Chapter 6: Forest and Logs
"Pull up the status log for Class E3 today."
The meeting room was dim, lit only by the flickering projection at the center. Lines of data streamed across the screen with a faint electric buzz.
"These are the sync test results from the fifth class," the system technician said, pulling up the graph. "Three students exhibited frequency spikes. One unregistered Armament triggered a resonance."
"The black spear?" Instructor Zhong Lan looked up.
"Yes." The technician nodded. "Nie Shi's weapon still has no registered manifestation pathway. The system has flagged it as 'non-system origin,' but its resonance value is extremely high."
"Where did it come from?" asked an elderly teacher in a lab coat.
"Unknown. Its binding process doesn't match any standard framework. Preliminary analysis suggests it's a Remnant Armament."
The room fell silent for a moment.
"Weren't all Remnant Armaments purged long ago?" someone murmured.
"The active ones, yes. But this one is neither fully active nor completely frozen—it's more like… passively awakened."
"Is it stable?"
"For now," the technician said, though without much confidence. "But there was a record today—it attempted to access an external memory channel and was forcibly cut off by the system."
Zhong Lan frowned. "What is it trying to find?"
No one answered.
"Also," the technician continued, "we suspect it's affecting more than just Nie Shi."
"During Xie Ping's test, his Armament prematurely hit the threshold value. Lin Kui's path showed fragments not belonging to her. Lu Jingxing's sync image briefly glitched."
"In other words…" the deputy director narrowed his eyes, "it's not just an anomaly—it could be a memory contagion source?"
A few people gasped.
"Then he must be isolated," the lab coat teacher said. "He can't continue attending classes with the others."
"Objection," Zhong Lan said coldly.
Everyone turned to her.
"You say it's a contagion source. I don't buy it," she said. "If it really wanted to lose control, it would've already done so."
"Then how do you propose we handle this?" the deputy director asked.
Zhong Lan lowered her gaze in thought, then replied calmly, "Continue observation. If necessary, assign him to solo training."
"More importantly—" she looked at the screen, "—he might be the only one who can make that spear 'speak.'"
That night, Nie Shi had another dream.
He was back in the forest.
Gray, silent, cold. The "gate" was still there—shaped like a spear driven into the earth, sealing something beneath the world.
He walked closer. The gate trembled slightly.
This time, he heard voices.
A fractured, broken voice. Like it came from very far away, or from many people speaking at once.
"Who… are you…"
"You… are not it… not him…"
"Return… return… return…"
"Return the memory-bearer, only then… only then…"
"Where… am I…"
The voices grew faster, messier, like someone smashing glass inside his mind.
Nie Shi felt a wave of dizziness.
He took a step back.
The ground split open. The edge of the forest collapsed. Light and shadow burst from the cracks—
He saw a shattered battlefield, a child crying, a woman sobbing on the ground, and a pair of cold eyes watching him from the rain.
He couldn't breathe.
Then, in that moment, the spear moved.
It slowly shifted from the shape of a gate into a real weapon. Its tip was pitch-black, its body wrapped in vague metallic glyphs.
"Remember it," the voice said. "Or you will be devoured."
"You are wielding someone else's life."
"Next time… it must answer to you."
Just before the forest collapsed, Nie Shi opened his eyes.
He was drenched in sweat. At his bedside, the black spear gave a faint click—
Like a lock, beginning to loosen.