The whole morning and noon passed, and by dusk, Leo Liu had written a lengthy account of everything I told him. It filled two entire pages, which he handed to me.
I tucked it into my jacket, keeping it close.
"Ethan Zhang, keep this safe. Next time, think about what I've given you, just don't forget it. If you see a similar scene again, remember to take this out and show us. Even if we don't remember, we'll believe you."
I nodded.
"Is it useful? Leo, what this guy said—who knows if it's true or not?"
Tiger Li commented from the side.
"Just to be safe, the three of us will each tell you the thing we least want others to know. If the time comes, you just need to say it out loud."
I nodded again. Then Leo Liu chased the other two out of the room. Inside, he told me his deepest secret. Afterward, the other two came in one by one and told me theirs.
After they finished eating, I led them to the river behind the village.
At the riverbank, Leo Liu silently watched the small temple across the water.
There are too many things about ghosts and gods in this world that can't be explained. In many places, the most common use of life force is in rituals.
I nodded. I hadn't known about this before.
Tiger, explain it. The village where you were born needed living people to offer their life force to the dead, right?
Tiger Li smiled, sat down by the riverbank, and began to speak.
A long time ago, when Tiger Li was a child, his village had a tradition during every Ghost Festival. That night, every household would leave their doors open.
At home, depending on the number of people, they'd use wooden planks or even vines to make a simple coffin. That night, everyone would sleep inside it. For three days around July 15th, this was the custom.
The purpose was to share some of their life force with deceased relatives, so they could come up for a visit and feel more comfortable. Ghosts don't always feel at ease in the world of the living; when morning comes, they have to hide in dark corners again.
Once ghosts absorbed the life force of the living, they could come out during cloudy or rainy days without any trouble. This was the village's custom, and every household followed it. Tiger Li could see them from birth.
When he was young, every Ghost Festival, he saw many dead people—his grandparents and other relatives—entering the house to absorb their life force. Only when he grew older did he understand these were ghosts.
So, does that mean the things in the temple across the river need the life force of living people too?
I asked, and Leo Liu nodded.
"Let's go. We'll check it out first."
We crossed the river and entered the temple. There were two strange totems, but nothing that looked like an offering.
Just two totems stuck in the muddy ground, and the temple itself was in ruins, nearly collapsed.
"You two, stop worrying. If time really reverses at midnight, then David Wu wouldn't have died. There's always a way to fix things. Old Eccentric already talked about this before you arrived, and Hugh Thompson should've told you too—nothing is predictable. What's the point of moping?"
Leo Liu said this to the two still dwelling on David Wu's death.
I touched my chest, feeling the record I kept—notes about important events over the next thirteen years that I gave to Leo Liu and the others. I worried that if midnight passed and the record disappeared, it would be a problem.
I started desperately trying to recall everything in that record. At this moment, I remembered a horror story where memory was erased—because the characters became part of the story, like puppets following its plot. But this time, things were different.
Once midnight struck, time would reverse—back to 12:00 AM on January 1, 2000.
We waited quietly. It was already 11:50, but the strange phenomenon from last night hadn't happened, and the two totems hadn't come alive.
"It's almost time. Ethan Zhang, keep that record safe."
I nodded. We walked out of the temple and looked around. At that moment, Leo Liu checked his pager, the other two looked at their watches, and I quietly watched the ticking hands of time.
Everything was silent. I tried to recall everything from the past day, running it through my mind over and over.
I could even hear the ticking of the watch's second hand. The silence was intense. It was already 11:59. I watched Tiger Li's watch as the second hand moved, one notch at a time.
I gripped the record tightly in my hand. Deathbane Aura was already seeping out from the surface of my body.
At midnight, suddenly, streams of energy surged across the ground. I saw Tiger Li and the others vanish in an instant. In my last glimpse, the clock hand pointed to twelve and spun rapidly in reverse. Then, with a buzz, everything around me stopped.
Time seemed to freeze, unmoving. I looked at the river beside me—it had stopped flowing, and every splash of water was perfectly visible. I stared in shock at everything around me.
I'd seen this kind of thing before: Ironmask once used this trick and killed a monk.
I moved around, spotting a stone by the riverbank. I reached out and picked it up, but felt nothing. The moment I put it down, it returned to its original spot.
It was strange. I scooped up a handful of water from the river, and when I let go, the water stayed suspended in midair, unmoving. The river's surface looked like it had a gap, but in the blink of an eye, the water I held filled itself back into the river.
I sat in silence, pondering what had happened. Everything was frozen—time itself had stopped, yet I could still move.
A surge of heat pulsed through my palm, growing hotter by the second. I quickly raised my right hand—the burning sensation came from the record written by Leo Liu, clenched tightly in my grip. Wisps of black smoke began to curl out from between my fingers.
The paper was vanishing. I hastily opened my hand and saw the edges spontaneously combusting, the sheet turning to ash. Only the part pressed against my palm remained intact. I hurriedly crumpled the record into a ball and squeezed it in my fist.
The paper stopped disappearing, but just then, I saw streams of white mist swirling toward me, encircling me. A powerful force tugged at my hand, trying to snatch the record away.
"Don’t even think about it—no matter what you are!"
I roared in anger, unleashing a burst of Deathbane Aura that instantly blew the white mist away. I floated upward as more and more streams of white surrounded me, enclosing me in an instant.
Crushing waves of pressure came from all directions, threatening to flatten me. I kept releasing Deathbane Aura from within, resisting the force.
The intent behind these forces was obvious—they wanted to destroy the record in my hand. But for now, they couldn’t break through my Deathbane Aura. I had to think of something.
Suddenly, red, yellow, and black light flared beneath my feet. The two things from the temple came alive, floating up and opening their mouths as they drifted toward me.
With a shout, I raised the Ghostblade in my left hand and slashed several times, cutting through a swath of white mist before darting forward. As expected, the two monsters gave chase.
One thought echoed in my mind: I couldn’t let them catch me. By now, the ground of this frozen moment was overflowing with white mist. The pressure around me grew stronger and denser, making it almost impossible to cut through with the Ghostblade.
The mist had become as solid as a steel wall. With a bang, I stopped. I sheathed the Ghostblade and quickly pulled out the Scattershot Rifle.
"Come on, let’s see whose power is stronger."
Deathbane Aura surged wildly from within me. I had to do something—unleash my strongest power.
Two crimson runes appeared in my eyes. The chaotic power inside me stabilized, and my Scattershot Rifle became even more powerful.
But in an instant, the two pursuing monsters vanished. I stared in shock.
Suddenly, something moved along my spine, making me cry out. One monster, snake-like, coiled around my body, while the other opened its jaws wide and bit down on my right hand, swallowing it whole.
My right hand was slowly vanishing inside the monster’s mouth. I roared in fury.
"Instinct—called coexistence..."
Deathbane Aura erupted chaotically from every corner of my body, my power flooding into my right hand.
A large section of my arm had vanished, but I still clung to the record. Waves of searing pain shook my ghost soul.
"You won’t get away with it—repeating this cycle again and again. Enough. Give back those who vanished in your spiral of time!"
A blinding white light stabbed into my eyes, making me dizzy. Instantly, I lost consciousness.
Thunder crashed overhead. Rain poured down as I gasped for breath, staring at the forest around me—I’d made it inside. My heart raced as I recalled the blood from the Darong Family that Xuehan Yi had made me drink.
But then I felt something hard in my right hand—something was there.