Chapter 46 – The Forgotten Graveyard
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A World That Time Rejected
Luo Fan stepped into the void.
The sensation was immediate—weightlessness, silence, and a crushing stillness, as if the entire multiverse had collectively decided to forget this place. The Dead Layer was not a physical world, but a space between realities, a graveyard of discarded possibilities.
The ground beneath his feet was wrong. It looked like cracked marble, yet felt like shifting sand. Distantly, entire cities floated upside down in the abyss, abandoned structures twisting in slow motion as if frozen in time. Fragments of erased histories drifted through the air—half-formed concepts, shattered constellations, whispers of timelines that never came to be.
EchoStar flickered violently.
> "Oh, I hate this place already. Everything here feels like it's waiting for a jumpscare."
Luo Fan took a careful step forward, his every movement causing ripples through the unstable fabric of this forgotten plane. Shen Mu followed, his expression grim.
"This place… it shouldn't exist."
Luo Fan nodded. "Which makes it the perfect place to hide something that shouldn't exist."
> "Yes, great logic! Let's keep walking toward certain doom. I love this plan."
Luo Fan ignored the sarcasm. Somewhere in this void lay the answer—the witness who had seen him before the reset.
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The Silent City
After what felt like hours of wandering through endless ruins, they came upon something different.
A city.
Unlike the other shattered fragments of existence, this one was intact. It stood, untouched by time, its towering spires gleaming under an eerie, nonexistent light. The architecture was alien—smooth, curved structures with no doors, no windows. Only spiraling pathways that led inward.
A single name surfaced in Luo Fan's mind.
The Silent City.
> "Okay, so, new problem."
Luo Fan sighed. "What now?"
> "There are no signs of destruction. Nothing happened here. Which means whoever lived here… they didn't leave. They were erased."
Luo Fan narrowed his eyes. "Which means something still remembers them."
Shen Mu spoke cautiously. "Or something made sure they were forgotten."
Luo Fan didn't hesitate. He stepped forward.
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The Witness That Remains
The deeper they went, the worse it felt.
The silence wasn't just an absence of sound—it was an enforced emptiness, like reality itself had been hushed. Even EchoStar's usual sarcastic quips became fewer, its flickering screen dimming.
Finally, they reached the center of the city.
A single structure stood before them—a massive, monolithic tower covered in shifting inscriptions. The symbols rearranged themselves as Luo Fan approached, forming words he could almost understand.
At the base of the tower, a figure stood.
Cloaked in flowing, tattered robes, its face hidden beneath a featureless mask of polished stone. It did not move. It did not breathe.
Yet when Luo Fan stepped closer—
It turned its head toward him.
The silence shattered.
> "You should not be here."
Luo Fan clenched his fists. "Then you know me."
The masked figure tilted its head. "I remember everything."
EchoStar flickered violently.
> "Oh. This just got very interesting."
Luo Fan exhaled. Finally—an answer.
But at what cost?
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[Chapter End.]