The weather in Yecheng was fickle. It was broad daylight and sunny when they left, but by the time Li Zhu’s car was cruising down the highway, a vast curtain of rain had already draped over the windows.
Through the front windshield, which the wipers cleared rhythmically, one could see the red taillights of the cars ahead, blurred by the rain and mist.
In the back seat, Meng Luo asked, “How much longer do we have to go?”
Li Zhu glanced at the navigation, noticing La Lai dozing off in the passenger seat with her eyes closed. He lowered his voice and said, “Another half hour.”
Meng Luo gave a soft “Mm,” stared at the rain outside, and fell silent. Li Zhu kept both hands on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the windshield and the rearview mirror.
He had originally called La Lai to tell her he had found Cui Yingzi. Just as he was about to head out, he remembered he had also saved Meng Luo’s number, so he had given her a heads-up as well.
After passing through the highway toll station, there was a stretch of exceptionally rugged, winding mountain road. At the end of it, a factory under construction appeared before them. On the side of the factory, they found a small grave.
The tombstone was like a large piece of grayish-white stone found anywhere. On it, three words, “Cui Yingzi,” were written crookedly. The dates of birth and death were already blurred. Below the dates, however, a line had been written in black marker: “I’m sorry.”
The person who erected the stone: Yao Ke.
Yao Ke was the name of Cui Yingzi’s roommate the one who had been coerced by the Student Union President into betraying her.
Li Zhu stood before the grave, looking down at the small mound. A sudden sense of unreality, a crossing of reality and illusion, surged in his heart. After leaving the instance, he had simply sent people to look for it on a whim, not harboring much hope of actually finding anything.
He hadn’t expected… could it be that everything in the instance had actually happened?
“What are you doing here?”
A man in his forties wearing an orange safety helmet and work clothes walked over. He frowned, looking at them as if they were a group of troublemaking teenagers.
Li Zhu asked, “I wanted to ask was there a school here before?” Then, he casually pulled a cigarette from his coat pocket and handed it over.
The foreman originally intended to ignore them; chasing them off would have been the end of his task. But the moment he saw the brand on that cigarette, his eyes lit up like a starving beast spotting a massive slab of meat.
It was too rainy to light a cigarette, so he grabbed it and stuffed it into his pants pocket with lightning speed, then began thanking Li Zhu profusely. “Thank you so much! You’re too kind.”
He continued, “There was indeed a school here originally. I heard it was called Canglan. Later—I heard this from others, just treat it as an urban legend for fun, don’t take it seriously—they say that after the school was built, it mysteriously started being haunted. They invited several famous masters to perform rituals, but nothing worked, so it eventually fell into ruin.”
The foreman spread his hands. “But you know, this land can’t stay vacant forever. So a big boss bought it and had us tear down the school to build an auto parts processing plant.”
“Huh? Why is there a grave here? This won’t do… I’ll go call some men to tear this down…”
“No need.”
The foreman was just about to leave when he heard Li Zhu’s words and turned back to explain. He rubbed his head and smiled. “No, how can we not tear it down? It’s right on the factory’s blueprint.”
Li Zhu said, “I said ‘no need’ because you won’t be building a factory anymore.”
The foreman froze on the spot. A minute later, his phone vibrated. When he saw the caller ID, he answered with trembling hands; it was the big boss who had hired them.
His boss’s voice came through the phone: “Hey, take your men and head back. The factory doesn’t need to be built. I’ve sold the land to someone else. I’ll pay the penalty fee for terminating the contract.”
The call ended. The foreman sighed. “You were right. Of all things to lose, I had to lose my job.”
Li Zhu said, “I’ll have someone contact you later to sign a new contract. We’ll decide exactly what to build later. Just don’t tear down this grave.”
Realizing the meaning behind those words, the foreman’s eyes widened in surprise and joy.
Once the construction workers had left, the only sound remaining was the fine rain tapping against the ground. Li Zhu turned to La Lai. “What kind of existence is an Evil God, exactly?”
“What do you think?”
Li Zhu replied, “I used to think they were some kind of supernatural existence, but now I’m not so sure.”
La Lai’s voice was as clear and cold as clashing jade. “They are indeed supernatural existences, though most are born from lower dimensions.”
“Lower dimensions? Does that mean our real world?” Li Zhu asked.
La Lai nodded. “These Evil Gods in the instances might be quite different from the gods you know. They are usually born from a specific catalyst at a particular location, originating from obsessions that refuse to dissipate for a long time. But most importantly, what truly triggers their birth is that they must have come into contact with the ‘Malice’ of the World Origin from a higher dimension.”
From this long, pedantic string of words, Li Zhu extracted two conditions for becoming an Evil God: first, an internal obsession; second, contact with the Malice of the World Origin. He just didn’t know what the “Malice of the World Origin” actually referred to.
On the way back, Li Zhu dropped Meng Luo off at her home first.
Meng Luo thanked them and was about to leave when La Lai asked her, “Have you submitted your college applications?”
Meng Luo nodded vigorously, then shook her head after a moment’s thought. “I didn’t get to submit it last time. Luckily, finishing the instance only took one night. I just submitted it again.”
La Lai asked, “Where did you apply?”
Meng Luo puffed out her chest with pride. “Tsinghua University, Biology Department.”
Li Zhu let out a “Whoa” and said, “A top student!”
La Lai thought for a moment. “Study hard.”
Once Meng Luo was gone, Li Zhu turned to La Lai. “Were you also a top student when you were… alive?”
La Lai found the question bizarre. “What’s all this about being alive or dead?”
Li Zhu just smiled.
The car drove all the way back to Li Zhu’s villa. Along the way, Li Zhu kept trying to persuade her: “Are you really not planning to stay at my house? You can pick any of the ten guest rooms you like. They’re fully equipped—beds, sofas, projectors, fruit baskets, potted plants, even a koi pond. What do you think? My parents aren’t even home. I guarantee you won’t find a better place to stay even if you looked with a lantern.”
La Lai watched the dark clouds rolling across the horizon outside. An even greater storm was brewing. If she went to sleep in the dark, pitch-black seafloor, it would surely be a bothersome night of rain tapping away.
She said tonelessly, “Alright then.”
Li Zhu’s persuasive sales pitch got cut off halfway. After a long pause, he asked, “So?”
“Drive faster. The rain is about to get heavy. I want to be at your house within ten minutes.”
Li Zhu’s mouth twitched. He nearly slammed on the brakes before quickly shifting to the accelerator and speeding toward the highway toll station.
He kept his word ten minutes, not a second more or less. Li Zhu parked the car steadily in front of the house. Just as he parked, a downpour of rain cascaded from the sky.
“Just so you know, there’s only one spare umbrella in the car.”
Li Zhu locked the car and opened the umbrella, making sure to tilt it slightly toward La Lai. This time, although La Lai frowned slightly, she didn’t deliberately pull away from him. A bit of a smile appeared at the corners of Li Zhu’s mouth, but he said nothing.
After entering the house, Li Zhu casually switched on the lights. La Lai also took the opportunity to examine this human dwelling from several hundred years later. In the human houses she had seen before, there were usually various miscellaneous items piled up in every nook and cranny, representing the traces of human life.
But Li Zhu’s place seemed far too tidy. The interior decoration was simple, and the furniture looked very new. Even though the house was large, it felt empty everywhere, exuding a cold atmosphere with little “human touch.”
Seeing her surveying the house, Li Zhu explained, “I don’t live here often. I usually stay at my parents’ place, so you can stay here.”
La Lai asked directly, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“A residence is a very private place for humans, right? Why are you so insistent on having me stay here?”
Li Zhu glanced at her and let out an ambiguous laugh. “Hey, why so defensive? We’ve shared life and death, after all. Although in this ‘shared life and death,’ you tried to kill me and failed, but… you should know, my family’s company is one with social conscience, and I am an excellent citizen who loves his job and has social conscience. So, of course, I can’t let a dangerous element with unknown motives like you wander around randomly.”
La Lai looked at him as if he were a psychopath, then turned and went upstairs. Li Zhu didn’t panic. He counted silently in his head: one second, two seconds…
When he reached the third second, sure enough, La Lai came back downstairs expressionlessly. Standing at the landing of the stairs, she looked down at him and asked, “Where are those ten guest rooms you mentioned?”
There were no ten guest rooms, of course. After all, this was just an ordinary two-story villa. Having a home theater, a gym, a walk-in closet, and a music room was already the maximum respect its capacity could give.
Amid La Lai’s increasingly cold aura, Li Zhu led her to the second floor, pushed open a door, and pointed inside. “Here, your guest room. This is the only guest room.”
Inside, there was a bed, a coffee table, a small sofa, and a private bathroom—everything one could need. La Lai’s mood brightened slightly. Then she pointed to a room nearby. “Isn’t that a guest room, too?”
Judging from the view through the crack in the door, it had similar facilities.
Li Zhu replied, “Um… that’s my bedroom. Do you want to come in and take a look?”
La Lai: “…” She turned and entered the guest room.
The gloomy weather during the rain was very suitable for a nap, and this was no exception for an Evil God. La Lai spent half the afternoon in bed. By the time she woke up, it was evening.
Her mood was quite good upon waking. She thought that humans had indeed made some meaningful inventions over the last few centuries; the bed and quilt were far more comfortable and soft than those from hundreds of years ago. She even rarely went without a nightmare.
However, half an hour later, after flipping through the manual for the “essential item” humans call a “cell phone” three times, she finally realized one thing: there was still a qualitative barrier between different species.
She didn’t dwell on it and went straight out the door.
The hallway was dark, the lights unlit. Clearly, Li Zhu wasn’t out there; only a sliver of yellow light leaked from the crack of his bedroom door next door. An Evil God didn’t need to be polite to “ants.” La Lai twisted the doorknob and opened the door directly.
Li Zhu was sitting at a desk. In front of him was a black “brick” like the ones they had seen in the computer room a computer but the one in front of Li Zhu looked lighter and thinner.
Hearing the sound behind him, Li Zhu immediately closed a window on the screen. La Lai hadn’t seen that green page before, but she had no interest in human tricks. She walked up and, as Li Zhu turned around, handed the manual into his left hand and the metal-and-glass composite known as a “cell phone” into his right.
“Teach me how to use the phone.”
After a moment’s thought, she said magnanimously, “In return, I can answer one of your questions.”