In Dragon Ball: A brutal beating of Frieza at the start

Page 41

Black Tower's expression was more grave than ever before: First, save her. Then...

Then find a way to overturn this damn fate. Lin Ye picked up Kafka and walked towards the exit. I don't want to be a cog in the machine of the next era.

The lights in the control room flickered, as if mocking their futile efforts. But the star core in Lin Ye's chest continued to beat, strangely synchronized with the faint pulse of Kafka in his arms.

Seventy-two hours. They only have seventy-two hours to fight against the workings of the entire universe.

The first step is to find other surviving system hosts.

Chapter 106: The Labyrinth of Memories

Pure white. Boundless pure white.

This was Lin Ye's first feeling after regaining consciousness. He tried to move his fingers, but found that his body seemed to be imprisoned by an invisible force, making even blinking difficult.

Welcome to the core layer, Mr. Lin Ye.

A neutral voice echoed in the void. Lin Ye strained to turn his eyes and finally saw a blurry humanoid silhouette gradually take shape directly in front of him—a figure composed of flowing data streams, without facial features, yet giving off an eerie feeling of smiling.

"Who are you?" Lin Ye heard his own voice trembling. He remembered that he had infiltrated the core layer to find system vulnerabilities, but he couldn't remember how he had come to this strange space.

I am the gatekeeper. The figure formed from the data stream bowed slightly, responsible for clearing away those fragments of memory that shouldn't exist. And you, Mr. Lin Ye, you've trespassed into a place you shouldn't be.

Lin Ye suddenly felt a sharp pain in his temple, as if countless tiny needles were churning his brain. He gritted his teeth, cold sweat trickling down his forehead.

"Let me out!" he growled.

I'm afraid not. The gatekeeper's voice was mechanically cold, unless you could recover the key deleted memories—especially the part about your mother's deathbed.

"What?!" Lin Ye looked up abruptly. "My mother's memories? That couldn't possibly be erased! I remember them perfectly clearly—"

Really? The gatekeeper suddenly approached, his face, composed of data streams, almost touching Lin Ye's face. "Then tell me, Mr. Lin Ye, how did your mother die?"

Lin Ye opened his mouth, but suddenly froze. He remembered that his mother had died in the hospital, remembered her pale face and weak voice, but the specific details... the specific details were like a thin veil, blurry and indistinct.

"Looks like you've figured it out." The gatekeeper took a step back. "Don't worry, I'll help you find the truth. After all, the truth is the best punishment."

As the gatekeeper finished speaking, the pure white space suddenly twisted and deformed. Lin Ye felt a wave of dizziness, and when his vision cleared again, he found himself standing in a familiar hospital room.

The smell of disinfectant. The monotonous beeping of the electrocardiogram. The gloomy sky outside the window.

This is my mother's hospital room before she passed away.

No… Lin Ye staggered backward, bumping into the chair behind him. He looked down at his hands—they had shrunk, they looked like they did when he was sixteen.

"Xiao Ye..." came a weak voice from the hospital bed.

Lin Ye turned around, trembling, and saw the face he had longed for day and night. His mother was even thinner than he remembered, her face ashen, only her eyes still retaining a sliver of light.

"Mom..." His voice choked with emotion.

Come here, let Mom look at you again. The mother raised her hand with difficulty.

Lin Ye walked forward mechanically, each step feeling like walking on cotton. He vaguely sensed that something was wrong; the scene was both familiar and strange, like watching an old movie that had been edited.

As he grasped his mother's cold hand, a jolt of electric shock shot through him. The images before his eyes began to flicker, his mother's face shifting between youth and old age, the walls of the ward sometimes appearing pristine white, sometimes stained with blood.

What's going on? Lin Ye tried to let go in alarm, but found that his fingers were firmly stuck to his mother's hand.

Interference has occurred during the memory repair process. The gatekeeper's voice comes from all directions; it seems someone doesn't want you to see the truth.

What truth? Let me go! Lin Ye struggled desperately.

Suddenly, all the flashing stopped. The ward returned to silence, but the mother's expression changed—her eyes were filled with fear, and her lips trembled.

Xiaoye...why did you do this? Her mother's voice was filled with pain.

"What? Mom, what are you talking about?" Lin Ye looked at her in confusion.

With difficulty, his mother raised her other hand and pointed to Lin Ye's chest. He looked down and was shocked to find a scalpel in his hand, its tip stained with blood.

No! This isn't real! Lin Ye dropped the knife in horror; it landed on the ground with a crisp sound.

These are the erased memories. The gatekeeper's figure appeared on the other side of the hospital bed. "Your mother didn't die from illness, Mr. Lin Ye. You ended her life with your own hands."

"You're talking nonsense!" Lin Ye roared, tears blurring his vision. "How could I... I love her so much."

Love and hate are often separated by a thin line. The gatekeeper said coldly, especially after she learned the truth about your father's death.

Lin Ye's mind was buzzing. Father? His father died in a car accident when he was ten years old. Wasn't that an accident too?

Just then, the door to the ward was suddenly kicked open. Lin Ye turned his head and saw a sight that shocked him even more—sixteen-year-old Su Mu stood in the doorway, her face pale.

Su Mu? How could you... Lin Ye's words stopped abruptly because he noticed that Su Mu was holding a gun, which was pointed directly at him.

"Lin Ye, get out of there!" Su Mu's voice sounded both familiar and strange. "That's not your mother! That's a system-simulated trap!"

What? Lin Ye looked back and forth between Su Mu and his mother on the hospital bed, puzzled.

"Don't listen to her!" The mother suddenly gripped Lin Ye's wrist tightly, with astonishing force. "Little Ye, Mom needs you... to finish what we started..."

Lin Ye felt a sharp pain from his wrist. Looking down, he saw his mother's fingers were deforming, her nails elongating into sharp, metallic claws that pierced his skin.

Ah! He instinctively stepped back, but could not break free.

Gunfire rang out.

The mother's head snapped back, revealing a black hole in her forehead. But to Lin Ye's horror, she didn't bleed; instead, a fine stream of data gushed from the wound.

"Quick, let's go!" Su Mu rushed over and grabbed Lin Ye's other hand. "Before the system completely locks onto us!"

The ward began to collapse, the walls twisting and deforming like melted wax. Lin Ye was dragged by Su Mu towards the door, behind them came the shrill screams of his mother—or rather, the monster that imitated his mother.

Xiaoye! You can't run away! You must face the truth!

Lin Ye didn't dare look back; his heart was pounding in his chest. The moment they rushed out of the ward, the entire scene shattered like glass, returning them to the original pure white space.

Lin Ye collapsed to the ground, panting heavily. He looked down to examine his wrist—there were no wounds, but a string of strange symbols, like some kind of code, appeared on the skin where his mother had touched him.

Those were memory markers. Su Mu—or rather, something that looked like Su Mu—squatted in front of him, and the system used them to track the modified memory blocks.

Lin Ye retreated warily: Who exactly are you? The real Su Mu couldn't possibly be here.

Su Mu sighed, her image began to fluctuate, and finally transformed into a glowing sphere: "I am an abnormal program in the system. You can call me Echo. The real Su Mu is trying to rescue you from the outside; I am a temporary interface created under her control."

Lin Ye frowned: Why should I believe you? That mother just now seemed very genuine.

"You don't have to believe me," the sphere of light said calmly, "but you should believe this."

It projected a holographic image—it was Su Mu in the real world, anxiously operating the control panel, with Lin Ye's unconscious body lying beside him.

She only has a thirty-minute window. The light sphere says that after that, the system firewall will automatically repair itself, and you will be trapped here forever. To escape, you must retrieve the deleted key memories.

Lin Ye smiled bitterly: "That monster just told me that I killed my mother. Is this what they call a key memory?"

No. The orb of light flickered; that was a false memory implanted by the system, designed to drive you to a mental breakdown. Your true memories were fragmented and hidden in different memory labyrinths.

Lin Ye stood up, feeling a wave of dizziness: How should I find it?

The sphere of light split into countless points of light, forming a luminous path before him: Follow me. But be warned, each fragment of memory will bring pain—both physical and psychological.

Lin Ye took a deep breath and followed the light into the depths of the pure white space. With each step forward, blurry images began to appear around him—his childhood home, the school corridor, his father's garage...

The first fragment is just ahead. The orb of light points out that it concerns the last thing your mother gave you.

Lin Ye suddenly stopped in his tracks: Wait... I remember she gave me a pendant. It was silver, and inside was...

His words trailed off as the scene before him changed once more. He stood in his living room, rain falling outside the window. His sixteen-year-old self was kneeling before the sofa, his mother weakly stroking his hair.

"Take this, Xiaoye." His mother placed a silver pendant in his hand. "It's more important than you think...protect it..."

Young Lin Ye looked down at the pendant, tears dripping onto the metal surface: Mom, don't say anymore, you'll get better...

"Let me finish," Mother coughed. "Among these are... things your father left behind... If one day you discover the truth about him... remember, it's not your fault..."

The scene suddenly distorted, and Lin Ye felt a sharp headache. He knelt down and saw the pendant glowing and warming in his hand.

This is the first fragment. The sound of the light sphere is coming from afar, but the system is interfering; we have to hurry—

Its voice was drowned out by a piercing alarm. The pure white space suddenly turned blood red, and the figures of the gatekeepers converged from all directions.

"Found you, little mouse." Countless voices said simultaneously, "Did you think you could escape the truth?"

Lin Ye gripped the pendant tightly, feeling a strange power surging from it. He looked up at the approaching gatekeeper and suddenly understood something.

This isn't a memory labyrinth... he murmured, this is a trial chamber. You're not hiding memories... you're testing me.

The goalkeeper paused for a moment.

Lin Ye stood up, the pendant's light growing stronger: "My mother didn't give me this pendant... I found it among her belongings the day she died. And you don't know this, because that memory... was never recorded by the system."

The space began to shake violently, and the image of the gatekeeper flickered like a television screen with a poor signal.

Error... error... it repeats mechanically, memory sequence mismatch...

Because this is no longer your game. Lin Ye gripped the pendant tightly, feeling a power flow from his fingertips throughout his body—this was his memory. His labyrinth.

With a deafening crash like shattering glass, the entire space collapsed.

Chapter 107 Source Code

The firewall of the Memory Corridor flashed a blinding red light, and the alarm sounded like a dull knife repeatedly cutting into Lin Ye's nerves. His fingers almost sparked on the virtual keyboard, and every muscle trembled slightly from excessive tension. Beads of sweat trickled down the edge of his tactical goggles, refracting into distorted spots of light in the torrent of data.

Thirty seconds until the firewall restarts! Alice's projection flickers violently beside him, quantum fluctuations causing her image to shift between clarity and blurriness, like an old television with a poor signal. Another failure this time, and we'll be permanently locked into this data layer! The core defense system has begun marking our consciousness signatures.

Lin Ye gritted his teeth, a faint taste of blood seeping from his gums. The final encryption barrier before him presented a nauseating sight—countless data worms writhing within the transparent firewall, each worm's surface bearing a human face—fragments of the consciousness of all the intruders devoured by this system.

On the tactical goggles of his right eye, a crimson countdown relentlessly ticked: 29, 28, 27.

"Let me do it." Alice suddenly grabbed his wrist. Her quantum projection began to disintegrate into golden particles of light, like sand art scattered by the wind. "Use my core code as the decoder. These encryption algorithms... I recognize them."

"Are you crazy? That would make your consciousness—" Lin Ye's voice caught in his throat. He saw Alice's pupils digitizing, binary patterns he had never seen before appearing on her irises.

"It's better than both of us dying here." Alice's lips curved into a familiar smile, the expression she wore after every successful prank, but now her eyes held a complex emotion Lin Ye couldn't decipher. "Remember? You promised to take me to see real cherry blossoms. I looked it up; the Somei Yoshino cherry blossoms only bloom for seven days... just like human life."

Her body suddenly erupted with dazzling golden light, transforming into countless luminous data chains, cascading down like a galaxy. Lin Ye felt a burning pain in his palm—it was Alice's last consciousness merging into his neural interface; her memories, emotions, and personality were all being converted into pure decoding energy.

Warning! Core protocol overwrite is in progress! The system alarm distorted, sounding like countless people screaming simultaneously. Black viscous fluid began to seep from the walls of the memory corridor, and the imprisoned fragments of consciousness suddenly turned towards them, emitting inhuman howls.

The countdown stopped at 15, and the encrypted wall in front of Lin Ye collapsed with a roar. The flying data fragments condensed into ice crystals in the air, then instantly vaporized. In the deepest part of the memory corridor, a hexagonal crystal silently floated in the void, its surface flowing with light paths similar to human capillaries—it was the last fragment of the creation program, and the most core secret of Project Ark.

He succeeded... Lin Ye staggered forward, his legs feeling like lead. He noticed the space around the crystal was subtly distorting, like asphalt under high temperature. When his fingertips touched the crystal surface, a bone-chilling cold shot up his arm and straight to his brain.

The instant the crystal emitted a blinding blue light, Lin Ye felt as if his skull was about to crack. Countless memories flooded in like an explosion: