Chapter Twenty-Two: Rose Manor (Twenty-One)—The Humanoid Evil Spirit

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At one forty-five in the afternoon, Qi Si stood alone at the center of a garden overflowing with roses, holding the Destiny Pocket Watch he had borrowed from Chang Xu.

Gray-white mist hung in the air. Along both sides of the path, hidden beneath twisted branches and tangled vines, enormous roses drooped wetly, their profound crimson as rich and glistening as fresh blood, exuding a chill and sinister aura.

Qi Si’s fingers brushed over petal after petal, finally coming to rest on the most magnificent rose of all. He closed his hand around its thorn-covered stem and, with a twist of his wrist, snapped it off, flower and leaves together.

Tender green fibers clung to the broken end of the branch, spurting pale turquoise sap like the capillaries of a poisoned man.

“You picked a rose,” said a voice, cold as a snake flicking its tongue.

“You picked a rose.” Countless voices merged into one, chanting the same words.

A drop of rain fell from the heavens and struck Qi Si squarely between the brows.

He lifted his eyelids and looked around. Through the dense fog, clusters of drab gray figures stood among the rose bushes, like scarecrows stationed on watch—though it was clear they had appeared only moments ago.

They were corpses, men and women, old and young alike. Some had rotted until nothing remained but white bones; on others, the features they had worn in life could still be vaguely discerned.

Among the figures surrounding him, Qi Si saw Shen Ming’s face. The newly dead monster still looked lifelike, its cracked skin a sickly pallor.

Those who had died here through countless cycles had gathered at this moment. Countless three-day spans of time and space now overlapped.

“Why can’t I pick a rose?” Qi Si tilted his head and asked with a smile.

Lightning tore across the gray-violet sky and struck down. For an instant, it illuminated the monstrous gray castle until it was utterly transparent.

Light and shadow flickered black and white. Thunder rolled in its wake.

A torrential rain descended from the heavens.

The bloodstained white shirt grew soaked. The bloodstains, long since dried and clotted, spread strangely through the rainwater, their intense reddish brown diluted into a dreamlike pale pink. Qi Si’s entire figure seemed to sway like a phantom.

He asked again, “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 can belong only to me.” That was what the woman in black had said. Her face was ghostlike, yet still retained a trace of the vitality of the living.

Qi Si had asked again, “Is beauty the same?”

Miss Anna had answered, “Yes. Beauty belongs to me…”

“Then what is it that you love—the beauty itself, or the person, thing, or object that possesses it?”

At his words, Miss Anna had smiled. Her lips bloomed like blood-red flowers. Turning, she had walked away along the path veiled by flowering branches, the black hem of her dress trailing across the ground in a languid, undulating sweep.

Now, at this very moment, Qi Si asked a question to which he already knew the answer. He raised his eyes beyond the layers of figures and looked toward the distant haze, where his gaze met that slender smear of black ink.

The hour hand of the pocket watch pointed straight up.

It was two in the afternoon.

…

Room 2.

Lin Chen sat silently at the edge of the bed, watching Chang Xu by the desk repeatedly read through the notebook filled with clues, then record the important points with a pen on a blank sheet of papyrus.

Sudden variables and a vast mass of information had poured through his mind one after another in an extraordinarily short time. Lin Chen’s thoughts had long since emptied into a blank void. He could remember only the few details Qi Si had instructed him to pay attention to before leaving, and he rehearsed them again and again in his mind to ensure that nothing could go wrong.

It was Qi Si who had extended a hand to him when he was at his most helpless, leading him safely all the way to the present. He had even risked going to the third floor to make up for Lin Chen’s negligence.

Now, no matter what happened, Lin Chen could not afford to fail. Otherwise, it would not be only his own life that was lost, but Qi Si’s as well…

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

He instinctively set the blade down and rubbed his hand against the bedsheet.

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Chang Xu, whose back was turned toward him, twitched his ear and asked without looking back, “What’s wrong?”

…Big brother, do you have eyes in the back of your head?

Lin Chen’s heart jolted, but he immediately steadied himself and gave an awkward laugh. “I…I’m a little nervous. What do you think Brother Qi came up with for clearing this place?” As he spoke, he carefully took the blade into his hand once more.

Chang Xu did not suspect anything. He answered honestly, “I don’t know.”

“Dong. Dong.”

A solemn, dignified bell rang outside the door, striking twice in succession.

Lin Chen sprang up and raised the blade, stabbing it toward Chang Xu’s neck. It was only a hair’s breadth from the skin—

Yet Chang Xu dodged to the side as though he had been warned in advance, then turned and pinned Lin Chen against the bed.

The blade was wrested from his hand. Gritting his teeth, Lin Chen kicked and thrashed wildly.

About an hour earlier, Qi Si had entered the room first, pushed the blade into his hand, and told him slowly and distinctly, “Brother Shen was killed by Chang Xu. There’s something wrong with him. If I haven’t returned by two, you must kill Chang Xu immediately. Otherwise, we’ll all die.”

At the time, seeing the grave expression on the young man’s face, Lin Chen had forgotten to ask why. He had only stammered, “I…I can’t do that…”

“You must.” Qi Si’s gaze had been as deep and still as a dead pool, his smile bleak. “This is the last resort. You’re the only person I can trust. The blade I gave you is the only weapon I carry. Consider it one last gamble—a desperate all-or-nothing bet.”

He had been about to say more, but Qi Si had turned and opened the door, allowing the gloomy Chang Xu to enter…

The memory drifted through Lin Chen’s mind. Somehow, he found a surge of strength from somewhere, jerked his head upward, and struck Chang Xu beneath the chin before reaching for the blade.

Chang Xu winced in pain. His eyes sharpened, and just as Lin Chen’s fingers were about to touch the blade, he drove an elbow into Lin Chen’s neck.

Had he failed after all?

Lin Chen gave a bitter laugh inwardly. The strongest emotion he felt was not fear of death, but guilt toward Qi Si.

He had still betrayed the other man’s trust. Now everything was over…

The sound of breaking bone rang out. Lin Chen’s pupils slowly dilated, and his entire body went limp, as though every ounce of strength had been drained from it.

Chang Xu quietly watched the scene, confusion gradually surfacing in his eyes.

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

And besides…why did being attacked from behind and having his throat slashed give him such a powerful sense of déjà vu, while remaining utterly impossible to remember?

Chang Xu rubbed the back of his neck and sank into troubled self-doubt, slowly becoming more and more bewildered.

…

At exactly two in the afternoon, amid the sea of roses, Qi Si reversed his grip and pressed the rose stem against his own chest.

The plant’s sap burrowed into his flesh as if alive, transforming into thorns that pierced his heart and sank deep in every direction, taking root throughout it.

A vivid blood-red bloom spread across the white fabric. The world before his eyes suddenly collapsed into darkness.

Pain powerful enough to shatter reason swept through his mind. Drawing a sharp breath, Qi Si murmured:

“My chest is rotting…”

It felt as though countless worms were writhing and crawling inside his heart, weaving a fine web across the surface of his skin and along the walls of his blood vessels. Following the flow of his blood, they spread onward into the depths of his organs, until they occupied every last crevice within him.

His limbs began to melt. Flesh and blood dissolved from the edges, dripping away…

“Flesh and blood spread across the ground…”

Zou Yan’s performance had provided an excellent demonstration. From it, Qi Si had determined that the rose was the key to transforming humans into monsters, while the four lines of verse were a spell—or, more precisely, an incantation.

As he continued chanting, the rose embedded in his heart grew wildly, bursting forth from his mouth and nostrils. Black-green branches also extended from the tips of his fingers and toes.

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“The rose dwells here…”

Control of his consciousness wavered. His sense of self was being altered and reforged inch by inch.

Human, inhuman, ghost, monster, beast, god…countless streams of thought clustered together, then exploded with a roar, scattering into tiny red fragments across the sea of his mind.

“Please firmly believe that you are human.”

The prompt on the system interface seemed almost to drip blood. Between the characters, a phantom message flickered in and out:

“You are not human.”

“Monster, you’re a monster…”

“Go to hell! Why aren’t you dead yet?”

“Qi Si, you’re not human!”

One after another, shrill and discordant cries churned together at the bottom of his mind. The abuse he had suffered over more than twenty years overlapped all at once.

Shen Ming’s dead face flashed before Qi Si’s eyes—the unmistakable consequence of complete transformation into a monster and the loss of all human awareness.

Too ugly. He did not like it.

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 exactly am I?”

“You’re not about to say that I’m a god, are you? Hahahaha!”

His laughter grew more and more unrestrained, gradually turning into a wild, booming laugh.

His perception of time warped. A mere few seconds stretched into an eternity, like a single plucked string sounding slowly through an endless night.

“May I endure forever with you tomorrow…”

The torrential rain surrounding him abruptly halted in midair, frozen at a single moment like a curtain of beads strung upon invisible threads.

Each raindrop refracted a gray-violet halo. In the next instant, they began to rise slowly, flying toward the heavens.

—The reversal of time had been triggered.

The colors before his eyes overturned, blending like oil paints smeared into a single muddled mass.

The turbulent, scattered fragments of consciousness slowly settled, piling up at the bottom of his mind like snowflakes.

A gigantic phantom playing card, woven from blood red and black, appeared from thin air. One half bore the image of a smiling human face; the other seethed with pitch-black tentacles and scarlet eyes.

“You wear a gentle mask only to tear apart the hopes of others more effectively. Beneath your harmless disguise lies an evil spirit destined to bring calamity upon the world.”

“You are destined to walk alone and keep company with destruction. Screams, wails, death, fear—you watch them all with cold eyes, taking pleasure in suffering.”

“You are an evil ghost that crawled out of hell, a monster hidden among the masses. In this amoral game, you will obtain the wanton freedom you have dreamed of—the freedom to do as you please.”

“Congratulations. You have unlocked the identity card: Human-Shaped Evil Spirit.”

The exquisitely carved card dissolved above Qi Si’s head into blood-red motes of light, all of which sank into his body.

He maintained the posture of driving the rose into his heart with both hands. Looking toward the castle, he gradually subdued his laughter, turning it into a faint scoff.

Whether Lin Chen killed Chang Xu or Chang Xu killed Lin Chen, the result would be the same.

Some would turn against their own kind, while another would transform into an evil spirit. By the time the raindrops fell back to the earth from the high heavens, the sin would already have been committed, and the evil spirit would return to human form.

All Qi Si wanted was to make time reverse at two o’clock this time.

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