Accident · Game / Young · Old ...

He didn't want others to walk down a path that no one would approve of.

Even though he has no memory.

"You have shown others the way and brought them hope," Lin said slowly as he exhaled. "Therefore, you must be 'Beauty'."

"..."

Eden's drunken eyes suddenly cleared, as if the clouds had parted to reveal the sun as she looked at Lin. A slight smile played on her lips, "Lin, perhaps you don't need to worry about whether you're the same person you used to be, and..."

Guiding the way, igniting hope...

Perhaps you haven't even noticed how many people are actually watching your back as they walk away?

Chapter Five: Unexpected Events - The Game

"By the way, why am I in your room?"

Lin only remembered to ask the question after the two had been chatting for more than ten minutes. The time spent with Eden was unexpectedly harmonious. Eden rarely spoke of the past in a tone that made Lin uncomfortable. She was much better at being a confidante than anyone else she had met in the past few days.

"Hmm? Didn't you come to my room drunk?" Eden's smile was enigmatic, his elegant and intellectual smile making it impossible to discern his true intentions.

"Yeah..."

Lin shook his head, feeling that the bottle was still full of alcohol. He couldn't remember anything after he got drunk. Was it a blackout?

Anyway, he should go out first. It felt good to sit down and chat with Eden, but after all, a man and a woman were drunk and sleeping in the same bed... Even if it was just for Eden's reputation, he should leave.

"I'm a little thirsty." Eden frowned slightly. She had drunk quite a bit tonight, and she didn't know how much time had passed. Neither of them had drunk any water. Lin didn't feel it, but she still needed to replenish her fluids.

Lin got dressed and stood up from the bedside, swaying slightly as she said, "I'll go get you some water."

"Need not..."

Suddenly, Lin got goosebumps all over, as if he had been connected to a version of himself from some unknown world. At that moment, he heard Eden's familiar words and felt a strange sensation.

"I can do it myself... What's wrong, Lin?" When Eden got up, she saw Lin staring intently at her. Even she, dressed in tattered clothes, felt a blush like a green apple when she was being stared at like that.

No matter how mature she is, she has never had such an experience, and in this respect she is probably more innocent than 95% of women.

"No, it's nothing."

Lin didn't feel anything about it. He thought his behavior of staring straight at people was quite normal, just like an instructor assessing the physique and physical fitness of his subordinates.

So Eden's rosy cheeks failed to attract his attention, since he couldn't even see the color.

The two got dressed, then Eden smiled at him, walked to the door of the dark room, and pushed it open...

"Um?"

Lin squinted, a biological instinct to protect his eyes.

Then, the scene outside the door stunned him.

The room was so dark that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face because the lights were off and the curtains were drawn, which made him misjudge something.

Time.

The fiery ball hanging in the sky enthusiastically spread its heat, the white-edged waves pounded on the beach, leaving wet marks, a crab crawled across the soft sand and quickly found a place to lie down, and the coconut trees rustled in the gentle breeze.

"..."

"..."

What, is it the same thing?

The direct sunlight was dazzling, but even more dazzling was the cruise ship that had been broken in two.

The enormous cruise ship they were on seemed to have been cut vertically in two by a laser, and Eden and Lin didn't even realize that they had already spent the night in the remaining half of the ship, which was stranded on the beach.

This can no longer be considered an unexpected situation.

This is exactly like the sinking of the Titanic.

"What happened?" Eden stood at the doorway, equally astonished. Not far in front of them was the severed section of the deck. Then, remembering something, she picked up the communicator and tested it. "Not the world of consciousness... this is..."

Lin also took out his communicator and discovered that he and Eden had received a message from the same person.

"Lin, how are you? Is anyone else around? We've encountered an accident. I'm currently adrift on a small island. I can't pinpoint your location or communicate with headquarters. If you receive this message, please reply immediately."

This is a message from Hua. Based on the current situation, she may be the first person to wake up after the accident.

However, Lin couldn't be sure if the other party had drifted to the same island as them, and according to Hua, the sixteen of them were likely separated.

The situation was very abnormal, and both Lin and Eden tried to send messages to other people and headquarters.

But worse, the communicator seemed to be malfunctioning, unable to contact headquarters or locate the coordinates of others. The only saving grace was that it could still send messages to the rest of the people.

"Wait a minute." Lin realized something was wrong. "Our communicators can't contact headquarters, but they can contact other people on the ship, but they can't communicate with the other members of the Firemoth."

"... Someone deliberately sabotaged the communication system between the communicator and headquarters, or interfered with the communication network." Eden realized that the current situation was clearly deliberate.

Just as they realized what was happening and tried to send messages to others, a message was sent to their communicators.

"It seems you've woken up. I'd like to play a game with you."

The very first sentence caught their attention. Lin opened the message; the sender was unknown.

"Now, the sixteen of you have been scattered across various locations on this 'Raven Island.' You can contact each other via communicators and try to reunite. Your task is to find the three treasures on this island." The message was short and clearly intended for everyone. "Until you find the three treasures, you cannot contact the outside world. After collecting all the treasures, you can go to the center of Raven Island to exchange them for a prize. You can work together or split up during the treasure hunt."

"But please note that 'I' am also among the sixteen, and I will prevent you from obtaining the treasure. If any of you can see through my disguise, you can receive a mysterious grand prize."

"Now, the game begins. It lasts for one week and ends at this time on the next seven days. If we fail, everyone will be punished."

"Go, young men and women, I have left everything in the world there! Go and become the great mountain bandit king!"

Lin and Eden silently read through this... announcement? The rules of the game?

In short, the mastermind behind this is clearly not legitimate, and this game is probably just a game, but the fact that the other party planned to split the entire ship in two just to play this game is quite a grand scheme.

Is He forcing the remaining fifteen people to play games with Him...? It feels like the mastermind behind this is about to be revealed.

"Anyway... let's meet up with the others first." Eden, wearing a swimsuit, stretched her beautiful body and glanced at her communicator before saying, "So far, only Hua has replied to our messages. She's in the northwest of the island, very close to us."

"... Alright." What else could Lin say? Now, only young boys and girls could embark on this journey.

With mixed feelings, Lin set foot on "Raven Island".

Chapter Six: Youth and Old Age

This island doesn't seem to be an uninhabited island; there are signs of human development and activity. However, since the other party chose this island as the "game venue," it must have been prepared in advance, so it's not entirely unexpected.

Lin bent down and pinched a handful of sand, letting it flow smoothly between his fingers. The fine sand under his feet left shallow footprints.

From Eden's perspective, this is a sea of golden sand, but the flat beaches that often appear on travel brochures and in movies are rarely naturally formed. The sand in these beaches is the most suitable for playing in and is unlikely to have formed in this area. It is more likely that the sand was transported, compacted, and leveled by humans.

"Who first suggested going on vacation?" Lin asked Eden casually, observing the coconut trees.

Eden didn't answer immediately. Lin looked back and saw a woman with long, wine-red hair smiling as she typed something into the communicator.

"... Who are you texting?"

"Hehe..." Eden chuckled meaningfully after sending the last word. "Doctor Mobius, she's very curious about your situation."

"Drop--"

Lin received a message on his communicator, and the first thing he saw when he took it out was...

"Are you with Eden?"

"..."

Lin was at a loss for words. He hesitated as he looked at the message, trying to figure out why the other person could question him with such a self-righteous tone and what their mindset was when they asked the question.

He turned to the smiling Eden and asked, "What did you send her?"

"Nothing much, I just thought Doctor Mobius would be very interested in what Lin looks like when she's drunk and asleep, so I sent her two photos." A smile brighter than the sun graced Eden's delicate face. "Then I gave her a brief description of what happened."

This seems... to be fine, right?

But for some reason, Lin had a bad feeling.

Eden only posted two photos of Lin sleeping and two sentences of explanation.

But the first photo she posted was of Lin lying next to her with his upper body bare, and the second photo was of Lin lying on his back, a frontal shot that could only be taken from an angle where you could sit on him.

The so-called explanation described in detail the scent on Lin's body and his sleeping habits.

It was obviously a joke by Eden, but for someone of her status, the joke... went a bit too far.

An hour had passed since they woke up when they met up with Hua. Hua was indeed very close to them. When Lin and Eden found her, she was wearing a swimsuit and sunglasses, gesturing at the deserted shore.

"What name should we choose... Random Thunder? That seems too simple... Let's just call him..."

She waved her hand to herself, then looked down at her hand, clenched her fist, and looked determined.

"Seven Forms of the Sky-Splitting and Sea-Breaking Huamen Fist Technique: Chaotic Thunder and Lightning! Break!"

"..."

"..."

The gray-haired girl suddenly shuddered and turned around sharply, only to see two people standing silently in the woods, staring at her as her arm froze in mid-air.

"Hua is still a year younger than us, after all," Eden said with a smile, leaping up to pluck a ripe coconut from the tree. He then spoke to Hua, whose head was bowed and whose hair was covered in dark clouds. "I used to dream of growing wings and flying through the sky too!"

Unexpectedly, Hua, who is usually taciturn and rarely shows his emotions, like a rigid old man ten times his age, would behave like this. It's surprisingly... cute.

"Eden," Hua sighed, clutching her burning forehead, "Don't try to comfort me..."

The more I comforted her, the more she wanted to erase that memory.

Unfortunately, quite the opposite is true. The side effect of becoming Flame-Chaser is hyperthymesia, which means she can't forget even if she wants to.

She never wanted to give her moves a cool and awesome name again. Maybe that's how people mature suddenly, not through gradual growth, but through devastating blows.

Lin took the coconut from Eden, broke it open, and handed it to the dejected Hua: "Have you contacted anyone else?"

"I've only managed to contact you guys for now." Hua hesitated slightly before accepting the coconut.

She had mixed feelings about Lin after he lost his memory.

If Hua had to find a word to express her feelings for Lin, it would probably be "brother," a term that transcends generational differences but eliminates the communication barriers caused by age.

Both Hua and Lin, as they were before, tacitly accepted their relationship, which was similar to that of an elder and a junior.

Lin rescued her from the Third Honkai War, taught her, and took care of her, but did not deliberately get close to her. Instead, he entrusted her to Himiko's care, perhaps thinking that even he himself could not fully see his own future, let alone point out the direction for Hua.

But after Lin lost his memory, Hua suddenly realized that the subtle, elder-junior distance between her and Lin had disappeared. Even the name "Lin," which she used to find difficult to say without adding the word "captain," could now be spoken naturally.

Is this better or worse? Hua didn't know, but it was definitely a bad thing for Lin. She couldn't imagine what it would feel like for someone to completely lose their past memories.

It's as if a person has completely died and then been resurrected, but is the person who has been resurrected really the same person as before?

"Haven't you contacted Mobius?"

Hua was taken aback. Lin noticed a flicker of fear in the depths of her eyes and stammered, "No..."

What happened between these two?

"Doctor Mobius is quite far from us, almost across the entire island, so we won't be able to meet up with her anytime soon." Eden walked over and sat down, sipping her coconut juice. The clear liquid slid from the corner of her mouth down to her chest, seemingly unaware of it herself. She continued, "Should we try looking for 'treasure' around here first?"

Hua looked at Eden: "Wait, are we really going to play that game?"

"... We currently know nothing about this island or the mastermind behind it. For now, we can only follow its lead. Only after gathering sufficient intelligence can we formulate other plans. We'll enter the game first, then break it." Lin answered Hua's question after a moment of silence.

Hua looked at Lin in surprise.

Even after losing her memory, could she still make such a decision?

"Okay, but this island is just too big. I just climbed up a tree and estimated that even if we walked around the entire edge of the island, it would take at least a day, let alone searching for the 'treasure' that has no clues."

What kind of treasure is this? Is it a treasure in the traditional sense, placed in a treasure chest? Or is it just some unknown thing called a treasure?

Hua felt that simply searching aimlessly was not a wise decision.

"There will be clues." Lin ate the coconut meat, then threw the shell away, stood up and looked at the coast. "He said this is a 'game,' so there will definitely be clues, and they will be clues that He provides on His own initiative."

Chapter Seven: Missions and Rules

"In what form do you think the clues will appear?"

"Logically speaking, since the other party wants to play a game, the clues shouldn't be easy to find. We might need to make some connections." Hua pushed her sunglasses back up, completely oblivious to the scorching sun, as she surveyed her surroundings. "Lin, what are your thoughts?"

"I don't think we need to worry about it too much."