hotmtlnovel Chapter 577: I Am Jiang Ye
Chapter 577: I Am Jiang Ye
"I am Jiang Ye... I am Jiang Ye..."I am Jiang Ye...
These chaotic voices all used Jiang Ye's timbre, yet they never merged into a single unified sentence.
Instead, it sounded like countless people arguing.
Coupled with the countless red-eyed puppets here, it felt like those puppets were all fighting over the identity of "Jiang Ye."
Their shouting grew louder and louder.
Each shout was like a sharp sword, stirring up storms in Jiang Ye's mind.
But the puppets themselves remained utterly still.
Worried the voices would force him into losing control, Jiang Ye forced himself to endure the piercing pain in his head and swung the iron hammer at another puppet.
This time, he dared not pause. One strike followed another without hesitation.
Before the previous puppet had fully dissipated, the next puppet's head was smashed in.
Strike after strike, he hammered with brutal force; each blow brought a wave of exhaustion that felt like his strength draining away.
Yet after each hit came a chilling, sobering coolness that surged from his soles to his scalp, washing away the fatigue.
Thanks to that cooling sensation repairing his body, he kept hammering, blow after blow, without stopping.
The chaos in his mind plus the mechanical repetition of the motion made him feel like a worker on an assembly line.
He felt his soul being pulled out, reduced to a machine.
Jiang Ye himself did not notice—
As the repeated motions continued, Ji Zixuan clone's red eyes gradually transformed like the puppets' eyes: from ordinary crimson into a fiery, heated scarlet!
And with each puppet he killed, the cooling sensation paradoxically sent a wave of warmth into his eyeballs.
Now those eyes were filled and overflowing with scorching heat.
At the same time, it was as if he had been bewitched by a ghost...
Every time the hammer came down, it became a furious roar from himself: "I am Jiang Ye!"
Every puppet killed was accompanied by a roar.
"I am Jiang Ye..."
...
This Jiang Ye seemed to have completely lost control.
He no longer knew how long he had been rampaging out of control...
As he fought on, the bone ash box he had set on the ground was no longer within sight.
It was as if it had slipped through some hidden tear in space.
When his consciousness cleared again, the red-eyed puppets were gone, replaced by the endless grave mounds that, from every angle, looked the same as when he first entered the infinite grave mound zone.
Jiang Ye froze where he stood, dazed for a long while before he finally pulled himself fully out of the crazed state.
The Jiang Ye in the underground Burial Ground regained his own view at the same moment.
He found that the coffin he'd dug up had already been opened.
Inside was empty.
The administrator was nowhere to be seen in that underground Burial Ground either.
Jiang Ye checked the 4444 Apartment chat group and discovered he had only been "berserk" for about ten minutes...
Thinking it over, he scanned the graveyard and typed into the group:
[May I ask if anyone knows whether the 4444 Apartment administrator has returned?]
No one answered in the group for the moment.
Jiang Ye's attention returned to the infinite grave mound zone.
He still sensed Ji Zixuan clone; he could clearly feel this clone's body: exhausted and ice-cold all over, but with burning, scorching eyes.
At the same time...
This clone's mind still kept echoing the voice "I am Jiang Ye"...
Not as sharp and grating as when surrounded by countless puppets just now.
Rather, it sounded like voices originating from within Jiang Ye, sometimes murmuring softly, sometimes shouting loudly, sometimes asking hesitant questions, sometimes making firm declarations...
It was as if countless fractured versions of himself had appeared inside Jiang Ye...
Or like the puppets he had killed had all moved into his body...
Compared to the previous total loss of control, he seemed barely able to rein these voices in, making them quieter.
The hesitating, murmuring voices were easier to control and calmed down quickly.
The firm, high-spirited voices required much more willpower to pacify.
Exhausted, Jiang Ye almost collapsed to the ground. It took a large amount of mental effort to suppress all those voices.
Physically and mentally drained, he rested for a minute or two before exhaling heavily and murmuring:
"I... am Jiang Ye?"
A moment later he added, "Am I... still Jiang Ye?"
At that single muttered question, an inexplicably forceful rebuttal burst into his mind:
"You stopped being Jiang Ye a long time ago! I am the real Jiang Ye!"
The voice jolted Jiang Ye awake with a shock!
So that split, fractured inner self could actually answer him!
Jiang Ye calmed his emotions quickly, thought for a moment, and tentatively asked:
"'Stopped being Jiang Ye a long time ago'... when exactly is that 'a long time'?"
The same domineering voice answered him directly, with arrogant confidence:
"A long time! Ever since the first time you betrayed your heart, you ceased to be Jiang Ye!"
"It goes back to your earliest muddled memories!"
"When you were four, the family broke a set of delicate dishes. Your mother told you the story about Washington chopping down the cherry tree, how he was praised for admitting his mistake..."
"So, even though you had nothing to do with the broken dishes, you lied you had broken them, just to be praised!"
"When you were six, you locked the house keys inside the house and ran away, trying to fix one mistake with an even bigger one, making the whole family panic searching for you late into the night..."
"When you were seven, you couldn't confess to the girl you liked, so you used cruel words and pranks to get her attention..."
"When you transferred schools at eight, you memorized a grand self-introduction but when standing on the podium could only say 'Hello everyone, my name is Jiang Ye'..."
"When you were nine..."
This domineering voice recited every incident of Jiang Ye's supposed weaknesses or dark, scheming sides as if it had them memorized.
Jiang Ye listened in stunned silence, filled with suspicion.
Were those examples really things that happened to him?
The critical problem was that he had no memories, so he couldn't judge...
Still, even without memory, he listened carefully to each listed case.
He tried to sketch himself from those possibly true or false examples.
Perhaps unwilling to waste time, the domineering voice quickly summarized:
"There are too many cowardly, wrong, and heart-betraying choices in you..."
"Those wrong choices have left your life full of holes!"
"But I am different! I am powerful, confident, I dare to face the truth of my heart, and I have always followed my true will!"
"Therefore... I am Jiang Ye! I am what all Jiang Yes want to become!"
Um...
Jiang Ye thought that if he did have memories—and if the real-memory version of him actually held grudges about some things—then maybe this forceful voice could stir his emotions.
Because the tone was indeed confident and domineering, as if it were a superior, more perfect Jiang Ye.
But the problem was, Jiang Ye had no memories.
Hearing those denials at most left him unmoved, even a little amused.
Really? Is that it?
Maybe his life was imperfect.
Maybe he had fantasized about a better, more perfect self.
So what?
Who in this world can live as a perfect version of themselves?
These ghostly things probably didn't think that listing cases he couldn't remember would make him deny himself, right?
Jiang Ye thought for a moment and finally addressed the arrogant "self" with one line:
"Arrogant and proud, you are not who I want to become."
The words sounded plain but carried an undeniable firmness.
The domineering voice finally fell silent.
Instead, a different voice, not particularly loud, spoke up coolly: "Heh, just self-deception."
That voice wasn't forceful, but it carried a detached clarity and arrogance, as if everyone else were drunk while it alone stayed sober.
Hearing a second denial, Jiang Ye remained calm and politely asked that voice:
"So, what did I deceive myself about?"
This voice, unlike the earlier one, wasn't so domineering and thus didn't answer at once.
It remained silent for a long time, aloof and uninterested.
Jiang Ye indulged it and asked twice more: "So, what did I deceive myself about?"
Only on the third repetition did that voice, as if reminded, reply:
"When you were eighteen, you wrote a letter to your twenty-eight-year-old self, listing one item after another: the life you wanted, the twenty-eight-year-old you you hoped to be, and the dreams you wanted to fulfill..."
"At twenty-eight you couldn't find that letter, and you have to admit you lived a failed life—never achieving the life you wanted, never becoming who you once expected, and you even lost the courage to chase your dreams again."
Those words were not an indignant, impassioned accusation.
They sounded more like a calm statement of fact.
Facts, it seemed, cut deeper than emotion.
Listening, Jiang Ye felt a sting, instinctively frowning.
Though he had no memories, he could still sketch a picture: the confident eighteen-year-old, and a thirty-something thirty depressed at twenty-eight, achieving nothing.
That kind of fall from promise to decay reminded him of Zhou Qiming he had seen not long ago.
But then...
Jiang Ye thought: aren't I freaking eighteen?
Where does a wasted twenty-eight come from?
Even if someone is thirty and has achieved nothing, so what?
Isn't thirty still young compared to death?
As long as one is alive, it's never too late.
Liu Bang watched dogs fight at forty-seven and conquered the world at fifty-seven.
K. Rowling published Harry Potter at thirty-two after years of poverty—does that count as having failed?
An old lady named Moses worked on a farm her whole life, learned painting at seventy-six, and at eighty held an exhibition in New York...
Compared to that, how many people don't even live to seventy-six?
If life hasn't ended, the future still has ink left to write—how can one call it failure?
Moreover, amnesiac Jiang Ye was a blank page. Past and future could be written anew.
Calming himself, Jiang Ye steadied his will and said to the inner voice:
"I will live the life I want, by my own hand. Sooner or later."
His tone was calm, not arguing but stating a fact.
That haughty voice did not speak again.
Gradually, Jiang Ye realized—
The clones within the infinite grave mound zone were undergoing a process of self-cognition cleansing.
Each "self" asked questions, seemingly trying to replace the original.
Jiang Ye suddenly thought of the Zhou Qiming this clone had met when it first climbed out of the grave mound.
He recalled Zhou Qiming talking about the "Personality Reconstruction School" and the so-called "Ideological Reform"...
He had analyzed before—
Most of the information Zhou Qiming gave him was likely true.
So...
Could this infinite grave mound zone really be trapping a Zhou Qiming who, like him, was being questioned by countless versions of himself?
Is that what "Ideological Reform" meant?
That new thoughts wanted to replace the original?
If so, Zhou Qiming... had he been replaced?
Jiang Ye guessed—
When Zhou Qiming told him he encountered many clones and eventually lost contact with them...
That part was probably a lie.
The truth might be...
The Zhou Qiming who was truly a clone likely did encounter numerous clones.
But because he was a Jiang Ye clone, he would distrust clones that did not share the clone-sensing connection!
So he probably killed many clones too!
Only, without the mutation brought by the bone ash box, his rate of killing clones would be much slower than Ji Zixuan clone's.
So he may not yet have triggered the main event of this "Ideological Reform"...
While fending off the inner probing voices, Jiang Ye thought about Zhou Qiming and, following his own disposition, deduced what might have happened to that clone.
Suddenly, as if it could guess his thoughts, another voice fell silent.
Out of the quiet, a voice that clearly belonged to Zhou Qiming surfaced.
This voice sounded malicious, sneering with a sinister tone:
"Do you really think you're still Jiang Ye?"
"Do you really think the you who revived is still you?"
"The moment you crawled out of the grave mound and I smashed your head, you were already dead!"
"And the method I used to revive you was neither the effect of 'clone kills clone' nor what you think was the 'Time-Limited Instant Kill'..."
"It was... I revived you, I replaced you!"
"You think you came back to life... but actually, I came back to life!"
"Otherwise, how would the ideological reform meant for Zhou Qiming fall onto you?"
"Because this is my ideological reform! And you are just an interloper who doesn't even notice!"
This Zhou Qiming voice was nothing like the previously questioning Jiang Ye voices; it carried strong hostility and malice.
It was clearly in direct opposition to Jiang Ye!
Before Jiang Ye could think, the attacking voice shouted:
"Now get out of my body! Return my ideological reform to me!"