**The forest of the Wood Nation whispered.**
Bark patterns twisted into human faces, their lips parting with the night wind, rustling out warnings. Xu Wu's mechanical eye scanned the "Tree Speakers," green data streams flickering across her iris.
*"What are they saying?"* I kept my voice low.
*"That we shouldn't have come."*
She tore off the fungal bandages wrapped around her wound, blue blood seeping into the soil. *"Turin's Forbidden Archives are alive. They devour intruders' memories."*
The moonlight vanished behind clouds. Ahead stood a structure woven from living trees—branches arched into doorways, leaves trembling without wind, as if the entire library recoiled in fear.
Xu Wu suddenly gripped my shoulder. *"Step back."* Her sickle flashed, severing vines hanging from the arch. The "vines" writhed on the ground, revealing their true form—dozens of Memory Jelly tendrils, still glowing faintly with Isia's fluorescence.
*"The High Priestess's surveillance net."* Xu Wu crushed the luminous tissue underfoot. *"She knew we'd come."*
---
The interior of the Forbidden Archives was ten times vaster than its exterior.
Countless bookshelves floated midair, staircases of tangled roots extending beneath our feet. Each book was bound by vines, its spine embedded with colored eyeballs that tracked our movement.
*"Knowledge has a price."* Xu Wu pried open a shrieking tome. *"Every page here is soaked in Tree Speakers' brain fluid."*
We stopped before a podium of gnarled wood.
*"Prototype Prime Directive Set"*
—sealed in transparent resin, its bronze cover pulsing slowly, like breathing.
*"Alive?"* I reached out.
The warning came too late.
The resin shattered. The bronze cover snapped shut like a Venus flytrap around my wrist. Agony erupted as visions flooded my mind:
_A white-haired man inputting my genetic sequence into a cultivation pod._
_Xu Wu strapped to an operating table, a Q-symbol branded into her collarbone._
_A-00 swapping a vial of golden serum._
*"Let go!"* Xu Wu's sickle severed the connection. Golden data-streams gushed from my wounds like blood, splattering the surrounding books.
Something horrific happened.
Every tome touched by the golden liquid screamed. Eyeballs on their spines burst. The entire library convulsed—falling shelves didn't spill paper, but razor-sharp bark shards.
*"It's rejecting your blood!"* Xu Wu dragged me toward the exit. *"Your genes are forbidden here!"*
---
Cornered in a circular hall, twelve Purifiers closed in from all sides. Their mechanical eyes locked onto Xu Wu, voices synced:
*"Deserter A-07. Commencing memory wipe."*
Xu Wu suddenly smiled.
She tore open her collar, revealing the glowing symbol beneath her clavicle. When the first Purifier struck, she did the unthinkable—
She stabbed her own mark.
Blue blood sprayed. Every Purifier froze. Their mechanical eyes began replaying the same encrypted memory:
_The white-haired man's lab. A cultivation pod holding a face identical to mine._
_A Water God's core embedded in his chest, golden data flowing beneath his skin instead of blood._
_His hand melting as it touched Xu Wu's hair, revealing metal bones underneath._
*"Now you understand?"* Xu Wu coughed blue. *"The one you've been hunting was never the deserter—"*
Fungal tendrils erupted from her wound, spearing into each Purifier's mechanical eye. Heads exploded in wet thuds. The last A-09 clone whispered before detonating:
*"So… we were… the failed vessels all along…"*
---
The rain-soaked escape felt like a nightmare.
My right arm had fully petrified, bark patterns spreading across my skin. Xu Wu fared worse—fungal filaments climbed her cheek, blooming bioluminescent flowers around her right eye.
*"To the Earth Nation…"* She gasped against my shoulder. *"Othera's Reverse-Soil… can temporarily suppress divine erosion…"*
The downpour split with golden light.
The white-haired man hovered above, his robe's hem dissolving into data streams that merged with the rain. The horror wasn't his power—
It was his face.
A possible future version of me, every wrinkle radiant with divinity.
*"Zero."* His voice was a million pages turning. *"You've finally come to me."*
Xu Wu shoved me with her last strength: *"Run! To the Sun Temple!"*
The white-haired man merely lifted a hand. Her body disintegrated into blue motes. Yet before vanishing, her lips clearly formed three words:
*"Kill the you of yesterday."*
---
Kneeling before Othera's shrine at the Earth Nation's border, I faced an inverted waterfall of floating black soil. An ancient consciousness watched from within.
When I reached toward the Reverse-Soil with my petrified arm, the earth recoiled.
The tremors carried a divine edict:
*"You are both poison… and antidote…"*
Staring at my half-wood, half-golden body, I understood everything.
The white-haired man was my future self.