I stood there in a daze, realizing I was back on that ski slope. Under the cold moonlight, the world was blanketed in white. I stared down, stunned.
The forest below, just as I’d seen before, was buried to the top in snow. An avalanche had swept through—the cliff, jagged like a row of teeth, now showed its strange, stony color where the snow had poured away.
I looked at myself—there was no sense of cold. My hands and skin seemed unnatural, a purplish-black, almost like a corpse.
I stared around in shock. Everyone else was gone. Why was I the only one left?
Suddenly, I spotted a figure at the bottom of the slope, busy with something. I was too far to see clearly, so I hurried down.
As soon as I started moving, I felt incredibly light—weightless. Startled by the change, I noticed there were no footprints in the snow. With a thought, I floated up into the air.
"I’m a ghost..."
I murmured, drifting down toward the figure. As I got closer, I saw it was Ken Wang. He was in the snow wearing a thin gray T-shirt, his hands red with cold, busy digging at the pitted ground.
"Ken..." I called out, but Ken Wang didn’t respond. Suddenly, he turned, looking at me in disbelief. But I realized he couldn’t see me. I walked over and waved my hand in front of his face.
Ken Wang seemed oblivious, continuing to dig at the snow with his hands and a wooden stick.
"Ethan, where are you?"
Ken Wang kept shouting, and I felt a surge of emotion. His hands were already purple from the cold, but he kept digging, as if trying to find me.
I panicked. Even though this was inside the story world, if he kept going, he might get hurt. I walked up to him, revealing myself beside a tree, and stretched out my hand, close enough to touch. I shook it, and with a muffled sound, snow fell from the branches.
"Who’s there?" Ken Wang looked up, face full of fear. It was as if he truly couldn’t see ghosts. I crouched in front of him, and suddenly realized—I could touch him. I gently brushed his hand.
Ken Wang cried out in shock and jumped to his feet, looking around.
I extended a finger and wrote on the ground.
"I’m Ethan Zhang. Don’t be afraid."
Ken Wang stared at the small characters I wrote in the snow, looking at me in disbelief.
Then I kept writing, telling him to make a fire first, so he wouldn’t freeze. Ken Wang stopped hesitating and pointed to a spot not far away. I looked over, and suddenly saw someone crawling out.
I hurried over to look—it was Sean Wu. His face was paper-white, covered with a thin layer of frost, arm raised as if trying to block something before dying.
Ken Wang found a lighter on Sean Wu, started a fire, and after warming up for a while, stripped Sean Wu’s clothes and put them on, even found gloves.
"Ethan, I was locked in a room. It took me a lot of effort to escape through the window and enter the second story. As soon as I arrived, I saw the avalanche. I’ve heard this story before—I thought you might have been buried by it."
Ken Wang quickly wrote a long string of words in the snow. I was surprised by how fast he could write, and I continued to write back.
"Maybe so. I’m already dead. In this story, my corpse might be buried here."
After a while, Ken Wang and I both started digging in the snow. Even though I could see him and he couldn’t see me, we worked hard together.
Who knows how long we dug—Ken Wang got tired first and went to sleep, while I kept searching for my own body. Time seemed frozen here; it was always night.
Later, Ken Wang got up a few more times. We’d dug up the whole place, but never found Stanley Zhang the taxi driver’s body, nor anyone else’s.
"What now? Ethan, we can’t find your body."
I was frustrated too. I’d died, yet even my corpse couldn’t be found. I’d heard that after death, ghosts can’t touch their own bodies.
I kept thinking, then started writing out the events of the story in the snow, bit by bit. Some things were still unclear, but I was beginning to understand.
"Don’t worry, Ethan. Keep searching—we’ll find it."
After resting for a while, Ken Wang resumed searching, and I joined him.
"Found it, Ethan—come look!"
I hurried over. It was me—my corpse looked just like the other two, completely frozen. Ken Wang hauled my body up, and I noticed my watch had stopped at eleven o’clock. It was broken.
"Ethan..." Before he could finish, Ken Wang fell back in fright—he could see me now, and looked terrified.
"Don’t be scared."
I muttered to myself. If I were in his shoes, I’d be scared too. Ken Wang had always been an ordinary person—he’d only recently encountered ghosts. After a while, when he got used to it, he helped move my body next to the fire.
"Warm up by the fire for a bit. Maybe you’ll come back to life, Ethan."
I shot him a resentful look. How could he say something so serious in such a cold tone, as if it were possible?
"It’s impossible."
Looking at my own corpse, it was dead beyond any hope of revival.
"Ethan, about what you just said—this story seems odd. It’s like everyone except Louis Liu and his girlfriend Joanne Lu was targeting Louis Liu during this trip. You could’ve gone further up the mountain, but it felt like someone was deliberately slowing you down."
Ken Wang’s words made my mind buzz. I remembered that during the climb, Edward Lee’s younger brother, Mason Lee, always lagged behind. We had to wait for him several times.
Louis Liu was constantly annoyed. Edward Lee kept defending his brother, but even after we reached the mountain, their pace was slow. Stanley Zhang, the taxi driver, was always up front, but kept stopping to take pictures of everyone.
"I get it now. Come on, Ken Wang, let’s go confirm something."
With a whoosh, I floated up, grabbing Ken Wang’s hand and heading toward the camp.
Soon, we arrived at the camp—it was empty. I looked around and found Louis Liu and Joanne Lu’s tent. The tent was closed. I walked over, Ken Wang came up beside me, and I unzipped it.
Ken Wang cried out in shock. Joanne Lu lay quietly inside, just as I’d expected—she’d died in the camp that night.
That night, Joanne Lu said she felt unwell and went to bed early. Now, looking at her, her vomit had frozen, hanging at the corner of her mouth.
It’s likely that night, someone wanted to kill Louis Liu and poisoned the food. But Joanne Lu ended up eating it, since they ate together. The one who poisoned them was probably Stanley Zhang, the taxi driver—he was the oldest and handled all the cooking.
We drifted to the side of the camp, and sure enough, not far away, I saw two bodies: one was Harvey Zhou, the other was Louis Liu. Blood was still visible on them. A bit further, on a steeper slope, I saw Edward Lee and Mason Lee, the brothers—both had fallen to their deaths.
That night, after Louis Liu returned, his anger exploded. But with so many people around, he couldn’t punish Mason Lee, so he threw his PSP away. They must have died at one and three o’clock, while the rest of us—including me—died at eleven.
Looking at the watch on my wrist and recalling everything from the ski trip, I finally saw the whole picture clearly.
Last night, Mason Lee probably went looking for his PSP, with Edward Lee accompanying him. They both fell. Louis Liu must have witnessed Joanne Lu’s death and was filled with hatred, but didn’t know who was responsible, so he went out that night.
Unexpectedly, he ran into Harvey Zhou. They fought fiercely. Sean Wu was probably involved too—he’d said he killed Harvey Zhou, and at that moment, Louis Liu wasn’t dead yet. In the crisis, Sean Wu killed Harvey Zhou and saved Louis Liu.
But as I guessed, Sean Wu directly killed Louis Liu. After all, Sean Wu had mentioned things from his university days—he probably didn’t trust Harvey Zhou, even knowing he and Louis Liu were enemies. So he killed Harvey Zhou first.
"So, Ethan, in this story, everyone’s a ghost. That means the story should be over, right?"
I nodded, lifted my head, and shouted at the sky.
"I know who the ghost is now. We’re all ghosts—satisfied?"
There was no response for a long time.
"There’s still something off. Five people died that night, leaving only you, Ethan, Stanley Zhang, and Sean Wu. So why did you go skiing the next day?"
"It’s obsession, Ethan Zhang—hahaha..."
At that moment, a wild laugh rang out—it was Louis Liu. He was covered in wounds, especially on his back, blood dripping steadily, his face deathly pale.