— The Past CP-HUB Never Deleted
Les withdrew his hand, almost unconsciously touching his forehead. His fingertips brushed the faint red imprint that still hadn't fully faded—like tracing a symbol etched deep within his mind.
Before Shawn could react, the Meta Band on Les's wrist began to tremble. A faint resonance escaped from inside Les—not quite a physical sound, more like the encrypted echo of data.
"So terrifying... That wasn't an era meant for human beings…"
The next moment, Les convulsed violently.
His body was yanked away from the boundaries of reality by some unseen force. His consciousness shattered in waves, as if his neural pathways were colliding with historical data layers.
Shawn lunged forward in alarm—but a blinding white flash devoured his vision.
—Within the light, images emerged.
Not a preset replay.
Not a simulation.
But a forcibly extracted record of a deeply buried, real historical archive.
Shawn watched in stunned silence:
A younger Les was dragged into a dark, sealed room by men wearing red armbands. Behind them were tattered red flags and blurred slogans. His head was forced into a metallic brace as a mental-infusion device activated. A screech pierced the ears. His consciousness began to fracture.
Time halted.
And then—
A string of numbers surfaced in the white light, like a system annotation reawakening long-buried data:
File No. 0001: Land Reallocation Project, Red Flag Village, Tribunal Zone 3192 of CP-HUB Central Plains Province.
---
Les opened his eyes.
Above him stretched a gray-white sky.
Not the gloom before dawn, nor the pressure of an oncoming storm, but a sky that had been erased—like a video clip missing its opening, leaving only a layer of static, frozen light.
The world was dead silent. No wind, no birdsong. Even insects seemed muted by some as if the world itself had been muted.
Beneath him, a dust-covered path twisted ahead like a severed artery, leading toward a still, unmoving village.
Les glanced down at the Meta Band on his wrist: interface frozen, data links severed, coordinate recognition failed.
He understood—he had been sent into a historical loop.
At the entrance of Red Flag Village stood a weathered stone arch, over which hung a red fabric banner:
"Purge Feudal Poison, Embrace the People's Rebirth!"
The words were handwritten, painted with the thickest of brushes. The ink bled like blood, forming jagged strokes.
Beyond the arch lay a small triangular plaza paved with cracked blue tiles.
At its center was a dry well.
Around its edge, blackened soil and faded red stains marked the ground—like the traces left by someone being dragged.
A little boy sat at the well's edge, twirling an empty sugar skewer in his hand.
"Where did you come from?" he asked, voice low as the wind.
Les tried to answer—but no sound came. His throat felt locked, as if sealed by a programmatic override.
The boy looked up at him, eyes calm, unsurprised.
"Another one come to watch," he said quietly.
Before Les could ask more, the boy pointed toward a building at the far end of the plaza.
"Today is a struggle meeting," he said.
Les walked toward it.
Villagers along the way turned to look. None had expression on their faces. Their lips moved, but made no sound. Every conversation played out like a mute performance.
Yet their movements were eerily synchronized—heads lowered, shoulders flinching, bodies edging away.
Outside the meeting hall, three men were being bound to broken wooden frames. They wore oversized paper hats stained with black ink. On each was written:
"Evil Landlord Li Shouren"
"Reactionary Relative Li Zhangshi"
"Lackey Zhang Gou'er"
A bloody red X was slashed across the front of each hat—thick, crude strokes, as if pressed on by bloody palms.
Li Shouren, still half-dressed in a torn blue robe, had chains on his ankles and bruises across his chest. Blood trickled from his lips, but his eyes locked fiercely on the crowd.
As Les stared, a flash of fragmented data flared in his mind:
"Li Shouren, once a village teacher… Labeled landlord class. Died during purges."
System note: Incomplete file. Memory signal delay: 3.2 seconds.
This wasn't reconstruction.
It was residue.
Suddenly, a sound rang out—not a mechanical chime, but the clang of a bronze gong hung at the hall's door. Someone had struck it hard.
The crowd fell silent and turned to the stage.
Les was "pushed" forward—not physically, but reclassified by the system as an observer.
Embedded protocol: "To witness is to participate."
Three figures stood on the stage, clad in the uniforms of the CP-Revolutionary Guard, each holding aloft a crimson flag, their expressions stern and unyielding.
Behind them hung a massive banner depicting a human face—
Half of it wore a gentle smile, though the eyes were disturbingly vacant.
The other half was stripped of skin, exposing raw muscle and sinew,
over which writhed fine black lines—like parasitic neural worms burrowing just beneath the surface.
All around the stage, faded white banners were plastered, each one scrawled in blood-red script:
"Revolution is not a dinner party. It is fire and blood that must cleanse the world!"
One of the captains shouted:
"Li Shouren! You're a reactionary landlord! Do you confess?!"
He yelled into the air—broadcasting not to the accused, but to a designated audience.
Les realized: All sound here is filtered—only 'authorized listeners' can hear.
The condemned heard nothing. Their mouths moved in silence, eyes vacant.
Suddenly, someone from the crowd stormed the stage and kicked Li Shouren hard in the knees—he collapsed.
The crowd exploded in "silent cheers"—people jumping, clapping, laughing—without a sound.
In Les's ears, another audio track played:
"They laughed… not out of joy, but because not laughing could land you on stage next."
Deeper within the vision, an older layer was stirred awake.
Not digital, not synthetic—but the spiritual scar tissue of civilization itself.
Les felt himself being pulled—not across space, but down into memory.
He saw villagers surround the ancestral Li house, shouting: "Down with tyrants!"
He saw a small boy wailing at his father's corpse, only to be dragged away—to feed the dogs.
He saw a teenager in a red scarf lift a bamboo stick, eyes burning with fear and hatred—pointing it at his own uncle.
Les clutched his head in agony, voice trembling:
"This isn't data… It's the ghost of memory. The backflow of fragmented consciousness."
The illusion trembled, began to collapse.
Paper hats spontaneously ignited. The red Xs twisted into thorns and vines, curling around necks and wrists, carving red welts.
Above the village floated a massive, cold eye—the CP-HUB Central Control Core—analyzing the "intensity" of each struggle, measuring "loyalty scores," and calibrating the loop.
Les's consciousness spiraled downward, caught in a vortex where memory and reality tore each other apart. He was nearly consumed—until—
A small hand grabbed him.
Cold. Steady.
Doudou. It was him again.
The child pressed a shattered ceramic plate into his palm.
"This was the last bowl my family used for dinner…" the boy whispered. "That night, they were taken away."
That voice didn't belong to the illusion.
Didn't belong to the system.
It came from an unformatted soul node—written in blood and flesh, with pain that remembered.
The vision tore away.
Les stood once more at the edge of the square.
The struggle continued.
Beside the dry well, fresh blood slowly trickled—seeping into the cracks of the stone—
drop by drop…