Ji Li still did not know that the identity behind the tenth door was Ruru.
Just a minute earlier, the face displayed on the door had belonged to Xiao Qian Duyue, a beautiful young woman whose eyes were missing.
The instant he pushed the door open, several shadows seemed to flit across his vision, passing before him one after another, only to vanish in a flash like hallucinations.
Once he had stepped fully inside, he saw something that should not have been there, right in the middle of the hundred-square-meter Dark Room he knew all too well.
Ji Li's expression changed drastically at the sight. Almost instinctively, he took half a step back, then forced himself to stop.
His eyes held an uncomprehending fear of the past, mingled with an unbearable longing.
The four Stone Pillars still stood in the Dark Room behind the tenth door, but the room was no longer empty. In its center stood another Stone Pillar as thick as an arm—or perhaps a stone pedestal.
Its construction resembled a slender column topped with a recess slightly larger than a fist.
Long-dried trails of blood ran down the Stone Pillar, almost entirely obscuring its original color.
At first glance, there was nothing special about the recess. Only a curved outline around its edge stood out, as though something had left an impression there that even the passage of time could not erase.
Ji Li knew this thing all too well. He had seen it with his own eyes.
More precisely, he had seen it in the past within a dream.
Now, one of the seven had appeared in the first manager mission after the reset!
An unprecedented storm swept through Ji Li's heart at the sight, and familiar faces surfaced before his eyes, one after another, beyond