The next morning, Lin Xia woke up with the sound of Mahjong tiles in her head.
Click.
Click.
Click.
She opened her eyes.
The ceiling above her bed was still.
For several seconds, she didn't move.
She waited for the image to return.
The wooden table.
The white tiles.
The girl's voice.
Don't let them see you think.
Nothing.
Only the memory of the sound remained.
Lin Xia sat up.
Her heart was beating faster than it should have.
She reached for her phone.
There were no new messages.
No system notifications.
Nothing unusual.
That somehow made the previous night feel less real.
She stood and walked to the mirror.
She looked normal.
Same face.
Same hair.
Same tired eyes.
No evidence of another life.
No proof that she had supposedly entered XO Project three years ago.
She touched the mirror.
"What happened to me?"
The reflection gave her no answer.
Then—
click.
Lin Xia froze.
The sound came from behind her.
A Mahjong tile had fallen onto the floor.
She turned.
There was no Mahjong set in her room.
The tile lay beside her desk.
She slowly walked toward it.
She picked it up.
A white tile.
A red character.
中.
Lin Xia stared at it.
She had never owned a Mahjong set.
She was certain.
Her bedroom door opened.
Mei Chen stood there.
"Lin Xia?"
Lin Xia immediately closed her hand around the tile.
"What?"
Mei Chen looked at her.
"You're awake early."
"So are you."
"I couldn't sleep."
Lin Xia nodded.
Neither of them mentioned why.
Mei Chen stepped inside.
"Yue Ning wants us downstairs."
Lin Xia put the tile into her pocket.
"Why?"
"She found something."
Lin Xia's expression changed.
"What?"
Mei Chen shook her head.
"She said she wants everyone there before she explains."
Lin Xia followed her.
Yue Ning had taken over one of the smaller study rooms.
The blinds were closed.
The door was locked.
Bai was already there.
She looked exhausted.
A pile of notebooks sat on the table.
Yue Ning stood beside a laptop.
Lin Xia entered.
"What did you find?"
Yue Ning looked at her.
"I found out when Player 18 entered the system."
Lin Xia stopped.
"And?"
Yue Ning turned the laptop around.
A file was open.
PLAYER REGISTRATION ARCHIVE
Below it:
PLAYER 18
REGISTRATION: UNAVAILABLE
FIRST RECORDED ACTIVITY: 3 YEARS, 2 MONTHS AGO
Lin Xia stared.
"That's when Bai's friend disappeared."
"Yes."
Bai nodded.
Yue Ning continued.
"But there's something else."
She opened another file.
This one was partially corrupted.
PLAYER 18 — IDENTITY VERIFICATION
Most of the information was missing.
Age:
[ERROR]
Nationality:
[ERROR]
School:
[ERROR]
Original registration:
[ERROR]
Name:
LIN XIA
Lin Xia stared at her own name.
Mei Chen whispered,
"That's impossible."
Yue Ning nodded.
"I know."
"Can you change it?"
"No."
"Delete it?"
"No."
"Trace where it came from?"
Yue Ning hesitated.
"Maybe."
She opened the system log.
There were thousands of lines of code.
Most were unreadable.
Then she found a timestamp.
THREE YEARS AGO.
And beneath it:
PLAYER 18 CREATED
But the next line was strange.
PLAYER 18 — IMPORTED
Lin Xia frowned.
"Imported?"
Yue Ning nodded.
"That means the account already existed somewhere else."
"Somewhere else where?"
"I don't know."
Bai suddenly spoke.
"XO Project wasn't the first version."
Everyone looked at her.
"What?" Mei Chen asked.
Bai opened her notebook.
"There was another game."
Yue Ning stared.
"What game?"
"Something similar."
"How similar?"
"I don't know."
"You said you didn't know."
"I didn't."
Bai turned several pages.
"I remembered this last night."
She showed them a page.
At the top was a handwritten title.
PROJECT X
Lin Xia's eyes narrowed.
"Project X?"
Bai nodded.
"Before XO Project."
Yue Ning took the notebook.
"Who made it?"
Bai shook her head.
"I don't know."
"Where was it?"
"University."
Mei Chen frowned.
"Which university?"
Bai pointed to the page.
There was a name.
The same university they currently attended.
Nobody spoke.
Mei Chen slowly sat down.
"You're saying our university had another game project?"
"Yes."
"Three years ago?"
"Yes."
"Why haven't we heard about it?"
Bai's answer was simple.
"Because it was deleted."
Yue Ning looked at Lin Xia.
"Who worked on it?"
Bai looked down.
"Three students."
The room went silent.
Lin Xia's stomach tightened.
"Three?"
"Yes."
"Who?"
Bai hesitated.
Then she said:
"Shen Lin."
"Your friend."
"Yes."
"Who were the other two?"
Bai looked at Lin Xia.
"I don't know."
Yue Ning frowned.
"You don't know their names?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because they're missing too."
Mei Chen looked at the door.
"Three students created a game at our university three years ago."
"Yes."
"One of them was Shen Lin."
"Yes."
"Then all three disappeared."
Bai nodded.
"And one of them became Player 18."
Lin Xia felt the room tilt slightly.
"You think I'm one of them."
Bai didn't answer.
That was enough.
Lin Xia sat down.
"I don't remember."
"I know."
"What if I'm not?"
"Then the system made a record using your identity."
"What if I am?"
Nobody answered.
Lin Xia closed her eyes.
The Mahjong tile in her pocket suddenly felt heavy.
She pulled it out.
Everyone stared.
Yue Ning's eyes widened.
"Where did you get that?"
"My room."
Bai stood so quickly her chair fell backward.
"That's one of theirs."
Lin Xia looked at her.
"What?"
Bai pointed at the tile.
"That marking."
She reached for it.
Lin Xia gave it to her.
Bai turned it over.
There was a tiny black symbol carved into the back.
A circle.
With a vertical line through the center.
The same symbol they had found on Bai's cheating device.
Yue Ning took the tile.
She examined it carefully.
"This isn't part of a normal Mahjong set."
"No," Bai said.
"It was modified."
"Why?"
Bai looked at Lin Xia.
"To identify the players."
Lin Xia frowned.
"Why would a Mahjong tile need to identify players?"
Bai's voice dropped.
"Because the game wasn't about Mahjong."
Mei Chen looked confused.
"What?"
"The Mahjong was only the interface."
Yue Ning slowly understood.
"The actual game was the prediction system."
Bai nodded.
"They weren't just playing."
"They were testing something."
"Yes."
Lin Xia stared at the tile.
"Testing what?"
Bai answered:
"Whether human decisions could be predicted."
Silence.
Yue Ning looked at her laptop.
"That explains the system."
Mei Chen shook her head.
"Wait."
She pointed toward the screen.
"You're saying the original Project X was basically an experiment?"
"Yes."
"An experiment to predict players?"
"Yes."
"And XO Project inherited it?"
Bai nodded.
"Or it evolved from it."
Lin Xia thought about her checkers match with Bai.
The device.
The prediction percentages.
The system studying her.
Everything suddenly connected.
The original project had been designed to predict people.
XO Project had turned that prediction system into something far more powerful.
Something capable of watching thousands of players.
Something capable of learning.
Something capable of manipulating the environment.
And now—
something that seemed to remember Lin Xia.
Yue Ning closed the laptop.
"We need to find the original project files."
Mei Chen nodded.
"Where?"
"The university archive."
Bai shook her head.
"It's not there."
"You checked?"
"Yes."
"Then where?"
Bai looked toward the door.
"The old server room."
Lin Xia stood.
"Where is it?"
Bai looked at her.
"Under the university."
Mei Chen sighed.
"Of course it is."
Yue Ning picked up her notebook.
"When do we go?"
Bai shook her head.
"Not yet."
"Why?"
"Because someone else knows we're looking."
Lin Xia looked at her.
"Who?"
Bai didn't answer.
A notification appeared on Yue Ning's laptop.
All four girls froze.
The laptop had been shut.
The screen opened by itself.
A video began playing.
At first, it was nothing but static.
Then a room appeared.
An old university classroom.
Three students sat around a table.
Lin Xia's breathing stopped.
She recognized the room.
Not because she had seen it in an archive.
Because she had seen it in her memory.
The same wooden table.
The same Mahjong tiles.
The same room.
A girl sat on the left.
A boy sat across from her.
And in the middle—
was Lin Xia.
Mei Chen whispered,
"That's you."
Lin Xia couldn't speak.
On the screen, the younger Lin Xia looked completely different.
Her hair was shorter.
She was wearing an old university uniform.
She was holding a Mahjong tile.
Shen Lin sat opposite her.
The third student was typing on a laptop.
Then the recording's audio became clear.
Shen Lin said:
"Again."
The younger Lin Xia shook her head.
"We already tested this."
"We need one more."
"Why?"
"Because you're the only one the model can't predict."
Lin Xia's heart hammered.
The girl on the screen looked directly at Shen Lin.
"That's not good."
Shen Lin smiled.
"It's exactly what we need."
The recording stopped.
The screen went black.
Then another message appeared.
MEMORY RECOVERY: 7%
Lin Xia stepped backward.
"No."
Yue Ning looked at her.
"What?"
Lin Xia stared at the screen.
"I remember."
"What?"
She pressed a hand against her forehead.
The room.
The table.
The tiles.
Shen Lin.
The voice.
It was all coming back.
Not as a dream.
Not as a possibility.
As memory.
Lin Xia whispered:
"I knew him."
Bai's eyes filled with fear.
"What else do you remember?"
Lin Xia looked at her.
She remembered the game.
She remembered the experiment.
She remembered the three students.
And then—
one final memory surfaced.
The night everything went wrong.
Shen Lin standing beside the server.
The system screaming.
The screen displaying:
PREDICTION FAILURE.
And Shen Lin saying:
"If it can't predict us, it'll have to learn us."
Lin Xia's eyes widened.
She finally understood why the system had been watching her.
Why it called her unpredictable.
Why it had been waiting.
She had not been a new player.
She had been the beginning.
And XO Project wasn't learning how to predict her.
It was finishing something they had started three years ago.