Rose Manor (21): Humanoid Evil Spirit

At 1:45 PM, Qi Si stood alone in the center of the rose-filled garden, holding the Pocket Watch of Fate he had borrowed from Chang Xu.

The air was thick with gray mist. Along the paths obscured by twisted branches and vines, massive roses hung their heads, wet and heavy. Their deep red was as vivid as fresh blood, exuding a cold, sinister aura.

Qi Si's fingers brushed over the rose petals, eventually lingering on the most vibrant bloom. He gripped the thorny stem and, with a flick of his wrist, snapped it off, flower and leaves alike.

The broken stem bled a pale green sap from its fibrous core, resembling the capillaries of a poisoned man.

"You picked a rose," a voice said, cold as a viper's hiss.

"You picked a rose," countless voices merged into one, chanting the same words.

A drop of rain fell from the high sky, striking the center of Qi Si's forehead.

He lifted his eyelids and scanned his surroundings. Through the dense fog, clusters of gray, dusty shadows stood among the rose bushes like scarecrows left on guard, though they had clearly only just appeared.

They were corpses—men, women, the old, and the young. Some had rotted down to white bone, while others still bore the faint traces of their living features.

Among the figures surrounding him, Qi Si saw the face of Shen Ming. The newly dead ghost's expression was lifelike, his cracked skin a sickly, deathly pale.

The dead who had been buried here across countless cycles were gathered at this moment; countless three-day timelines were overlapping right now.

"Why shouldn't I be allowed to pick a rose?" Qi Si tilted his head and asked with a smile.

Lightning streaked across the gray-purple sky, illuminating the monstrous, dusty old castle in a single flash.

Light and shadow flickered in black and white, followed immediately by a low, rumbling thunder.

A torrential downpour descended from the heavens.

His blood-stained white shirt was soaked through. The old, dried bloodstains spread in a strange way, the intense reddish-brown diluted into a dreamlike pale pink, making Qi Si himself appear as wavering as a phantom.

He asked again, "Why shouldn't I be allowed to pick a rose?"

It was just as he had asked "Miss Anna" in the garden at nine that morning.

"The roses belong to me, and they can only belong to me," the woman in black had said then, her face ghost-like yet still possessing a sliver of the living.

Qi Si had asked, "Is beauty the same?"

Miss Anna replied, "Yes, beauty belongs to me..."

"Then, what is it that you truly love? Is it beauty itself, or the person, event, or object that possesses it?"

Miss Anna had smiled at the words, her lips blooming like blood-red flowers. She turned and walked away along the path shaded by flower branches, her black skirt trailing and swaying across the ground.

At this very moment, Qi Si asked the question knowing the answer. He raised his eyes, looking past the figures toward the misty distance, and locked gazes with that graceful black ink-like silhouette.

The minute hand of the pocket watch pointed to the hour.

It was two o'clock.

Room 2.

Lin Chen sat on the edge of the bed in silence, watching Chang Xu, who stood by the desk, flipping through notes filled with clues and recording key points onto a blank sheet of papyrus.

Sudden variables and complex information had flowed by one after another in such a short time that Lin Chen's mind was already a blank void. He only remembered the details Qi Si had urged upon him before leaving, rehearsing them in his consciousness over and over to ensure nothing went wrong.

It was Qi Si who had extended an olive branch when he was at his most helpless, leading him safely to this point, even risking a trip to the third floor to make up for his own oversight.

Now, he could not afford to fail under any circumstances. If he did, it wouldn't just be his own life at stake, but Qi Si's as well...

The responsibility was too heavy. Lin Chen's palms began to sweat again, making the blade in his hand slick and difficult to grip.

He subconsciously set the blade down and wiped his hands on the bedsheets.

Chang Xu, with his back turned, twitched his ears and asked without looking back, "What is it?"

...Big brother, do you have eyes on the back of your head?

Lin Chen's heart skipped a beat, but he immediately adjusted his mindset and chuckled, "I... I'm just a bit nervous. What kind of clearance method do you think Brother Qi came up with?" As he spoke, he carefully gripped the blade once more.

Chang Xu, suspecting nothing, answered truthfully, "I don't know."

"Clang, clang."

A solemn, grave bell tolled outside the door, striking twice.

Lin Chen lunged up, raising the blade high to strike at Chang Xu's neck, the edge nearly touching skin!

The latter, as if having received a warning, tilted his head to dodge and turned to pin him onto the bed.

The blade was snatched from his hand, and Lin Chen gritted his teeth, kicking and struggling wildly.

About an hour ago, Qi Si had entered the room first, pressed the blade into his hand, and told him word for word: "Brother Shen was killed by Chang Xu; Chang Xu is the problem. If I don't return by two o'clock, you must kill Chang Xu immediately, or we will all die."

At the time, looking at the young man's grave expression, he had forgotten to ask for the reason, only stammering, "I... I can't do it..."

"You must do it." Qi Si's eyes were as deep as stagnant water, his smile wretched. "This is the final resort. You are the only one I can trust. The blade I gave you is the only weapon I carry. Consider me a gambler making one final, desperate bet."

He had wanted to say more, but Qi Si turned back to open the door, letting the gloomy-looking Chang Xu inside...

As the memory drifted through his mind, Lin Chen found strength from somewhere, throwing his head back to slam into Chang Xu's chin, making a move to grab the blade.

Chang Xu winced, his gaze turning cold. The moment Lin Chen reached for the blade, he slammed an elbow into his neck.

Was it all for nothing in the end?

Lin Chen smiled bitterly to himself; the most intense emotion he felt was not the fear of death, but the guilt he felt toward Qi Si.

He had failed the man's trust after all, and now, everything was over...

The sound of bones shattering rang out, Lin Chen's pupils slowly dilated, and his entire body went limp as if every ounce of strength had been drained away.

Chang Xu watched this scene quietly, a look of confusion slowly emerging in his eyes.

What was going on? Why did Lin Chen suddenly want to kill him? What had happened?

And... why did the sensation of having his throat slit from behind feel like such a strong sense of déjà vu, yet he couldn't recall anything at all?

Chang Xu touched the back of his neck, falling into a deep, self-doubting contemplation, gradually becoming lost in the wind.

At exactly two o'clock in the afternoon, amidst the sea of roses, Qi Si pressed the stem of a rose against his own heart with a backhanded grip.

The plant's sap burrowed into his skin and flesh as if it were alive, transforming into sharp thorns that pierced his heart and took deep root in every direction.

Bloody flowers bloomed in rich, vibrant colors against the white background, and the world before his eyes suddenly collapsed into darkness.

Pain sufficient to shatter his sanity swept through his brain; Qi Si gasped, murmuring the chant:

[My chest decays...]

It felt as if countless insects were writhing and crawling within his chest, weaving dense webs across his skin and blood vessel walls, extending along the flow of his blood deep into his organs until they occupied every inch of space within his body.

His limbs began to melt, his flesh and blood dissolving from the edges, dripping away...

[Flesh and blood spread upon the ground...]

Zou Yan's performance had served as an excellent demonstration, allowing Qi Si to confirm that the roses were the key to human transformation into ghosts, and the quatrain was the incantation, or rather, the mantra.

As he chanted, the rose embedded in his heart grew wildly with vitality, erupting from his mouth and nose, while black-green branches extended from the fingertips of his limbs.

[The rose dwells here]

The dominance of his consciousness swayed, his self-perception being rewritten and recast inch by inch.

Human, non-human, ghost, monster, beast, god... countless schools of thought clustered together, exploding with a roar and scattering like tiny red fragments in the ocean of his mind.

[Please firmly believe that you are human]

The prompt text on the system interface seemed to drip blood, the phantom of the four characters [You are not human] flickering in and out of existence between the lines.

"Monster, you monster..."

"Go to hell! Why won't you just die?"

"Qi Si, you aren't human!"

Confused, screeching voices mixed together at the base of his mind, the insults he had endured over the past twenty-plus years overlapping in a single moment.

Shen Ming's death flashed before Qi Si's eyes; that was undoubtedly the consequence of a complete transformation into a ghost, the loss of human cognition.

It was too ugly; he didn't like it.

Memories surged like waves; with his eyes half-closed, he let out a low laugh: "If I am not human, and not a ghost, then what exactly am I?"

"You wouldn't happen to be implying—that I am a god, would you? Hahahaha!"

His laughter grew increasingly unbridled, gradually turning into a roar of mirth.

His perception of time was distorted, a mere few seconds stretched out into an eternity, like the slow pluck of a string in the midst of an ancient, endless night.

[Endure with me until tomorrow...]

The torrential rain around him suddenly suspended in mid-air, freezing in place at that moment like a beaded curtain strung together by silk threads.

Each raindrop refracted a grayish-purple halo, and in the next second, they slowly rose, flying toward the high sky.

--Time reversal triggered.

The colors before his eyes were overturned, the mixed oil paints blurring into a single mass.

His swirling, agitated consciousness slowly settled, piling up at the base of his mind like snowflakes.

A massive phantom of a playing card, interwoven with blood-red and black, appeared out of thin air; one side showed a smiling portrait, while the other surged with pitch-black tentacles and scarlet eyeballs.

[You don the mask of gentleness only to better tear apart the hopes of others; beneath the harmless disguise lies an Evil Spirit destined to bring calamity to the world.]

[You are fated to walk alone and keep company with destruction; screams, wails, death, and fear—you watch with cold eyes, finding joy in suffering.]

[You are a wicked ghost crawled out of hell, a monster hidden among the crowd; in this game devoid of morality, you shall obtain the unbridled freedom you have always craved.]

[Congratulations, you have unlocked the identity card "Humanoid Evil Spirit"]

The exquisitely carved card dissipated into blood-red light spots above Qi Si's head, all of which merged into his body.

He maintained the posture of his hands thrusting the rose into his heart, looking toward the direction of the ancient castle; his laughter gradually subsided, turning into a light sneer.

Whether Lin Chen killed Chang Xu or Chang Xu killed Lin Chen, it would lead to the same result.

Some kill their own kind, some transform into Evil Spirits; by the time the raindrops fall from the high heavens back to the earth, the sin will have been committed, and the Evil Spirit will have returned to human form.

Prejudice drives the non-conformist into the ranks of beasts; dissenters and pioneers are denounced as devils in human skin, either living in isolation or meeting their doom—the victors are gods, the defeated are demons.

And all Qi Si wanted was these two points of time reversal.

I rewrote this chapter several times, and I'm still not satisfied... Sigh.