The Game of All Beings

Chapter One: The Last Sunset

When the morning light crept through the gap in the curtains and fell upon Shen Yue's pillow, he was dreaming he was a blacksmith.

The furnace was blazing hot, the sword blank on the anvil glowing a transparent orange-red. He raised his hammer, ready to strike the seventy-third blow—this number was crystal clear in his mind, for he had forged over a thousand swords, and each one required a full three hundred strikes. The hammer fell, sparks flew in all directions, and the blade hummed with satisfaction.

Then he woke up.

His mother's arms cradled him, warm milk dripping from her breast onto the corner of his mouth. He wanted to open his mouth and suckle, but found his lips had already grown accustomed to being closed—a three-month-old infant shouldn't consciously refuse food, but he did. He possessed the consciousness of three hundred years.

This was the daily reality for a reincarnated soul.

Shen Yue didn't cry. He had long ago learned not to cry at birth. Crying was instinct, but instinct could be suppressed. He used the willpower accumulated over three centuries to control his throat, quietly swallowing the milk, his eyes fixed—past his mother's shoulder—on that c***k in the ceiling.

That c***k looked like a sword.

A sword from a past life.

He recalled a similar c***k in the beam of that blacksmith's forge. That day, as he was forging a sword, on the seventy-third blow, the beam snapped, the forge collapsed, and he was buried under the rubble, only to be dug out three days later.

And then he died, right here, becoming a newborn.

"Good child," his mother whispered, holding him closer. "Doesn't cry or fuss, so easy to care for."

Shen Yue closed his eyes. He couldn't count how many times he'd heard that phrase. Too many to bother.

——

This world didn't have calendars.

Not because they lacked a concept of time, but because time itself wasn't important. Someone who'd lived three hundred years and someone who'd lived thirty had completely different perceptions of what "a year" meant. Reincarnated souls marked time by events—a particular war, a specific plague, a certain period of darkness.

Shen Yue marked time by "blank slates."

The last time he'd seen one was forty-seven years ago. A girl, born into an ordinary family east of the city. Twenty-four hours after her birth, there were no signs of residual past-life memories—her pupils showed no contraction response to specific light frequencies, her sleeping brainwaves were pure sine waves, and when awake, her eyes held nothing but emptiness.

True blankness.

Shen Yue knew that look. An ordinary infant, looking at you with nothing behind the eyes. Not assessing you, not comparing you, not connecting you to some acquaintance from three centuries past. Just looking.

That look both frightened and fascinated him.

He was seventy-three in that life, a fisherman. He was rowing his boat past the eastern riverbank when he saw a crowd gathered on the shore. Someone shouted, "A blank slate! It's a blank slate!"

He docked his boat and pushed through the crowd, and saw the girl.

She was cradled in her mother's arms, eyes wide open, watching the clouds in the sky. The clouds moved, and her eyes followed. Pure curiosity, curiosity untainted by any knowledge.

Standing in that crowd, Shen Yue suddenly felt dirty.

Not physically dirty, but memory dirty. Three hundred years of memories clung to his soul like a thick layer of grime, coating everything he saw. When he looked at clouds, he thought: last time I saw clouds was a hundred and twenty years ago, it rained that day, I got soaked, caught pneumonia, and died.

He couldn't just see clouds.

But she could.

What became of that girl later? He didn't know. By unspoken rule, information about blank slates was protected—not by law, but by social consensus. People didn't deliberately inquire about the whereabouts of a blank slate, because inquiring implied you had designs. And those with designs tended to disappear quickly.

Shen Yue had lived too long, seen too many disappear.

He understood one principle: in this world, curiosity could kill.

——

Shen Yue's name in this life was Shen Yue.

He'd chosen it because in his previous life he was called Zhang Wei. He'd used Zhang Wei seven times and was tired of it. There was a trick to picking a new name: couldn't be too distinctive, or you'd be remembered; couldn't be too common, or you wouldn't react when called. Shen Yue was a compromise—sounded like a scholar's name, but not too conspicuous.

He was seventeen now.

Seventeen meant he'd been playing dumb for seventeen years. He had to pretend he didn't know one plus one equals two, had to pretend he was scared the first time he saw fire, had to pretend he couldn't read, had to look enlightened when his mother taught him the character for "person."

"Person," his mother said, pointing at the flashcard. "Like a person standing, two legs."

Shen Yue nodded, showing a guileless smile.

He'd known that character for three hundred years. He also knew oracle bone script, bronze script, small seal script, clerical script. He knew seven scripts, three of which nobody used anymore.

But he couldn't say so.

If he did, he'd be erased.

Not death—something more final than death. He'd seen people who'd been erased—or rather, he'd seen the blank spaces they left behind. A neighbour, old Zhou, who liked playing chess in the evenings. One day Shen Yue passed his house and found the door open, the room empty.

He asked someone: "Where's Old Zhou?"

The person looked blank: "Who's Old Zhou?"

Shen Yue froze. He knew Old Zhou, had played chess with him, Old Zhou loved tea, had a daughter, Old Zhou——

Then he realized he couldn't recall Old Zhou's face anymore.

After only three days, Old Zhou had vanished completely from his memory. He tried desperately to remember, could only recall the words "Old Zhou" and a vague feeling—as if this person had been important, important enough not to forget.

That was erasure.

Vanishing from everyone's memory. Vanishing from all records. Vanishing from the fundamental logic of the world. As if they'd never existed.

Shen Yue didn't want to be erased.

So he'd played dumb for seventeen years, and would have to keep doing so.

——

That evening, Shen Yue sat on the city wall, watching the sunset.

The sun was sinking in the west, setting half the sky ablaze with orange-red. The clouds were tinged with gold, purple, deep crimson, piled in layers to the horizon. The river below the wall reflected the evening glow, shattered into a million shimmering scales.

Shen Yue narrowed his eyes.

He'd seen too many sunsets. Every reincarnation, he watched them, and each one was both different and the same. The clouds varied infinitely, but the fact of sunset remained constant. The sun would set, the sky would darken, tomorrow would dawn.

But would tomorrow truly dawn?

The periods of darkness were becoming more frequent lately.

Three months ago, there'd been one lasting a full two days. The sun didn't rise, the sky just stayed black, blacker than anything. Not like night—night had stars, the moon, a little light. This was true blackness, lightless blackness, as if trapped under a giant pot.

Those two days, no one dared go out.

Shen Yue stayed indoors, lamp lit, listening to the silence outside. No wind, no insects, no sound at all. The whole world seemed dead.

After two days, the sun reappeared, but everyone felt something had changed.

The days had shortened.

Not metaphorically—literally shortened. Daytime was about an hour shorter than before, and the sun sat lower in the sky. The authorities blamed atmospheric refraction anomalies, but Shen Yue didn't believe it. He'd lived too long, seen the sun too many times. He knew where it should be.

The sun was falling.

Or rather, the world was shrinking inward.

Shen Yue recalled a rumour—something he'd overheard in one of his lives. The man who said it was a Wall Breaker, or claimed to be, drunk in a tavern, rambling to a few strangers.

"You know what the periods of darkness are?" the man had said. "They're the world shrinking. Every time it goes dark, the boundary contracts a little more. The places swallowed by darkness aren't gone—they've been folded up. The people are still there, still reincarnating, but they can never get out. Trapped forever in the darkness, the living dead."

Nobody believed him then.

The next day, that man vanished.

Not erased—vanished. No one remembered what he'd said, what he looked like, that he'd ever existed. The only reason Shen Yue still remembered was that he'd drunk less that day, and he had a compulsion—he deliberately noted strange things, wrote them down, hid them where only he could find.

He went back to check his notes. The notes were still there, but the description of that man had become a blank. The words remained, but combined into meaningless symbols. He stared for a long time, suddenly unable to recall why he'd written them.

That was the trace of erasure.

Even the reason erased.

——

"What are you doing here all alone?"

Shen Yue turned. A girl stood behind him.

She looked about fifteen or sixteen, in ordinary cotton clothes, hair casually tied back, eyes very bright. The setting sun lit her face, giving her skin a warm, glowing tint.

Instinctively, Shen Yue began scanning.

It was a reincarnated soul's instinct—meeting a stranger, first determine if they're another reincarnate. Look at the eyes, the posture, the micro-expressions. A reincarnate's eyes held something, sediment from too many experiences, impossible to hide.

But this girl's eyes held nothing.

Clean.

Utterly clean.

Shen Yue's heart skipped a beat.

"Are you......" he began, then stopped.

The girl tilted her head, looking at him. "I'm Lin Xiaohé, I live west of the city. And you?"

"Shen Yue."

"Shen Yue." She repeated it, nodded. "That's a nice name."

"Thanks," Shen Yue said, his mind racing. A blank slate. She had to be. Those eyes couldn't lie, no trace of past-life residue. But why was she here alone? Shouldn't blank slates be protected?

Lin Xiaohé walked over, sat beside him on the wall, legs dangling over the edge.

"Do you like watching sunsets?" she asked.

"Mm."

"Why?"

Shen Yue thought about it, unsure how to answer. He watched sunsets out of habit, because he did in every reincarnation, because it was one of the few times he could legitimately space out. But he couldn't say that.

"They're pretty," he said.

Lin Xiaohé laughed. "I think so too."

She looked at the sun, light in her eyes. Pure appreciation, without comparison, without recollection, without sentiment. Just watching, finding it beautiful.

Shen Yue watched her, and felt something strange.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd simply watched a sunset.

Maybe never. From his very first memory, he'd carried memories. From his first**, he'd known who he was. He didn't know what "first" felt like—first seeing fire, first hearing rain, first liking someone.

He didn't know.

But she did.

"What do you usually do?" Shen Yue asked.

"Play," Lin Xiaohé said. "Play everywhere. My dad says I'm like a stray cat, can't be tied down."

"Your dad......"

"Dead." She said it calmly. "Died last year. My mum too. Both dead."

Shen Yue was silent. Last year there'd been a plague, many dead. More deaths than births, but it didn't trigger the Purge—the rules had changed, no longer about simple numbers, but about something called "instability." He didn't understand those things, only knew that after that plague, many people disappeared.

Lin Xiaohé survived.

Blank slates had stronger immunity than reincarnates, scientifically proven—their immune systems weren't confused by past-life memories, reacted more purely. But it meant she was now an orphan.

"You live alone?" Shen Yue asked.

"Mm." Lin Xiaohé nodded. "The old lady next door brings me food. And I can catch fish myself."

She pointed at the river below the wall. "I catch fish there. With my hands, no net."

Shen Yue imagined the scene: a girl, barefoot in the river, bent over, hands in the water, waiting for a fish to swim by. Sunlight on her back, water droplets sparkling.

A scene he'd never experienced.

He'd never caught a fish with his bare hands. He'd caught them with spears, with nets, with rods—tried every method over three centuries. But he'd never had a "first time" catching a fish.

Suddenly, he desperately wanted to know what that felt like.

"Tomorrow I'll come catch fish too," he said.

Lin Xiaohé glanced at him, eyes crinkling. "Can you?"

"No," Shen Yue said. "You teach me."

"All right."

The sun sank completely. The last ray vanished below the horizon, the sky deepening to blue, stars beginning to appear.

Lin Xiaohé stood, dusted off her clothes. "I should go back. The old lady next door will worry if I'm too late."

"I'll walk you."

"No need, I know the way."

She took a few steps, then turned back. "Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow."

Shen Yue watched her figure disappear into the dusk, then sat alone on the city wall, watching the stars for a long time.

He didn't know if tomorrow would come.

The periods of darkness were coming more frequently. Maybe tomorrow the sun wouldn't rise. Maybe this world would keep shrinking until it folded him and everyone else into darkness. Maybe the gods, when he made some particular choice, would erase him, making him vanish from everyone's memory.

Maybe.

But tomorrow, he still wanted to go catch fish.

Not because he wanted to learn, but because he wanted to watch that girl catch fish. Wanted to see her expression when she caught her first one. Wanted to see her smile.

It was the first impulse like this he'd had in three hundred years.

He didn't know if it was dangerous.

He only knew that a moment ago, he'd felt a sudden chill—as if pierced by countless gazes simultaneously.

He looked up at the sky.

Nothing there.

But the stars seemed to flicker.