Rose Manor (16): Clues Converge

In the second-floor guest room, Ye Zi's corpse slumped slowly to the floor, her eyes wide open in a final, uncomprehending stare.

She had died without ever understanding how Zou Yan had managed to kill her in a scenario where "only ghosts can kill humans."

Zou Yan retracted her right hand. Her originally fair arm was now covered in ugly, vine-like patterns, with plant tendrils occasionally burrowing out from beneath her skin, blooming into tiny, blood-stained flower buds.

The process of ghost-transformation, however, was confined solely to her arm. At her shoulder, an iron ring clamped down on her muscles, preventing the vines from spreading any further.

[Name: Barrier Ring]

[Type: Prop]

[Effect: Slows the progression of supernatural corruption]

[Note: Faced with a predetermined ending, what use are fear and hesitation?]

Zou Yan's goal had been different from the other players from the very beginning; she had come here to find something specific.

Now that the task was complete, it was time to end this scenario.

Two people were already dead; she only needed to kill one more...

Zou Yan pushed the door open and walked toward the room at the very end of the hall.

She remembered that Lin Chen, who was staying inside, was a newcomer.

In the third-floor room, wisps of blood-red color began to spread from Qi Si's fingertips, entangling him within a few breaths.

He opened his mouth, but upon discovering he could not make a sound, he decisively gave up struggling. With a listless expression, he allowed the blood threads to crawl over his entire body, weaving a red spiderweb across his skin.

Outside the door, vines grew wildly, surging through the door gap one after another, crowding in until they occupied every corner of the room.

Objective time seemed to have frozen at this moment. Chang Xu remained in his hunched posture by the bedside. Dust particles hung suspended in the air, casting tiny shadows upon the floor.

A thin layer of pale pink veiled his vision, the light dimmed, and the surrounding scene yellowed and curled like an old photograph caught in a fire.

Within the dim, flickering light and shadow, phantom images appeared. Almost the moment he saw them, Qi Si grasped their meaning.

Strange knowledge was poured into his mind, instantly becoming familiar, as if it had always existed in the depths of his memory, only to be awakened at this very moment...

A torrential rain fell outside the ancient castle.

In an attic piled high with clutter, a girl with a red birthmark on her face fell to the floor. The door slammed shut before her eyes, the final sliver of light narrowing into a line before vanishing into the darkness.

The girl did not cry or make a fuss, as if she were long accustomed to such treatment. She simply leaned against the corner of the wall, quietly listening to the footsteps outside fade away.

She did not know how much time had passed when a faint glimmer appeared in the darkness. Like a shadow creature startled by the light, she looked timidly toward the source.

There, amidst the dusty pile of debris, sat a small Idol, glowing with a soft, ethereal light as if bathed in the mist of dawn.

Carved from stone, the Idol's face was exquisite, possessing a beauty that was soul-stirring.

It held its hands cupped against its chest, its lowered eyes fixed upon a blood-red rose carved from gemstones—evil, peaceful, and compassionate all at once.

Driven by an inexplicable impulse, the girl picked up the Idol and held it before her, gazing at it with near-obsessive devotion.

In a trance, she heard the voice of the god.

The god asked, "I can feel your pain. Do you wish to pray to me?"

The girl had long since despaired of her future, and at that moment, she felt not a shred of fear toward the unknown.

She smiled bitterly and countered, "What use is prayer? I was born ugly. They say I am the reincarnation of a demon; perhaps my very existence is a mistake."

The god said, "Beauty and ugliness, good and evil—all are sentient beings. If you crave beauty, plant roses throughout this attic. From now on, everything shall be as you wish."

The girl agreed to the god's bargain. For countless nights that followed, she snuck out of the castle to steal rose cuttings from the garden, bringing them to the attic, filling the gaps in the floorboards with soil, and planting the stems within.

Her hands were shredded by the rose thorns, covered in wounds, but whenever she thought of how soon she would become beautiful, she forgot all her exhaustion and pain.

She remembered the candies her sister had given her when she was young, and the stories she had told—that was her first understanding of familial love, which gradually sprouted into more complex, incomprehensible emotions.

But now, her sister was busy attending various banquets every day and never spared her a glance. When she finally found her sister and, emboldened, kissed her lips, her parents had rushed in in a panic, shouting and pointing at her before locking her in the attic.

She thought it must be because she was ugly; the world loved beauty and loathed ugliness.

If only she could become beautiful, her parents would no longer despise her, and she could follow her sister again just like in the old days, right?

As the rose vines crawled over the attic, the birthmark on the girl's face faded. Her appearance grew more and more like her sister's, yet she gradually noticed that the look in her parents' eyes grew increasingly fearful.

It was a rainy night when the girl overheard her parents talking.

The father said, "Annie's behavior is becoming more and more bizarre. I'm afraid she'll hurt Anna... should we ask the priest to take a look?"

The mother hesitated, "We can't let the priest come; Annie will be executed. We'll just keep a close eye on her; nothing will happen."

The father sighed, "Let Anna go to the countryside tomorrow. We'll arrange a marriage for her as soon as possible to keep them apart..."

The girl listened calmly, her face devoid of joy or anger. She knew exactly what she had to do, just as she had known to plant the roses night after night without fail.

She climbed to the attic once more, knelt before the Idol, and kowtowed piously.

She said, "I want two people to die in a way that no one will suspect. For that, I am willing to pay any price."

And so, the god taught her how to kill living things and use fresh blood to carve the incantations.

The girl killed the cat in her home. The moment the warm blood stained her fingertips, she knew there was no turning back.

When Qi Si regained consciousness, he found himself leaning against the wall. The two skeletons that had been on the large bed before him were gone, leaving behind only a pile of bone fragments.

Beside him, Chang Xu was attempting to crush the bone fragments into even smaller pieces.

Seeing Qi Si wake up, Chang Xu explained, "You were caught in a Nightmare just now. I deduced the key lay with the skeletons, so I smashed them."

"..."

Although he knew everyone's talents differed, and that in a fair game, if one could overcome a crisis with wit, there must also exist a solution where brute force could prevail...

...But this was simply too absurd, wasn't it?

Qi Si remained silent, lowering his head to look at his hands.

The red dress he had been holding was nowhere to be seen; clearly, it had been consumed as a plot item after triggering the event.

The scrap of paper he had pulled from under the pillow had also vanished, leaving no trace, as if it had never existed at all.

Qi Si looked at Chang Xu. "If I'm not mistaken, there is a piece of paper with clues written on it under the pillow."

Chang Xu, possessing great initiative, reached under the pillow the moment the words left Qi Si's mouth and pulled out a slip of paper covered in text.

Qi Si leaned in, his gaze sweeping over the words on the paper:

[Anna and Annie were born at the same time...]

The content written on the paper was exactly the same as the previous one.

Was it another time loop?

If the previous time loop had only been a conclusion inferred indirectly from the movement of the hands on the Pocket Watch, then this time, it was a tangible, personal experience.

Qi Si felt as though he had dreamt a very, very long dream. In that dream, a blink of an eye spanned a thousand years, and countless thoughts flowed through his consciousness, leaving behind faint traces and impressions that felt both real and illusory.

This sensation was peculiar; it seemed to stem from the mechanics of the instance, yet it also felt like a talent buried deep within his own memories.

Chang Xu finished reading the content on the paper, handed it to Qi Si, and asked, "How did you know there was paper under the pillow?"

"I saw it," Qi Si replied. "It seems another time loop occurred just now. Of course, it's also possible that I was hallucinating."

He recounted his experience and sensations in a concise manner.

Chang Xu raised his left hand to touch the back of his neck, his eyes narrowing slightly. "I feel that time in Rose Manor is beginning to unravel. The time loop at one o'clock in the afternoon must have been something like a switch; once activated, the subsequent effects became uncontrollable."

Qi Si had no intention of correcting Chang Xu's conjecture.

He raised a hand to tap his temple, his gaze sweeping over the several Rules on the system interface from beginning to end.

The anomaly at one o'clock in the afternoon was undoubtedly the key to breaking the deadlock. The most urgent task was to figure out the trigger mechanism for the time loop.

But there were too few clues.

The only thing that could be certain was that the trigger for that time loop was inextricably linked to Zou Yan or Ye Zi.

One of them had used an item to obtain the clue of the four-line poem from Chang Xu's room and had immediately conducted an experiment.

The experiment had been a success.

What a melodramatic story (it was moving in my head, but what on earth is this after writing it out).