Rain lashed the city like a warning.
Lin Chen stood by the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse, a glass of scotch in one hand, his mind far from the skyline of neon lights and flowing traffic. The events of the past few days still churned in his head—Li Chu's breakdown, the dormant node embedded in her body, the whispers of Project Helix, and now…
A name.
One he hadn't thought of in over a decade.
Xu Yiren.
Once, they had been inseparable.
He had been the loud one, reckless and always getting into trouble. Xu Yiren was the brain—quiet, thoughtful, and strange in a way that made adults nervous. They were kids when they got pulled into something far bigger than they could comprehend.
And then one day, Yiren vanished.
No warning. No goodbye. Just… gone.
Until now.
Earlier That Day — System Alert: "Unknown Ping Detected"
The system had flickered unexpectedly, pulling Lin Chen from a training simulation. Static flooded his interface, then cleared to a line of text that sent ice down his spine:
User: Xu_Yiren_001Status: Connected.Location: Shanghai Central Terminal — Platform 9.
He didn't think. He moved.
Shanghai Central Terminal – Platform 9
The station was crowded. People flowed like a river—some anxious, some sleepy, all unaware of the quiet ripple of something extraordinary passing through.
Lin Chen pushed through them, eyes scanning the sea of faces.
Then he saw him.
A young man in a weathered coat, short black hair, lean frame, standing alone as if he didn't belong anywhere. He looked… older, obviously. Taller. A little paler. But the eyes—
Still the same. Clever. Haunted. Watching.
"Yiren?" Lin Chen called out.
The figure turned.
A slow, almost eerie smile spread across his lips.
"I was wondering how long it'd take your system to recognize mine."
They didn't hug. Neither of them were the type. But Lin Chen's breath hitched for a moment before he regained control.
"I thought you were dead."
"Close," Xu Yiren said simply. "But no. I was in Phase Three."
Lin Chen froze.
Phase Three?
He had only seen the term once in a corrupted System Archive: "PHASE III — Memory Partition & Identity Rewrite". It was a dead-end. Nothing readable beyond the title.
And yet here Yiren was, standing before him, system online, mind intact—at least on the surface.
"What are you doing here?" Lin Chen asked, walking with him toward the exits.
Yiren's eyes flicked toward a security camera, and then a group of people in suits by the vending machines. "Not here. You're being watched."
Safehouse – Two Hours Later
The apartment Yiren led him to was clean, minimalistic, and surrounded by a signal jammer that Lin Chen's system confirmed was Grade-S military spec.
"Who are you hiding from?"
"Not who. What."
Yiren sat on the windowsill, fingers lightly tapping a rhythmic pattern against the glass. "Let's start from the part you don't remember."
Lin Chen's jaw tensed.
"What do you mean?"
"You think the system chose you the moment you awakened during that accident, right?"
"Yes."
Yiren shook his head. "No, Lin Chen. You were chosen long before that. You and I—we were part of the original Salvator Seed Cohort. Only ten children were ever tagged. You and I were two of them."
Lin Chen's heart thundered in his chest.
"You're lying."
"I'm not."
Yiren pulled out a data shard and tossed it onto the table. Lin Chen picked it up cautiously. The moment he connected it to the system, a flood of encrypted files opened.
Project logs. Experiment dates. Visual recordings.
One stood out.
[Subject-04: Lin Chen]Age: 7Status: Latent — Memory Lock Engaged.
The clip showed a small boy strapped to a chair, tears drying on his cheeks. Scientists in lab coats spoke in hushed tones:
"Salvator prototype successfully bonded. Emotional imprinting stable. Initiate memory wipe in 3… 2… 1…"
Lin Chen staggered back from the footage. It was him. That voice. That room. Flashes began to return like broken film reels:
Needles. Screaming. A girl with silver eyes.A boy sitting next to him—Xu Yiren.
"You knew," Lin Chen whispered.
Yiren nodded. "I remembered after my third system update. But they sent me into isolation before I could tell anyone. My system was considered a failure due to unstable output."
"Until now?"
Yiren looked out the window, his voice suddenly hollow.
"They rebooted me last year. Turns out I wasn't a failure—I was a sleeper."
System Notification — Main Plotline Updated
[Memory Fragment Access: 01/10] Unlocked
The truth behind Lin Chen's past begins to unfold.The true origin of the Salvator System is tied to human memory suppression experiments.
Side Mission Available:"Piece Together the Past"Unlock all 10 memory fragments to uncover the hidden layer of the system and access Core Upgrade Path Alpha.
Reward: System Evolution Trigger + Unknown Bonus
Lin Chen stared at the notification, his hands shaking slightly. This was no longer about survival. It wasn't even about money or power.
It was about who he truly was.
Yiren stood up, pulling on gloves and tucking a data drive into his coat.
"I can't stay long. They're tracking me again."
"Who? Erebus?"
"Not just them. There are people who want the system to evolve—but not in your hands. They're looking for something called The Prime Host. If I'm right…"
He paused, looking directly at Lin Chen.
"It's you."
As Yiren Left the Apartment
"Wait," Lin Chen called. "Are we friends… or enemies now?"
Xu Yiren's smile returned—quiet, melancholic, and razor-sharp.
"Depends. On whether you're strong enough to remember everything."
And with that, he vanished into the crowd once more, a phantom from the past dragging all the buried ghosts into the light.