The woman remained unconscious-looking, lying in Hong Haocheng’s arms.
He sensed his body; the spiritual voice that used to instantly respond to his thoughts was gone, yet not entirely dead. He could still feel the soul energy, and it was clearer than before. Or perhaps, his own perception had become keener.
So, it was all real?
“Liar, you fooled me by saying you were only twenty-eight. Damn it.”
Hong Haocheng got up. He glanced at the woman on the bed. Taking advantage of her rare, deep-sleep-like state, he carefully opened the small suitcase and rummaged through its contents.
“Phone? Hmm, no need to check it.”
He tossed it aside. Then, searching a bit more, he easily found that thing—their marriage certificate. Sure enough, both copies were right there.
Back then, after being forced into the wedding ceremony, we took a photo together on the island. Xuji waved the marriage certificate in front of me after it was made, but wouldn’t let me touch it, saying she was afraid I’d tear it up.
After that, the two of us went our separate ways, as if we had just played a game of house.
“Got you now, huh. Hehe, let me see how ugly you made me look in the picture.”
He flipped it open and glanced at it. Hong Haocheng froze for a moment.
The photo was of the two of them, and his ID number was correct, but… on the age front, he was two years older than her.
“Why… aren’t you called Wang Xufei?”
Hong Haocheng’s heart pounded. He looked at the name beneath the woman: Wang Qianyi, female, 26 years old.
“Wang Qianyi? Isn’t that the girl whose files I knocked over last time… the one who called me to run away?”
Hong Haocheng turned his head to look at the serene, sleeping face of the woman on the bed. Although this woman was beautiful, she lacked the simple, unadorned yet deep and distant aura of Xufei—their styles were completely different.
Suddenly, he felt his body jolt.
—”Alert, alert. The aircraft has encountered an ocean current and is making an emergency landing.”
—”Alert. Aircraft engine malfunction!”
“What?!”
Hong Haocheng’s expression changed. He quickly put on his clothes, gripping the marriage certificate, and pulled the sheet over the drowsy woman opening her eyes.
“Hubby, what’s wrong?”
“The plane is shuddering, and to make matters worse, an engine has caught fire.”
He noticed he could stand steadily on the turbulent plane, realizing he had unconsciously absorbed a significant amount of his training into his abilities.
Bang! The door burst open, and Feng Juguan glanced at the people inside. “Quick, give her to me.”
“I’ll hold her. My balance is already—”
“Give her to me!”
Feng Juguan’s sharp shout left Hong Haocheng momentarily stunned; then, he obediently handed Xuji over to Feng Juguan.
“The marriage certificate is in the suitcase—go grab it,” the woman said.
Feng Juguan nodded and was about to carry Xuji further inside when Hong Haocheng blocked him. He pulled out one certificate he had stashed in his pocket and handed it to the other man.
The boy said, “Give me the other one.”
The woman immediately turned her head: “No, give both to me.”
“Why?” Hong Haocheng looked at her, puzzled by her sudden panic.
“I…”
“What else are you hiding from me?”
As he asked, a vague memory surfaced in Hong Haocheng’s mind—one not originally his own.
This was a spillover from the woman’s psychic force absorbed the night before. Though the transfer of memory was sparse, a fragmented and fractured version of a world now brushed like firelight across the sea of his consciousness, stirring tumultuous waves.
The boy’s expression changed as he turned to look at Xu Ji in Feng Juguan’s arms.
“You should go.”
“You… you know?” The woman looked at his suddenly relieved expression.
Hong Haocheng moved through the room, where items were sliding side to side, like a steady sailor heading to the other end of the engine room.
“Go quickly, if I’m not mistaken, won’t it be too late if you wait any longer? Go ahead.”
Feng Juguan looked at the woman in his arms and whispered anxiously, “Why is it ahead of schedule? We haven’t reached the prepared base yet.”
The woman’s eyes had lost their previous youthful radiance.
“Perhaps this is fate. Those preparations are no longer necessary.”
She looked up at the boy’s back ahead of him and said:
“My real name is Xu Fei, without any surname. In the future, forget me.”
With no time to think further, Feng Juguan gritted his teeth, hugged the woman, and quickly rushed toward the rear door of the room. The plane swooped downward in a dive through the clouds.
Suddenly, the thick fog in the clouds behind them began to churn.
It howled!
An even larger, pale gray plane roared out from the clouds.
— “Calling BA6278…”
The massive gray plane, like a moving piece of land, hovered closely above the unsteady BA6278. Several pentagram patterns were painted on the side of the enormous fuselage.
In the clouds beside it, two more fighter jets pierced through the disturbed cloud layer, heading in with trailing exhaust. On their sides were crescent moon and star-stripe patterns.
The aircraft formation effortlessly matched the speed of the out-of-control plane, dropping several ropes from above. Special forces soldiers descended to the ends with almost impossible acrobatics and swiftly transferred the people from the crippled aircraft to the larger plane—except for the boy who watched it all.
Hong Haocheng gazed calmly out the window, recalling the stories the woman had told him these past few days.
In the 19th century, Polish explorers, the Ivanowski brothers, vanished in the Arctic Ocean.
Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, was lost in 1937 during her round-the-world flight.
In 1803, Australian explorer George Bass sailed near South America and disappeared without a trace…
“So what you’ve been talking about all along is my story.”
Several more planes from different nations pierced the clouds behind like swords, emerging like a hidden aerospace fleet revealing itself.
A gray-black delta-wing aircraft flanked the rolling and plunging BA6278 on both sides.
This roar shattered Hong Haocheng’s thoughts.
As he listened to the crackling sounds inside the aircraft, a broadcast echoed through every corner.
—”Comrade Hong Haocheng.”
A few seconds later.
“Mm,” Hong Haocheng replied faintly, lifting his head toward the speaker. “I’m still here.”
—”We’re waiting for you to come home.”
The plane roared down toward the vast, boundless earth.
He felt as if in a dream, falling and falling, never reaching the ground, the radio waves cutting off, leaving only the relentless hum of white noise.
Hong Haocheng watched the gradually approaching earth outside the window, an indescribable calm welling up in his heart.
——”Crackle, crackle.”
The boy remembered Xù Jī’s smile and what she had said, “No matter where you go, I want to be in your heart.”
He closed his eyes, letting his body fall with the plane, yet an eerie peace emerged in his heart, as if he were returning to a destiny that rightfully belonged to him.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
The plane’s wings exploded in flames, and all the items in the room were flung into the corners. An indescribable aura began to permeate the entire cabin, quickly turning obscure, eerie, and oppressive.
Thump, thump, thump.
A faint heartbeat resonated in his ears and chest, like the heavy footsteps of a ghost treading on his heart.
This fall stretched into an unimaginably long silence, as if the distance between heaven and earth had been magnified ten thousand times.
……
“What exactly is ‘Lost Illusion Company’?”
Yang Zicang lay on his comfortable soft bed, his hand resting on the pillow as he pondered this question.
The night was silent, save for the feeble ticking of the simulated clock, pecking at the darkness.
Here, he had only slept for three or four hours and was already fully refreshed, but if asked to get up now, the long-established habit couldn’t truly compel his body to do anything. Besides, even if he did get up, there was nothing to do.
Turning his head, he glanced at the time displayed on the wall beside him.
04:12:28。
In boredom, Yang Zicang, clad in a fluffy pajama, picked up an exquisite half-palm-sized card from beside his pillow and flipped it back and forth. As he lifted it, the rigid card faintly glowed.
[Through the “Employee ID,” I know my current mental power intensity is at the second ring, eighth stage.]
“I really wonder how something like this is made.”
[I want to know the design principle of the employee card… but that’s not my concern.]
After fiddling with the employee card, Yang Zicang recalled some information about himself.
In just half a month, he had increased his mental power intensity by two full stages. Although logically, new company members tended to progress quickly thanks to the nature of their work, achieving such rapid growth as his—according to his group leader—was extremely rare, and she had never witnessed it firsthand.
However, as he toyed with the card, Yang Zicang’s brow slightly furrowed.
While a comfortable life and safe power enhancement attracted some who knew this place’s existence, that wasn’t his objective.
Morrie’s danger had not been resolved; Mu Xiaoyu remained unaccompanied to the town; and there were many other matters, such as the year-end City Ranking Battle, not to mention… the elusive and shadowy figure stirring his heart in the Lost Frequency Land.
Though his time in this world had been brief, he had already become entangled with many ties and obligations.
“I have to hurry.”
Yang Zicang turned slightly to one side.
[I wonder, where exactly could the bookshelf be? I want to go back early.]
The young man in the bed thought, recalling the information about Lost Illusion Company imprinted in his mind through that handbook. Compared to the meticulous records on the Lost Frequency Land, which even detailed formulas for some Lost Mind Engines, there was very little information about this place—almost zero aside from its name.
[I wonder, how did the original “Forward March Squad” manage to investigate and uncover information about this place?]
[Were those people very capable?]
Thinking of the creed declaration left by the “Forward March Squad,” Yang Zicang subconsciously straightened his fingers gripping the employee card, tracing the strokes of the word “Forward” on the wall—first, then writing two horizontal lines, followed by two crisscrossing vertical strokes…
He yawned, retracted his finger, and thought.
[The dark gold linking silver and red—could it refer to… the model colors of those officers?]
Suddenly, a fold of light shot toward him.
{Zi Cang, I see that your employee card can now establish a communication link. So, you’re awake?}
Yang Zicang was slightly startled by the girl’s voice ringing directly in his mind, then he relaxed.
“Group Leader Jiaoma isn’t asleep either?”
{Mm, I get up at this time every day.}
“Huh… in that case.” Yang Zicang threw off the covers and got up, touching his employee card as he said, “Group Leader Jiaoma, may I ask if I can go to the archives room to look up materials?”
{Of course you can. I’ve been wanting to invite you there for a while now.}
“For a while now?”
Yang Zicang let out a long, heavy sigh in his heart.
He never imagined that the so-called mysterious “Old World Document Repository” he had been secretly and obsessively searching for was actually a place anyone could go to. If only he had thought to ask earlier.
A sudden feeling of “being too poor and weak to dare speak recklessly” welled up in the young man’s heart.
“Then I’m free right now. Can you tell me the route?” Yang Zicang asked with slight urgency.
He didn’t expect success to come so quickly.
“Yes, I could. I’d even like to go with you, but…”
“But what?”
{The library only contains records about the old world. If you read them, you can’t return to the Lost Frequency Zone, okay?}
“W-What?” Yang Zicang’s eyes shot wide open instantly.
[I’m wailing.]
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