Yan Wei was not scared to death by the omnipresent Ghosts/Monsters in the instance, but he nearly died from the shock of this retrospective opening.
As someone who has always avoided women, he never expected that his first close-up observation of female lingerie would be thrust upon him by this instance.
Yan Wei: “……”
He was momentarily stunned, quickly turning his head to look out the window, only to be met with a blinding expanse of white. Snowflakes were still gently falling, and the air outside the dormitory felt unusually cold, with a thin layer of frost covering the window. Yet, despite the heavy snow, the sun shone brightly, casting warm light everywhere.
No wonder when he opened his eyes just now, there were clothes hanging at the foot of his bed.
It was an early winter morning.
The day Qian Xuanxuan jumped from the dormitory building seemed to be a similar snowy day.
With a loud “bang,” the door to the girls’ dormitory was forcefully pushed open.
Yan Wei turned his head at the sound and saw three girls in school uniforms walking in one after the other. They all looked like typical high school students, neatly dressed in uniforms, with short hair tied up in high ponytails. However, their expressions were filled with fear, their faces pale, and dark circles under their eyes, clearly showing their poor mental state.
The girl at the front spotted Yan Wei as soon as she entered. She paused for a moment, first stunned, then quickly averted her gaze with… disgust.
“What are you still doing here? You’ve been expelled for so long, and yet you still linger here…” she said irritably, “So many people have died in the school these days; maybe it’s because you’re still here, this cursed and disgusting thing.”
Yan Wei understood. He had entered Qian Xuanxuan’s retrospective, and at this moment, in the eyes of these girls, he was Qian Xuanxuan. Therefore, their attitude towards him was the same as the treatment Qian Xuanxuan received back then. The weather outside was identical to that of the day Qian Xuanxuan fell, and combined with what this girl said about being “expelled for so long” and “deaths,” it indicated that Qian Xuanxuan had already begun her rampage of revenge, and this day…
Must be the day Qian Xuanxuan died.
A retrospective is the most profound impression of the deceased during their life, the greatest Resentment. If a player passively enters a retrospective, they need to find the source of the deceased’s Resentment and resolve it. Most of the deceased’s Resentment stems from the moment before their death, so the usual methods of resolution involve either preventing the death or taking revenge on the person they resent the most—just like in the instance he and Yan Mingguang entered in Ankang Town, where the bride resented her husband for not saving her, and only by killing him could the illusion be broken.
However, in Qian Xuanxuan’s retrospective, although it was on the day of her death, it did not feature the scene just before her death. Instead, it was in the dormitory, where it seemed she had a quarrel with her roommates.
For Qian Xuanxuan, who had long been a victim of campus bullying and had reached the point of killing out of anger, this was a common and ordinary scene, hardly worth remembering. Yet, this seemingly trivial moment turned out to be the most deeply ingrained memory for Qian Xuanxuan. Was there something she regretted the most, something she wished to change?
Yan Wei’s mind flashed with impressions of Qian Xuanxuan’s character, while the three girls who entered noticed his lack of reaction. One of them stepped forward, her expression impatient as she forcefully pushed Yan Wei: “Are you talking to me? Can you not be such an eyesore here?”
Yan Wei swayed slightly from the push but remained unmoved.
Another girl, looking pale, said, “Forget it, why bother with her? So many people have died these days; I’m so scared it might be my turn next…” Clearly, Qian Xuanxuan’s roommate had been mentally tormented by the events of the past few days. She sat down on a nearby chair, her expression dazed, and murmured, “We don’t know who will be next. You’ve been expelled for a long time; why not leave earlier… maybe you could escape a calamity…”
He raised his eyes.
He glanced at the three girls again, then at the desk corresponding to the bed he was sitting on—on the desk were various scribbles, mostly curses and insults written in black and red ink, along with some extremely nauseating drawings. Although there were obvious signs of wiping, those marks remained intertwined, forever etched on Qian Xuanxuan’s desk.
Yet, the desk itself was still quite tidy, with books and stationery arranged as if they had just been organized. It seemed the desk’s owner not only had no intention of leaving but also wanted to stay here.
Yan Wei suddenly felt a wave of discomfort. Resentment, regret, sadness.
This feeling permeated every corner of the dormitory, yet the other three girls seemed oblivious, while he was surrounded by this emotional onslaught, his brain momentarily feeling as if it were suffocating. He suddenly found it hard to breathe.
At that moment, the very pessimistic girl sat down, while the one who had initially expressed disdain for “Qian Xuanxuan” was unwilling to back down. She rushed forward, yanking Yan Wei up and shouting hoarsely, “Aren’t you afraid of dying? Why are you so calm!? Those who died bullied you; did you curse them to death!?”
As she spoke, before Yan Wei could respond, she collapsed, hugging her head and squatting down, her voice suddenly tinged with tears: “I’m so scared of dying…”
Yan Wei watched the actions of these three roommates of Qian Xuanxuan, took a few deep breaths, and with all his Perception, he struggled to suppress the suffocating emotions with the help of reason.
He looked again at Qian Xuanxuan’s desk, his lips parted slightly as he whispered almost inaudibly, “Qian Xuanxuan… are you watching? This is your emotion from back then, right…”
Yan Wei heard a very faint, contemptuous laugh, a girl’s voice, laced with a chilling undertone.
—It was Qian Xuanxuan.
“You really are here; not only are you here, but judging by your reaction— you think I could never understand you.” Yan Wei smirked, “But I already know how to break your Resentment.”
Now, in this Retrospective Illusion, in front of Qian Xuanxuan’s three roommates, he was Qian Xuanxuan.
He took a step forward, standing in front of the girl who was squatting down and crying, slowly bending down.
Yan Wei’s voice, which had been clear and crisp, now took on a layer of coldness, each word sharp: “Do you still have anything to be afraid of? I thought you were afraid of nothing. After all, back then, the curses and insults you hurled at me were far more malicious than simple death.”
The girl’s crying suddenly halted, and she looked up at “Qian Xuanxuan” in disbelief, clearly not expecting that the usually meek target of bullying would say such strong and biting words. Perhaps on Qian Xuanxuan’s last day alive, after she had already taken revenge on many, this high school student, both victim and perpetrator, still remained weak and timid in front of her classmates, unable to utter any words of retaliation.
“Surprised? Think I shouldn’t be like this?” Yan Wei sneered again, saying, “How have you treated me all this time? Have you forgotten? Since you could do such things back then, why are you scared now—”
He raised his gaze, his eyes sweeping over the three pale-faced girls, speaking each word deliberately: “You’re scared now? When you said you wished I would die, did you never think that I could be scared too?”
As soon as he finished speaking, the three girls displayed shocked expressions, but this look did not last long. Their previously ordinary faces suddenly turned as pale as snow, their eyes devoid of color, leaving only the terrifying whites of their eyes.
They slowly straightened up, their white-eyed gazes in the cramped dormitory moving closer to Yan Wei.
—These three girls must have also been killed by Qian Xuanxuan, turning into Ghosts/Monsters. At this moment in the retrospective, after Yan Wei finished speaking, they suddenly transformed from ordinary people into Ghosts/Monsters, clearly indicating that the owner of the retrospective wanted to kill him.
Qian Xuanxuan’s voice echoed in Yan Wei’s ears from all directions: “You guessed wrong… you guessed wrong… you guessed wrong… go die…”
The three girls extended their sharp, claw-like hands, lunging at Yan Wei.
Yan Wei blinked.
In the moment just before their claws reached his shoulder, he pulled out a card. The rare item “Brief Reality” obtained from the previous instance could replicate any player data Yan Wei knew for three minutes, usable only once per instance.
This was the confidence that allowed him to enter the Retrospective Illusion alone without the Undying State.
The card shook in his hand, and the next moment, Yan Mingguang’s power suddenly surged into him. Having always relied on Perception, Yan Wei instantly felt the sensation of having extraordinarily high physical stats.
He raised his hand, effortlessly grabbing the hand reaching for him and forcefully slamming the girl to the ground.
“…Yan Mingguang’s data is really too useful.”
He did not pause at all, quickly blocking another hand reaching out from a Ghost/Monster that had once been Qian Xuanxuan’s roommate.
In just a moment, he had thrown all three Ghosts/Monsters to the ground without any hesitation. Yet, he was still not satisfied; he stepped forward to the nearest of Qian Xuanxuan’s roommates, knelt on one knee, pressing down hard on the dangerous Ghost Hand with one hand while slowly raising the other.
The ethereal female voice from all directions continued, repeatedly saying “You guessed wrong,” the tone growing sharper.
Yan Wei looked at the Qian Xuanxuan’s roommate before him, staring at her pale Ghost face, and calmly said, “I usually wouldn’t do this, but I want to help her do what she dared not do back then.”
As he spoke, he brought his raised hand down forcefully, slapping her hard.
—He had seen the scene in the retrospective that He Luo showed him, where Qian Xuanxuan was cornered by these three girls at the dormitory staircase, being slapped.
An eye for an eye.
Then, Yan Wei replicated this, during the three minutes of Yan Mingguang’s power, he slapped the three Ghosts/Monsters that had once been Qian Xuanxuan’s roommates to the ground “an eye for an eye.”
The echoing voice of Qian Xuanxuan grew louder, and by the end, Yan Wei felt that sharp voice almost screaming in his ear, “You guessed wrong.”
The three minutes ended.
The feeling of having physical stats far exceeding his own suddenly dissipated, but the three Ghosts/Monsters lay sprawled on the ground, unable to rise and attack Yan Wei again.
Yan Wei took a deep breath, listening to Qian Xuanxuan’s voice beside him, feeling the various negative emotions filling the dormitory. He smirked, lowered his gaze, and said, “Just now, I mocked them, responding to them with the same methods they used to bully you, an eye for an eye. You said I guessed wrong; this is not where your Resentment lies, so you turned them into ghosts to kill me.”
“Yes, my actions just now were indeed not the way to resolve your Resentment and unwillingness.”
The incessant “You guessed wrong” suddenly stopped.
Yan Wei continued, “What I did just now was not to break the situation; I just wanted to help you do what you didn’t dare to do face-to-face back then. You took revenge on them, you did it in the dark, making them pay one by one, but you never dared to stand in front of them and say ‘get lost.'”
“Actually, you are not unwilling about this; you regret taking the wrong path.”
“You kept your bed and desk tidy; you actually don’t want to leave here. You still want to stay. But Tang Yizhuo ruined everything for you; he is the root of all evil, while the others are merely ignorant followers. They even think they are right; in their eyes, you are just someone who often does bad things and messes with classmates behind their backs. They bullied you, isolated you, and harassed you, but they never did anything that endangered your life. Everyone has their small evils; a little malice is just an excessive joke to those who inflict it. But when each small evil is inflicted on the same person, it becomes the greatest harm. These small matters accumulate, like grains of sand piling up, gradually becoming the last straw that broke you.
In the dormitory, the overwhelming negative emotions shook, impacting Yan Wei’s nerves.
The three Ghosts/Monsters that had once been Qian Xuanxuan’s roommates slowly dissipated, and a girl with long black hair, wearing a school uniform and covered in blood, suddenly appeared before him. Her dark hair, exuding a chilling aura, obscured most of her face, but the visible part was smeared with thick blood, and there was a large broken area on her head, giving her a fragmented appearance—she had died from the fall.
Yan Wei did not retreat; he stood tall, one hand in his pocket, his expression calm.
He said, “What they just said were also the words you heard back then, right? They indeed did something excessive, but they never thought of letting you die; they even thought that if you left earlier, you wouldn’t have to die. They are bad, but they are not evil.”
“What I did just now was not to break the situation; I just…” Yan Wei shook his head, feeling quite helpless, “I just did what you should have done. An eye for an eye; those you killed did not deserve to die. So your Resentment does not lie in the last scene before your death, but in this moment, when you hear them speak and suddenly realize you took the wrong path. There are many ways to protect yourself and retaliate against others in this world; you could have spoken out when Tang Yizhuo first slandered you, bearing all the consequences and protecting yourself. You could have stood up when they bullied you and told them to get lost directly. You actually had many methods, but in the end, you killed them…”
“You regret it. Because you ultimately became the same kind of person as them.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Qian Xuanxuan, now bloodied and disfigured, trembled before him. She slightly lowered her head, her face still pale and terrifying, her expression obscured by her hair.
In her retrospective, Yan Wei felt the intense fluctuations of her emotions at this moment.
When he saw Qian Xuanxuan’s neatly organized desk and bed, he understood that Qian Xuanxuan perhaps still wanted to maintain hope. Unfortunately, in the end, she realized she had taken the wrong path and ultimately jumped from the rooftop.
Qian Xuanxuan hoped she would not become the version of herself she hated the most.
And what he did just now was merely to help Qian Xuanxuan do what she had not dared to do in life, not to break the situation.
“So I didn’t guess wrong; the way to break your retrospective is…”
Yan Wei lowered his gaze, his fingertips brushing against the Black Ring, pulling out a regular dagger, and with a swift motion, he aimed the blade at his own heart and stabbed it forcefully!
The person she ultimately wanted to kill the most was herself.
Before she killed others, she killed herself.
At the moment the blade pierced his heart, Yan Wei felt no pain—this was a Retrospective Illusion, and his method of breaking the situation was correct, so nothing would go wrong. The dormitory before him began to slowly distort, and Qian Xuanxuan, standing in front of Yan Wei, slowly raised her head, her pure white eyes staring intently at him.
Yan Wei said to her, “Right and wrong can never be clearly defined; the reason there are so many things in this world is that people cannot be completely governed by reason. If I were you, I would have prevented all of this from happening from the start. But I am not a completely rational person; if I reached your point, I wouldn’t know what I would do.”
The world before him had completely twisted.
As the world spun, two thin, slightly yellowed papers floated down, landing steadily in Yan Wei’s hands.
The light before Yan Wei flickered, the Retrospective Illusion vanished, the bright daylight faded, replaced by the already darkened morning at the high school.
As soon as he steadied himself, he saw ghosts swirling around him. At the moment he broke Qian Xuanxuan’s retrospective, all the retrospectives in the small grove disappeared, and all the players emerged again. They were entangled with the Ghosts/Monsters, while Yan Mingguang stood waiting at the spot where Yan Wei had entered the Retrospective Illusion.
At the moment Yan Wei appeared, a Long Whip sliced through the air, timely striking down a Ghost/Monster that lunged at him.
The scene was chaotic.
Yan Wei tightly gripped the Punishment Notice for He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan’s expulsion in one hand, while the other grasped Yan Mingguang’s arm, just about to speak when suddenly, Yu Feizhou’s exclamation rang out not far away: “Lin Zhen!!!”
Then came a muffled grunt, laced with obvious pain— it was Lin Zhen’s voice.
Yan Wei froze, turning to look in the direction of the sound, faintly seeing He Luo, with a terrifying face and covered in blood, standing amidst the swirling Ghosts/Monsters, one pale hand gripping someone while the other had already pierced through that person’s shoulder blade.
Yan Wei’s breath caught.
—That was Lin Zhen.
He Luo clearly sensed his presence, her all-white eyes fixated on the two Punishment Notices in his hand, her voice low and chilling: “You actually got them… then make a choice, trade the Punishment Notice for him.”
