The Pendant and the Memories That Failed

"This... thing..."

"You..."

"Where..."

"Did you..."

"Get... it...?"

The voice was no longer cold and indifferent as before. Instead, it seemed to contain the wind, snow, and deathly silence accumulated over billions of years. Every word struck Ling Ye's soul like an ice pick, carrying an almost uncontrollable rage that threatened to destroy everything—and... a faint tremor of disbelief!

Ling Ye's heart stopped instantly! His blood seemed to freeze!

She recognized this pendant?!

Wasn't this thing just a sign-in reward from some insignificant world?! How could it provoke such a violent reaction from her?! Judging from the situation, the pendant's origins were probably even more deadly than that broken pebble's!

An enormous sense of crisis crashed over him like icy water, instantly sobering him up!

He couldn't tell the truth! Absolutely not! He could never explain that he had obtained it through the Sign-in System! He had to redirect the disaster again! He needed to find a target that could draw her attention away!

In the blink of an eye, Ling Ye's gaze suddenly shot toward the shabby cloth bundle in the corner of the room once more!

That was it!

Ling Ye's face instantly filled with "pain," "fury," and "unbearable memories." His acting broke through its limits again as he pointed at the cloth bundle and rasped in a voice laced with humiliation and hatred:

"Madam, please judge for yourself! This... this was left behind by that damned heartless man!!!" (Once again shifting the blame onto the nonexistent "child's father.")

"When he abandoned us, mother and son, he left this behind, saying... saying it was meant to give Little Ye something to remember him by! But in reality... in reality, it was meant to humiliate me!" (Improvising now, steering the story toward melodrama.)

"I wanted to destroy it! But thinking... thinking that it had ultimately been left by Little Ye's biological father... I... I endured the humiliation and wore it until now... reminding myself every day never to forget this grudge and hatred!" (He was almost convinced by his own words, and even forced two golden tears of "grief and indignation" from the corners of his eyes.)

As he spoke, he secretly and frantically circulated Chaos Origin Qi, stimulating the Chaos Green Lotus Basin inside the bundle and making it release a more obvious faint fluctuation belonging to that pebble. Although it was suppressed, he could still draw out a trace intentionally. He tried to link the "child's father" with the "source of trouble," making Madam believe that both the pendant and the pebble were part of the mess left behind by that heartless man!

Sure enough, Madam's attention was instantly drawn to the strange and unpleasant fluctuation coming from the pebble inside the bundle!

Her gaze abruptly turned toward the bundle, and her icy killing intent boiled once more, as though she could see through the cloth and directly into the pebble that was currently "sleeping" inside.

"His... thing?" Her voice became even colder, filled with a fury that felt like desecration. "He actually dared... leave such a filthy object... beside Little Ye?!!"

It worked! Ling Ye was ecstatic and quickly added fuel to the fire. "Exactly! And that's not all! I suspect... I suspect that he left it with ulterior motives! He wanted to use it to monitor Little Ye, perhaps even... even harm him! I had no choice but to seal it inside this bag and guard it day and night, never daring to relax for even a moment!"

He portrayed himself as a great mother who had endured humiliation to protect her child(?).

Madam's aura fluctuated violently from her fury. The temperature in the room plunged once again, and frost began to form on the walls. She seemed to have completely believed Ling Ye's story, redirecting her rage at the "heartless man" toward the pendant and the pebble inside the bundle!

"Good... good... very good!" She said the word "good" three times, each one carrying a chill that froze the soul. "It seems... back then... this palace... was still... far too... lenient... with him!"

Ling Ye lowered his head, not daring to respond, and silently prayed that this crisis would pass quickly.

However, just as he thought he had muddled through once again—

Madam's furious gaze swept over the beast-fang pendant and seemed... to catch an extremely subtle detail that her intense emotions had caused her to overlook just now.

Her movements abruptly stopped.

Her furious aura froze as though someone had pressed a pause button.

Slowly—extremely slowly—she focused her gaze on the pendant once more.

This time, she looked more carefully, more... intently.

As though she wanted to carve every pattern on it into her eyes.

A deathly silence descended over the room, leaving only the sound of Ling Ye's frantic heartbeat.

After a long while.

Madam suddenly uttered an extremely soft whisper, filled with endless confusion and... a trace of remembrance:

"Something's wrong..."

"This wear..."

"This aura..."

"It seems... much older..."

"So old that..."

"He... had not yet... been born..."

Ling Ye's heart sank to the bottom! It was over! Something was wrong with the details! The pendant's age didn't match?!

He had just been about to force out an explanation—

But Madam suddenly raised her head. Her icy eyes pierced through the illusion and locked onto Ling Ye! This was no longer the rage from before, but an extremely sharp scrutiny that seemed capable of seeing through everything!

"Who... are you... exactly?" Her voice was cold and calm, yet more terrifying than any roar. "This Primordial Fang... is absolutely not... an object... of this era..."

"It could never... be his..."

"It belongs... to an even more ancient... age..."

"An age... that even this palace... has only heard... in legends..."

Primordial Fang?!

An even more ancient age?!

Ling Ye's mind buzzed! He had no idea the pendant had such an outrageous origin! The description given by the Sign-in System had simply been "unknown beast fang, hard material"!

"Speak!" The cold pressure descended like a mountain, tightly clamping down on Ling Ye's throat. "Where... did you... obtain this thing?!"

Ling Ye was pressed to the point of near suffocation. His mind raced frantically, yet remained completely blank! Any lie would seem pale and powerless before the other party's terrifying insight!

Just as he was about to collapse—

The beast-fang pendant around his neck, which was being watched so intently, seemed unable to withstand the clash of wills and energy pressure between two existences—one an enraged matriarch, the other a Primordial Great Expert.

It actually...

"Crack..."

Emitted an extremely faint sound, like cracking ice.

A hair-thin crack quietly appeared on the surface of the pitch-black beast fang!

Immediately afterward—

An extremely faint yet indescribably desolate and ancient aura, like a sigh that had slept for billions of years, quietly seeped from the crack...

That aura was neither energy nor divine sense. It was more like a fragmentary... incomplete... imprint that had been frozen by time.

As this ancient aura appeared—

Deep within Ling Ye's sea of consciousness, at the very bottom of the Sign-in System's core, which had been silent for billions of years, long since exhausted of energy and sunk into eternal slumber, a forgotten redundant fragment concerning the "origin description of sign-in items" seemed to be accidentally activated by the ancient aura of the same origin. It flickered indistinctly for an instant...

A fragmentary, distorted, chaotic stream of information resembling malfunctioning code forcibly squeezed into Ling Ye's nearly frozen thoughts:

[Zi... abnormal information-stream impact detected... attempting analysis...]

[Zi... information source: [Primordial Fang] (fragmentary)...]

[Associated sign-in location: [Primordial Wilderness · Unknown Forbidden Land · Rift in the Temporal-Spatial Maelstrom]...]

[Associated sign-in time: [Error! Data corrupted! Timestamp missing!]...]

[Item description: [Zi... ***unable to identify***... suspected... discarded material from some failed experimental site?... Zi... weak energy response... no value...]...]

[Remarks: [Zi... acquisition process... affected by unknown interference... data severely damaged... only recorded: ...picked... up...]...]

[Zi... information fragment lost... system overloaded... entering... permanent silence...]

The chaotic information flashed past like lightning and vanished instantly, as though it had never appeared.

Yet it left several keywords in Ling Ye's mind:

[Picked up]...

[Failed experimental site]...

[Discarded material]...

[No value]...

At the same time.

When Madam sensed the desolate, ancient, fragmentary aura emanating from the crack in the beast fang—

Her icy figure... suddenly... began to tremble violently!!!

It was as though she had witnessed something utterly inconceivable, something that overturned everything she knew!

She stared fixedly at the cracked pendant. All her previous anger, killing intent, and scrutiny... disappeared without a trace!

They were replaced by...

Extreme shock...

Disbelief...

And...

A trace...

Of profound...

Confusion...

And...

Fear?!

Yes!

It was fear!

A feeling of insignificance and terror, like that of a lowly creature glimpsing the ultimate mystery of the universe!

Her lips trembled faintly as she unconsciously uttered broken syllables:

"This aura... is... 'Origin'...?"

"No... no... it's even... older... than 'Origin'..."

"It's more like..."

"[----]"

The final word she uttered seemed to contain an indescribable terror. It directly twisted the surrounding laws of space and time, making it impossible for Ling Ye's perception to capture or understand. Merely trying to "hear" it caused his soul excruciating pain, as though it were being torn apart!

Yet Ling Ye clearly saw that when Madam uttered that incomprehensible word, a trace of extremely rare fear flashed through her eyes, which had been frozen for all eternity.

Was she... truly terrified of the origins of the "failed experimental site" and "discarded material" represented by this pendant?!

Although Ling Ye had no idea what was happening, his instinct for survival made him seize this once-in-a-thousand-years opportunity!

He endured the pain in his soul. At the instant the other party's mind was shaken and a massive gap appeared in her defenses, he suddenly shouted the least important yet most impossible-to-disprove word from that chaotic information, as though it were a lifeline:

"I... I picked it up!!! I picked it up!!!"

His voice was distorted by fear and urgency, filled with immense "grievance" and "confusion."

"In a... a ruin filled with shattered rocks and strange lights! I thought it looked sturdy despite being black... so... so I picked it up and wore it! I really don't know anything, Madam!!!"

He desperately disguised himself as an ignorant fool who had either struck it lucky—or suffered terrible misfortune—by picking up some junk, trying to downplay the terrifying cause and effect that might lie behind the pendant!

"You picked it up...?" Madam suddenly returned to her senses. Her icy gaze focused on Ling Ye's face once more, filled with extreme scrutiny and suspicion. "Where did you pick it up?! The exact location?!"

"I don't remember! I really don't!" Ling Ye's acting reached its peak. Clutching his head, he put on an expression of painful recollection. "That place was very strange. The light was distorted, and time was chaotic. My memories are all blurry... I only remember ruins and fragments everywhere... It seemed... it seemed like a huge... broken... 'laboratory'?" (Forcibly incorporating the concept of a "failed experimental site.")

While spouting nonsense, he frantically prayed in secret.

Madam stared fixedly at him, as though she wanted to dig the truth out from the depths of his soul.

Ling Ye felt as though everything about him had been seen through. Yet he stubbornly guarded the final trace of clarity in his mind, desperately recalling the pain of his soul being torn apart and that desolate, ancient aura, making himself look even more like a hapless victim whose memories had been struck by a "higher relic."

A long, suffocating silence followed.

The terrifying aura around Madam slowly receded, but her icy gaze remained as sharp as a blade.

She looked once more at the beast-fang pendant, its cracks spreading across the surface. A trace of extremely complicated apprehension flashed through her eyes, and there even seemed to be... a faint... almost imperceptible... retreat.

It was as though she did not want to investigate the terrifying truth behind the pendant any further.

In the end, she seemed to reluctantly accept Ling Ye's explanation that he had "picked up some junk"—or perhaps she simply did not wish to touch this taboo subject again. She snorted coldly:

"Hmph... quite... lucky..."

"Such an... inauspicious object..."

"And you dare... wear it so casually..."

"You don't... know when... you're going to die..."

Her tone carried a trace of mockery, but most of her killing intent had faded.

Ling Ye was ecstatic! He had muddled through it again?!

However, before he could finish relaxing—

Madam's gaze fell once more onto the figure in Ling Ye's arms... Ling Xiaoye, who was still burrowing around against his milk-powder-covered chest.

Her eyes flickered faintly.

It seemed... she had thought of something?

Then she looked at Ling Ye again. Her tone became somewhat... strange, carrying a commanding, unquestionable quality:

"Since... this thing... was 'picked up' by you..."

"And you and Little Ye... are considered... fated..."

"Then... keep it..."

"Perhaps... in the future..."

"It can shield him... from some... 'trouble'..."

Ling Ye: "???" Keep it? Wasn't this thing an inauspicious object?! And now it was supposed to shield Little Ye from trouble?! What kind of operation was this?!

Before he could figure it out, Madam added another sentence, her tone even more meaningful:

"Wear it... properly..."

"Do not... 'lose' it... again..."

"Perhaps..."

"Its 'owner'..."

"One day..."

"Will return... to 'find' it..."

With that, her icy figure did not linger. Like a receding tide, it slowly withdrew and completely vanished into the air.

Only her final cold words continued to echo in Ling Ye's mind:

"Three-day deadline..."

"Unchanged..."

"This palace... looks forward... to seeing... a Little Ye... who has been... better cared for..."

The pressure in the room suddenly diminished.

Ling Ye collapsed to the floor with a thump. Ling Xiaoye, who had nearly fallen when Ling Ye suddenly loosened his grip, began crying again with a loud wail.

But Ling Ye no longer had the time to care about him.

He was drenched in cold sweat from head to toe, as though he had just been hauled out of the water. His fingers trembled as they stroked the cracked beast-fang pendant around his neck, which still radiated a faint, desolate aura.

He mulled over the madam's final words, each one laden with meaning and terrifying the more he thought about them...

"Can it keep trouble at bay?"

"Will its master come back for it?"

"Something you picked up..."

An utterly absurd yet bone-chilling thought uncontrollably surfaced in his mind:

Could it be...

What he had obtained from the sign-in reward back then... wasn't junk...

But...

The...

...lost...

...toy...

...of some ancient existence beyond imagination and comprehension?

Or...

...a dog tag?!