Chapter 902: Fading Memories
Jiang Ruoxue stayed with me for a few days.
Then, just as she had said, she joined the "Paradise Gate" to seek out that deputy leader who possessed "Strong Fortune."
I also asked her how she planned to recruit that girl into the group. Her answer left me a bit confused.
She said that girl might really like girls. She herself had been playing the role of a tomboy for half her life, never expecting to meet the real deal.
That remark felt strange to me...
Was she planning to sacrifice herself for the "Jidao"?
But what kind of person was that girl, anyway?
From Jiang Ruoxue's description alone, I found it hard to picture that girl's image.
Supposedly, she was tall, nearly one meter eighty, devastatingly beautiful, possessed a high-level "Echo" without any side effects, liked girls, was friendly to others, and served as the deputy leader of an organization with immense "Good Karma"...
Could someone that perfect really exist in this world?
If such a girl appeared in a movie or anime, odds were she'd have some earth-shattering secret, and they'd paint her as a beautiful but venomous villain.
But Jiang Ruoxue spoke highly of her. Before I left, I randomly asked a few passersby. Whenever they mentioned that girl named Yun Yao, everyone praised her endlessly, heaping compliments upon her.
She didn't even have a single scandal or anything to dislike about her.
God, she's like a character straight out of an anime... I can hardly imagine what she's really like.
In their era, didn anyone try to recruit her as an idol or entertainer?
I suddenly felt a bit of inferiority.
But then again, whether it was "Cause and Effect" or "Karma," both had a profound impact on the "Jidao." If they could add "Strong Fortune" to the mix, this organization would become unimaginably powerful.
These three layers of insurance, capable of altering fate and circumstances, could almost make the "Jidao" eternal.
Right now, the "Jidao" was in a very peculiar position. Even if I disappeared, or Ruoxue disappeared, or anyone in the organization vanished or lost their memory, the "Jidao" wouldn't be affected at all.
Its membership would still grow daily, and its strength would increase day by day.
If "Strong Fortune" joined as well, I had a feeling... no matter what Bai Yang was planning, she would be a huge asset.
In the days that followed, the "Jidao" would continue to split all the other organizations here, making the "Participants" experience endless despair.
Countless strong individuals would gradually awaken in that despair, and numerous organizations would crumble under suspicion.
Next cycle, I returned to near my spawn point.
Although Ruoxue and I had made up, we still operated on opposite ends of the city. She wasn't by my side.
How should I describe this feeling? Everything Jiang Ruoxue did was for me, yet I could hardly see her.
It was a kind of ethereal yet solid sense of security.
Perhaps Ruoxue and I had both grown. Now I could stand on my own, and she was no longer so capricious.
We were both running around for a single ultimate goal.
That ultimate goal was to liberate the entire "Land of Finality."
I still went to see Bai Yang every day. As always, he never asked about anything concerning the "Jidao."
Sometimes I even had a dazed thought—had he forgotten the existence of the "Jidao"?
But I quickly shook my head and dismissed that concern. The "Jidao" was one of Bai Yang's most important chess pieces, and also the key to protecting the entire city. Bai Yang had no reason to forget it.
Countless times I wanted to ask Bai Yang what he was planning, but my previous two experiences were still fresh in my memory. Whenever I tried to pry even a little into Bai Yang's plans, his thoughts would completely blank out my mind.
I couldn't fathom the schemes he had laid out. I could only try my best to be a good chess piece that wouldn't be discarded.
I still engaged in armchair discussions with Bai Yang. The amount of knowledge he had acquired over these years far exceeded my imagination. At first, I could still discuss all sorts of topics with him, but in recent years, I'd spoken less and less.
Because Bai Yang's thinking and knowledge had already far surpassed mine.
One day, I arrived at the "Jile Money House" and found Bai Yang reading again.
"Sao Yang... isn't that enough?"
I looked at him and asked the question that had been on my mind for a long time.
"What?" Bai Yang closed the book and raised his strange pupils to look at me.
"I mean your knowledge," I said. "After all these years, you're still insisting on finishing a book every day...?"
"More than that," Bai Yang said. "I no longer need sleep now, so every day I have double the time. If the students don't cause me trouble and there are no special situations to handle, finishing two books a day is no problem."
"Sao Yang, I know you want to become stronger, but shouldn't you also take time to digest and absorb? Otherwise, with such a volume of knowledge constantly pouring into your brain, even your brain won't be able to handle it."
"It needs to adapt," Bai Yang replied. "I have no time to rest anymore, so my brain can't either."
"But why...?" I slowly frowned. "You're driving yourself to this point, frantically absorbing knowledge... Isn't this enough?"
I knew that Bai Yang might already be the most learned person in the entire "Land of Finality." Anyone who could calmly read through an entire bookstore and remember what was in the books would be more knowledgeable than ninety percent of the people in this world.
Let alone someone like Bai Yang, who could draw inferences and apply every piece of knowledge flexibly.
"Why keep acquiring knowledge...?" Bai Yang thought for a moment. "Maybe you think I'd say something cliché like 'The sea of learning has no end,' but that's not it..."
He slowly stood up, walked to the office door, and looked out at the noisy crowd outside. Gamblers from all walks of life still filled the place.
Bai Yang left the door ajar, blocking out the noise, and then said, "Yan Zhichun, I've fallen into a deep 'panic of losing my memory.' The only way I can possibly retain even one percent of what I've learned when I forget everything is to absorb as much knowledge as I can. And that one percent will be what sustains me in the future."
"What...?"
"If you dye a piece of clothing over and over, even the easiest dye to fade will leave a mark," Bai Yang said. "That's why I can't stop for even a moment."
I didn't understand... I knew that everyone had their own fears and anxieties, but Bai Yang was afraid of a possibility with an extremely low probability.
Just like I had wondered before—he was already an Earth-level "Zodiac." Why would he fall into a "panic of losing his memory"...
"The time I have left is running out."
Bai Yang turned his head, and just like the first time I met him, his face was heavy as he said, "Yan Zhichun, I'm racing against time."