Over the next few days, Ren Tao gradually went from heartbroken to utterly numb.
By the end, he was ready to throw up.
From morning to night, he lived through Xiao Ji and Liu Xiang's life story, over and over.
It felt as though he had entered Doctor Strange's Time Loop.
An endless loop with no way out.
Xiao Ji's mindset was deeply abnormal, too. He was a textbook devotee of tragedy: he could clearly have steered everything toward a wholesome, bright, happy ending, yet he chose the most painful path, tormenting himself and everyone else and single-handedly creating the terrifying arena for survival that was the Douluo World.
As "Natural Born Killers," could this also have been the emotional code binding Xiao Ji and Liu Xiang?
Ren Tao keenly noticed one crucial prop in the tragic drama between Xiao Ji and Liu Xiang: the razor without a handle.
Xiao Ji had used it to carve leaves into his arm as the prototypes for Soul Rings, and he had also used that razor to try to slit Liu Xiang's throat and his own.
From the perspective of dramatic theory, then, the blade was very likely tied to some tortuous history, which was why it had become a vessel for his emotions.
Or had he used that blade to kill his own family? And was it also the only keepsake his father had left him?
His imagination ran wild. Ren Tao felt he was losing his mind.
Three days passed, yet he had gained nothing.
Xiao Ji and Liu Xiang's story was like a film, each "screening" lasting roughly an hour and a half. It played on repeat, pausing briefly only when Xiao Ji fell asleep.
Then, upon waking, it returned to the moment Xiao Ji first met Liu Xiang.
Ren