“Doomsday Loop: Prohibition of the Fourth Day”

When Lin Chuan woke, the first sensation wasn’t delay. It wasn’t noise.

It was—
emptiness.

Everything in the room was in its place. The sunlight outside was normal. The time displayed clearly. Yet his mind felt hollow, like a chunk had been removed.

He tried to recall what had happened after midnight yesterday.

Nothing.

Not a hazy, forgotten memory, but something that had never existed.

As if that period had never been permitted to be written.

He instinctively glanced at the mirror.

This time, the reflection was completely in sync. No delay.

No synchronization rate appeared.

Instead, along the edge of the mirror, a nearly invisible gray line ran, like a deliberately blurred border.

He reached out to touch it.

The instant his fingertips met the glass, a sudden, violent vertigo struck.

Not pain, but a loss of direction.

Up, down, front, back, inside, outside—all scrambled in a single instant.

Lin Chuan stumbled back, hitting the bed frame, barely regaining his balance.

He understood the rule of the fourth day.

It wasn’t a restriction of movement.
It was a prohibition on approaching the “boundary.”

Outside, the city seemed unusually “clean.”

Billboards no longer flickered; signals were full and clear; intersections displayed unambiguous instructions; people’s expressions were calm, their steps uniform.

Like a model city that had been perfectly calibrated.

But the more orderly it looked, the more Lin Chuan knew—
Something was being hidden.

He tried approaching several locations where anomalies had appeared before.

At the first intersection, the construction barricade had vanished; the road was straight and clear.
At the second subway station, announcements were complete, uninterrupted.
That old building—

Gone.

Not demolished.

As if erased from the city map.

Navigation showed nothing but green space, and pedestrians naturally avoided the area, as if the building had never existed.

Lin Chuan stood across the street, staring at the empty space, his chest tightening.

The core had been cut off.

At noon, he encountered Zhou Wan again.

This time, she didn’t approach him.

She stood in the crowd, but as if behind an invisible glass. Their eyes met, and she flinched slightly before quickly looking away.

Lin Chuan stepped toward her.

Every step felt like approaching a warning line.

When he was about three meters away, his vision began to darken at the edges.

Not black.

But information missing.

Zhou Wan’s outline in that area became incomplete, like a frame that had been partially erased.

She finally spoke, voice low:

“Don’t come closer.”

“Why?”

“Because the me you see now… is no longer complete.”

Lin Chuan stopped.

“Where is the complete you?”

Zhou Wan looked at him, eyes showing real fear for the first time.

“In the place they won’t let you go.”

At that moment, he understood the cruelty of the fourth day.

It wasn’t just a ban on entering certain locations.
It was—
A prohibition on verifying the authenticity of a person.

As long as he couldn’t confirm,
the world could replace them at will.

The synchronization rate briefly flashed, then disappeared.

He only caught a single number—

79%.

Far below the threshold of day three.

Yet the world applied no pressure.

No hum. No delay.

This meant—
He had been silently deemed “safely removed from the core.”

Lin Chuan suddenly realized their real strategy.

No need to erase him.
No need to overwrite him.

Just make sure he could never touch the truth again.

By evening, the sky returned to normal blue.

Too normal.

Clouds aligned almost mathematically; the sunset’s color temperature was perfectly stable, as if calculated.

Lin Chuan stood on a pedestrian bridge, watching the “optimized” city below.

He murmured:

“If the core is prohibited, then—
it still exists.”

This time, no response.

As if the world had chosen to pretend it didn’t hear.

23:59.

The last minute of the fourth day.

He closed his eyes, didn’t check the time, didn’t look for hints.

He only remembered Zhou Wan’s almost-suppressed words—

“The complete me.”

When the second hand hit zero, a faint, almost imperceptible line of text flashed at the edge of his vision:

[Day Five: Replacement Allowed]

Lin Chuan opened his eyes, breathing evenly.

He knew, starting tomorrow,
Even “who someone is” would no longer be safe.