“Who are ‘they’?”

Li Yao was dazed for a moment.

It was not hard to tell that Traveler Meng did not receive a good education. His words were somewhat incoherent, but the straightforward way he wrote attracted Li Yao’s attention immediately.

“When I fell into the reservoir, I struggled hard and choked on a few mouthfuls of water. My body was cold, but I felt that my stomach was on fire. It was extremely uncomfortable.

Dream Traveler wrote, “But very soon, I sank into the depths of darkness. I felt that I was a mosquito that had been embedded in amber for countless years.

“Some people say that, when a person is on the verge of death, their brain cells will go through their last vigorous activity, allowing the memories of a lifetime to flash in front of their eyes like a racing lantern. I was in the same situation at that time. However, what flashed in front of my eyes, other than myself in this life, were my past life and even my past life.

“At that time, I was just a primary school student. I had always lived in the small town of my hometown. At most, I had seen the colorful and bizarre scenes of the big cities from the fuzzy black-and-white televisions. However, when I was entangled in my dying memories, I ‘saw’ myself turn into a well-dressed white-collar worker who was working in the big city’s CBD. In the office, I racked my brains, schemed against each other, and sharpened my head as I climbed upwards—it must be noted that when I was in the third year of primary school, even the capital city and the national metropolises did not have a CBD. And in the white-collar life that I ‘recalled’, there were many details of office politics that a primary school student could never imagine.

“While I was hesitating and confused, the memory suddenly broke apart. I seemed to have become a different person. I was no longer a white-collar elite in the big city of CBD, but a mechanical worker in a certain western resource city. The new ‘memories’ are even weirder. I remember clearly many details about the manufacturing and operation of the machines, as well as the natural style of the western city, including the taste and cooking methods of the local specialties. They were all very unpopular. In the era when transportation was inconvenient and information was scarce, a primary school student living in a third-tier town in the southeast had absolutely no access to relevant information.

“I don’t know if I wrote it clearly enough. Can you understand what I mean?

“That is to say, a third-grade elementary school student, a child no older than ten years old, fell into the reservoir. When he was seriously drowning and on the verge of death, he should have been able to recall the short ten years of his life. But for some reason, I broke through the boundary between ‘previous life’ and ‘this life’ and saw the scenes where I was a white collar of the CBD in my previous life and the scenes where I was a mechanical worker in my previous life. These scenes were incomparably clear, and the delicacies in the scenes were all delicious and flavorful. To this day, I still can’t forget everything that I ‘saw’ at that time, as well as the scent that I ‘smelled’.

“When I woke up and my soul returned to the body of a ten-year-old elementary school student, I found myself lying in bed at home with my mother, who could not cry even if she wanted to. It was not until later that I learned that it had been more than half an hour since I was rescued from the reservoir. My face was blue, and my hands and feet were pale. I had lost my breath a long time ago. It took me more than half a month to save my life, and I didn’t wake up until an entire month later.

“But this is not the end.

“Since then, although my body has recovered, my mind has been in a trance. I can often see things that ordinary people can’t see and hear sounds that ordinary people can’t hear. In the dead of night, when I enter the dream, I often return to the two dreams that I’ve had hundreds of times. Or rather, I return to the memories of my previous life and my previous life.

“As I grew older and my brain gradually matured, the past life and the previous life in the dream became clearer and clearer. I even had a feeling that I was very clear that I was dreaming, and the world in the dream was the world of my previous life and the previous life. This was a ‘clear dream’, and I was a traveler traveling through the dream—the memories of my previous life.

“When I was sixteen, my third dream, which was the memory of my previous life, was awakened.

“It seemed to be a very dark and miserable world. Wars, famine, and chaos were everywhere. Like most people, I bathed in smoke and cannon fire in the army, and after I was wounded and maimed in the battlefield, I returned to the military factories to provide weapons and ammunition for the frontline. Just like that, I lived a bleak life. In the end, a million super-large bombs blossomed in the sky of the planet, and a light that was even more intense than the solar storm cleansed the entire world.

“When my adolescence came to an end, when I was 18 or 19 years old and in my early twenties, I had a total of seven dreams of my previous life. Other than that, there were also some bizarre, mottled dreams that seemed to be wandering in the sea of stars. They were very sci-fi and futuristic. But these strange dreams were not as clear as the memories of my previous life. It was hard to say what they actually meant.

“In short, the memories of my seven lives have something in common:

“Firstly, they all took place on Earth. Although the general trend and the details are different every time, such as the names of countries and cities, the social outlook, and the international political situation, they are basically limited to the 1970s and 1980s to the 1920s and 1930s. The basic language, technology, and civilization are very similar, too.

“Secondly, no matter how hard I tried or how decadent I became in every life, I was unable to change the course of the entire world. In the 21st century, the world went from prosperity to decline, from stability to collapse, from peace to war. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, ozone hollows, glaciers melting, drastic changes in solar activity, mutated plagues, extremism, fanatical politicians wielding nuclear weapons… All of these pushed the entire world to the brink of destruction.

“Thirdly, I don’t know whether it was a coincidence or not, but I remember clearly in every memory of my life that the collapse of the world began after the accidental death of a batch of science fiction, fantasy, and fantasy novelists, cartoonists, movie producers, and game producers. At first, it was the ‘creators’ who used their imagination to create an absurd illusory world. Then, it was the astrophysicists who were more imaginative but not easily understood by the public. Then, it was the scientists in various fields and the cutting-edge scholars who represented the limits of human intelligence… They were like dominoes that had been pushed down. No force could stop their complete collapse.

“If that’s the case, the scenes in my dream cannot be described as ‘past life’.

“Because the memories of my previous life should be one-sided, one-dimensional, and not parallel—my ‘this life’ was born in the 1970s and 1980s, so my previous life should have been born in the early 20th century, and my previous life should have been born in the late 19th century. This is the most reasonable.

“Why do I see seven different ‘me’ in my dreams, appearing on seven Earths that are subtly different but have equally lackluster endings—around the 21st century?

“Since I was ten years old, the question has baffled me for the first half of my life. I tried to find the answer in countless science fiction, philosophy, physics, and absurd books, but to no avail. I can only say that what happened to me is more like a ‘parallel world’ mentioned in some science fiction novels and movies, or even a concept of ‘reincarnation’.

“That is to say, there is not just one Earth, but at least seven—no, eight Earths. The eight Earths are subtly different, but their development paths are generally the same. The Earths that were continuously reincarnating between the 1970s and 1980s to the 1920s and 1930s are like a self-recycling computer game. Every time an Earth is on the verge of destruction in the 1920s and 1930s, it will be ‘rebooted’ back to the 1970s and 1980s, and everyone living on the Earth will have their memories of their previous life erased and enter a new cycle in a brand new posture. As for me, perhaps because the memories of my previous life were not completely erased, and also because I woke up from the extreme near-death experience of drowning, I actually saw the scene of the previous cycle and the previous cycle.”

“I don’t know why this is happening. What is the significance of such a ‘reincarnation’? I only know that it is not far away from the end of our cycle, because the creators of the fantasy worlds in our world are gradually dying, too. This is the horn of doom.

“Yes, you can say that it was all my nonsense and the imagination of a neurasthenic. But before you mock and attack me, take five minutes to think about it and look at the other answers below the question. I’m not the only one who has encountered such a weird ‘supernatural event’. Thousands of other people have experienced weird things that science cannot explain.

“Even you, who are reading the threads, don’t have similar experiences?

“Tell me, have you ever been to a completely strange place, only to vaguely remember the nearby streets and sceneries as if you had been here in your ‘past life’?

“Did you do something or say something, only to feel that the same thing had been done or said somewhere else?

“Have you ever seen a stranger who suddenly gave you a very familiar feeling, as if you used to have a very close relationship, but in fact, you never had any interactions with him, unless it was… in your previous life?

“Do you ever feel that you’ve lost countless important days in your life? Do you feel that many of the memories that you had at that time are mottled and hazy? Do you feel that you’ve forgotten the most important things in your life?