In truth, there had been signs of it long ago.
Ji Li stood inside Room 301, even as the Time Ghost stood before him, his hand clamped around its throat.
Beyond the corridor, faint voices and footsteps could still be heard.
The Seventh Branch was hardly quiet. By the closing stages of the Tenth Supervision Event, the people here had long since returned to their usual routines.
Earlier, the entire branch had been empty of both people and ghosts. Looking back now, that alone had shown that the Time Ghost had completed its invasion. He simply did not know whether it had invaded Ji Li or the hotel.
Everything was over. This mission, which concerned Ji Li alone, was half complete.
Behind the shattered glass, the Time Ghost's sheen slowly faded, like an old stone wall weathering away at an accelerated pace, becoming a heap of ashes that should have scattered long ago.
The wedding gown he had long grown sick of seeing faded and rotted along with the ghost at a visible speed, finally dissolving into a puddle of sludge.
"Sizzle!"
The glass he had seen with his own eyes for the first time—the Ghost Bride's picture frame—had already been punched through by Ji Li. Cracks spread across it like a spiderweb until it shattered with a crash.
The Time Ghost shattered along with it, still covered by the Red Veil.
It was finally gone. It was finally over.
The heart that had been missing for an entire night returned to where it belonged, drawing in a living man's blood and restoring proper circulation, bringing with it a rhythmic heartbeat.
Ji Li's eyes reddened slightly as he gazed at the wreckage strewn across Room 301. At that moment, every sound vanished, and the world sank into the deathly silence