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"You can help me recover my memories?" When Ma Xianhong heard George's words, he immediately raised his head, face alight with excitement. "
"You can help me recover my memories?"
When Ma Xianhong heard George's words, he immediately raised his head, face alight with excitement.
"If you can help me regain what I lost, I'll give you whatever you want!"
He had loved mechanika since childhood. Later, his great-grandfather taught him the Divine Machine Hundred Refinements, and he picked it up quickly—praised as a prodigy who might surpass his elder.
When he was fifteen, his great-grandfather was suddenly attacked, one leg hacked off and rushed into hospital. His great-grandfather told him about the Eight Wonders and planned to flee with the family. But Ma Xianhong's memory stopped at the moment they left the hospital and boarded the car. After that, his memories vanished. When they returned, he was alone.
Fortunately, a kind sister, Qu Tong, took him in, treated him like a real brother, and helped him search for his family ever since.
Qu Tong carried grand ideals: she wanted everyone in the world to become strangers—no more differences, no more conflict, no more bloodshed for inheritance. So she founded the Yao Star Society to help those in need among the strangers, to heal their hurts and give them new lives.
One purpose of creating the perfect Furnace of Self-Cultivation was to repay Qu Tong's care: to help her realize her ideal and build the nation of her dreams. The other, more pressing purpose was to use the furnace to restore his lost memories, to find his grandfather and family.
If the stranger in front of him could really return his memories, Ma Xianhong swore he would give anything—let alone the Divine Machine Hundred Refinements; all the artifacts he had made, everything he owned, would be offered.
"No need for anything else. The Divine Machine Hundred Refinements alone will do."
George pressed his hand to Ma Xianhong's head. A forceful intrusion of spiritual power penetrated Ma Xianhong's mental world, and George began to read his memories at great speed.
"Interesting. A sealed memory—but not a problem."
From his studies, George knew memories were etched into the soul—part of the soul itself. They could not be utterly erased. Even rebirth offered a chance to awaken past-life recollections. What people called "memory-erasure" was usually a sealing—locking memories deeper within the soul. If you could go deep enough and understood how to work with soul-seals, you could lift them and restore the memories.
Ma Xianhong's seal lay deep, but for George it was nothing.
"Release!"
With that command, George shattered the soul-seal and liberated the buried memories.
"What a staged performance—self-directed, self-acted!"
Reading the sealed segment, George couldn't help but mutter. From the start, Qu Tong had felt off to him. She claimed to be a successor of the dual-perfection hand technique, and because she too bore a link to the Eight Wonders, she'd rushed over to rescue the Ma family. But it was far too coincidental.
The Ma family had been hidden for years without discovery—then, the moment they were found, Qu Tong appears, their family is captured, and somehow the most talented member, Ma Xianhong, is left behind and happens to be found by her. Realistically, if someone came to seize a whole family, they would take or kill them all, not leave one child behind to be conveniently rescued.
Ma Xianhong's youth, naiveté, and long-term exposure to Qu Tong's indoctrination left him unable to sense the deception. If he had Zhang Chulan's cunning, he would have seen through it long ago.
Qu Tong's ideals were simply too grand—she wanted to overthrow the existing order, create a new one, and turn every human into a stranger. People with such dreams, George thought, were not normal; their thinking was extreme, and their methods would be extreme as well.
He compared her to Magneto—someone willing to transform all humanity into mutants, who could even kill his most loyal follower for the sake of his cause. To George, Qu Tong's grand vision was laughable. Turning everyone into strangers would not erase class or conflict; if anything, it would multiply tragedies. Unless everyone became saints, disputes over interests would persist, and the weak and kind would still suffer—only now they would be strangers instead of ordinary people.
In Ma Xianhong's sealed memory, George saw Qu Tong intercept the Ma family as they exited the hospital. She first used the Dual-Perfection Hand to erase the Ma family's memories of the Eight Wonders and of Ma Xianhong, and then she specifically sealed away the portion of Ma Xianhong's memories related to his family.
Her motive was simple: she recognized Ma Xianhong's talent—one that might surpass Ma Benlai's—and intended to exploit his determination to find his family in order to perfect the furnace that converts ordinary people into strangers.
George suspected Qu Tong's ideal of turning all humans into strangers might be a front. Perhaps her true objective was to create a massive number of obedient followers through conversion and then use them as muscle against Quanxing and the major sects. With Yao Star Society's resources alone, she could hardly match the company or the big sects—unless she amassed a vast army of manufactured strangers.
"Sister… it's you… you—why? Why did you do this?"
After the memories returned, Ma Xianhong nearly collapsed in despair. He had loved and trusted Qu Tong so deeply—only to discover she'd deceived him for years. Everything had been a lie.
"All right, the deal is done. I should be going."
George ignored the agonized Ma Xianhong and vanished with a blink.
Ma Xianhong's family drama was not George's concern. The trade had been fair: he had acquired the Divine Machine Hundred Refinements. Now he would move on to other valuable techniques. His next target was Qu Tong.
Originally he had planned to visit the Lü family for the Dual Hands technique—after all, Lü Liang's Blue Hand came from the Lü family tradition. But after viewing Ma Xianhong's memories, George felt tracking down Qu Tong was the better option.
He was not sure whether the Lü family even possessed the Red Hand. Even if they did, it would not likely be as comprehensive as Qu Tong—the daughter of Duanmu Ying, the creator of the Dual-Perfection Hand. So finding Qu Tong directly made more sense.
Not long after George left, the villagers of Biyou and Zhang Chulan were drawn by Ma Xianhong's anguished wails.
"Leader—what's the matter?"
Chou Rang hurried forward, anxious at Ma Xianhong's collapsing expression. Zhang Chulan's eyes flicked; he moved closer as well.
After a long while, Ma Xianhong finally raised his head and looked at Zhang Chulan.
"Zhang Chulan, I'm willing to have all the villagers stop resisting and comply with the company's arrangements. But you must promise me two things."
"My nephew—you've finally come to your senses!"
Zhang Chulan froze for a moment, then beamed, nodding eagerly. But inside he wondered,
"Could this be connected to him?"
(End of Chapter)