Chapter 33 – The Forgotten Ones
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A Gathering in the Ruins
Luo Fan stood amidst the swirling remnants of lost reality. The temple's broken walls whispered with echoes of a world that no longer existed.
And now, standing before him, were people who should not exist.
The Forgotten.
Spectral figures flickered in and out of existence, their forms shifting like unstable memories. Some wore robes of ancient sects, long erased from history. Others bore the sigils of realms that no longer had a name.
Each one was a remnant of the old multiverse. Each one had survived the Reset.
Shen Mu stepped forward, her gaze unwavering. "You understand now, don't you?"
Luo Fan nodded slowly. "You're people from before the Reset. But that should be impossible."
> "Yeah, Boss, this whole thing is making my circuits itch. Reality doesn't work like this."
One of the figures—a weathered old man with silver eyes—spoke. "And yet, here we are."
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Echoes of a Lost Time
Luo Fan studied the group. There were about a dozen of them, all looking to him for answers. He wasn't used to that—usually, it was the other way around.
> "Sooo… are we just ignoring the part where you're technically the reason they exist? You did rewrite reality, after all."
Luo Fan's fingers twitched slightly. EchoStar had a point. By rejecting the Reset and absorbing the Devourer's power, he had changed the fundamental laws of the multiverse.
And somehow… these people had slipped through the cracks.
A younger cultivator, barely in his twenties, clenched his fists. "We don't know why we survived, but we know something is wrong. The heavens feel… incomplete."
Shen Mu nodded. "This world is unstable. We are not supposed to be here, but neither can we leave."
Luo Fan exhaled. If that was true, then this temple wasn't just some ruin—it was a convergence point, a place where fragmented realities overlapped.
A glitch in the rewritten world.
> "Alright, I've seen enough. Boss, we have two options: Walk away, or take responsibility for another cosmic mess. Guess which one you're gonna pick?"
Luo Fan shot EchoStar a look. "Do you ever stop talking?"
> "Nope. Not even when I was a fully functional system. Now, what's the play?"
Luo Fan turned back to the Forgotten.
"…Tell me everything you know."
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A Fractured Truth
The group exchanged glances. Finally, Shen Mu spoke.
"There is something… out there. Watching."
Luo Fan stiffened. "Watching?"
She nodded. "A presence. It does not belong to this world, nor to the last. It is… waiting."
A chill ran down Luo Fan's spine.
The Reset had erased nearly everything. But if something had survived outside of it…
> "…Boss. You remember how the Devourer wasn't completely erased?"
Luo Fan's jaw tightened. "You think this is connected?"
> "Oh, I know it is."
The air grew heavier. The whispers in the ruins turned to low, distorted laughter.
Something was indeed watching.
And it was waiting for him to make his next move.
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[Chapter End.]