At 1:45 p.m., Qi Si stood alone in the middle of the rose-filled garden, holding the Pocket Watch of Fate he had borrowed from Chang Xu.
Gray-white mist hung in the air. Along the path, hidden beneath twisted branches and vines, enormous roses drooped under the weight of moisture. Their deep red petals were as vivid as fresh blood, and they exuded a chilling aura.
Qi Si ran his fingers over the rose petals, then stopped at the most vivid bloom. Gripping its thorny stem, he twisted his wrist and snapped it off, flower and leaves alike.
Pale green fibers clung to the broken stem, which spurted light green sap like the capillaries of someone poisoned.
"You picked a rose," a voice said, cold as a snake flicking its tongue.
"You picked a rose." Countless voices melded into one, chanting the same words.
A raindrop fell from the high sky and landed squarely on Qi Si's brow.
He lifted his eyelids and looked around. In the dense fog, clumps of gray, dusty figures stood among the rosebushes like scarecrows keeping watch, though they had clearly only just appeared.
They were corpses, men and women, young and old. Some had rotted until only their bones remained; others still faintly resembled the people they had been.
Among the figures surrounding him, Qi Si saw Shen Ming's face. The recently dead ghost's features were lifelike, and his cracked skin was a sickly pale.
The dead who had perished here through one loop after another had gathered in this moment. Countless three-day stretches of time overlapped here and now.
"Why can't I pick a rose?" Qi Si tilted his head and asked with a smile.
Lightning slashed across the gray-purple sky, striking down in an instant and illuminating the monstrous-looking gray castle.
Light and shadow flickered between black and white. A rumble of thunder followed close behind.
A downpour fell from the sky.
The rain soaked through his bloodstained white shirt. The stains, long since crusted over, spread with surprising ease. Their rich reddish brown diluted into a dreamlike pale pink, making Qi Si himself seem to drift like a phantom.
Once again, he asked, "Why can't I pick a rose?"
Just as he had asked Miss Anna in the garden at nine that morning.
"The roses belong to me, and only me." That was what the black-clad woman had said then, her face ghostly, yet still retaining a trace of a living person's vitality.
Qi Si asked again, "Is beauty the same?"
Miss Anna answered, "Yes. Beauty belongs to me..."
"Then what do you love: beauty itself, or the people, things, or objects that possess it?"
At his words, Miss Anna smiled. Her lips blossomed blood-red, and she turned to walk away along the path screened by rose branches, her black skirt trailing behind her in a rippling sweep.
At this very moment, Qi Si asked a question he already knew the answer to. He looked up, past the rows of figures, toward the mist-shrouded distance, where his gaze met that of the willowy black silhouette.
The Pocket Watch's hands pointed to the hour.
It was two in the afternoon.
Room 2.
Lin Chen sat silently on the edge of the bed, watching Chang Xu, beside the desk, read through the notes containing their clues over and over, then use a pen to jot down the key points on a blank sheet of papyrus.
Unexpected changes and an overwhelming flood of information had come one after another in a very short time. Lin Chen's mind had long since gone blank. He could only remember the few details Qi Si had given him before leaving and run through them again and again in his mind, making sure nothing could go wrong.
Qi Si had reached out to him when he was at his most helpless, then brought him safely this far. He had even risked going to the third floor to make up for Lin Chen's oversight.
Now, no matter what, he couldn't let them down. Otherwise, it wouldn't just be him who died. Qi Si would die too...
The responsibility was too great. Lin Chen's palms began to sweat again, making the blade in his hand slick and difficult to grip.
He instinctively lowered the blade and rubbed his hand against the bedsheet.
Chang Xu, sitting with his back to him, twitched an ear and asked without turning around, "What's wrong?"
...Big bro, do you have eyes in the back of your head?
Lin Chen's heart skipped a beat, but he immediately steadied himself and forced a laugh. "I... I'm a little nervous. What do you think Qi-ge came up with as a way to clear the game?" As he spoke, he cautiously gripped the blade again.
Chang Xu didn't suspect a thing and answered honestly, "I don't know."
Knock, knock.
The solemn toll of a bell sounded outside the door, striking twice in succession.
Lin Chen sprang to his feet and thrust the blade at Chang Xu's neck. It was only a hair's breadth from his skin!
But Chang Xu seemed to have sensed it coming. He dodged to the side, then turned and pinned Lin Chen to the bed.
The blade was torn from his hand. Gritting his teeth, Lin Chen kicked wildly.
About an hour earlier, Qi Si had entered the room first and put the blade in his hand. He had told him, slowly and clearly, "Shen-ge was killed by Chang Xu. There's something wrong with Chang Xu. If I haven't come back by two, you must kill him at once, or we'll all die."
As he looked at the young man's grave expression, Lin Chen had forgotten to ask why. He had only stammered, "I... I can't do it..."
"You have to." Qi Si's eyes had been as still and dark as a pool of water, his smile bleak. "This is our last resort. You're the only one I can trust. The blade I gave you is the only weapon I carry with me. Let me be a gambler just this once, and stake everything on one throw."
He was about to say more, but Qi Si had turned and opened the door, letting Chang Xu, with his gloomy air, into the room...
Memory stirred in Lin Chen's mind. He found strength from somewhere, jerked his head up into Chang Xu's chin, then made a grab for the blade.
Chang Xu grimaced in pain. His gaze sharpened, and just as Lin Chen was about to reach the blade, he slammed an elbow into Lin Chen's neck.
Had he failed after all?
Lin Chen laughed bitterly to himself. His strongest emotion wasn't fear of death, but guilt toward Qi Si.
He had still let Qi Si down. Now everything was over...
A bone cracked. Lin Chen's pupils slowly dilated, and his whole body went limp, as if every bit of strength had been drained from him.
Chang Xu quietly watched the scene unfold, confusion gradually rising in his eyes.
What was going on? Why had Lin Chen suddenly tried to kill him? What had happened?
And... why did the sight of someone attacking him from behind and slashing his neck feel so familiar, even though he couldn't remember it at all?
Chang Xu rubbed the back of his neck, sinking into troubled introspection until he was thoroughly bewildered.
At exactly two in the afternoon, amid the sea of roses, Qi Si turned his hand and pressed the rose stem against his heart.
The plant's sap burrowed into his flesh as if alive, then transformed into thorns that pierced his heart and sank deep roots in every direction.
A vivid blood-red flower bloomed against white. The world before his eyes suddenly crumbled into darkness.
Pain enough to shatter his sanity swept through his mind. Drawing in a sharp breath, Qi Si murmured:
[My chest rots away...]
It felt as if countless worms were writhing beneath his skin and crawling through him. They wove fine webs across his skin and the walls of his blood vessels, spreading along with his blood and burrowing deep into his organs until they filled every inch of his body.
His limbs began to melt. His flesh dissolved from the edges inward and dripped away...
[Flesh spreads across the ground...]
Zou Yan's transformation had been an excellent example. It had shown Qi Si that roses were the key to turning humans into ghosts and monsters, and that the four-line poem was a spell—or perhaps an incantation.
As he recited it, the rose embedded in his heart grew wildly, brimming with life. It burst from his mouth and nose, while black-green branches sprouted from his fingertips and toes.
[Roses dwell here]
Control of his consciousness wavered. His sense of self was being altered and remade, inch by inch.
Human, nonhuman, ghost, monster, beast, god... Countless ideas clustered together, then exploded with a roar, scattering red fragments across the sea of his thoughts.
[Please believe that you are human]
The words of the prompt on the system interface looked as if they were dripping blood. Between the lines, the ghostly words [You are not human] flickered in and out.
"Monster, you're a monster..."
"Die! Why won't you just die?"
"Qi Si, you're not human!"
A jumble of shrill voices echoed at the bottom of his mind. The insults he had endured over the past twenty-odd years overlapped all at once.
Shen Ming's dead face flashed before Qi Si's eyes. It was undoubtedly the result of becoming a complete ghost or monster and losing all sense of humanity.
It was too ugly. He didn't like it.
His memories surged like waves. With his eyes half closed, he let out a low laugh. "I'm not human, and I'm not a ghost. Then what am I?"
"You're not going to say I'm a god, are you? Hahahaha!"
His laughter grew more and more unrestrained, building into a full-throated cackle.
His perception of time warped. A few brief seconds stretched into an eternity, like a single string note ringing slowly through an endless night.
[Tomorrow, live on with me...]
The downpour around him abruptly stopped in midair, freezing in place like a curtain of beads strung on invisible threads.
Each raindrop refracted a gray-purple glow. The next second, they slowly rose, flying toward the sky.
—Time reversal had been triggered.
The colors before him spilled and ran together, like a painting whose pigments had been mixed into a single blur.
His turbulent thoughts slowly settled, piling up at the bottom of his mind like snowflakes.
An enormous card, patterned with black and blood-red designs, appeared out of thin air. One half showed a smiling figure; the other writhed with black tentacles and scarlet eyeballs.
[You wear a gentle mask only to tear apart the hopes of others more easily. Beneath your harmless disguise lurks an evil spirit destined to bring calamity to the world]
[You are fated to walk alone and consort with destruction. Screams, wails, death, fear—you watch with indifference and take pleasure in suffering]
[You are a demon clawing its way out of hell, a monster hidden among the crowd. In this amoral game, you will gain the freedom to act as you please, just as you have long dreamed]
[Congratulations on unlocking the Identity Card "Humanoid Evil Spirit"]
The intricately engraved card dissolved above Qi Si's head into points of blood-red light, all of them sinking into his body.
Still holding the rose as he drove it into his heart, he looked toward the castle. His laughter gradually subsided, turning into a scoff.
Whether Lin Chen killed Chang Xu or Chang Xu killed Lin Chen, it would lead to the same result.
Someone turned against a fellow human. Someone became an evil spirit. By the time the raindrops fell from the sky back to the earth, the sin would have been committed, and the evil spirit would have returned to human form.
Prejudice cast those who dared to be different among the beasts. Those with dissenting views and those who went ahead of their time were denounced as devils in human skin. They were either ostracized or destroyed. The victor became a god; the defeated, a demon.
All Qi Si wanted was for time to reverse this once, at two o'clock.
I rewrote this chapter several times, but I'm still not satisfied... Sigh.
Before you continue