Published: February 13, 2025
Ye Zhongming opened his eyes, and the first thing that greeted him was a starry sky.
He looked down and saw that he was on a desolate planet, surrounded by red lava.
However, he didn’t feel any heat.
Ye Zhongming tried to take a couple of steps forward, stepping on the lava without feeling anything, as if his body only existed within his own line of sight.
He wandered aimlessly, moving through the rising smoke and crossing deep chasms.
He shouted and ran.
No one answered, and he didn’t feel tired.
He didn’t know how long he had walked, covering the entire planet without finding a trace of life.
At the same time, it seemed that Ye Zhongming had forgotten many things; he only remembered who he was and some of his abilities, but all the past and familiar faces were completely forgotten.
He didn’t know why he appeared here, nor why it was like this.
He walked alone on this planet, trying to find some undiscovered places, seeking others of his kind, and attempting to regain his lost memories.
But all of it failed.
He didn’t need to rest, felt no fatigue, wouldn’t be hurt, and there was no danger.
He wandered like a lost soul or a wild ghost, but didn’t know what he was supposed to do.
After a long time, he finally gave up the idea of walking out and began to rest.
He sat in the boiling lava, watching it roll and flow around him. He stood by the sea, watching the crashing waves and the clouds swirling. He lay in a meadow, observing the changing stars and the gentle wind. He wandered in the forest, witnessing the cycle of life and death in nature.
One day, he finally understood something. He reached out his hand and felt the temperature of the lava, the moisture of the seawater, and the vitality of the plants.
It was as if he had become human again.
Yet he remained lonely, unable to leave this place or recall anything about himself.
If one does not experience it themselves, they cannot understand the feeling of being alone through the long years.
Thus, Ye Zhongming began to observe everything more carefully, or rather, he tried every means to pass the time.
Because he feared he would go mad.
So, after an unknown amount of time, he learned some things.
He could paint with lava, make plants fly, dry up the sea, and obscure the sky.
Ye Zhongming treated these as toys, playing with them endlessly.
Until… he ruined the planet.
He fell into deep space, surrounded by cosmic bodies of varying distances.
He returned to his original state, able to walk in the universe, crossing the distance between the nearest two planets with every step, yet feeling nothing but loneliness.
So he began to observe the celestial bodies closely.
As time passed, Ye Zhongming forgot everything, focusing solely on studying what he saw.
He could only forget his loneliness in this way, always hoping to find a form of life with which he could communicate on some celestial body.
Until one day, he could crush a planet with just one hand, stroll right into a star, or blow away a nebula in a single breath.
Ye Zhongming had a feeling that he might be able to escape.
But just as he was able to freely create or destroy these cosmic bodies, in an instant, he found himself back at the starting point, on that planet, amidst the lava.
Ye Zhongming didn’t quite understand why this happened.
He tried for a long time and found he could not discover the reason, so he could only start over, making sure not to forget himself.
Fortunately, he had not forgotten what he learned before; he quickly stepped out of the planet and soon could wander in the universe.
But when he reached a certain level, he returned to the starting point again.
Time and again, Ye Zhongming fell into a loop from which he could not escape.
He had to stop once more to think, to experiment, and to seek answers among all things.
He began to grasp the patterns, then to control them.
Gradually, he remembered some things, like the reminders from his parents when they left in the morning, and the crying boy he had been that night in the corner downstairs.