouting.
No expressions.
Not even killing intent.
They were simply carrying out the command with calm precision.
That calm was even more terrifying.
Lin Ye stood rooted to the spot, his chest heaving.
The white mark from before was still glowing faintly.
But he had no idea how to control it.
“Xia Wei!”
“What the hell is that?”
Xia Wei didn't answer.
She stared fixedly at the Correctors.
As if she were calculating something.
A few seconds later,
she suddenly reached out her hand.
“Give me your hand!”
Lin Ye froze for a moment.
Then he grabbed it immediately.
The next instant,
a silvery-white glow appeared in Xia Wei's palm.
It wasn't fire.
It wasn't electricity.
It was a string of characters flowing past at incredible speed.
Like lines of code, they slowly traveled along their arms.
Lin Ye looked down.
The characters weren't English.
They were symbols he'd never seen before.
And yet, somehow, he could understand what they meant.
**Backup.**
**Sync.**
**Connection complete.**
Xia Wei said quietly:
“From now on, don't let go of my hand.”
“Otherwise, you'll be corrected.”
Lin Ye didn't even have time to ask a question.
The Correctors moved.
Boom!
The floor beneath them exploded apart.
Three Correctors vanished at the same time.
The next second,
they appeared in three different directions.
Their fists swung down simultaneously.
“Duck!”
Xia Wei yanked Lin Ye toward herself.
Bang!
The force of the punches swept over the tops of their heads.
An entire row of bookshelves behind them shattered on impact.
Pages filled the air, swirling like a blizzard.
For the first time, Lin Ye truly felt it.
If not for Xia Wei,
he would already be dead.
“How are they moving?”
Xia Wei answered quickly as she retreated.
“They aren't teleporting.”
“They're correcting distance.”
Lin Ye stared.
“What does that mean?”
“They aren't crossing space.”
“They're making the world believe—”
“They were already there.”
A chill ran down Lin Ye's spine.
This kind of ability again.
It didn't violate the world.
It rewrote the world.
Four Correctors closed in around them again.
Xia Wei finally stopped.
Slowly, she pulled a pure-black card from her uniform pocket.
There was no writing on it.
Only a white tree-shaped symbol.
Before Lin Ye could get a clear look,
Xia Wei gently snapped it in two.
Click.
In an instant,
the entire Archive Room changed.
The bookshelves around them began turning transparent.
Countless glowing characters emerged from the air.
Book after book.
Photo after photo.
Even the walls
were covered in densely packed data.
It was as if the entire world had suddenly become a massive database.
Lin Ye was stunned.
“What is this...?”
Xia Wei gazed around them.
She answered calmly:
“The Archive view.”
“The real world.”
She raised her right hand
and pointed at one of the books floating in the air.
“Backup.”
Smack.
The book suddenly vanished.
The next second,
it reappeared above a Corrector.
Boom!
The heavy encyclopedia slammed down hard.
For the first time, the Corrector was forced back.
Lin Ye's eyes widened.
“You...”
“I didn't move it.”
Xia Wei shook her head.
“I only restored it to where it was three seconds ago.”
Lin Ye suddenly understood.
The Archive's power
wasn't creation.
It wasn't destruction.
It was...
**Restoration.**
Taking things that had once existed
and bringing them back.
“All Archive ability users
can only manipulate things that once existed.”
Xia Wei explained as she dodged an attack.
“So that's why we call ourselves—”
“Backups.”
A Corrector suddenly rushed in front of Xia Wei.
Its pale palm was about to touch her.
Lin Ye reached out almost instinctively.
“Watch out!”
He didn't know what he was trying to do.
He simply wanted Xia Wei not to get hurt.
The white mark on his chest
lit up again.
The next instant,
the world fell silent.
Time.
It was as if time itself had stopped.
Every sheet of paper hung motionless in midair.
Raindrops floated in place.
The Corrector remained frozen with its hand outstretched.
Only Lin Ye
could still move.
He stared blankly at his surroundings.
“What happened...?”
An unfamiliar voice
suddenly came from behind him.
“Time hasn't stopped.”
“You've seen it.”
Lin Ye spun around.
Behind him
stood a boy about his age.
He wore a white uniform completely different from the Correctors'.
A faint smile rested on his face.
The strangest thing was,
Xia Wei acted as if she couldn't see him.
The Correctors acted as if they couldn't see him either.
In the entire world,
Lin Ye alone had noticed his presence.
“Who are you?”
The boy didn't answer.
He only pointed at one of the Correctors.
“Look at him.”
Lin Ye followed his gesture.
The next second,
he froze.
Another figure appeared over the Corrector's body.
A female teacher in her thirties.
She wore glasses
and stood smiling at the front of a classroom.
She was taking attendance.
“Li Cheng'en.”
“Here.”
“Wang Zhe.”
“Here.”
“Lin Ye.”
“Here.”
Lin Ye went rigid.
She wasn't a stranger.
She was...
his middle school homeroom teacher.
But
hadn't she died of an illness two years ago?
The next instant,
the image vanished.
The female teacher became a Corrector again.
The boy said calmly:
“They aren't monsters.”
“Once,
they were all human.”
Lin Ye was completely stunned.
He looked at the Correctors again.
The cold, lifeless white masks now seemed to overlap with different human faces, one after another.
Old people.
Children.
Doctors.
Police officers.
Even students.
Each face appeared for only a brief instant.
The next second, it became a cold mask again.
“You see it now, right?”
the boy in white said calmly.
“That isn't an illusion.”
“It's the ‘backup’ they truly left behind.”
Lin Ye opened and closed his mouth.
“So...”
“The Correctors are the people who were Zeroed?”
The boy shook his head.
“Not entirely.”
“Their humanity no longer exists.”
“All that's standing before you now is an empty shell being used by the world.”
“Reset turned the last traces of their existence into correction programs.”
“And made them erase new anomalies for the world forever.”
Lin Ye clenched his fists.
It felt as if a massive stone were pressing down on his chest.
If Xia Wei was right,
then the Archive preserved their final memories.
And Reset...
turned those memories into weapons.
Just then,
cracks began to spread through the frozen world.
Crack.
A tiny fissure spread down from the sky.
The boy in white looked up.
“Time's up.”
Lin Ye hurriedly asked:
“Wait!”
“Who are you, really?”
The boy smiled.
“Once you've truly learned how to use the Archive,”
“you'll know.”
“And one more thing.”
He paused.
“Don't trust Xia Wei completely.”
Lin Ye's pupils contracted.
“What?”
“She hasn't lied to you.”
“But...”
“She hasn't told you the whole truth, either.”
Crack—
The entire world shattered like glass.
Every image collapsed at once.
Lin Ye's vision went black.
Another violent explosion rang in his ears.
Boom!
He returned to the Archive Room.
Time began moving again.
The Corrector's palm was less than four inches from Xia Wei.
“Xia Wei!”
Lin Ye rushed forward on instinct.
He didn't know why.
The image he'd just seen suddenly surfaced in his mind.
That Corrector
had once been a teacher.
And the thing teachers did most often
was...
reach out to protect their students.
“Stop!”
Lin Ye shouted instinctively.
The next instant,
something unbelievable happened.
The Corrector's movement
actually stopped.
Not just the one in front of them.
Every Corrector in the Archive Room froze in place at the same time, as if their connection had been severed.
Xia Wei stared in shock.
“How is that possible...?”
Lin Ye couldn't believe it himself.
He had only shouted a single word.
And the Correctors had actually stopped attacking.
However,
this silence lasted less than three seconds.
The Correctors' white masks began to tremble violently.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
One crack after another slowly spread from the center of each mask.
Then
a pained growl came from beneath the masks.
It didn't sound mechanical.
It sounded more like a person struggling.
Xia Wei's expression changed dramatically.
“Lin Ye!”
“Get back!”
“You awakened their backups!”
The moment she finished speaking,
one of the Correctors suddenly clutched its head with both hands.
It dropped to its knees.
A crack opened across its white mask.
Lin Ye saw clearly.
There was no darkness beneath it.
There was a pair of terrified eyes.
The Corrector looked at Lin Ye, trembling.
Its lips quivered slightly,
as if it were desperately trying to say something.
In the end,
it forced out only two words.
“Help... me...”
The next second,
bang!
Black light erupted from its body.
The mask covered its entire face again.
It rose to its feet once more.
Its eyes were even hollower than before.
Xia Wei grabbed Lin Ye.
“Go!”
“Now isn't the time to save him!”
“Reset has discovered your ability!”
The two of them sprinted toward the exit.
Behind them,
all the Correctors gave chase again.
But this time,
they no longer remained silent.
Instead, they repeated the same word over and over.
“Retrieve.”
“Retrieve.”
“Retrieve.”
Their perfectly synchronized voices echoed throughout the entire library.
Like a curse that would never stop.
The two of them raced out of the Archive Room,
through the hallway,
and toward the first-floor entrance.
The instant Xia Wei shoved open the iron door,
the entire old library began to shake violently.
Rumble—!
The ceiling started collapsing.
The surroundings rapidly faded.
The bookshelves.
The walls.
The stairs.
Everything turned into countless white points of light.
Like a file in the process of being deleted.
Lin Ye looked back.
The entire library was disappearing.
It wasn't collapsing.
It was...
being completely erased from the world.
He stood there blankly,
until Xia Wei grabbed his hand hard.
“Don't look!”
“If you keep looking,”
“even your memories will be corrected along with it!”
She pulled Lin Ye out of the school.
The two of them ran all the way beyond the school gates.
They didn't stop until they were sure no one was following them.
Both of them were gasping for breath.
Neither said a word.
The night wind swept past,
as if none of what had just happened had ever happened.
Lin Ye looked back.
Where the old library had stood,
there was now only a vacant lot overgrown with weeds.
No building.
No ruins.
Not even a trace that it had ever existed.
He stared blankly at the empty lot.
A thought suddenly surfaced in his mind.
If he hadn't experienced it himself,
then perhaps...
even he would believe that the lot had always been empty.
Just then,
Xia Wei took a white card from her pocket and held it out to Lin Ye.
There was no name on it.
Only a white tree
and a string of numbers.
A-017.
Lin Ye looked up.
“What is this?”
Xia Wei was silent for a few seconds before slowly speaking.
“Starting today,
you don't have an ordinary life anymore.”
“Welcome to—”
She looked toward the distant, pitch-black night sky.
Her voice was soft.
“The Archive.”
However, she didn't notice
that the phone in Lin Ye's pocket had lit up on its own at some point.
Against the black screen, a single line of blood-red text appeared.
Target confirmed: A-017 has been reactivated.
The Zero Protocol officially begins.