Wang Jiajia naturally didn't have as many thoughts as I did.
She sincerely called the real world the Pure Land, and hinted at her wish to go there.
"...There's no such thing as reincarnation where we come from. When you die, you become a ghost. If a ghost is killed, it disappears completely. My father and my other relatives all searched for a way into your world while they were alive. I don't know if anyone ever succeeded... Maybe someone did, but never came back. If I could cross over and enter your cycle of reincarnation, I could start over." Wang Jiajia's eyes shone as she spoke.
She was sincere about this, too.
I didn't know how she understood reincarnation, or whether she knew that after reincarnation, a person's memories vanished completely—that it was a true fresh start.
Her eyes were pleading again, but this time she wasn't begging me to spare her.
"Traitor!" the child shouted beside us.
He'd used that word before.
"You know about reincarnation, too?" I'd gained a whole new understanding of the future world, and my heart felt heavy.
If people in the future world knew about the real world—not just the Ghost Kings, but ordinary people as well—then we truly lagged far behind them. We knew nothing about ghosts, nothing about their invasion, and nothing about what was happening on their side. We didn't even know they'd already gathered so much information, however outdated it might be. They seemed not to know that the underworld had disappeared.
The child snorted and didn't answer my question, but his silence was as good as an admission that he knew about reincarnation.
"That's a lie!" the child cried out again, unable to hold back. "You don't start over after you die. What would that even mean? It's