Chapter 22 Rose Manor (21) humanoid evil spirit

At 1:45 PM, Qi Si stood alone in the center of the rose-filled garden, holding the 【Pocket Watch of Fate】 he had borrowed from Chang Xu.

The air was filled with gray mist. Along the paths covered by branches and vines, large roses hung their heads, dripping wet. Their deep red was so vivid it seemed ready to drip, exuding a cold, sinister aura like a stagnant river of blood.

Qi Si’s fingers brushed over the rose petals, finally resting on the most vibrant one. He gripped the thorny stem of the rose, exerted force with his wrist, and snapped it off, flower and leaves together.

The broken end of the stem was connected by tender green threads, spurting out pale cyan sap, just like the capillaries of a poisoned person.

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

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

A raindrop fell from the high sky, hitting the center of Qi Si’s brow.

He lifted his eyelids and looked around. In the thick mist, clusters of gray shadows stood among the rose bushes, like Scarecrows guarding the place, yet they had clearly only just appeared.

They were corpses, of all ages and genders. Some had rotted down to mere white bones, while others still faintly showed their features from when they were alive.

Among the figures surrounding him, Qi Si saw Shen Ming’s face. The face of the newly dead Ghosts was lifelike, the cracked skin presenting a sickly pallor.

The dead who had been buried here in cycle after cycle were gathered at this moment; countless three-day space-times overlapped here.

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

Lightning streaked across the gray-purple sky, striking suddenly, instantly illuminating the monster-like, dusty old castle.

The light and shadow flickered between black and white, followed immediately by the rumbling of thunder.

A torrential rain descended from the sky.

His blood-stained white shirt was soaked by the rain. The congealed blood stains spread unexpectedly, the intense reddish-brown diluted into a dreamlike pale pink, making Qi Si himself drift like a phantom.

He asked again: “Why can’t I pick the rose?”

Just as he had asked “Miss Anna” in the garden at 9:00 AM.

“The roses belong to me, and they can only belong to me.” At that time, the woman in black, whose face was like a ghost’s but still retained a fraction of a living person’s vitality, had said so.

Qi Si asked again: “Is beauty the same?”

Miss Anna replied: “Yes, beauty belongs to me…”

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

Upon hearing this, Miss Anna smiled, her lip color blooming like a blood flower. She turned and walked away along the path shaded by flower branches, her black skirt trailing and swaying on the ground.

At this moment, Qi Si asked a question he already knew the answer to. He lifted his eyes, crossing over the figures, and looked toward the distance where mist was rising, his gaze meeting that graceful black ink-like trace.

The hour hand of the pocket watch pointed to the hour.

It was 2:00 PM.

…

Room 2.

Lin Chen sat on the edge of the bed without a word, watching Chang Xu at the desk repeatedly reading the notes containing clues, then using a pen to record the key points on a blank piece of papyrus.

Sudden variables and complex information flowed by one after another in a very short time. Lin Chen’s brain was already blank; he only remembered the few details Qi Si had instructed him before leaving, and he nervously rehearsed them over and over in his mind.

It was Qi Si who had extended an olive branch when he was most helpless, bringing him stumbling all the way to the present, and even venturing to the Third Floor to make up for his negligence.

Now, he could not mess up no matter what, otherwise it wouldn’t just be him who died, but also Qi Si…

The responsibility was too heavy. Lin Chen’s palms began to sweat again, and the razor blade in his hand became slick, making it difficult to hold.

He subconsciously put down the blade and wiped his hands on the bedsheet.

Chang Xu, with his back to him, twitched his ears slightly and asked without turning his head: “What’s wrong?”

…Brother, do you have eyes on your back?

Lin Chen’s heart skipped a beat, but he immediately adjusted his mindset and laughed it off: “I… I’m a bit nervous. What kind of clearance method do you think Brother Qi came up with?” As he spoke, he cautiously gripped the blade again.

Chang Xu did not suspect anything and answered truthfully: “I don’t know.”

“Dong, dong.”

A solemn, grave bell toll came from outside the door, striking twice in succession.

Lin Chen leaped up suddenly, raising the blade high to stab at Chang Xu’s neck, almost touching the skin!

The latter, as if he had been warned in advance, tilted his head to dodge, then turned and pinned him to the bed.

The blade in his hand was taken away. Lin Chen gritted his teeth and kicked wildly, with only one thought in his heart: Kill Chang Xu!

About an hour ago, Qi Si had entered the room first, shoved the blade into his hand, and told him word by word: “Brother Shen was killed by Chang Xu. Chang Xu is problematic. If I don’t return by 2:00, you must kill Chang Xu immediately, otherwise we will both die.”

At the time, looking at the young man’s serious expression, he forgot to ask for the reason and only stammered: “I… I can’t do it…”

“You must do it.” Qi Si’s eyes were as deep as a pool of stagnant water, his smile miserable, “This is the last resort. You are the only one I can trust. The blade I gave you is the only weapon I carry with me. Let’s just say I’m being a gambler, making a desperate throw.”

That was the first time Lin Chen had received such heavy expectations from someone other than his parents.

Growing up, because of his poor family background, most of what he heard were phrases like “You don’t deserve it” or “You can’t do it,” as if, for the poor, failure was just a matter of course.

Even though his parents were very good to him, what he felt more was the responsibility he had to bear and the anxiety of fearing he couldn’t meet expectations.

The one time he impulsively tried to save someone, it also ended in failure. Those people’s faces wore mockery and ridicule, their eyes clearly writing “You don’t deserve it.”

He seemed to be good for nothing except studying, unable to do anything well. And now, someone had staked their life on him in a desperate gamble…

“I must do it.” Lin Chen responded in his heart.

He opened his mouth to speak this promise, but Qi Si turned back to open the door, letting the gloomy-tempered Chang Xu in…

Memories swam through his mind. Lin Chen, not knowing where the strength came from, tilted his head up and slammed it into Chang Xu’s chin, making a move to snatch the blade.

Chang Xu felt the pain, his eyes narrowing slightly. The moment Lin Chen was about to touch the blade, he slammed his elbow onto his neck.

Was it a failure after all?

Lin Chen smiled bitterly in his heart; the strongest emotion was not the fear of death, but guilt toward Qi Si.

He had still failed the other’s trust; now everything was over…

The sound of bones shattering rang out. Lin Chen’s pupils slowly dilated, and his whole body went limp as if all his strength had been drained.

Chang Xu watched this scene quietly, a look of confusion slowly appearing in his eyes.

What was going on? Why did Lin Chen suddenly want to kill him? What happened?

And… the situation of being sneak-attacked from behind and slashed in the neck, why was there such a strong sense of déjà vu, yet he couldn’t remember it at all?

Chang Xu touched the back of his neck, falling into self-doubt, gradually becoming bewildered in the wind.

…

At exactly 2:00 PM, in the sea of roses, Qi Si backhanded the rose stem against his heart.

The plant’s sap drilled into his flesh as if it had life, turning into sharp thorns that pierced his heart, taking deep root in all directions.

Blood flowers bloomed with vibrant colors on the white background, and the world before his eyes suddenly collapsed and grew dim.

Pain sufficient to shred his sanity swept through his brain, yet Qi Si laughed instead, chanting out of breath:

【My chest decays…】

It felt as if countless insects were twisting and crawling in his heart, weaving a dense web on his skin and blood vessel walls, extending along the flow of blood, burying deep into his organs, until they occupied every inch of space inside his body.

His limbs began to melt, flesh and blood began to dissolve from the edges, dripping down…

【Flesh and blood spread on the ground…】

Zou Yan’s performance had served as a good demonstration. From this, Qi Si determined that the rose was the key to a human’s transformation into Ghosts, and the four-line poem was the spell or incantation.

As he chanted, the rose inserted into his heart grew vigorously, bursting out from his mouth and nose, and black-green branches also stretched out from the fingertips of his limbs.

【Roses dwell here…】

The dominance of his consciousness wavered, and his self-perception was being tampered with and recast inch by inch.

Human, non-human, ghost, monster, beast, god… countless schools of thought clustered together, exploded with a roar, and turned into tiny red fragments scattered in the ocean of his mind.

【Please firmly believe that you are human】

The prompt text on the system interface almost dripped blood, and the phantom image of the four characters 【You are not human】 appeared flickering between the lines of text.

“Monster, you monster…”

“Go to hell! Why won’t you just die?”

“Qi Si, you are not human!”

Hissing sounds mixed at the bottom of his mind, and the verbal abuse he had suffered over the past twenty-plus years overlapped at the same moment.

Shen Ming’s death flashed before Qi Si’s eyes; that was undoubtedly the consequence of complete transformation into Ghosts, losing human cognition.

It was too ugly, he didn’t like it.

Memories surged like waves. He kept his eyes half-closed, his lips stretching to his ears: “I am not human, not a ghost, so what am I exactly?”

“Don’t tell me you want to say—I am a god? Hahahaha!”

The laughter became increasingly wanton, like the sound of a tide destroying a wooden boat after surging into a wall, and like the torrential rain of dense clouds sweeping across a hundred miles, crushing the old castle.

His perception of time was distorted, a mere few seconds stretched out, as if a single note plucked slowly in the eternal night.

【Endure with me tomorrow…】

The torrential rain around him suddenly suspended in mid-air, freezing at a certain moment like a bead curtain strung together by silk threads.

Each raindrop refracted a gray-purple halo, and in the next second, they slowly rose, flying toward the high sky.

— — Time reversal was triggered.

The colors before his eyes were overturned, the mixed oil paints blurring into a mass.

His flying, agitated consciousness slowly settled, piling up at the bottom of his mind like snowflakes.

A huge phantom of a playing card interwoven with blood and black appeared out of thin air; one half was a smiling portrait, the other half surging with pitch-black tentacles, embedded with scarlet eyeballs.

【You put on a mask of gentleness, just to better tear apart the hopes of others; beneath the harmless disguise is an evil spirit that will eventually bring disaster to the world】

【You are destined to walk alone and keep company with destruction; screams, wails, death, fear—you watch coldly, taking pleasure in pain】

【You are an evil ghost that crawled out of hell, a monster hidden among the crowd; in this game without morality, you will gain the freedom to act recklessly that you have dreamed of】

【Congratulations on unlocking the Identity Card “humanoid evil spirit”】

The exquisitely engraved card dissipated into blood-colored light spots above his head, all of which merged into his body.

Qi Si maintained the posture of inserting the rose into his heart with both hands, looking toward the direction of the old castle, his laughter gradually subsiding, turning into a scoff.

Whether Lin Chen killed Chang Xu or Chang Xu killed Lin Chen, it would lead to the same result.

Some engaged in mutual slaughter, some transformed into evil spirits. When the raindrops fell back to the earth from the high sky, the sin had already occurred, and the evil spirit had returned to a human form.

What Qi Si wanted was just this time reversal at two o’clock.