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Chapter Thirty-Five: Return

"Welcome back."

Zhou Li looked at the four people before him, who still seemed a little dazed, and a hint of emotion flickered in his eyes.

The third group had lost only one person, and... they had finished in less than a day!

Everyone looked at the four of them with eager interest. After all, in the Mist Gathering, smart and reliable companions were incredibly important.

Zhou Li's voice brought them back to reality. However, to everyone's surprise, Li Yuejun, Xu Zhi'an, and Jiang Li all turned to look at Bai Yanliang at the same time.

Li Yuejun looked both delighted and incredulous. "Bai Yanliang, you did it!"

Bai Yanliang glanced around. For some inexplicable reason, everyone was staring at him.

He smiled and said little. "I just got lucky."

It was him!

The newcomer really had solved it!

Bai Yanliang kept his expression unchanged, but he could clearly feel more people's attention turning toward him. Among them... were several gazes that made him want to turn around and find out who they belonged to. Still, he held back.

"Everyone's back, and we have one minute left. Once time's up, the Mist Gathering will force us out. Bai Yanliang, Qi Nian, congratulations on surviving here. Please memorize this string of numbers. We're spread across the country, and we usually keep in touch by phone." As he spoke, Zhou Li recited a string of numbers.

Bai Yanliang silently committed it to memory. Come to think of it, he didn't have a phone yet...

Unlike Bai Yanliang, who remained fairly composed, Qi Nian had only just come around, and still looked dazed.

"We'll get in touch in the real world and share the details of our tasks. That's crucial for understanding the rules of the Mist Gathering. To be honest, everything we know about its rules has been pieced together through one narrow escape after another." Zhou Li's voice was tinged with emotion.

The Mist Gathering wasn't a system. It wouldn't tell them in their minds what they mustn't do or what the rules were. They had learned everything... by paying a terrible price.

Even so, the Mist Gathering remained unfathomable to them. No one knew... what it really was.

"By the way, Mr. Bai, you're from Ye City, aren't you?"

Zhou Li suddenly looked at Bai Yanliang.

Bai Yanliang nodded, unsure what he meant.

Zhou Li smiled and turned toward a corner. "That big star is coming to your city."

A star?

Bai Yanliang followed his gaze. Through the mist, he could make out the vague outline of a woman.

"See you all in a month."

Zhou Li seemed to sense something and hurriedly said it.

He wasn't the only one. Bai Yanliang also felt an immense force pushing them away. At last, he understood what Zhou Li had meant with that strange analogy earlier.

They really were like swimming rings forced underwater. As soon as the force holding them down disappeared, they were immediately pushed back up.

Just like that, Bai Yanliang's vision blurred. The two crimson streaks of light in the gray sky of the Mist Gathering seemed to shift, as if... a pair of eyes were blinking.

When he came to, he was standing in what was clearly a girl's bedroom.

After a quick look around, he realized it must be the room of Yang Wanlong's daughter, who was still in school. He stepped back outside.

"Phew..."

Bai Yanliang sank wearily onto the sofa and glanced at the clock on the wall.

Time hadn't moved forward at all.

Yet he had spent twelve hours in the world of the Mist Space.

The Mist Gathering... what a strange place. It was as if it had pressed pause on the real world and sent them into the past.

No, perhaps it wasn't the real world that had been paused, but only their group.

Bai Yanliang took the key from his pocket and gazed at it in silence.

He knew perfectly well that he was different.

His door hadn't opened by itself. He had unlocked it with a key.

And this old-fashioned key had belonged to Bai Yanren.

"Big brother... just how many secrets were you hiding?"

Bai Yanliang closed his hand around the key, feeling its coldness. For once, a trace of confusion crossed his mind.

He leaned back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling.

His emotions rarely fluctuated, but he was still a normal person.

The bizarre Past World and the vicious, impossible-to-defeat ghosts had suddenly appeared in his life. Though Bai Yanliang hadn't shown it, he still felt deeply exhausted.

Especially... after everything he'd experienced in the Mist Gathering, he could now be certain that Yanren's death had been anything but simple...

Not the kind of mystery he'd imagined while at Ye City Psychiatric Hospital. Yanren's death was connected to something far more profound.

His thoughts swirled like snowflakes in a blizzard. Bai Yanliang closed his eyes, doing his best to enjoy the peace after leaving the bizarre world of the Mist Space.

Creak—

Just then, the door opened.

At the sound, Bai Yanliang sat up and looked toward the entrance. He was about to greet Yang Wanlong when he realized the person there... didn't look like Yang Wanlong.

A girl radiating youthful energy stared at him with wide, round eyes, panic written all over her face.

Bai Yanliang stared back, but it was obvious she'd gotten the wrong idea.

"Ah!!!"

She leaned against the door and screamed.

"Wait..."

"Ah!!!"

"I'm..."

"Ah!!!"

"Please, listen..."

"Ah!!!"

Bai Yanliang gave up. The girl was impossible to reason with; at the moment, it seemed her throat could only produce screams.

"Yang Yiyi!"

Bai Yanliang shouted.

"Uh..."

Her voice cut off as if someone had suddenly grabbed her by the throat. She looked at Bai Yanliang with a strange expression. "Y-you are...? Do you know me?"

Bai Yanliang breathed a huge sigh of relief. Dealing with women was even harder than dealing with ghosts.

He gestured toward his luggage. "I'm a guest of your father's. He went out to buy groceries. If you don't believe me, you can just wait there until he gets back."

Yang Yiyi eyed him suspiciously, still standing at the doorway without coming in. "Y-you're lying. I know all of Dad's friends, but I've never seen you before! What's your name?"

Bai Yanliang realized that the words he said most often were probably his own name.

"Bai Yanliang."

He looked at Yang Yiyi helplessly and repeated the three characters he'd already said several times. "My name is Bai Yanliang."

"White-eyed wolf?"

Yang Yiyi seemed to have misheard him and repeated it without thinking.

Then she suddenly seemed to remember something, her eyes lighting up as she looked at him. "You're Bai Yanliang? Dad's mysterious informant?"

Informant?

Bai Yanliang froze. Yang Wanlong had actually mentioned him to Yang Yiyi? What sort of identity had he given him...?

When Bai Yanliang didn't deny it, Yang Yiyi finally accepted that it was true. Delighted, she rushed inside and tossed down her schoolbag. "Dad said you helped him solve lots of cases!"

Bai Yanliang finally understood what he was to Yang Wanlong.

Over the past few years, whenever Yang Wanlong visited him at the psychiatric hospital, he would sometimes talk about difficult cases. Out of boredom, Bai Yanliang had occasionally shared his own thoughts.

So that was it...