Chapter 709: Some History I’ve Never Heard Before
When we returned to the room in silence, we found a familiar face waiting inside.
But it had been so long since I’d last seen him that I had to think for a while before I remembered—this was my brother Gu Yu.
He was like Sister Siwei, one of those who had always been kind to me.
“Siwei, Hero,” Brother Gu Yu said with a smile. “I’m back.”
His appearance was exactly the same as before. It seemed not just him, but even I hadn’t changed much in appearance—after all, in this strange prison, we never grew up.
But the smell of him had changed. He wasn’t as clean as he used to be, many years ago, yet he still smelled good.
“Gu Yu…?” Sister Siwei was taken aback. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then immediately turned around and shut the door. “How did you…?”
“It’s a long story, but luckily I came back in time. I made it just in time for everything.”
“Just in time…?” Sister Siwei asked, confused. “What do you mean?”
“No one in this place can be allowed to collect enough ‘Jade,’ or else an irreparable catastrophe will occur,” Brother Gu Yu replied.
Sister Siwei gasped. “So… the ‘Jade’—was that you? You came to stop Wan Ge from collecting it?”
“Yes.” Brother Gu Yu nodded. “Have you forgotten my ‘Fragrance’? I hid all those pieces of Jade.”
“Hidden…?” Sister Siwei’s eyes widened. “You mean those pieces of Jade are actually…”
“Right there in the safe, not gone anywhere.” Brother Gu Yu smiled slightly. “It’s just a pity that real people don’t act like in TV dramas—when they see an empty safe, they don’t fumble around inside. Otherwise, my plan would have been ruined. The safe has been opened by now, hasn’t it? I’ll find a chance to dispose of them.”
“But how did you manage it? That’s a safe we’re talking about.”
“Nothing too difficult.” Brother Gu Yu rubbed his nose. “I started out as a stage magician. Later, when the industry went downhill, I switched to close-up magic. Back when I performed escape acts, I studied the construction of many safes and spent years getting intimately familiar with them. Usually, just a stethoscope was enough to help me open some low-level locks.”
“Just that simple…?”
“Just that simple. This is an office building, not a bank,” Brother Gu Yu said. “The safes here are usually for storing contracts, so they wouldn’t use the highest-grade locks. They were no challenge for me. Last night, while you were all shouting slogans together, I hid every single piece of Jade.”
Sister Siwei fell silent for a moment, then asked, “And that ‘irreparable catastrophe’ you mentioned—what exactly is it?”
“You might not believe this, but over the years, I’ve traveled to many other cities and learned a lot of information we never knew before.” Brother Gu Yu crouched down and began drawing on the floor as he spoke. “If we can’t come up with a good plan, we’ll all be wiped out.”
Sister Siwei and I came over to him and watched as he sketched a simple map on the ground.
In the past, I always struggled to understand what the grown-ups were saying, but now it felt like I had grown up.
It’s a curious thing—my age hasn’t changed, yet I’ve grown.
Brother Gu Yu drew five circles on the floor, arranged like the Olympic rings. Then he pointed to the circle on the left side of the bottom row and said:
“Siwei, Hero, our city—the one that needs to collect ‘Jade’—I’ll call it ‘Jade City’ for now. As for the other four cities, two of them have no living people left, and the other two are still active. One of the active cities is ‘Whorl City.’ They collect a spiral object shaped like a snail shell, which they call ‘Whorls.’ The other is ‘Way City,’ which collects little golden, glowing spheres called ‘Ways.’”
Sister Siwei and I listened to this knowledge we had never encountered before, and we both fell into deep thought.
“Five cities…?” Sister Siwei murmured. “We’re all collecting different things?”
“That’s right, but it’s not important,” Brother Gu Yu said. “Whether it’s ‘Jade’ or ‘Whorls’ doesn’t really matter. What matters is that everyone who has preserved their memories for a long time knows the same thing—that these things must never be gathered completely. It’s a huge deception.”
“What if… they were gathered completely? What would happen?”
“There would be a ‘restart,’” Brother Gu Yu said. “I visited two seniors in ‘Whorl City’ and ‘Way City,’ and according to what they said, it’s the same everywhere. Once everything is gathered, an irresistible force will appear and make us all start over. But it seems they are afraid of something, because they didn’t explain the specific situation to me.”
The scent of Sister Siwei began to change. She was silent for a long time, then asked, “Then there’s no way for us to escape…?”
“That… I can’t say for sure.” Brother Gu Yu said. “Every city has its own direction of effort… Right now, it looks like our situation and that of ‘Whorl City’ are the most dangerous. We could fall into irreversible doom at any moment.”
“Irreversible doom…?” Sister Siwei hesitated. “Are you saying we’ll end up like those two nameless cities—everyone dead?”
“Exactly,” Brother Gu Yu confirmed. “As for the two cities still active… The ruler of ‘Whorl City’ is called Nie Bei. He’s an active-duty special forces soldier. His presence has turned ‘Whorl City’ into a city of soldiers. There, every man and woman has the look of someone ready to die. They take turns, day and night, gambling their lives with the ‘Zodiac.’ The entire city is littered with corpses and rivers of blood, but I never saw a single person regret it. On the contrary, the ‘Zodiac’ working there were somewhat complaining—they never knew which day they’d die under the relentless attacks of the ‘Participants.’ Nie Bei told me that as long as even one person remains in ‘Whorl City,’ they will unhesitatingly fight the ‘Zodiac’ until everyone falls. I asked him why, and he said that ever since the first ‘life gamble,’ the ‘Zodiac’ had become the murderers of their comrades. So this war had to be fought until there was a result.”
Sister Siwei was stunned. “There are people like that…?”
“‘Way City’ is the complete opposite.” Brother Gu Yu pointed to the circle in the middle of the top row and continued, “This city, sitting at the center, has no leader like Nie Bei, but it has several very famous ‘Tacticians.’ If Nie Bei represents ‘Force,’ then ‘Way City’ represents ‘Strategy.’ The advantage of this city is that they ensure a higher survival rate, but they also have a drawback—‘Way City’ cannot match Nie Bei’s kill rate against the ‘Zodiac.’ Unfortunately, this time I didn’t get to meet their leader, Wen Qiaoyun, but I did meet a decent man named Qian Duoduo, who told me some of ‘Way City’s’ history.”
After hearing this, both Sister Siwei and I fell silent. Compared to these two cities, what were we doing?
“You should have noticed by now…” Brother Gu Yu said somberly, “Everyone in this place is working hard toward ‘escape,’ but we in ‘Jade City’ have been standing still. No… not just standing still, but actually regressing.”
“This city is already ‘sick’…” Sister Siwei said.
“It is indeed ‘sick,’ but it can still be saved.” Brother Gu Yu looked at me. “As long as ‘Hero’ is here, everything can still be saved.”