In her eyes, time in the entire room began to reverse.
Light shuttled through the flowing gray dust, all the mycelium began to grow backward, the piano keys flicked in reverse, and the furniture returned to its original positions.
"Why is she standing still?" one tuner asked outside the door.
"It's Miss Bai's mental ability, don't disturb her."
In the eyes of the two tuners, the room remained unchanged from a moment ago, still displaying a gray-white corruption.
Bai Nian'an stood still.
Countless memories that did not belong to her flooded into her mind.
The warmth before a fireplace, the joy of creating a painting, the praise of peers, the smile of a nursery teacher.
Scenes of the two men's childhood in the orphanage flashed past Bai Nian'an's eyes like streaks of light.
One day, the woman who had always looked after them in the orphanage suddenly went mad and was shot dead by the arriving tuners. Like a brief interlude in a musical score, it became the turning point in the two boys' fates.
On a pitch-black snowy night, before the woman's grave, a man approached the weeping boys and promised them everything.
Bai Nian'an tried her best to see the man's face, but she could only see a pair of dark red eyes.
Later, they graduated with honors, were admitted to the Starry Art Academy, and became members of the Student Council. They possessed extensive networks and social resources, interacting with others with gentle faces during the day.
In the shadows, they donned the robes of an ascetic, brainwashing more people to join the Ascetic Sect and coordinating sect members to launch terrorist attacks.
Until shortly before their deaths, they were still participating in high-level Student Council meetings—meetings specifically targeting the Ascetic Sect itself.
Bai Nian'an's brow furrowed tighter and tighter. Before she could untangle the sequence of events, her perspective returned to this room.
They seemed to have suffered an attack. The wounds on their bodies were severe; half of one man's chest was pierced through, his left arm was missing, and dense, tiny white flowers were growing from the wounds.
Bai Nian'an pondered; the aura emitted by these white flowers seemed similar to what she had felt from that blonde girl before.
The other man had descended directly into mental madness, flaying the skin off his own body while still alive in the room.
At a certain moment, a sea of white flowers bloomed in the room, withered in an instant, and then their bodies were consumed by dense mycelium, rotting and decaying.
The mycelium grew throughout the room like bamboo shoots after rain.
Bai Nian'an quickly continued to rewind time, back to an even earlier point.
The world shattered and reconstructed in her eyes.
Under a fractured sky.
Two ascetics walked through a sea of flowers. When the wind blew, the soft petals of these small white flowers swayed gently. Large patches leaned with the wind's trajectory, scattering fluff that fell along with the gray dust filling the air.
Even though these flowers were blooming everywhere, the two could not feel a single spark of life. The entire world seemed to consist only of a silent, pale void.
"Ascetic D31, how long has it been since we last came here?" Ascetic D12 asked.
"12 days."
"I mean, here."
Ascetic D31 pondered for a moment and said, "719 years, 343 days, 11 hours, 5 minutes, and 5 seconds."
"How did it become like this?"
"I don't see art. I only see withering and death."
"I'm not sure."
Before them was an endless wilderness. Ash from a fire drifted through the air like scorched earth that had been swept by war. The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder smoke.
They began to wander through this pale world, walking across the gray-white abandoned land.
There were no bustling cities, high-rises, or streets—not even a sign that any civilization had ever existed.
"What about the Heart of Desire?"
"I'm not sure."
"Will such a beautiful life ultimately wither away in time?"
They crossed ravines and valleys, dried riverbeds, mountains, and plateaus. After an incredibly long time, they returned to this deathly quiet wilderness.
"It's truly a world devoid of any aesthetic sense," Ascetic D31 sighed. "I thought I could witness true art."
"I'm starting to feel bored. How disappointing," Ascetic D12 said, turning to leave. Suddenly, he seemed to see something and broke into a grin—a smile that held joy, fear, and madness all at once.
A seductive blood flower bloomed from his chest, and his heart exploded!
Splashes of blood fell like red paint, adding a second color to this gray-white canvas.
The blood dripped into the white flower bushes, and time seemed to freeze at that moment.
"Ascetic D12!!" Ascetic D31 roared.
His companion fell to the ground without even a groan, the flowing blood staining the White Spider Lily of the Other Shore beneath him red.
Looking around in panic, Ascetic D31 tried to find the enemy who had attacked them. Finally, he stood in place, trembling.
A girl walked out from among the spider lilies. Her silver hair reached her boots, and a lance engraved with exquisite patterns lightly brushed through the flowers. She was like the master of this world, the source of all rot, withering, and deathly aura.
In his eyes was the reflection of the girl's slightly dim gaze, the wild and chaotic tentacles within her body, her heart full of the colors of desire, and the tip of the lance she slowly raised to point at him.
"Beautiful... so beautiful," Ascetic D31 said, dazed. "So you were here."
Another blood flower bloomed from his chest!
The world slowly darkened, slowly turning a solid crimson.
His gaze was fanatical as he struggled to crawl toward the girl who radiated rot, withering, and death, his fingertips reaching for her shadow. At the final moment, the space near his and his companion's corpses distorted, and they vanished into thin air.
The girl picked up the items they had left behind.
A letter with wings and gilded lettering, and an invitation to a family ball.
"Ticket," she murmured. "Star of Art?"
Suddenly, as if sensing something, she slowly turned her head. "You..."
"Who are you?"
Bai Nian'an's mind went blank with a buzzing sound. An unprecedented sense of crisis caused every cell in her body to scream in warning as she saw the girl's hand slowly reach toward her. Only at the very last moment did she abruptly sever the conscious link, breaking out of the state of mental reconstruction.
She gasped for air and then coughed violently, covering her mouth as blood seeped through her fingers from her mouth and nose.
Seeing the girl's abnormal state, the two tuners outside the room rushed in and supported her body.
"Miss Bai!" "Are you alright?"
Bai Nian'an leaned against the wall. It took a long time for the dizziness to fade. She glanced back at the room, her pupils trembling slightly.
"Go... go, leave here. Report to the association. We must report to the association quickly."
The two tuners watched as Bai Nian'an seemed to have lost her soul, constantly muttering something as she stumbled out of the room.
They exchanged a look, both seeing the confusion in each other's eyes.
...................
Since returning from the tuner's office a week ago, Xu Xiaoyou had felt listless. She couldn't muster interest in anything, as if everything had become meaningless.
Even the most delicious food tasted like wax in her mouth. She suffered from insomnia and felt heart palpitations from time to time.
Under Tang Xin's pressure and coaxing, she went to the Life Daybreak medical clinic. No mental illness was found; the plague doctor there simply told her to eat and sleep on time, take more walks, and not have too much mental stress.
She tried to do as the doctor said—sleeping early, eating on time, and going for walks with Tang Xin every day—but the feeling did not fade; instead, it grew stronger.
At this moment, that feeling completely erupted, reaching its peak. Intense dizziness and nausea made her head swell, feeling as if the entire world were spinning non-stop.
She leaned against the washbasin, her stomach churning.
Her vision focused, and a bloody die was vomited out by her.
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