The night wind sent fallen leaves swirling across the ground.
The streetlamp at the corner flickered on and off.
Lin Ye stared across the road.
The person holding the black umbrella stood completely motionless.
The rain had stopped a long time ago.
Yet he was still holding the umbrella.
Stranger still...
The pedestrians coming and going acted as if they couldn't see him at all.
Some walked right past him.
Some even passed through his shadow.
No one stopped.
As if...
Lin Ye was the only one who could see him.
"Xia Wei."
Lin Ye lowered his voice.
"Can you see that person across the street?"
Xia Wei followed his gaze.
After two seconds of silence, she said, "...No."
Lin Ye's heart sank.
"He's right under the streetlamp."
"Wearing a black coat."
"Holding a black umbrella."
Xia Wei looked again.
She still shook her head.
"There's no one there."
The hair all over Lin Ye's body stood on end.
Not a Corrector.
Not the Archive.
But...
**Someone only he could see.**
Just then, the man with the black umbrella slowly raised his head.
Darkness concealed his entire face.
His features were impossible to make out.
And yet Lin Ye could feel it.
The man was looking at him.
The next second, the man with the black umbrella raised his right hand.
He slowly curled his index finger, beckoning Lin Ye over.
Lin Ye instinctively took a step forward.
Xia Wei immediately grabbed his hand.
"Where are you going?"
"He's calling me over."
"Who?"
"That person."
Xia Wei's expression changed.
"Lin Ye."
"Don't go over there."
"Why not?"
"Because I can't see him."
That one short sentence made Lin Ye stop.
Over the past few days, he had come to understand one thing.
In this world,
**the things you can't see are more dangerous than the things you can.**
And yet the man with the black umbrella didn't leave.
He only beckoned Lin Ye again.
Then he turned and walked into the alley beside him.
"Wait!"
In the end, Lin Ye still chased after him.
"Lin Ye!"
Xia Wei cursed under her breath and followed.
The alley was narrow.
Old sheets of corrugated metal and abandoned bicycles were piled along both sides.
The man with the black umbrella walked very slowly.
He kept a distance of twenty to thirty meters between them.
Whenever Lin Ye was about to catch up,
he would take another step forward.
As if he were deliberately leading Lin Ye onward.
"Who is he, anyway?"
Xia Wei panted.
"I really can't see anyone."
Lin Ye didn't answer.
He didn't know, either.
He only had an indescribable feeling.
If he stopped now,
he would definitely regret it.
The alley grew deeper and deeper.
Before long, there were no more homes around them.
Finally, the man with the black umbrella stopped in front of a long-abandoned clinic.
The metal gate was half-open.
The sign was already rusted through.
A few characters could still be made out:
**Yong'an Clinic.**
The man with the black umbrella stood at the entrance.
He slowly turned around.
For the first time, Lin Ye saw his face clearly.
It wasn't that he had no features.
It was...
His face looked like ink washed apart by water.
It kept shifting.
Every second, it became a different person.
An old man.
A woman.
A teenager.
A child.
Dozens of unfamiliar faces overlapped and shifted without end.
At last, they settled on a middle-aged man.
The man's lips moved.
He silently said something.
Lin Ye understood him.
He was saying:
**"Save her."**
The next second, the entire figure disappeared.
Only the black umbrella remained,
lying quietly at the clinic entrance.
Lin Ye slowly walked over.
The umbrella was wet.
But the handle was ice-cold.
The instant he touched it,
an intense pain shot through his mind.
Countless images flooded in.
A doctor.
A little girl.
An emergency room.
Blood.
Screams and sobs.
Finally, a man holding the girl in his arms.
He kept repeating the same words.
"I'm sorry..."
"I'm sorry..."
"Daddy got here too late..."
Lin Ye abruptly let go.
He fell hard onto the ground.
Cold sweat covered his forehead.
Xia Wei immediately helped him up.
"You saw something again?"
Lin Ye gasped for breath.
"That wasn't a memory."
"It was more like..."
"Someone else's life."
Xia Wei's expression turned solemn.
"Residual memory."
"Only backup users can read it."
Lin Ye looked at the umbrella on the ground.
Suddenly, he understood.
The man with the black umbrella just now
wasn't an enemy.
He was...
**Someone the world had forgotten.**
Xia Wei crouched down.
She examined the umbrella carefully.
"There are no traces of Reset."
"And no Archive mark."
Her brow furrowed deeper.
"Strange..."
Lin Ye asked, "What is it?"
"In theory,"
"people who have been Zeroed"
"can't make contact with living people on their own."
Lin Ye's heart jolted.
"So what happened just now..."
"That was a first."
Xia Wei slowly stood up.
Her gaze turned toward the abandoned clinic.
"Something definitely happened here."
She pulled out her phone and opened Archive.
Within seconds, a red warning appeared on the screen.
> **Data does not exist.**
Xia Wei's pupils contracted slightly.
She searched again.
The same four words appeared:
**Data does not exist.**
She said quietly, "Archive can't find it."
Lin Ye stared at her.
"I thought everyone left a backup."
Xia Wei fell silent.
This was the first time she had encountered a situation like this.
Archive had no record whatsoever of someone who had been Zeroed by the world.
That meant there were only two possibilities.
First.
This person had never been backed up by Archive.
Second.
Someone had...
**deliberately deleted Archive's records.**
As the two stood in silence,
a sudden "thump" came from the clinic's second floor.
It sounded as if something had fallen to the ground.
Lin Ye and Xia Wei looked up at the same time.
The curtains on the second floor swayed faintly.
As if...
Someone
were standing behind the window, watching them.
Episode Six: The Man with the Black Umbrella
The curtains on the second floor
swayed gently.
As if someone had just stepped away from the window.
Lin Ye and Xia Wei exchanged a glance.
Neither of them said a word.
The entire alley was unnaturally quiet.
There had clearly been the sound of cars passing in the distance just moments ago, but now it was as if something had cut them off.
Quiet.
So quiet they could hear nothing but each other's breathing.
Xia Wei slowly reached out and picked up the black umbrella.
"Wait."
Lin Ye suddenly spoke.
"What?"
"That person just now..."
"He didn't seem like he wanted to hurt me."
Xia Wei was silent for a few seconds.
"I know."
"But..."
She looked at the black umbrella in her hand.
"The less something looks like an enemy,"
"the more likely it is to be a trap."
Lin Ye didn't argue.
Everything that had happened over the past few days had proven that this world couldn't be judged by common sense.
The two of them pushed open the clinic's door.
Creeeak—
The wooden door groaned with a heavy scraping sound.
The air was thick with the smell of disinfectant.
Lin Ye froze.
"Wait..."
Xia Wei stopped.
"What?"
"Hasn't this clinic been abandoned for years?"
"Yeah."
"But..."
Lin Ye frowned.
"The disinfectant smells fresh."
Xia Wei's expression shifted.
She crouched down and ran her hand over the floor.
There was no dust.
The chairs lining both sides of the hall were old,
but they looked as if someone had wiped them down just moments ago.
"Someone is living here," she said quietly.
"And recently, too."
The examination room door was half-closed.
Lin Ye slowly pushed it open.
Inside was an old-fashioned examination bed.
A wooden desk stood beside it.
A medical record lay on the desk.
Lin Ye opened it.
The first page.
Blank.
The second page.
Blank.
He kept turning until the end.
There wasn't a single word in the entire medical record.
Only the back cover bore a name.
**Lin Yuqing.**
Lin Ye's head snapped up.
"Yuqing?"
Xia Wei immediately came over.
When she saw those three characters, her pupils visibly contracted.
"How could this be..."
"Wasn't she supposed to be Zeroed tonight?"
Lin Ye quickly flipped through the entire record.
Finally,
on the last page,
he found a handwritten sentence.
> **If someone sees this medical record,**
> **it means the correction has begun.**
The handwriting was messy,
as if it had been written in a panic.
Lin Ye's heart sank.
"The correction has begun..."
"Could it be..."
"Yuqing was targeted a long time ago?"
Just then, footsteps sounded from the second floor again.
Step.
Step.
Step.
They didn't sound like a Corrector.
They sounded more like an ordinary person's footsteps.
Xia Wei immediately switched off the flashlight.
The two of them hid in the examination room.
The footsteps slowly approached the stairs.
Then they stopped on the first floor.
A man came downstairs.
A white coat.
Glasses.
Around forty years old.
His appearance...
was exactly the same as the man Lin Ye had seen inside the black umbrella.
Lin Ye's breath caught.
"It's him..."
The man stood in front of the counter.
He acted as if he hadn't noticed them,
simply sorting through the medical records on the desk.
His movements were so natural, as if he were just doing his usual work.
Xia Wei frowned.
"Strange..."
"He has no signs of life."
"But he's not a Corrector, either."
Lin Ye suddenly thought of something.
"Residual memory."
Xia Wei froze.
"What?"
"You said it yourself."
"Only backup users can read residual memory."
"Could it be that..."
"what we're seeing now"
"isn't a person,"
"but..."
"a memory?"
The instant he finished speaking,
the man stopped moving.
He slowly turned his head.
His gaze locked directly onto Lin Ye.
He smiled.
It was an exhausted smile, but also one filled with relief.
"Finally..."
"Someone can see me."
Lin Ye and Xia Wei froze at the same time.
Because residual memory
should, in theory...
**be incapable of speaking with living people.**
The man removed his glasses and gently set them on the desk.
His voice was hoarse.
"If you can hear me,"
"then Archive... hasn't given up yet."
He slowly raised his hand
and pointed toward the deepest part of the second floor.
"Please."
"Save my daughter."
"She isn't an anomaly."
"The person who really should be Zeroed..."
The man's expression suddenly turned terrified.
Before he could finish,
a pitch-black crack suddenly split open across his chest.
A mass of black data fragments burst out of his body.
Xia Wei's expression changed dramatically.
"Lin Ye!"
"Get out!"
The man dropped to his knees in agony.
The entire clinic began to shake violently.
Familiar white text appeared across the surrounding walls, line after line.
It wasn't Archive.
It was...
**Reset.**
The cold electronic voice rang out again.
> **Illegal memory retrieval detected.**
> **Beginning overwrite.**
> **Beginning overwrite.**
> **Beginning overwrite.**
The next second, every window in the clinic exploded at once.