Bureau of Strange Affairs – Sublevel 5: Restricted Archives
"This soul-core fragment came from the Enforcer you pierced."Chen Xi placed the glowing shard into a containment ring. "Its data is… different. It's not hostile."
Lu Feng stood beside him, staring at the shard.
"I don't think it's from the Enforcer."
He reached out, letting his soul chain touch it—and the light inside the fragment pulsed gently.
A voice emerged.
"You made it here."
Everyone froze.
The shard reshaped—forming a semi-transparent projection.
It was Lin Qian.
Not a hallucination, not a broken memory—but a true echo, a piece of consciousness preserved within the Gray Domain.
His gaze was clear, and though his form shimmered faintly, the weight in his voice was real.
"You've done what I failed to do," he said calmly.
Kaelin's voice shook. "You're still… here?"
Lin Qian smiled faintly.
"Not alive. But not erased either.Before I fell, I wrote part of myself into the fate-chain system—just in case."
He turned to Lu Feng.
"You're the successor. The one who crossed the fracture properly."
Lu Feng clenched his fists. "Why didn't you warn us sooner?"
"I did," Lin Qian said quietly. "But when I tried, the Tribunal silenced me.My registry was erased. You remember, don't you, Kaelin?"
Kaelin lowered her eyes.
"I tried to defend you," she whispered. "They labeled me unstable."
Lin Qian's voice turned grim.
"Here's what you must know: the Bureau's original deal with the Gray Domain was not to protect humanity."
"It was to exchange control."
Everyone stared in shock.
"The mirror system, the Tribunal, the soul-link theory—all of it came from Gray Domain templates. In return, the Domain was allowed to observe, to harvest memory structures."
Zhao Ting's voice cracked. "So the people we saved—were they just tagged experiments?"
Lin Qian nodded.
"And I was the first to see it."
Lu Feng took a breath. "Then I… as a host who never signed their 'contract'... I'm the variable."
"Yes," Lin Qian said. "You are the unregistered soul—the one they didn't expect."
"And now that they know… they won't stop."
Lin Qian's image began to flicker.
"I don't have much time left. I'll say one last thing."
"If you want to end the contract, you must go to the core—the origin of the mirror system."
"To a place called Zero Sequence Platform."
"But beware…"
"There, you won't just meet the Domain—"
"You'll meet yourself."
The echo shattered into dust, leaving behind only a sigil: a gray-white spiral.
Kaelin grasped Lu Feng's hand tightly.
"Are you afraid?" she asked.
Lu Feng looked at her.
"I used to be."
"But not anymore."
"Because now—I'm not walking alone."