A familiar sensation of consciousness being drawn away swept over her again, as if she’d been submerged in deep water and then hauled back up.
When she opened her eyes once more, the surroundings had, as expected, changed again.
Inside a simply furnished—bordering on shabby—studio apartment, the lighting was dim.
Xia Ji, her school uniform covered in dirt, ash, and even clear shoe prints, hung her head like a frightened animal trying to hide.
She carefully placed her equally filthy schoolbag down at her feet.
She deliberately turned her face aside, loose strands of hair trying to cover the fresh bruises and scratches on her cheek, but even in the poor light those marks remained faintly visible.
Across from her, a figure in home clothes and slippers slowly approached, casually placing a few teaching plans on a cluttered table nearby.
“Here, use some medicine.”
He extended a hand, passing her a small bottle of iodine and a tube of ointment for bruises.
His voice was intentionally soft, gentle, trying to reassure her.
“Don’t be afraid. Here, you’ll be safe.”
Xia Ji’s hands twisted the wrinkled hem of her uniform nervously, her head lowered.
After a moment’s hesitation, she seemed to summon all her courage, reaching out with a trembling hand to carefully take the cold bottle of iodine and ointment.
Her voice was as faint as a mosquito’s buzz, nearly inaudible: “Thank you… Teacher Xu…”
Slowly, she looked up, her gaze timid as it met the person before her—her homeroom teacher since entering high school, Xu Guangming.
Xu Guangming glanced at the wounds on her face and let out a faint sigh.
He said nothing, just reached out and pressed the ceiling light switch on the wall, banishing the gloom in the room.
He turned and, a bit slowly, drew the somewhat worn curtain closed over the window.
When he finished, he glanced at Xia Ji, still standing anxiously in place, and motioned with his eyes toward a chair.
“Sit.”
His tone was calm.
He turned and sat down first, taking a nearby low stool.
Xu Guangming stared at Xia Ji for a while.
His gaze didn’t hold the usual concern of a teacher; instead, it carried a hint of scrutiny and a deep, hidden emotion brewing beneath the surface.
“Do you need help applying the medicine?” he asked, his voice still steady.
Hearing this, Xia Ji flinched as if burned.
She shook her head quickly, voice flustered, “No, no need… Thank you, Teacher. I—I can do it myself…”
After speaking, she hurriedly set the brown bottle of iodine at the corner of the table, pulled out a cotton swab, clumsily dipped it in the brown liquid, and began carefully treating the wounds on her face and arms.
The sting of the iodine made her instinctively shrink her neck, but she bit her lip and stayed silent.
Xu Guangming silently watched her apply the medicine for a while.
Deep in his eyes, a complex, unspeakable emotion seemed to be building and surging.
At last, he spoke, his voice low but like a stone thrown into still water, shattering the calm in the room in an instant: “I remember… you used to have a really good friend, didn’t you?”
Hearing this, Xia Ji’s hand suddenly stopped mid-movement.
A drop of iodine fell from the swab, blooming into a dark spot on her dirty school trousers.
Xu Guangming’s voice continued, seemingly bland but carrying a chilling, penetrating force: “His name was Xu Yuanzhou. In middle school, he died in a Shi Bian Ti attack…”
“They say he died to save you, to save Chen Xinyu… and that Lu Ran as well, right?”
These words exploded in Xia Ji’s ears like a sudden thunderclap.
She jerked her head up, not even caring that the motion tugged at her wounded face, her eyes wide with utter shock and disbelief, staring dead at Xu Guangming.
“Teacher Xu… you, how did you…”
Xia Ji’s voice broke apart, her terror making it impossible to form a complete sentence.
At her words, Xu Guangming raised a hand and slowly rubbed his cheek with his knuckles, the gesture oddly distant.
The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly.
“Unfamiliar, isn’t it? This face.”
He no longer hid anything, his gaze sharpening, locking onto Xia Ji’s confused and suspicious eyes.
He spoke each word with absolute clarity.
“I remember when you were little, you always clamored to come to my house, begging me to put on cartoons for you… pestering me to tell those stories you’d heard a hundred times…”
“Even you couldn’t recognize me…”
His tone was unreadable—whether relieved or sorrowful. “It means… it worked.”
He saw the tumultuous emotions roiling in Xia Ji’s pupils and cut straight to the point: “What are you thinking? Trying to guess who I really am, aren’t you?”
Xu Guangming leaned forward, closing the distance between them, his eyes like an abyss trying to swallow Xia Ji’s soul.
He lowered his voice, each word like an ice pick hammering at Xia Ji’s crumbling defenses: “What you’re thinking… is right.”
“I am Yuanzhou’s father—your Uncle Xu…”
He finally uttered that name, laden with long-suppressed grief and a twisted obsession…
“Xu Zhiwu!”
Xia Ji shot up from her chair as if pricked by invisible needles, stumbling backward, her calf banging hard into the chair’s leg, drawing a muffled cry of pain.
Clatter—!
The chair crashed to the ground with a harsh noise in the silent room.
She seemed oblivious to the pain in her leg, her eyes fixed in shock on the calm-faced homeroom teacher before her.
Her mind frantically tried to piece together the face of Teacher Xu with the memory of the ever-gentle Uncle Xu who had patiently told them stories.
“No… impossible.”
Her voice trembled, barely coherent.
“Uncle Xu… how could you be…”
How could you…
“They all say I lost my mind, then went missing, right?”
Xu Zhiwu slowly stood, looming over the panicked Xia Ji, his tone as mild as if discussing the weather.
“So, all of you accepted that version of events so easily. As if nothing ever happened… went on with your lives, attended school, could even… look forward to the future?”
“That’s not true! It’s not like that!”
Tears welled up in Xia Ji’s eyes as she shook her head desperately, the tears flowing uncontrollably.
“I didn’t—I never forgot…”
“Then what were you thinking—!!!”
Xu Zhiwu suddenly exploded, without warning.
Veins bulged on his forehead, his face flushed with emotion, his voice hoarse and raw like a wounded beast, his pent-up anguish and fury shaking the cramped apartment.
“Yuanzhou is dead! My son is dead! He died to save you!!”
“He was a genius! An A-rank Oracle! He was the one who most deserved to live!!”
“To save you! To save Chen Xinyu! And that damned Lu Ran!! He died!! Not even a complete corpse left behind!!!”
How could you?!
“How can you all live your lives as if nothing happened?!”
“How could you just casually forget the friend who died for you?! Huh?!”
His furious shouts battered Xia Ji like a storm.
She was crushed by the raw, unrestrained grief and accusation in his words, sobbing until she was out of breath.
But within that torrent of rage, she somehow found a surge of courage, lifted her head, and met Xu Zhiwu’s burning, pain-filled gaze, shouting with all her strength.
“I didn’t—!!”
Her shout made the furious Xu Zhiwu pause in shock.
Xia Ji’s lips trembled pale, her voice shattered, yet carried a desperate finality: “I never forgot. Not for a single day!”
“I’ve never had peace of mind… It was my fault… I’m the one who got him killed…”
“It’s all my fault… If I hadn’t screamed and cried in terror that day… Yuanzhou wouldn’t have risked his life to save us… it’s all my fault… all because of me…”
At these words, the violent anger on Xu Zhiwu’s face faded like the ebbing tide.
In its place was a chilling calm that made one’s heart seize.
His voice was hoarse, emotion unreadable: “So this is why you’ve put up with bullying from Chen Xinyu and Lu Ran for so long?”
“Enduring their abuse to punish yourself, to atone, is that it?”
The words made Xia Ji freeze as if stabbed in her deepest, most secret place.
Before she could respond or deny it, Xu Zhiwu suddenly stepped forward and gripped her thin shoulders with such force it was as if his fingers would sink into her bones.
He drew close, each word a verdict chiseling into her soul: “Xia Ji, listen to me—”
“You are guilty.”
I am… guilty?
Looking into Xu Zhiwu’s cold yet burning eyes, Xia Ji silently repeated those words, her chaotic thoughts suddenly grasping a twisted, painfully clear thread.
Xu Zhiwu continued, his voice low and filled with suggestion: “Your existence didn’t just kill Yuanzhou, it also… killed your mother, didn’t it?”
At the word “mother,” Xia Ji’s pupils quivered violently, as if struck a heavy blow.
She seemed to be manipulated by invisible strings, mechanically raising her gaze to meet Xu Zhiwu’s, her eyes hollow and numb.
Silence spread between them, suffocating in its heaviness.
After a long while, Xia Ji finally nodded ever so slightly, her voice barely more than a sigh, suffused with the despair of surrender: “Yes… I am guilty…”
“But the sinner is not just you.”
Xu Zhiwu released her shoulders and stepped back, his voice grave.
“The Shi Bian Ti that killed Yuanzhou is a sinner! Chen Xinyu, who stood by—or even pushed you further—is a sinner! And Lu Ran—he’s the worst sinner of them all!”
His tone grew sharp and decisive: “Yuanzhou’s death is absolutely connected to Lu Ran! I checked—there was surveillance in the area, but the footage was deleted! The Law Enforcement Bureau’s report is full of holes!”
“They all say I went mad because they’re afraid! They’re afraid I’d go to the provincial capital and get someone higher up to re-investigate the case!”
“That’s why I pretended to be crazy… endured everyone’s pointing fingers and pity… and finally tricked those who were watching me.”
A near-obsessive cold light flashed in Xu Zhiwu’s eyes.
“Once they let their guard down, stopped watching me… I…”
He took a deep breath, as if the memory of that endurance still stung.
“I disappeared, too.”
“Then, I changed my face, made up a new, clean background, and returned here again…”
His gaze focused on Xia Ji, brimming with an undeniable sense of mission.
“Xia Ji, you are guilty. You must atone—not just for Yuanzhou, but for your mother’s death as well…”
At this moment, Xia Ji’s eyes were completely devoid of light, like a puppet drained of its soul.
She numbly nodded along with Xu Zhiwu’s words, repeating, “I must atone. For Yuanzhou, for mother… atone…”
Seeing her so thoroughly led and devoid of judgment, Xu Zhiwu nodded in satisfaction.
He carefully took something from the inside pocket of his coat…
A vial of liquid so black that not even light could penetrate it.
Just looking at it gave off a sense of foreboding, of cold, sticky dread.
Xu Zhiwu held the strange vial before Xia Ji.
His voice dropped, taking on a sinister, almost incantatory rhythm: “Those who cast themselves into darkness, after suffering, will surely see the light…”
“Take the world’s utmost evil, and use it to strike down—”
“All the sins of this world!”
As he spoke, he reached out, raising Xia Ji’s cold, trembling hand, and solemnly placed the heavy, almost living black vial into her palm.
The chill made Xia Ji instinctively try to pull her hand away, but the vial seemed to stick to her skin.
Xu Zhiwu stared into her lost and struggling eyes, his voice full of bewitchment and urgency…
“Now…”
“It’s your time to choose.”
Her gaze slowly dropped to her outstretched palm.
The pure black vial lay there quietly, as if a living, ominous creature.
It was so dark that it seemed to swallow even the faint light around it.
There were minute, sticky ripples crawling across its surface, icy cold to the touch, the chill boring straight into her bones.
[No! Xia Ji! Don’t touch it! Throw it away! Hurry, throw it away!]
Chu You screamed frantically within, desperately wanting to swing her arm, to rush over and knock the vial away, to shout with all her might to awaken Xia Ji from the abyss.
But it was as if she were bound in invisible shackles, locked away in the depths of her own mind—unable to move, unable even to blink.
She could only watch, feeling the suffocating despair flood her, pushing Xia Ji toward ruin.
Under Chu You’s burning, helpless gaze, Xia Ji’s trembling hand slowly, one finger at a time, curled closed.
In the end, she gripped the vial that contained endless darkness and agony.
The icy cold seeped through her palm into her body, making her shudder.
She looked up at Xu Zhiwu once more.
There was no expression on her face, her eyes empty.
Her lips parted, moved a few times.
A voice came out—so calm it was almost eerie, devoid of any emotion—slowly squeezed from her throat—
“I…”
A brief pause—final confirmation, or utter surrender.
“…will atone, for my…”
“Sin…”