He woke to a number.41
It was branded onto the sky, vast, dark red, and silent. Like an unhealed wound, or a mark casually drawn by a god. Rain couldn't wash it away; grey clouds curled at its edges. It hung there, pressing down on the world with its sheer mass and weight.
Beneath the "41", a smaller, crimson number flickered:
Just a "1".
Lonely, hanging there, flickering weakly now and then like a candle in the wind.
Pain.
That was the first thing he felt.
Not the pain of a wound. It was a brutal force boring into the void of his mind—chipping away, scooping out, and emptying the names and shards of the past from the depths of his consciousness.
"Agh…"
The young man groaned, pressing his palm hard against the cold, smooth windowsill.
—A window.
A towering stained-glass rose window. Cold lead strips partitioned the brilliant colors, depicting unfamiliar saints and celestial scenes, filtering the outside light into a dappled haze of color.
And he was dressed in clothes that had no place here: a plain white robe with straight hems, tied at the waist with a black rhinoceros-horn belt inlaid with cloud patterns. A dark jade pendant engraved with star patterns hung at his side, swaying gently with his restrained breath. On his feet were long boots with white soles and silver patterns, their cloud motifs glowing softly in the dim light.
Incongruous.
A jarring, heart-gripping sense of wrongness enveloped him.
Suddenly—
An opposing force slammed in! Like a red-hot engraving tool, it aimed straight for the emptiness in his mind, trying to wedge foreign "knowledge" into him!
The two forces collided and tore at each other in the center of his consciousness. One sought to erase everything into blankness; the other to carve its own imprint.
"Mm!"
The violent sense of contradiction and tearing, mixed with the forcibly implanted "memories" that did not belong to this time or place, surged from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
Who am I?
Only these three words burned in the blank sea of his awareness, seared repeatedly by the pain:
Mo Bai.
I am Mo Bai.
Then, another thought, fainter yet more stubborn, rose like a bubble from the depths, struggling against the tearing force—
Find… her…
Who?
He jerked his head up, bloodshot eyes locking onto the world outside the window. Past the gorgeous, cold glass, beyond the silent square and a few rain-drenched plane trees, his gaze fixed on the northwest corner of the square—
A hexagonal pavilion with upturned eaves stood in silence.
Under it, a figure.
A figure in a bright emerald-green dress, vivid and glaring in the gray, "41"-dominated world, like the only living thing in a landscape of despair.
She leaned casually against a vermilion pillar, one foot resting on the base, her profile blurred, seemingly facing his direction.
Rain had dampened strands of her hair, clinging to her indistinct cheek.
On her chest.
Pinned a small, silver cherry blossom brooch. The moment his eyes found it, it became the only clear, the only certain "coordinate" in this distorted world!
Abruptly—
A tsunami of memories crashed into Mo Bai's churning mind:
A tranquil star-observation platform. An old man with an unfathomable face, his presence deep as the starry sky, pressing a piece of dark jade engraved with constellations into his palm. The voice echoed directly in the depths of his mind—"From this day forth, you are the Twelfth Generation Wandering Disciple of the Celestial Mechanism Pavilion. Mo Bai, remember, all things change, but the secrets of heaven must not be lightly revealed."
A smoke-shrouded battlefield. A moon-white figure flitted silently through enemy lines, the gleam of a sword flashing each time it plunged into the depths of darkness—
"The Twelve Celestial Mechanism Arts!"
Fragmented memories flashed repeatedly—
The blood-dark '41', the green dress, the cherry blossom brooch, the Twelve Celestial Mechanism Arts.
"Wait… wait!"
Mo Bai mustered all his strength, screaming hoarsely at the window.
The next moment, he witnessed the most bizarre scene of his life:
The syllables he uttered, the moment they left his lips, solidified into physical form—three distorted, translucent characters, "Wait", "Wait", "Wait", hovered eerily in the air before him, quivered faintly, then froze and dissipated.
Sound could not travel out. No. This world had robbed sound of its right to propagate.
A cold, primal fear of being rejected by the very rules of this world instantly clenched his heart. But faster than fear was the instinct that had just awakened within his body! Without hesitation, he pushed off the ground with his right foot, pivoted at the waist, and his entire form shot forward like a white arrow released from a bowstring, crashing toward the stained-glass window depicting the foreign heaven!
Still, silence.
Only the flying, soundless shards of colored glass traced countless crystalline, deadly arcs in the air, reflecting his desperate figure. He lunged into the rain, toward the square, toward that glimpse of green.
"Bzzzzzt—!!!"
This time, there was sound.
A piercing whine, sharp beyond the limits of hearing, exploded not from the outside, but directly within him, within every inch of the congealed air.
But the flow of time was stripped away.
Raindrops hung suspended. Shards of glass froze in mid-air. His forward-leaping posture was nailed in place by an invisible, immense force, a mere three zhang (about ten meters) from the pavilion.
Three zhang, an unbridgeable chasm.
He looked up.
The sky above had "broken". Below the enormous, dark red "41", a perfectly circular patch of sky was silently "erased", revealing a seething, viscous darkness behind it. That darkness frantically collapsed and condensed toward the center—
He saw it clearly.
A blood-red pupil.
Formed entirely of the deepest, most foul crimson light, its edges still writhing and adjusting. It rotated slowly within the void, finally locking onto him.
Locking on was the attack.
At the center of the blood pupil, extreme light compressed into a point, then erupted—a concentrated beam of blood-red light tore through the frozen space-time, shooting straight for his chest! Raindrops, dust, even the light itself along its path seemed to be "vaporized".
Mo Bai's eyes widened in fury. His immobilized body couldn't dodge. He could only pour all the memory-force and the newly awakened power from his consciousness into his hands—
The Twelve Celestial Mechanism Arts - First Form: Unbreakable Aegis!
"Hum!"A transparent barrier of energy materialized with difficulty, shielding Mo Bai's body against the scorching wave.
The blood-light struck. The soles of his white boots curled and sizzled.
A moment later, the energy barrier shattered with a soft "puff".
"Argh—!"
It wasn't pain. It was "disappearance." It was the cold, hollow feeling of parts that constituted "Mo Bai" being erased. Countless memory-images flickered, shattered, and turned to ash in his mind.
The robe on his upper body disintegrated in the light, revealing a lean, powerfully built torso beneath. It seemed slender, but every muscle was sharply defined—medals earned from countless brushes with death and the edge of rules. Now, the red light was branding a new mark. In an instant, his upper body was dyed red, indistinguishable whether it was light or blood.
Strangely, after ravaging his chest, the destructive red light seemed to avoid the lower part of his robe and those white boots, as if wary of them.
Then, an overwhelming, irresistible force crashed into him like a tidal wave.
Mo Bai, frozen in mid-air, was violently blasted backward like a cannonball fired from a giant ballista, smashing heavily into the room's wall!
The wall cratered deeply with the imprint of his body. Under the pull of gravity, Mo Bai peeled away from the embedded wall and crashed heavily to the floor.
The room was already shrouded in billowing dust and the lingering smoke of scorching.
A long time passed.
In the dust,
Mo Bai wiped the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
The blood was warm, carrying the metallic sweetness of rust.
He pushed himself up, leaning against the cold stone wall, slowly adjusting his breathing.
He closed his eyes, focused his mind.
Sank his consciousness into a lightless, dark void-sea.
At the center of the void-sea, two crystals hovered.
Their forms were irregular, emitting a steady, faint glow, like cold eyes that had opened of their own accord in the darkness.
—Memory Core Crystals.