Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 13: Sleepwalking in Dreamland

1648: Lin Sanjiu Arrives on a White Horse

"Yu Yuan!"

A distant call broke through the waves, rain, and darkness, the voice urgently trying to pull Xie Feng back, to stop her from sinking further, from slipping into the endless depths of the dark sea.

But it was too late.

Her mother, her sister, her closest friends, her partner... they were all drifting away, sinking into the waves, and all she could do was follow them down. There was no other choice.

"Yu Yuan, it's me. Are you okay?"

The voice didn't give up, didn't fade, but instead drew closer in an instant. From the churning black currents beneath the surface, someone firmly grasped her shoulder. That hand pressed against her skin and clothes, surprisingly dry, snapping her back to reality with a jolt.

Yu Yuan slowly blinked.

The night disappeared, the ocean disappeared, and bright daylight filled his vision. For a moment, he didn't know where he was, nor did he know where Dong Luorong had gone. No, something was wrong; the data seemed scrambled.

He had never known a woman named Dong Luorong.

"Xie Feng's" memory ran in his mind by accident. It hadn't even finished before he was abruptly pulled out of it.

"Yu Yuan?"

The woman who had forcefully woken him from that dream-like state—he recognized her now as Lin Sanjiu—was bending over him, her face deeply lined with worry, surprise, and... was that happiness?

Was she happy to be reunited?

Though the Veda rejected emotions, with enough pattern analysis, one could still recognize human facial expressions. As his data processing stabilized, Yu Yuan quickly remembered everything, so precisely that he could even pinpoint it to the second—he had accidentally triggered someone's memory. At first, he had a sense of self-awareness and even thought about doomsday on those two planets. But then, what happened?

When did he start truly believing he was Xie Feng?

To the point where he even felt a strange emptiness in his arms—as if someone he was supposed to be holding tightly wasn't there and had no connection to him at all.

As Yu Yuan mentally traced back through the "background log," Lin Sanjiu suddenly knelt down beside him with a thud, and he realized he was half-lying on the ground.

Yu Yuan blinked again. Lin Sanjiu's expression was truly peculiar.

She reached out a hand, slightly trembling, hesitant, but she brought it forward and gently touched his face.

In a daze, Yu Yuan felt her fingers lightly brush across his skin.

"You... you're crying," Lin Sanjiu murmured softly, looking down at her fingers damp with his tears.

When she looked up, her eyes were slightly red; she unconsciously pressed her lips tightly together. All these little details suggested that she was on the verge of tears herself.

It was utterly baffling.

As a Veda, Yu Yuan shedding tears was already a sign that something was wrong within him. But the fact that Lin Sanjiu, upon seeing his tears, seemed ready to cry as well—this was something he found completely incomprehensible.

However, an even stranger thing happened next: Yu Yuan lifted his hand to touch his face, only to realize that the tears were still flowing, warm and relentless. They blurred his vision in waves, obscuring Lin Sanjiu's face. He couldn't make out his surroundings clearly, nor did he know how to process this error. All he could do was sit there, helpless, as tears continued to roll down his cheeks.