"So, I was already dead..."
"All these years have passed, and I don't even know how my wife and child are doing." Zhang Jian's dry, pale lips opened and closed, letting out a murmuring sound.
For Zhang Jian, a decade of muddled experiences felt like a beautiful dream.
Now, the dream had awakened, and reality was incomparably cruel.
"His wife and child also disappeared as early as ten years ago," Li Yunyao added without going into detail.
The meaning behind those words was self-evident.
They had likely already been disposed of by the nobles.
"They lived quite well. However, you are already dead and have no need to exist in this world. Bear with it, it'll be over soon."
Xu Ye aimed the muzzle of his gun at the center of Zhang Jian's forehead.
Zhang Jian wore a terrified expression as fish heads almost popped out across his body once more. His face was withered and wrinkled together like a sun-dried chrysanthemum. A few seconds later, seeming to resign himself to his fate, he lowered his head.
"As long as they're alive... without me, they can live even better. If they saw me like this, they'd probably mistake me for a monster."
Xu Ye watched Zhang Jian. Within his pitch-black pupils, water-wave-like golden patterns suddenly flashed.
At the same time, the scene before Zhang Jian's eyes abruptly shifted.
To his astonishment, he found that he had returned home.
His wife was cooking in the kitchen, his child was lying in the stroller, and he was sitting on the sofa watching television.
He felt a sense of tranquil longing, joyful surprise, and tears streamed down his face...
A blissful smile formed on his face.
Along with the sound of a gunshot, his smile was frozen at that exact moment.
"Alice," Xu Ye called out in his mind.
"Received!"
A streak of light darted out from between Xu Ye's brows, revealing none other than Alice.
It stepped with an elegant cat-walk, its pupils likewise rippling with golden patterns as it gazed at the lingering soul fragments suspended in the air.
Corroded by time, Zhang Jian's soul was already tattered and broken beyond recognition.
Alice "looked" at it, and the shattered soul was sucked straight into its eyes.
Before Alice's eyes, scenes of experiences from Zhang Jian's life appeared.
Deep in the night, a hotel room.
"Alice"-or rather, Zhang Jian-sat nervously on the bed, bare-chested, watching Han Li emerge from the bathroom.
The other woman's hair was wet, her figure was barely passable, and she simply looked rather mean-spirited.
Clutching the blanket, Zhang Jian fell silent.
Han Li smiled as she lay down on the bed, loosening her pajamas: "Come on. This is a transaction; I get what I want, and I won't let your Sewage Treatment Plant go bankrupt. Your wife and child will definitely live in peace and safety for the rest of their lives."
"Youth is truly wonderful, unlike my useless husband who has to rely on pills."
As the memory flowed, Zhang Jian felt physical revulsion and resistance, yet he was utterly powerless.
Gritting his teeth and swallowing his humiliation, he crawled toward Han Li inch by inch, slowly.
Alice: "???"
No, stop!
What are you doing!
No, no, no!
I'm just a female cat!
I've endured things a cat was never meant to experience.
The memory was forcefully cut off by Alice.
Disheveled and aggrieved, it sat on the floor, tears welling in its eyes, biting its paw with one hind leg crossed over the other in a pitiful display.
Looking at Xu Ye with a deeply wronged expression, Alice said, "Xu Ye, my front end isn't clean anymore either."
"???"
Upon hearing Alice's description, the corners of Xu Ye's mouth twitched.
Yet this time, no useful information had been gleaned from the soul's memories.
Once the Aberrant was dealt with, logistics personnel quickly came upstairs, sealing Zhang Jian's corpse inside a special black airtight bag.
They then left behind a portion of personnel to begin energy detection and disinfection of the scene and the entire building.
As for Zhang Rongxuan, he was taken back to undergo hypnosis, memory erasure, and reconstruction.
Lu Mingwang had matters to attend to at home and had left early.
Strolling leisurely, Xu Ye walked downstairs and arrived across the street, preparing to buy a bottle of water.
Standing on Xu Ye's shoulder to take in the scenery while healing her injuries, Alice seemed to notice something and suddenly spoke, "Meow? Isn't that your old classmate Wang Yong?"
Following Alice's line of sight, Xu Ye looked over and indeed spotted Wang Yong inside a small grocery store.
The latter seemed to have noticed him as well and trotted over.
Wang Yong's complexion looked somewhat haggard, the rims of his eyes red as if he had yet to recover from his mother's death. Upon seeing Xu Ye, he offered a greeting: "Xu Ye, what brings you here?"
"I'm just wandering around this area. How about you? I heard your mother fell into the water; are you holding up okay?" Xu Ye asked sympathetically.
Wang Yong pressed his lips together, having grown thin enough over the past few days to appear gaunt: "People always have to leave one day. This world isn't any kind of good place anyway, so leaving a bit early is quite nice."
"I still have to go to my part-time job, so I won't chat any longer. I'm heading off."
With that, he hurried away.
Watching his former classmate's lonely back, Xu Ye felt a rather sour sensation in his chest.
The Dawn Blade's memory alterations were quite thorough indeed.
In this city, in this world, who knows how many people had their memories altered, believing everything they considered real was actually entirely false.
Xu Ye sighed softly, yet at that very moment, his heart twitched abruptly.
[I encountered Wang Yong, which left me feeling somewhat sentimental. He didn't look like he was doing very well; perhaps he is hiding some unknown secrets.]
[Suddenly, a flash of insight struck my heart, and I recalled two things.]
[First, in the previous simulated future, why did Zhang Rongxuan's script written to kill Qin Yanhua involve me? He didn't know me at all beforehand.]
[Second, Zhang Jian was embedded in the wall for a full decade, mutating for ten years while living peacefully without suffering any external stimuli. Why did he suddenly go berserk?]
[Given my intellect, I still cannot figure it out. As for that ugly cat Iron Root, it actually cut off Zhang Jian's soul memories and missed some crucial information. Fortunately, I still have my clever heart; when I get back today, I'll reward it with an hour of aerobic training.]
After reading this prompt, Xu Ye felt a slight chill in his heart as he finally remembered what he had overlooked.
As for Alice, she flew into a rage: "Who is the dog swearing at?"
[The dog is swearing at you.]
[...]
For the first time, the heart was utterly defeated.
"Hehe." Alice flashed a victory sign.
In the quiet and narrow alleyway, not a soul was in sight.
As Wang Yong walked along, he began to chuckle in a low, soft tone, his shoulders shaking.
"So this is what it feels like to be the mastermind behind the scenes. Xu Ye, no matter how smart you are, you probably never guessed that I was the one secretly driving this entire process."
"Things have proceeded very smoothly, and the pollution has been eliminated."
Wang Yong stretched lazily.
Yet just as his arms reached the halfway point of the stretch, his body suddenly stiffened.
For right behind him, someone had pressed the pitch-black muzzle of a gun against the position of his heart.
Xu Ye pulled back the bolt, smiling at Wang Yong as he said, "Classmate Wang Yong, how about we chat a little longer?"
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