As the wielder of the Torch Dragon’s Derived Rune, Jiang Yan was the only one who knew time had been reversed.
Because time was tight, she didn’t have a moment to savor the feeling of her spiritual energy refilling her body, nor could she explain the conditions for clearing Cangnan Funeral Home to the others. In a flash, she used her red threads to bind everyone’s waists, pulling them back and out of the spirit hall, so that in the next instant, they were standing before the iron gates of the funeral home.
Everyone was a bit bewildered, completely unable to process what had just happened.
They had just entered the spirit hall, stepped into the energy field’s grasp, and begun to wait.
At first, it just felt cold, then suddenly a tremendous bell began to toll in their minds.
The sound left them dizzy and nauseated, their chests roiling with discomfort.
Because both body and mind were so distressed, they were still recovering, only vaguely noticing something had touched their waists, then feeling a faint breeze.
A dozen seconds later, Pingping was the first to open her eyes.
By then, Jiang Yan had already withdrawn the red threads. Pingping frowned and looked around, unable to make sense of what had happened.
After a moment, she asked curiously, “Did this energy field… perfectly replicate the scene outside?”
By now, the others were coming to. Shen Huanhuan rubbed her temples and said, “I think I just felt something tie around my waist, something really thin… like thread.”
Jiang Yan spoke plainly, “That was me.”
Inside Cangnan Funeral Home, after Shen Huanhuan’s death, Jiang Yan had revealed her identity, saying she might be able to get them all out. At that time, Shen Xiaoxiao had said Shen Huanhuan had guessed who she was.
But Shen Huanhuan had always been someone with a strong sense of boundaries.
She knew it wasn’t polite to ask about such secrets, so she hadn’t pressed.
And Jiang Yan’s answer then had been—“I’ll tell her once we get out.”
So now she laid it out clearly. Jiang Yan raised her hand, and several red threads floated in her palm, twining together as if alive, rising and falling like flames.
“My true form’s red threads. I just used them to bind you all.”
“I stopped you from going in.”
True form.
Shen Huanhuan’s lips curled slightly. It was one thing to guess, another to have her friend tell her directly. She nodded warmly, not prying further, just following Jiang Yan’s lead.
“Why did you stop us, Sister Jiang Yan?”
Shen Xiaoxiao could hardly hold back her words. In her view, if they didn’t enter Cangnan Funeral Home today, they could just go in tomorrow—what difference did it make? But the fact that Jiang Yan was a yao was a huge deal.
Niu was dead, and now she had a yao as team leader.
Shen Xiaoxiao rubbed her hands together, opening her mouth, but seeing her sister already moving to the next topic, she held back and obediently covered her mouth with her hand.
Pingping and Yu Renwan had long known about this, so their expressions were calm. They too began to ask why Jiang Yan had decided not to enter Cangnan Funeral Home at the last minute.
“Did Sister Jiang Yan sense some danger?” Shen Huanhuan guessed.
Yu Renwan agreed, “Definitely.”
Pingping shrugged, clearly in agreement.
Jiang Yan didn’t explain right away. She looked at everyone first. To be honest, she’d never experienced time reversal before, and probably never would again.
So now she felt a pronounced sense of disorientation.
As if she’d lived another life.
They had all died inside, each in their own tragic way: Shen Huanhuan, who knew she would die but rushed into the valley; Pingping, who died returning to save her sisters from Flower Street; Yu Renwan, who gave her life in gratitude to Xi Jueyun; Shen Xiaoxiao, who chose to die with her sister in the end.
Some matched their character settings perfectly, others diverged.
But all of them died inside.
Was there hatred?
Not really.
Because these characters were real—they had truly existed, had truly gone to their deaths for others, out of a sense of duty.
These were roles they didn’t play with much feeling, but for others, they were lives that could never be relived.
After a long silence, Jiang Yan didn’t start by telling everyone what had happened. Instead, she spoke of the derived rune: “Earlier I obtained a time-type rune that can rewind time by three seconds.”
“I just used it.”
Everyone was stunned.
After a moment, Yu Renwan asked tentatively, “Was it before we entered Cangnan Funeral Home?”
No one would guess from Jiang Yan’s words the vast difference in time flow inside and outside the field, so Yu Renwan’s question was reasonable.
Jiang Yan shook her head. “It was after we entered the energy field.”
“We went in and lived there for several days, and in the end, all of us died,” she paused, then added slowly, “all except me.”
That was a lot to take in. Everyone was stunned into silence.
Two minutes later, Pingping guessed the key: “The time flow inside the energy field is much faster, isn’t it?”
She said, “Like, many days inside equals just a moment outside.”
“So after you cleared the stage, you used the time-reversal rune to bring us all back.”
“And to keep us from going in again, you pulled us out of the energy field’s grasp the moment time rewound.”
Jiang Yan nodded. “That’s about right.”
“But I didn’t clear the stage.”
Her voice was calm. “No one can clear that place. It’s an energy field with no solution once you enter.”
That completely piqued Pingping’s interest.
She flexed her fingers, then asked, “Do you all want to recover those memories?”
“I want to remember. I can’t figure out why I would die in there.”
Pingping’s ability was similar to ‘words become law.’ She truly couldn’t understand what would make her die inside.
But her ability had limits.
—She couldn’t change the past, nor alter a fixed future.
In other words, she could alter any future line that could be changed, but in Cangnan Funeral Home, all her future lines ended in death, so she couldn’t save herself in that timeline.
But now that Jiang Yan had reversed time, this timeline had restarted.
Pingping’s ability could now be used more effectively.
That is, she could let everyone recall the memories from that vanished timeline.
Yu Renwan was the first to speak up: “I—I want to remember!”
“Memories with Jiang Jiang are so precious. I don’t want to forget.”
The twins quickly agreed.
Shen Huanhuan said softly, “Things we all experienced together shouldn’t be left for Sister Jiang Yan to bear alone.”
“Memories are heavy things. It’s not good to let one person carry them all—it’s exhausting.”
After everyone confirmed this, Pingping immediately began to murmur under her breath.
But these were memories erased by a time rune. After just half a sentence, Pingping’s forehead broke out in cold sweat. She didn’t want to stop, though, just wiped her brow, grabbed several rare spiritual energy-restoring talismans from her pocket, and gritted her teeth to finish.
The moment the last word was spoken, Pingping plopped down on the ground.
Even with the help of many high-level talismans, her spiritual energy was wiped out and she needed time to recover.
Jiang Yan wanted to go help her up, but Pingping didn’t try to stand. Instead, she sat cross-legged, earnestly sorting through the memories flooding her mind.
The twins and Yu Renwan closed their eyes as well.
A few days’ worth of memories wasn’t much. Jiang Yan stood by, waiting for them to open their eyes.
Five minutes later, they slowly opened their eyes.
Everyone’s expression had changed.
Shen Xiaoxiao’s lashes trembled, then tears began to fall. It took only a few seconds for her to go from quiet sobbing to a full, broken cry. She wept as if her heart were being torn apart, gasping as she looked at Shen Huanhuan, her grief as raw as the night Shen Huanhuan died.
Shen Huanhuan sighed and went to hug her sister.
“There, there,” she patted her back.
“I’m sorry,” Shen Xiaoxiao sobbed in her sister’s arms. The words seemed to open the floodgates of years of guilt. She kept repeating, “I’m sorry,” one apology after another, her remorse so deep even Pingping was moved.
Yu Renwan walked over to Jiang Yan and whispered, “I left Jiang Jiang a note.”
Jiang Yan replied, “I saw it.”
After a moment, Jiang Yan looked at Yu Renwan. “Did it hurt then?”
Yu Renwan had died the worst—bled out by Master Wang, the whole room reeking of blood.
Hearing this, Yu Renwan immediately understood what Jiang Yan was asking and hurriedly denied it: “Just a little.”
“It didn’t really hurt.”
“Jiang Jiang, don’t worry about me.”
Jiang Yan suddenly didn’t know how to respond to such an obvious lie, so she just lowered her eyes. “That’s good.”
She gave everyone half an hour to adjust, but after just ten minutes, everyone had pulled themselves together. Shen Xiaoxiao wiped her face with a tissue, even checking her swollen eyes in the mirror.
Afterward, she asked, her voice stuffy, “Should we report this energy field to the Supernatural Administration Bureau?”
“There’s no way to clear it, after all.”
Jiang Yan said, “There are two methods now.”
Everyone looked at Jiang Yan.
Jiang Yan analyzed, “First, I could break through from the outside. But this energy field’s turbid qi barrier is extremely thick. Even if I don’t have to wait for a countdown this time, and there’s no time pressure, and I don’t have to use all my yao power in one blow, it would still cost me two-thirds of my energy.”
“At that point, my true form’s phantom would appear, six or seven meters tall, and the commotion would be huge—impossible for ordinary people not to see.”
She looked at everyone. “As far as I know, the Bureau is still keeping energy field information secret. They probably don’t want me to use that method.”
Shen Huanhuan nodded thoughtfully.
She asked, “So what’s the second method…?”
Jiang Yan: “Find the spirit’s obsession.”
Shen Huanhuan was startled, then quickly understood. “You mean, seal the obsession into a talisman and forcibly restore its emotions and reason?”
“Yes,” Jiang Yan replied.
The Bureau’s official method for dealing with supernatural entities had always been to find the spirit’s obsession, help them resolve it, and let them reincarnate. For those so polluted they’d lost all emotion and reason, the Bureau would seal the obsession into a talisman to awaken it and make the spirit lucid.
Cheng Guang had told Jiang Yan about this method back when she was on the Silkworm Village mission.
But in all the tasks Jiang Yan had carried out so far, she’d never needed to use it.
Xia Qing and Chen Ranyi were still lucid, the weasel was alive, Pingping was human, and the two previous energy fields had clear clearance conditions—when they found the spirit’s obsession, they could leave, so there was never any need for a talisman.
In other words, since Jiang Yan began her missions, she’d never used the method Cheng Guang described.
But now, finally, it was time.
—Awaken the spirit’s obsession in Cangnan Funeral Home, let it regain lucidity, and have it destroy the energy field itself.
Shen Xiaoxiao carefully recalled the events inside the energy field, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t figure out who the spirit was.
“I feel like everyone died so miserably. Any of them could have returned to the human world when the Ghost Gate opened and stubbornly stayed behind.”
“Like, maybe they just wanted to see how prosperous the country is now. Maybe the spirit just wanted to see that, so they couldn’t bear to leave.”
Shen Huanhuan shook her head. “The Ghost Gate opens every year on the fifteenth of the seventh month. Spirits wanting to see loved ones all come out then. But the spirit has been gone so long—why did it stay behind only last year?”
“It must have seen something that triggered a powerful obsession, making it feel it had to remain in the human world.”
“Its obsession overcame the pull of the Ghost Gate, and when the gate closed, it still wasn’t recalled.”
Jiang Yan agreed with Shen Huanhuan’s reasoning.
“Something must have happened last year,” she said, “and the spirit uses a text-game mode in the energy field. That format didn’t exist a hundred years ago, so in the year it lingered here, it must have encountered the internet, seen modern people playing games online.”
“It might have seen something online, and that’s why it didn’t return to the Ghost Gate.”
At this, Yu Renwan asked Jiang Yan, “Jiang Jiang, do you have any guesses who the spirit is?”
Jiang Yan nodded.
She replied, “When the foreign soldiers invaded the village, I couldn’t understand a word they said. But suddenly, my mind filled with translated versions of their speech.”
“Only Xi Jueyun knew that language.”
Shen Xiaoxiao clapped her hands. “Then it must be Xi Jueyun!”
“Spirits get polluted after just a few months in the human world and gradually lose their minds, so they wouldn’t purposefully learn anything new. If the spirit knows a foreign language, it must have learned it in life!”
Shen Huanhuan looked at Jiang Yan and said softly, “Xiaoxiao makes sense.”
Jiang Yan: “Then let’s focus on Xi Jueyun as our main lead and see if there’s any information about her online.”
Shen Xiaoxiao immediately pulled out her laptop and started searching.
She was skilled with computers. Back when she’d hacked Chen Ranyi and Chen Ning’s accounts and passwords, it was her doing. Now she put those skills to use again, tapping away at her coding software, trying to trace every information network related to “Xi Jueyun.”
Shen Huanhuan got in touch with her detective friend, asking for information on Lingren Village and its modern development.
Yu Renwan scratched her head, not sure what to do.
She looked around. “Knowing more is always good.”
“Having more friends is good too.”
Jiang Yan smiled. “You’re already great.”
Ignoring Yu Renwan’s suddenly flushed ears, she walked over to Pingping and crouched down. “When you’ve rested, can you help us find Xi Jueyun’s obsession?”
“Related information is fine too.”
Pingping shook her head. “I can’t do anything with information directly related to the spirit. Otherwise, I’d have used it as soon as we entered.”
“The spiritual energy cost is just too great—it would drain my life.”
Jiang Yan nodded in understanding.
Every ability has its limits—the stronger it is, the greater the cost. Otherwise, Pingping alone could break the cycle of supernatural resurgence.
Xi Jueyun had been dead nearly a century; information was hard to find.
And in that era, there weren’t many ways to leave records. Even if they found nothing, it would make sense.
But if the spirit really was Xi Jueyun, and if she really had seen something online, then the answer had to be there.
Jiang Yan found a place to sit.
Time passed quickly. The twins exchanged information now and then.
Two hours later, Shen Xiaoxiao suddenly shot to her feet.
“Is it this—?”
She pointed at the screen, anxious. “Sister Jiang Yan, come look!!”
Jiang Yan hurried over. Shen Xiaoxiao turned the laptop toward her. On the screen was a middle schooler’s private account, with a pinned post of a few lines and a photo, posted early last year.
[Republic-era love stories are nine out of ten tragic—
Turns out true lovers’ suicide pacts really exist.]
The photo showed two skeletons: a tall man holding a woman in his arms, both with penetrating wounds in their chests, as if stabbed by a long sword.
Jiang Yan recognized it at a glance—Xi Jueyun.
Xi Jueyun and the invader’s skeletons.
At the time, she had been held too tightly, unable to break free, so she’d turned her Mandarin Duck Sword on herself, killing both herself and the enemy.
A hundred years had passed; their clothes had long since rotted, guns and swords taken by later generations, their bodies carelessly buried together in the earth, with nothing left to prove their identities.
Last year, on a day when Lingren Village’s soil was turned, the two skeletons were unearthed. On that day, ignorant people raised their cameras, took photos, wrote captions, and wove a romantic story around it.
But what did any of this have to do with romance?
After a long silence, Jiang Yan said softly,
“I finally understand why Cangnan Funeral Home is a dead end.”
“She carries hatred in her heart.”