Chapter 259: 1999

"I've been to America once. Their gods seemed to be saying that they started the Ideological Tides, or something like that. In any case, it conflicts quite a bit with the narrative over here." For the sake of Kopan's Sacrificial Knife, he'd had more than his fair share of dealings with those gods.

"So, between these two contradictory claims, which one do you think is the real one?" Tan Yougen asked, crossing his arms.

Zhang Wenda's brow furrowed at the question. 'He wondered what Tan Yougen was getting at.' "What the hell does that have to do with me? I couldn't care less which one is true and which is false. It doesn't make a difference to me."

"You're right, it doesn't have anything to do with you, and it doesn't matter which is true or false. But we *do* have to care. We have to find out what in the world is going on here." Tan Yougen extended a finger and tapped firmly on the paper covered in writing three times. "At any cost."

Upon hearing this, Zhang Wenda's pupils constricted slightly. He had a feeling Tan Yougen was about to reveal something momentous.

"In fact, it's not just America. Africa, Europe, East Asia… there's substantial evidence from all of them proving that they were the ones who caused the Ideological Tides."

"More importantly, after comparing various clues and video footage, we can basically confirm all their claims are true. A single effect, yet there are many different causes. Don't you find that strange?" Having said that, Tan Yougen stood up and went to the window to look outside.

"It's like the branches of seven or eight different trees becoming entangled and bearing only a single fruit."

"What does that prove?"

"It proves that in our world, it's not just the living creatures that have become grotesque, or space that has become grotesque—even history itself has become utterly grotesque. Something is clearly wrong."

When he finished, his expression grew somber. "Perhaps… we were wrong about our comrades at Bureau 749."

Zhang Wenda shook his head forcefully, feeling dizzy from everything he was hearing. "Can you get to the point? I feel like you're getting more and more sidetracked. What exactly was Tang Xingxiong looking for?!"

"She was looking for the source of all this grotesquerie." Tan Yougen's words made Zhang Wenda's heart leap.

Tan Yougen turned his head to look at him. "You've probably never paid any real attention to the slogans on the wall, have you? And I'm guessing you completely look down on the dedication of people like Shuisheng and Wang Xiaohua. You think they're idiots, and you're the clever one."

"But no matter what you think of me, or what you think of Bureau 507, our mission has never changed: to turn this grotesque world back into what it used to be."

Zhang Wenda shot to his feet, heart pounding, and rushed over to the paper. He stared intently at the sheet of white paper covered in numbers. "So Tang Xingxiong found it?!"

He finally understood why Tan Yougen and the others had been so agitated earlier. 'This is about the root cause of everything wrong with the world. It might even determine whether the entire world can be changed back to how it was before.'

"We can't say she found it, exactly. But she spent twelve years in the Big Circle, and her exclusive intelligence provides crucial corroboration and allows us to make certain deductions." Tan Yougen walked over, joining the others to look at the paper filled with numbers.

"Remember how I said earlier that we threw four stones? Three of them made a splash when they hit the lake. Combined with our previous clues, we've managed to gather some limited information about it."

"So what's the thing called?" Zhang Wenda asked.

Tan Yougen's finger slid across the paper, his nail finally stopping on the four digits "1999." "We've checked the records from other continents and countries. No matter how fantastical or ridiculous the claims, the date of birth for all the Ideological Tides is December 1, 1999. So, internally, the Third Line has given it the codename '1999.'"

"1999? The Maya prophecy? The end of the world?" Zhang Wenda stared at Tan Yougen in shock. "What on earth is '1999'?"

Tan Yougen slowly shook his head. "As for what '1999' is, we're not entirely sure what kind of entity it is. But the comrades we've lost over the years have provided us with clues."

"First, we can basically determine that '1999' itself is not purely physical. It exists in a kind of overlapping state of the spiritual and the material, or perhaps it must live in that kind of superimposed environment."

"It's like how we humans need oxygen wherever we go. To make Earth's environment more comfortable for itself, it has turned this place into a superposition of the Spiritual World and the material world."

"That's precisely why our world has become so grotesque and bizarre."

After hearing all this, Zhang Wenda swallowed hard. 'He never imagined that the Third Line, which had always seemed somewhat soft and was constantly being pushed around by the Big Circle, had actually been working this entire time—and had made this much progress.'

'Perhaps, in their eyes, short-term wins and losses meant nothing at all.'

"Wait, if what you're saying is true, does that mean '1999' is some kind of life-form?"

This time, however, Tan Yougen didn't answer. He simply remained silent, his brows tightly locked.

"An extraterrestrial life-form? Did it cause all of this?" Zhang Wenda continued to press.

"Hold on, don't talk. Let me think, let me just think…" Zhang Wenda clutched his head, his brow furrowed so tightly he wouldn't have cared if he scratched it bloody.

The room fell utterly silent. Though there were five people present, it felt as if no one was there at all.

A few minutes later, Zhang Wenda lowered his hands. "If that's really the case, then the place where '1999' lives, or '1999' itself, is more than just a simple overlap of the spiritual and the material."

"It's highly likely that things we see as utterly grotesque are as logical as 1+1=2 to it. Perhaps in its cognition, an object is *supposed* to be observed from thirteen different perspectives. That might be why the world is divided into thirteen Ideological Tides. It might even have thirteen eyes, with each eye being a different angle of observation."

"Or maybe, in the cognition of '1999,' linear history is itself an error. History is *meant* to be chaotic like this, and a single effect is *supposed* to have multiple causes."

As he said this, Zhang Wenda thought about the multiple supposed causes for the Ideological Tides. He also recalled the rule within Ideological Tide No. 13, which allowed for contact between the past and the future.

As for what a being like '1999' would actually look like, his own limited imagination could no longer conjure an image.

In response to Zhang Wenda's speculations, Ouyang Shuangdian finally spoke up. "We've had similar hypotheses about what you're describing. But what '1999' is really like, or whether it's even a living organism, is still uncertain. We can only figure out what it is after we find it."

"So have you found it? Are there any clues as to where '1999' is now?"

And at that very moment, Tan Yougen once again extended his finger and tapped firmly on the paper covered in numbers.