I felt a pounding headache.
After the headache came a blinding light.
It wasn't firelight. It was white light—the sunlight.
I saw the scene before me.
Li Moqian's remains were still sitting across from me, leaning against the wall, her head tilted to one side.
It was as if nothing had ever happened.
I hadn't seen what happened when Li Moqian was kidnapped. I hadn't tried to save her, and the kidnappers hadn't gone mad and set fire to the shantytown as a result.
I gasped for breath, feeling my heart pound wildly and erratically. I could feel beads of sweat sliding down my body. Each drop felt like a knife's edge scraping across my skin.
I closed my eyes for a moment. After a long while, I suddenly realized something.
Li Moqian had stopped making a sound.
I thought of the moment when Li Moqian had knelt on the second floor.
I felt a little panicked, and my heart ached for her.
I knew how tormenting guilt and self-reproach could be. I'd been upset for a long time over what happened at the film studio. If Skinny and the others hadn't stayed by my side, and Gu Mo and Nangong Yao hadn't casually tried to comfort me, I wouldn't have recovered from that state so quickly.
But Li Moqian had no one.
She... might have gained three sets of memories, too.
I'd realized that I'd changed the past, only to make the original "past" return. Li Moqian had been killed twice. The only time she'd come close to surviving, other people had been dragged into it and burned to death.
If she were selfish, she would probably be furious and resent me for not saving her. But she didn't seem like that kind of person. All these years, she...