Only I Walk Alone

Wu Ge saw a pink world, a world where peach blossoms thrived. In that world, there was a wooden house with a lounge chair in front, on which sat an elderly grandmother. Motionless, her eyes closed, she held an unfinished sweater in her hands.

As Wu Ge entered this bright world, he felt time return to normal, while the dark world outside, lacking any point of reference, showed no discernible change.

It was as if Wu Ge had been watching a fast-forwarded movie, but upon entering this “movie,” his perception of time speed adjusted to match the world’s pace, making time seem normal again.

This is a matter of the reference frame, a concept learned in middle school physics. Two people sitting on a high-speed bus are in a state of relative rest with each other. However, if one of them gets off mid-journey, to the person remaining on the bus, the other would seem to be rapidly moving away.

Wu Ge had stepped into another person’s soul world. Due to the artifact, reality and the soul were inverted, allowing Wu Ge to see not the person’s physical form but their soul world instead.

Approaching, Wu Ge inquired, “Are you a member of the Venus civilian exploration team?”

There was no response. The elderly lady didn’t even open her eyes.

She had become like Cang Shu, aged to the point of clarity, hearing, and memory loss. However, unlike Cang Shu, Wu Ge could sense a sense of time on her.

It was likely she had spent decades in this soul world.

Wu Ge didn’t disturb her further. Passing by the lounge chair, he entered the wooden house, a simple forest cabin with a single floor and four rooms: a bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, and a study.

In the study, Wu Ge saw a large bookcase filled with various notebooks. On the desk, he found a notebook opened but untouched by a pen.

Picking up the notebook and flipping through a few pages, Wu Ge found a diary entry: “Day 23,725 of being trapped here. I forgot to refill the cats’ food, causing them to meow incessantly. It took me over ten minutes to realize why they were meowing. I’m starting to forget how I ended up here. I often read my previous diaries, but my eyesight is failing. It seems I’m waiting for a promise. Is that why I keep a diary, to not forget all this?”

Calculating quickly, Wu Ge realized that 23,725 days amounted to about sixty-five years. This meant the team member had been trapped here for at least sixty-five years, a situation more severe than Cang Shu’s.

Continuing to peruse the notes, Wu Ge found the first diary on the top shelf, emanating a musty odor. He didn’t touch it but used his psychic power to scan the diary instead. After scanning, Wu Ge instantly understood everything.

The third exploration team included a twenty-three-year-old werewolf race female graduate. She joined the team to search for her father on the surface of Venus but ended up trapped in a spatial rift with the rest of the team.

Shortly after entering the Klein bottle-like space, they discovered that time flowed incredibly fast there. First, exposed backpacks, supplies, and equipment began to age rapidly and then disappeared, followed by life forms and experimental mice, and finally, humans.

However, the team members were highly capable and did not panic. They quickly calculated the aging speed of supplies, equipment, and humans. In this space, inanimate objects without souls seemed to age faster than living beings with souls, so they immediately consumed all their food while searching for an exit.

Wu Ge discovered that the aging rate for the lab mice was approximately ten seconds to one year, whereas for humans, it was about one minute to one year. After coming to this conclusion, they immediately began searching for exits separately.

Unfortunately, being in a Klein bottle, to three-dimensional beings, it represented an infinitely large world.

As time passed, some began to lose their sanity because, with every minute, they aged a year, driving people to despair in this bizarre place.

At this critical moment, Cang Shu, with his profound knowledge and sharp intellect, guessed the nature of the space and calculated the locations of two exits.

By then, their protective gear was nearly gone. Since the gear was closest to the body and in contact with human skin, it deteriorated more slowly than the instruments and equipment. However, even with damaged protective gear, leaving this place could still mean certain death.

Therefore, they chose to enter another portal, leading to the world Wu Ge was now in—a world where inside and out were inverted. In this world, there would be no secrets; everyone could see into the hearts of others.

The ugly, dirty, cruel, cunning, or the kind, innocent, clean—everyone’s inner self was exposed. The stronger one’s psychic power, the larger their soul world.

Like now, Wu Ge’s dark inner world was as vast as the universe, while this female team member’s soul world was merely a tiny patch.

Wu Ge began to examine new diaries. In this inverted world, it became clear who was good and who was bad. Everyone knew what role they played in the hearts of others.

Who had dark thoughts, who had kindness, who came here for selfish reasons, and who risked their lives to save others—all became clear.

This was a world where lies and even pleasantries couldn’t exist.

In the adult world, we might not speak ill of someone’s faults directly, choosing instead to silently criticize in our minds. But here, with everyone’s soul world open, if one disliked another, that sentiment would be openly displayed in their soul world.

Here, truth was laid bare, but this candor didn’t lead to mutual understanding but rather mutual resentment.

Thus, a more serious issue arose. In reality, resentment without retaliatory actions is harmless. However, in this soul world, once resentment occurred, it was as if using psychic power to battle those they resented.

The outcome was inevitable. A few surviving team members engaged in uncontrollable battles—a type of combat indescribable, a battle between souls filled with imagination, chaos, and marked by evil and ugliness.

In the end, Cang Shu and the female team member prevailed because they harbored no resentment towards each other.