Chapter 902: Fading Memories

Jiang Ruoxue stayed with me for a few days.

Later, just as she had said, she joined Tian Tang Kou to find the deputy leader who possessed Qiang Yun.

I once asked her how she planned to recruit that girl, but her answer left me confused.

She said that the girl might genuinely like other girls, and she herself had pretended to be a tomboy for half her life, only to encounter a real one now.

Her words made me feel a little uneasy...

Was she planning to sacrifice herself for Ji Dao?

But who exactly was this person?

From Jiang Ruoxue’s description alone, it was hard for me to picture the girl.

Apparently, she was tall, nearly 1.8 meters, stunningly beautiful, with a high-intensity Hui Xiang that had no side effects. She liked girls, was friendly to others, and served as a deputy leader in an organization with immense Shan Ye...

Could there really be such a perfect girl in this world?

If she appeared in a movie or anime, she’d probably have some shocking secret and end up portrayed as a beautiful but venomous villain.

Yet Jiang Ruoxue spoke very highly of her. Before I left, I casually asked a few passersby, and everyone praised the girl named Yun Yao effusively, without a single negative comment.

She had no scandals or any flaws that anyone disliked.

Heavens, she was like a character straight out of an anime... I could hardly imagine what she looked like.

In their era, didn’t anyone try to scout her as an idol or entertainer?

I suddenly felt a bit inferior.

But on the other hand, whether it’s Yin Guo or Ye Li, both have a profound impact on Ji Dao. If we could add Qiang Yun to the mix, the organization would become unimaginably powerful.

These three forces that can alter fate and circumstances would essentially make Ji Dao indestructible.

Now, Ji Dao is in a very peculiar position. Even if I disappeared, or Ruoxue vanished, or anyone in the organization lost their memory, it wouldn’t be affected at all.

Its members would still grow daily, and its strength would continue to increase.

If Qiang Yun joined, I have a feeling... whatever Bai Yang is planning, she’d be a major asset.

In the days that followed, Ji Dao would keep splintering all the organizations here and make the Can Yu Zhe feel endless despair.

Countless strong individuals would awaken amid that despair, and numerous organizations would collapse under mounting doubt.

In the next cycle, I returned to the area near my birthplace.

Although Ruoxue and I had reconciled, we still operated at opposite ends of the city, and she wasn’t by my side.

How to describe this feeling? Everything Jiang Ruoxue did was for me, yet I rarely saw her.

It was a vague but solid sense of security.

Perhaps both Ruoxue and I had grown. Now, I could handle things on my own, and she was no longer as impulsive.

We were both rushing around for the ultimate goal.

That goal was to liberate the entire Zhong Yuan.

I still met with Bai Yang every day, and he never asked about Ji Dao, just like before.

I even wondered if he had forgotten about Ji Dao’s existence.

But I quickly shook my head and dismissed the thought. Ji Dao was one of Bai Yang’s most important pieces, and the key to protecting the whole city, so he had no reason to forget it.

I wanted to ask Bai Yang countless times what he was planning, but my previous two experiences were still fresh in my mind. Whenever I glimpsed even a part of his plan, my brain would go completely blank.

I couldn’t comprehend his schemes, so I just tried my best to be an excellent piece that wouldn’t be discarded.

I still engaged in theoretical discussions with Bai Yang. The amount of knowledge he’d acquired over the years far exceeded my imagination. At first, I could chat with him about all sorts of topics, but in recent years, I’d said less and less.

Because his insights and knowledge had far surpassed mine.

That day, I arrived at Ji Le Qian Zhuang and found Bai Yang reading a book again.

“Yang Ge... Isn’t it enough yet?”

I looked at him and voiced the question I’d been holding back for a long time.

“What?” Bai Yang closed the book and lifted his unusual eyes to look at me.

“I mean your knowledge,” I said. “So many years have passed, and you’re still insisting on finishing a book every day...?”

“Not just that,” Bai Yang replied. “I don’t need sleep anymore, so I have double the time each day. If the students don’t cause trouble and there are no special issues to handle, finishing two books a day is no problem.”

“Yang Ge, I know you want to get stronger, but you also need time to digest and absorb. Otherwise, cramming this much knowledge into your brain could overwhelm it.”

“It needs to adapt,” Bai Yang answered. “I have no time for rest, so my brain can’t have any either.”

“But why...?” I slowly furrowed my brow. “You’re pushing yourself this hard, frantically absorbing knowledge... Isn’t it enough already?”

I knew that Bai Yang was probably the most learned person in all of Zhong Yuan. Anyone who could calmly read through an entire bookstore’s worth of books and remember the content would be more knowledgeable than 90 percent of people in the world.

Let alone someone like Bai Yang, who could draw inferences and apply knowledge flexibly.

“Why keep acquiring knowledge...?” Bai Yang pondered for a moment. “You might think I’d say something clichéd like ‘the sea of learning is boundless,’ but it’s not that...”

He slowly stood up, walked to the office door, and glanced at the noisy crowd outside, which was still full of gamblers from all walks of life.

Bai Yang partially closed the door, blocking out the external noise, and then said, “Yan Zhichun, I’ve fallen into a deep ‘loss of memory panic.’ I have to absorb as much knowledge as possible so that when I forget everything, I might retain at least one percent. And that one percent will be my future reliance.”

“What...?”

“As long as you repeatedly dye a piece of clothing, even with dye that fades easily, some traces will remain,” Bai Yang said. “That’s why I can’t stop for even a moment.”

I didn’t understand... I knew everyone in the world had their own fears, but Bai Yang was afraid of something with such a low probability.

Just as I’d wondered before, he was already at the earth-level Sheng Xiao, so why was he gripped by loss of memory panic?

“The time I have left is running out.”

Bai Yang turned his head, his face as heavy as the first time I met him, and said, “Yan Zhichun, I’m racing against time.”