Chapter 2: No Way Back
Bang! Bang!
Hiss...
Deep within the shadowed valley, a cryo chamber coated in metallic moss was violently flung open from within.
Ren Zhong shivered as he crawled out.
He scrambled out using hands and feet, then grasped the edge of the chamber tightly with both hands to prevent his backside from crashing onto a jagged stone below as he slid down.
The last time he emerged from the chamber like this, he had landed askew right onto that sharp rock, his hipbone colliding with it in a painful clash, making him grimace in agony.
This time, wiser from experience, Ren Zhong instinctively made sure his feet touched the ground first.
Then, leaning against the metal panel of the chamber, he slowly slid down to sit on the earth.
Cough, cough, cough!
He coughed fiercely, for a long while, then gulped in rough breaths.
He struggled to breathe deeply, to confirm he was still alive.
He slapped his chest again and again, trying to calm himself.
His mind was filled with the images from seconds ago—his chest pierced by a bullet, his skull split open for his brain to be extracted.
Terrified, he scanned his surroundings for a long time.
All he saw were the same crooked, disordered abandoned cryo chambers, towering trees with lush branches, vines darting across the ground, dense thickets, and patchy moss, like a bald scalp.
No sign of that aircraft. Thank heavens.
Wait, why am I back in the cryo chamber?
Ren Zhong pinched his face hard, confirming he wasn't dreaming.
New doubts began to swirl within him.
What exactly happened just now?
Wasn't I dead?
Did I really die?
Or after my brain was taken, was it placed in some container and artificially cultivated, and this is just a dream conjured from my mind?
Ren Zhong pondered for a long time but found no answer.
He even twisted his thigh fiercely.
Ouch, it really hurts.
Maybe it's not a dream, or maybe the dream is simply too real.
He was so absorbed in thought that he didn't even notice the cryo chamber beside him automatically broadcasting information again, only when his parents' final words echoed did he snap back to reality.
He listened to their last words once more.
He calmed down.
Though he couldn't distinguish whether this was reality or illusion, nor understand what was happening or why that aircraft killed and harvested brains without hesitation, he had no choice but to move forward and see what lay ahead.
His father had said, whatever happens, look ahead.
And now, feeling thirsty again, he set off!
Following his memory, Ren Zhong returned to the stream, knelt to drink and wash his face.
This time, he didn't lie back to ponder life, nor did he skim stones; after a brief rest, he chose the opposite direction from last time, hoping to avoid that cursed aircraft.
He hadn't taken more than a few steps when there was another thud behind him.
Ren Zhong turned in surprise.
It was the same red, oil-slicked fruit, shattered on the ground.
He walked back, studied it carefully, then looked up beside him.
There was a flat stone; if memory served, he had picked up this stone last time to skim across the water.
Now, its position was exactly as before, not a millimeter off.
The crushed red fruit lay between two palm-sized patches of gray and black on the earth.
Ren Zhong closed his eyes and recalled, his face filled with wonder.
The spot where the red fruit landed, the way it scattered after smashing, the size and shape of the fragments—all these details matched his memory precisely, as if time had flowed backward and the world reset.
Ren Zhong stood petrified for a long time.
His heart was filled with incredible speculation.
About ten minutes passed before the stone statue that was Ren Zhong moved, heading straight for the direction opposite the aircraft.
He hadn’t gone far before he suddenly clutched his neck and curled up on the ground.
After a bout of pain, Ren Zhong slowly got up, and mentally counted the time.
He was even more certain now.
The timing, scale, severity, and location of his illness matched last time exactly, not a second off.
That left only two possibilities.
Either this was a dream created by his removed brain, or... after death, time truly reset, returning him to the moment of awakening.
For now, the first scenario seemed more likely; the second was just a beautiful hope.
...
Bang! Bang!
Ren Zhong crawled out of the cryo chamber once more.
Page (1/3)
He lay limply on the ground, his pupils constricted, his gaze haunted by lingering fear and confusion.
He had just "died" again, killed once more by the aircraft.
This time he had chosen a new direction, carefully creeping after leaving the forest, but the patrolling aircraft spotted him from afar and swept in for a clean kill.
The method was identical: a shot through the chest, a cranial extraction.
Ren Zhong slammed his fist angrily into the ground.
It was just like those nightmares where you run into endless loops—a never-ending recursion.
I don't believe it! I'll try another direction!
Using the sun as a guide, he had first gone east, then west, now he chose due south.
This time was slightly better; at least he made it several miles across open grassland before being harvested by the aircraft.
He managed, in those brief moments after death—his "netherworld God’s-eye view"—to observe more details.
He noted the aircraft's side number: 11899, and the direction and route it patrolled.
The number was written in Arabic numerals!
Arabic numerals!
...
Bang! Bang!
Once again, he crawled out of the cryo chamber.
This time, Ren Zhong headed north.
...
Bang! Bang!
...
Bang! Bang!
Amid swirling smoke, Ren Zhong emerged yet again.
Last time, he returned to the eastern route, and before leaving the forest, he used his shirt to catch the red fruit that fell from the sky, eating his fill.
Poisonous or not, he didn't care.
He was doomed anyway; if he could eat first and have more strength, his chances of escape would be better.
Luckily, the red fruit was harmless.
This time, before leaving the woods, he curled up in the edge thicket, cautiously observing the outside through the gaps.
He wanted to see if he could avoid the aircraft, then slip out once it flew away.
Minutes later, the sound of wind came from afar, and the aircraft swept in.
Ren Zhong held his breath, watching closely.
From the way the plants bent in the aircraft’s wake, he deduced its path was a neat arc.
The arc extended, the straight-line distance between them steadily shrinking.
Ren Zhong breathed quieter and quieter, judging the distance by sight.
He began to hope.
If the aircraft stuck to its route and didn’t spot him at its closest approach, his escape plan would be a big step forward.
Suddenly, the aircraft made a sharp ninety-degree turn, heading straight for him.
Ren Zhong sighed, picked up a palm-sized stone from the ground.
He threw it, futilely.
This time, he didn’t come back empty-handed; he memorized the distance at the moment the aircraft changed course—five hundred meters.
...
Time perhaps passed in a flash, or perhaps it dragged on.
Ren Zhong, numb-faced, crawled out of the cryo chamber again.
He didn’t know whether to be happy or sad.
He could basically confirm it now: this wasn’t a dream, for he had died one hundred and thirty-six times.
If it was a dream, it would be the one hundred and thirty-seventh power of nightmares—too much.
Time truly reset to the moment of awakening each time he died, like an endlessly vast Poincaré recurrence.
According to the second law of thermodynamics, microscopic particles in nature move randomly at all times, and entropy in isolated systems always increases eternally.
The universe is moving irreversibly from order to disorder, destined for thermal death—the chaos of all things.
But probabilistically, if particle movement is truly random, then over an infinite time, any particle will eventually return to a position infinitely close to its starting point.
All the particles in the universe, likewise.
The odds of this happening in finite time are infinitesimal.
But as long as the probability exists, in infinite time it becomes nearly certain.
One day, everything in the universe will, after an unimaginably vast cycle, return to some state it once occupied.
This can be understood as time flowing backward.
This is humanity’s greatest terror—the absolute opposite of entropy, the Poincaré recurrence.
In 1895, Jules Henri Poincaré made this historic theoretical proof.
In March 2018, researchers at the University of Vienna successfully demonstrated the Poincaré recurrence phenomenon in a multi-particle quantum system, publishing their paper in Science.
Ren Zhong, himself an author in Science, never believed in spirits; he was accustomed to using science to answer all his doubts.
Page (2/3)
Now, besides Poincaré recurrence, he could find no better explanation.
Understanding this should have been a relief, but the process of grasping the truth was unbearably painful and despairing.
Now, he had figured out the aircraft’s routine: outside this forest, spanning dozens of square kilometers, four aircraft numbered from 11896 to 11899 patrolled in a ring at a fixed speed.
If the straight-line distance between him and any aircraft was less than five hundred meters, he’d be detected—regardless of visual cover. The aircraft seemed to possess some life-sensing system.
He could now stay just out of range and easily bypass the aircraft sweep, escaping in any direction.
He had succeeded more than ten times.
But sadly, whichever way he exited, before meeting any humans, he’d encounter some bizarre creatures.
There were giant flying insects with a three-meter wingspan and metallic sheen, which would swoop at him from afar, easily shatter his wooden club, knock him down, and use their meat-grinder jaws...
There were fist-sized, seemingly cute hopping animals, like harmless rabbits. But when they kicked up dust and charged, their pointed ears smashed the stones he threw, then pierced him through. Before dying, Ren Zhong saw clearly: the white “rabbit’s” body wasn’t fur, but a shell like rustproof electroplated metal.
There were metallic fish lurking in puddles, with voltages of millions of volts; stepping in, he was instantly incinerated.
There were armored behemoths that stood like small hills, swallowing children whole.
These creatures were not as swift as the aircraft in killing him, but their methods were slower, letting him twitch a bit like a dying grasshopper—but that was all.
Their methods were more painful, even more horrific.
Ren Zhong felt no matter how hard he tried, death was inevitable.
The heavens and earth were an endlessly magnified horror cruise, the infinite exponent of a nightmare.
He was on the verge of collapse.
On his penultimate attempt, he even tried suicide, seeking release.
But he still woke up in the cryo chamber.
He wondered, maybe if he didn’t leave the woods?
He tried that, too.
Yet five days later, he died under the shade by the stream.
This time, it was cancer.
No cure, just waiting for death.
Ren Zhong hugged his legs, curled up beside the chamber like a walking corpse.
His mind was muddled, gruesome scenes of dying endlessly replaying uncontrollably.
His ears buzzed, his body shivered from fear.
He even began to resent his parents instinctively.
Why did you freeze me? Why throw me into this hopeless nightmare? Wouldn’t it have been better to die outright? What did I do to deserve this punishment?
Now, two choices lay before Ren Zhong: either yield to fear and reality, go completely mad, and suffer endless torment in an infinite cycle of death; or cut off all distractions, endure all pain, stand up again, and use a thousand, ten thousand, perhaps infinite deaths to carve out hope for escape.
These two thoughts tore at his mind, making him groan in anguish.
Faintly, his parents’ last words echoed again.
"If you can't change it, you can only endure."
"Live well."
"Always look ahead."
Ren Zhong snapped back to himself.
At the brink of sinking into the abyss, his parents’ words pulled him back.
He recalled that his parents were ordinary people, living simply, not seeking riches, kind to others, never ambitious, their greatest pride raising him, their remarkable son.
Yet their son died young, and they faced the agony of burying their child.
When his parents sold their home and everything, still needing to earn half a million a year to keep him alive, they must have felt despair.
Near fifty, abandoning their old lives, taking on debt and business, perhaps not knowing what came next, but having no choice, determined to try—if they failed, so be it.
They succeeded in the end.
Though their final words sounded light, Ren Zhong could imagine how they toiled, tirelessly, unreservedly, under the pressure of failure meaning watching their son die.
His own hundred-plus deaths were excruciating, but each bout of pain lasted only seconds.
His parents, however, fought for forty-five years in a field they disliked, under the terror that failure meant losing him.
That life was no easier than dying.
"Though my situation is dire, it is a new life bought by my parents’ lifetime of effort. How can I give up so easily?"
Ren Zhong took a deep breath, anger and defiance blazing in his eyes.
He forced himself to calm down, analyzing the situation step by step.
"I can revive and reset endlessly, that’s my advantage. I can ‘know the future.’ This is my S/L technique, my invincible position. There must be hope for escape!"
"After the aircraft kills me, it removes my brain, but when monsters kill me, they devour me whole—even my bones."
"There must be meaning behind this. There are Arabic numerals; in this world, there must be other humans!"
"This is good—this is hope."
[New book, please add to your collection]
Page (3/3)