“Are you satisfied with the ending you’ve seen?”
What?
“If you had the chance to change the future, would you seize it with all your might?”
Wen Xin couldn’t help but reach out and cover his aching forehead. He quickly recalled what had transpired earlier that day.
He had worked tirelessly late into the night to finalize a joint proposal with Li Yongming, hashing out the finer details. In the end, he had been forcefully dragged out of the conference room by Yuan Yanzhong, who insisted he rest and practically pinned him to the bed.
Just as Wen Xin was lost in thought, the cryptic voice rang out again, its hoarse and profound tone carrying an eerie weight as though a storm howled through a deep valley, laden with enigmatic implications.
Wen Xin abruptly raised his head.
He listened carefully, finally realizing the voice wasn’t entering through his ears but resonating directly within his mind.
Given recent reports of possible mind control incidents among City A’s leadership, this discovery sent a chill down Wen Xin’s spine, triggering his vigilance.
Until he looked out and saw the scene not far away.
It was an all-too-familiar sight: war raged, smoke billowed, and buildings collapsed like reeds blown over by the wind, one after another. Amid the cacophony, a bone-chilling roar mixed with anguished cries of despair could be heard.
Hearing the screams, Wen Xin reflexively clutched his chest, only for his hand to pass straight through his body.
What was going on?
As he stared at his ghost-like hand in disbelief, before he could process his horror, the strange voice repeated its question:
“Are you satisfied with this ending?”
Satisfied? With what?
Satisfied with the devastation wrought by war? Or the countless lives lost here?
Before Wen Xin could voice his question, he suddenly saw a familiar figure.
Or rather, a familiar serpent.
Dark green scales interlocked tightly, forming a rugged texture, and a towering body loomed like a mountain.
It was Ah Lü!
Wen Xin couldn’t mistake Ah Lü’s appearance. Although the snake standing there looked vastly different from his memories, with pupils like dark slits and an aura of unshakable bloodlust, it was unmistakable.
This Ah Lü was nothing short of a ferocious beast.
Wen Xin was about to call out when, to his horror, he saw Ah Lü open its blood-red maw and strike viciously at a golden eagle swooping down from above.
At that moment, his heart leaped into his throat. “Ah Jiu, dodge!”
The golden eagle veered to the side, narrowly evading the strike, but it didn’t seem to be reacting to Wen Xin’s warning.
From start to finish, the golden eagle never once glanced in Wen Xin’s direction. Its ferocious gaze was locked on the belly of the giant snake, where a blurred and indistinct human corpse lay.
The battle wasn’t limited to just the snake and the eagle. A diminutive pink fox pummeled the ground, leaving a crater in its wake, while a purple squirrel punched through the dirt with unrelenting ferocity.
These savage creatures all joined the fray, unleashing deafening roars as they fought over the human corpse.
Who was that body?
What were they arguing over? Why were they so angry, so grief-stricken?
Floating in midair in a spectral form, Wen Xin instinctively rubbed his temples.
It felt as if a thick barrier enveloped the entire area, drowning out the cacophony of noise. In the silence, a single, clear answer began to take shape in his mind.
—That corpse was him.
No one else. Just him, Wen Xin.
Wen Xin clutched his chest again, his discomfort growing, and muttered to himself, “Is this what the original future looked like?”
The future had been altered. This was a conclusion Wen Xin had reached from his friend Tang Qi’s dreams and from piecing together clues provided by other precognitive abilities.
But he had never seen this future with his own eyes until now. Witnessing it left an indescribable sorrow weighing heavily on his chest, making it hard to breathe.
“You’re dissatisfied.”
The mysterious voice, persistent and unyielding, had asked Wen Xin the same question several times. Receiving no answer, it supplied one on its own.
Finally, Wen Xin took the time to search for the source of the voice.
When he turned, he was stunned to see the skeleton of a dinosaur.
Like him, it existed in a ghostly form.
In the original timeline, Wen Xin, through his elder brother Wen Jinfeng’s will, uncovered evidence of the First Base’s creation of the zombie virus. In the days that followed, he united human factions and mutant forces to launch a vengeful assault on the First Base.
Thus began decades of war. The conclusion came at the cost of Wen Xin’s life, the lives of tens of thousands of human soldiers, and the eventual fall of the First Base—a bitter victory.
However, the collapse of the First Base was not the final resolution.
The mutants, who trusted only Wen Xin due to his close interactions with them, revealed their ferocity after his death, fighting brutally over his corpse and nearly destroying the world once again.
Meanwhile, humanity, having vanquished the First Base, still faced relentless mutant threats, enhanced zombies, and an ever-dwindling food supply.
Years later, as the crises worsened daily, the various human factions finally set aside their differences and united for survival. But by then, humanity had been pushed to its breaking point. The price paid to defeat the First Base had been catastrophic, leaving humanity barely able to hold on.
The once-brilliant human civilization seemed to be fading irreversibly into the embers of its twilight.
Yet, this future held three variables.
The first variable was a secret project never made public by the First Base: Experiment One, Tyrannosaur—its hybrid gene prototype a blend of Tyrannosaurus rex and pterosaur.
The black dinosaur was a marvel of experimentation, perfectly replicating ancient DNA while boasting extraordinary combat prowess and resilience, far surpassing any mutant created to date.
Unfortunately, this masterpiece unexpectedly perished during an experiment, leaving everyone in disbelief.
The regenerative power that had once stunned the world seemed to fail entirely. The creature succumbed to its wounds in mere seconds, leaving the First Base in turmoil. Furious, the leadership punished everyone involved in the experiment and sealed the dinosaur’s remains. What became of them remains a mystery.
The second variable was that after Wen Xin’s death, his spirit, seemingly moved by the grim and unfulfilled future, lingered briefly in the world in ghostly form.
The final variable lay in the unexpected meeting of these two souls.
