Chapter 112 Perfection Through Refinement (11)

A familiar feeling washed over her again, the turning hands of the clock stretched out the time around her, and the scene before her suddenly receded.

An invisible force pulled her backward.

The blurry figure stood still, growing further and further away from her, yet the invisible barrier in front of her remained unyielding.

The feeling of being unable to control and being at someone's mercy was infuriating and irritating to her.

The shadow flickered in and out of existence, silently watching her.

She resisted the heavy constraints, slowly raising her hand. The pointer transformed into a flowing liquid, passing through her fingertips and forcefully engulfing her.

For a moment, the intense resentment actually lessened the feeling of being unable to move, allowing sensation to gradually return to the limbs.

In the next instant, she broke free from the obstruction and finally reached out and grabbed the shadow tightly.

Space and time seemed to have no meaning here. In the blink of an eye, she didn't even take a few steps before her hand pierced through the smoky, misty figure.

Shu Ningmiao had already noticed something.

She also possesses the ability to control the current situation, but she is not as familiar with what is in front of her.

—This is the power of the 'string' that the game system refers to.

An entity capable of manipulating time.

Weston's machine was useful; she successfully absorbed the Pandora of the Crimson Palace Stone, which allowed her to grasp the concept of strings.

She stepped in unwittingly, attracting something she shouldn't have.

The shadow before her possessed the ability to control the "strings" and had invaded her world.

This means that this person is the last missing piece in completing the story's logical chain, the true second-playthrough player.

The person who knew everything about the past, present, and future, and who started over with her.

She knew from the beginning that the person was not Achini.

The outline of the shadow was pierced by her hand, and Shu Ningmiao roughly grabbed the fading shadow again, truly imprisoning the phantom in her hand because of that almost intense desire.

“...It’s you.” At this moment, she couldn’t even utter many words, her eyes filled with unreadable emotions: “The other person in Edvina’s study is you.”

The shadow in her hand flickered erratically, seemingly without substance, yet leaving a disgusting, sticky feeling on her hand.

"Another person?"

The thing remained silent for a long time before speaking with a faint smile: "How pitiful, is death really that important? My dear, I just want to help you. You have the desire to see everything clearly, but you are blocked by some illusions."

Its speech was so strange. Shu Ningmiao could tell that it was deliberately imitating the inexplicably intimate tone of the game system, but it could never be the system itself. She couldn't feel any tenderness or concern in its words.

Completely ignoring its sophistry, she continued unaffected: "After leaving Edwina's office, there was a question I thought about for a long time. Although I can never get the real answer, I can still guess a bit about it, right?"

Shadow hummed in interest and continued, "What's the problem?"

"The lock Edvina left behind, and the conditions for opening it." She said firmly, "Sealed for over three hundred years, no one could open it, yet Achini and I, in the present, were able to open that door. If this were a condition that an ordinary person could never achieve—I guess the condition could only be resurrection—but something's not right..."

Shu Ningmiao was able to state this condition with certainty because she guessed that the conditions set by her master must contain her own subconscious expectations.

Edwina's last letter was already a hint.

The only condition to unlock the 'lock' is one that is absolutely impossible to achieve.

But if there were no expectations, that letter wouldn't have been written in such detail.

The lock that she thought was impossible, yet secretly hoped would one day be opened, may very well have stemmed from a beautiful fantasy about the safety of her deceased best friend.

No prayer is more fitting for a dying person who is unwilling to leave this world than "coming back to life."

Shu Ningmiao's eyes seemed to hold a flame, as if she wanted to burn the illusory shadow in her hand to ashes.

"—In the previous timeline, when I appeared in Edwina's office, I was clearly not dead yet."

Achini and she did not appear at the same time, so before that, there must have been someone else who opened the door for her and lured her in.

She was truly powerless against an opponent who could control time at will.

The opposing team was holding up the referee's whistle and could freely rewind, pause, and fast forward; only this could explain why Achini appeared out of nowhere behind her.

That person must be someone she knows—she doesn't have much patience for strangers.

Because of this assumption, she would occasionally break free from rationality and harbor intense suspicion about everything around her.

The shadow stretched out its misty arm and pressed it against the back of her hand; the sticky, slippery touch was not at all as ethereal and unreal as it looked.

It whispered, "It was Achini who stabbed you in the chest with his own hands. Why are you still trying to exonerate him? Even if there were a third party who witnessed your death, shouldn't they bear a heavier burden of guilt than him?"

Shu Ningmiao stared intently at it, her eyes darkening, a look that was hard to tell whether it was mockery or disgust.

Her pupils reflected the empty landscape, yet it was as if she were once again in that surging sea of ​​fire.

The continuous flames scorched her skin, her dark red hair flowed down her arms, and low laughter lingered in her ears, growing sharper and sharper.

Achini's ethereal figure approached her, letting out a soft, ethereal laugh: "Ah, that's right."

His long, dark red hair cascaded down the back of her hand, and the smile on his face was both dreamlike and blank: "It's me... It makes no difference to me who chooses to complete the plan..."

The memories shattered abruptly.

"A lie." Shu Ningmiao paused, her hand gripping the shadow, and suddenly spoke.

Achini's answer was too quick and too confident, which ironically became his only weakness.

The statement that "it makes no difference to him who he chooses to kill" is definitely a lie.

If there really was no difference, he wouldn't have shed tears when he took action.

From that first lie, she no longer needed to question him further, because the lie had already revealed the true nature of another person.

Shu Ningmiao knew she wasn't particularly intelligent, but her memory was pretty good. The first time she was immersed in memories of the past, the feverish fantasy brought on by blood loss made the cold liquid dripping onto her neck stand out starkly and leave a deep impression.

After that, she only asked Achini one last question.

—The chains pierced through him the second before.

When she lowered her head, she asked with complete bewilderment, "Why were you crying the moment you struck?"

She still doesn't understand the meaning of those tears.

Even if Achini truly possessed her genes, she couldn't believe that two people who had never met could suddenly develop strong feelings for each other from such a thin relationship.

That single tear could prove a lie; to her, that was all.

If a person's fate is a ship constantly adrift in a vast ocean, she must desperately nip any storm that tries to control her in the bud the night before.

Therefore, it also possesses the power to control time, as long as it can kill this thing... even if it suffers a backlash...

She took a deep breath and her fingers tightened little by little.

Despite repeated warnings from the game system, a sense of danger still crept into Shu Ningmiao's mind.

No—not now.

She could clearly sense that her control over the strings was far less mature than the other person's. She was able to control the shadow in front of her, mainly because the other person offered no resistance, aside from the amplification of her anger.

"I will kill you." She vaguely felt her body being pulled away, her lips trembling as she tightly grasped the wisp of shadow that was about to slip away from her hand, as if trying to remember any distinguishable features of the phantom.

"No matter what you are... no matter where you are, I will kill you."

It said, "That's great."

From the gray shadows, she could actually sense an almost serene smile.

Tick-tock.

The crisp sound of liquid splashing seemed like an auditory hallucination in this void.

-

Tick-tock.

Water droplets trickled down the edge of the window and drifted into the ward with the wind.

The third floor of the medical clinic.

Ward 309.

The double windows were blown wide open by the wind, and the notebooks and papers on the bedside table rustled.

A thin, frail hand rested on the paper, the pen tip tracing a line, circling the word "destiny" on the paper. The red ink gradually spread and flowed down, almost faintly covering the word "pearl" on the next line.

The half-open door to the ward was hurriedly pushed open, and a nurse rushed in, hastily closing the window and apologizing repeatedly, followed by a man in a suit and tie.

Yu Lu bowed politely to her and said, "It's going to rain."

The blonde girl sat on the hospital bed, silently gazing out the window at the misty rain that pattered against the glass.

Yu Lu put down the interrogation folder in his hand. As the omniscient interrogation record of the Pinne Secrets, it has not been connected to the network and still maintains the tradition of handwritten records.

Although the information was mostly vague and blank, Arsia mostly responded to the unwarranted illness with silence, immersing herself in her own world and rarely speaking.

Unlike the last time I asked, there was a bunch of fresh yellow roses in the vase by her bedside.

He subconsciously felt that this was Shu Ningmiao's doing; at least Weston wasn't that kind of person.

Arcia stared at the rain in the sky for a long time before turning around and saying softly, "They're so noisy."

Yu Lu was completely unmoved by the voice, which was barely even a drizzle, and simply looked politely at the place where she had been staring for so long.

The rain outside only occasionally pattered against the window, and the crystal-clear, icy water droplets slid across the glass, leaving streaks of water.

-

Tick-tock.

A tear fell from in front of Shu Ningmiao and into the void between them.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

The familiar cool touch splashed onto the back of her hand.

The shadow grabbed her arm: "You'll thank me."

"—Truth, cause, ending—isn't the whole of people's muddled lives just a pursuit of these meaningless things!"

Shu Ningmiao felt more and more that she had heard this obviously distorted voice somewhere before.

But there was no time left for her to think.

It carried her along, and everything around them began to fall. Shu Ningmiao's pupils constricted as she watched helplessly as the shadow in her hand was torn apart by a slight force, like a thin piece of white paper.

As if the stage curtain had been torn open, everything before her eyes shattered into heavy darkness as the liquid splattered. Warm blood welled up from her chest, both dry and cold.

The cool tears on the back of my hand were gradually drying, yet they still felt slightly damp.

...What a disgusting sensation.

Here we go again.

How many more times will this humiliating ritual of stabbing her be repeated before it finally ends?

Her vision was so blurry that she could only see the color of the table. It was still quiet around her. A hand was placed on her forehead, and she let her body fall limply onto the table.

This silence lasted for a very long time, as long as a century.

Then, she felt the cold, foreign object being slowly pulled out of her chest, and heard Achini's pale voice: "Is that enough?"

The surroundings were eerily quiet, and he seemed to be talking to himself.

But a moment later, she felt her hand being lifted silently by another person. This hand was much colder than the one Achini had placed on her forehead, and it felt more like a dead person than she herself.

"yes."

The familiar yet deliberately obfuscated voice, indistinguishable from the illusory figure, clearly came from that shadowy silhouette.

Who...is he?!

“Her ability is very special… especially for you, going from a flawed imitation to the true master, you should be ecstatic.” The owner of the voice gently shushed, “Don’t make that face.”

“She’s not dead yet,” Achini said, as if seeking confirmation.

“How pathetic,” the voice said again. “Your sorrow is meaningless. Leave her here; the people of Pine will not give her a chance to live. Let her end it all.”

Achini's voice trailed off in a long silence, broken into fragments: "Didn't you say she would live forever with us in Pandora?"

"Everyone's life will eventually return to Pandora." The voice chuckled. "Otherwise, why would the springs beneath Pine still gush forth so abundantly after hundreds of years, showing no sign of waning?"

“She’s different,” Achini muttered to himself. “She’s one of us.”

"She's just an ordinary person who's luckier than most, but not that lucky." The man said calmly, "For people, superpowers are no different from something as ethereal as 'luck.' Without the string, she wouldn't be the one truly qualified to change the world."

As expected... everything Achini said was a lie.

She knew that the superpower contained the "string" of the world's laws, and who the person who could truly change the world was.

It's Eric.

So why does she now possess the power of strings? Is it because of the game system?

Shu Ningmiao thought Achini would symbolically shout "You were lying to me all along," but in reality, there was only a long, numb silence in the room.

Tears fell onto her collar, as heavy as the blood that soaked her chest.

I really want to punch him into the wall.

After a brief silence, the harsh sound of chair legs scraping against the wooden floor resumed. The person standing in front of her pulled out a chair, sat down at the table, and casually pulled out some papers that had fallen from the files. He folded them into something, and although his tone was calm, it was filled with intense disgust: "Isn't it the kind of drama people like to watch when someone who has everything from birth loses everything and dies a lowly death?"

"In the end, she's nothing but an arrogant and shallow shell. She seems indifferent to most things, but that's just to cover up her arrogance and cold-heartedness. What's the point of living like that?"

"Let go." The owner of the voice looked down at her, but she didn't feel that gaze actually falling on her: "Everything has a price. The price of disregarding one's will is life. When the superpowered device in your hand pierced through her body, her physical body was already dead. When the Pandora in her body completely dissipates, that will be true annihilation."

"She's dead." The man's whisper was like a demon from the abyss: "You killed her."

She could feel Achini's hand slowly loosening.

Indeed, everything Achini said and did seemed empty and false, because he was truly a blank life, and everything he proclaimed was just a "retelling" of this person.

"Do you know her? Do you have any memories of her?" The man sighed softly, placing his hand over her face to obscure her features. "Besides what I've told you, have you had any interaction with her?"

“No.” Achini’s breathing became labored: “...but seeing her makes me very sad.”

"Love is an illusion." The man casually closed her eyes, his voice very soft, and then disappeared into the room.

Edwina's office door opened and closed again, returning to silence.

Based on the available information, Shu Ningmiao believes she may already be dead.

Being trapped inside a corpse is neither pleasant nor reasonable. She tried to activate the so-called string to leave, but there was no response.

Perhaps she can leave this dream once the "Pandora within her body" that the person mentioned completely dissipates, since if she is completely dead, there is no reason for her to still be conscious.

The large amount of Pandora she absorbed undoubtedly enhanced her intangible connection to the 'string'. She can now clearly distinguish her surroundings, which are the same as the memories she had been trapped in before. This is the "past" that is being covered by the current timeline.

So, Shu Changyan's kiss was real too.

She tried to raise her hand, but couldn't even move her fingers an inch. If a picture were taken now, it would probably be the CG of her death ending in the game.

If she was still conscious when Shu Changyan stole a kiss from her, then all she wanted now was for him to kiss her again soon so she could be free.

She had no desire to be trapped in this pointless suffering and rack her brains to figure out some truth. She was unmoved by the man's vicious judgment, but the surroundings were deathly silent. Now there wasn't even a heartbeat. If she didn't think about anything, it might be more unbearable than being a corpse.

Shu Ningmiao rarely began to think about why Shu Changyan was the first to discover her.

But before she could think about it enough to kill time, the answer had already appeared in her mind.

And that mission... probably for the same reason.

Fortunately, she stopped breathing before he made a move; Shu Changyan really should burn some money for her.

In such a place, she lost all sense of time, as if she had been sleeping for a very long time. When she sensed the presence of another person again, this person stood before her, staring at her for a long time without moving. As the silence lasted longer, the despairing stillness grew heavier and heavier. The silence was like the last line of defense before a dam broke, which made people feel even more terrified.

Shu Ningmiao leaned against him, feeling her body temperature growing colder and colder, almost losing the last trace of life. She couldn't help but sigh softly.

Strictly speaking, this was a light touch that didn't really qualify as a kiss. She could sense that it contained no lust. Sometimes, she really couldn't figure out what Shu Changyan was thinking.

Shu Changyan didn't say anything, but his body heat kept flowing over her; she was almost in a state of rigor mortis.

He took a soft handkerchief and gently wiped away the blood and ash from her skin, smoothing her hair with his fingertips.

After a long while, Shu Changyan called her name softly.

Full name and surname.

Shu Ningmiao suddenly had a very bad feeling.

So far, this feeling hasn't been wrong.

-----------------------

Author's Note: 500,000 words!!!! I'll send out a red envelope (cash gift), and the giveaway has started. Thank you everyone, sob sob sob [crying][crying][crying][crying]