AP CH8
“……”
The Crow fell silent.
“This isn’t right, is it?”
Huai Shi murmured softly, “I know not everyone has to like me. I may not fit in, I might not be popular… but maybe sometimes people deserve a little punishment for what they’ve done. Still, not a single one of them deserved to die.
They’re all living, breathing people—just like me. They shouldn’t die. Just like those people at the club didn’t deserve to die. Even if they’ve sinned… they are still innocent.”
“That’s why I don’t like the things you’re saying.”
Huai Shi stared into her eyes, speaking slowly and firmly, “—I really, really, really don’t like it.”
“…Oh my, oh my, why so harsh?”
The Crow turned her head away, as if sadly sobbing. “Big Sis is only doing this for your sake, you know. And besides, now that this whole bird belongs to you, is it really so wrong to test the waters a little before our partnership starts?”
As she spoke, she batted her tearful eyes. “For the sake of my pure and honest heart, won’t you give me a chance to make up for it? If Plan A won’t work… then we still have Plan B, don’t we?”
…
…
Unfortunately, no matter how a crow behaved, it was not the least bit cute.
“…What Plan B?”
“Simple, really.”
The Crow gave him one final look. “If you refuse to kill others…”
She said, “Then I’ll just have to kill you instead.”
In that instant, darkness swallowed Huai Shi’s vision.
……
……
Huai Shi dreamed a long dream.
In the haze, it felt as if he had just finished work and was waiting for the subway to go home. In his heart, he was still scorning some useless employee he had fired earlier that day. Then, from the tunnel’s depths, came the rumble of the train.
Before he could put his phone away, he heard a venomous voice behind him: “Go die!”
A moment later, two hands shoved hard against his back.
He fell. He flew. Then he fell again—onto the tracks. The train’s headlights grew brighter, closer, and closer, until Huai Shi was crushed, shattered into pieces. The last sound he heard was the crisp crack of his own skull breaking.
Unspeakable pain followed—but there was no time to scream, no time to feel fear. His consciousness faded swiftly.
Next, he became a tycoon of global finance, cornered at last, trapped in a park. His betrayed assistant sent one final ultimatum—demanding surrender.
Huai Shi sneered and raised his gun in defiance.
Bang!
A soft shot echoed from the distant helicopter. His body went numb. In the final instant, he heard his assistant’s confused cry: “Don’t shoot! He’s not—”
A headshot?
In the daze, before he could even process it, the nightmare shifted again—he became a middle-aged, sleazy man in strange power armor, carrying a gun and storming the Louvre to battle bizarre insectoid creatures.
He quickly died.
This time, his final thought was: Damn, I need to reload my save…
Save? Save what? Save your REM, you fool!
He started mocking himself—but the laughter died in his throat, because suddenly he was hanging from a city gate, nails driven through his hands, feeling no pain, drunkenly swaying, smiling dumbly at a white-haired man standing before him.
But why was that man glaring at him? Did he do something wrong?
A flash of moonlight, then his head was chopped off.
Beheading, this time.
Then again—he was tied to a stake, burned alive amid roaring flames, the crowd howling madly: “Die, heretic!”
And so he died once more.
Over and over, death after death, each time in a new form—poisoned, drowned, strangled, burned, shoved into a meat grinder, rushed to the ER, pushed by accident, killed by countless people or even by himself for countless absurd reasons.
Again and again and again and again.
Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death.
He didn’t know how many times he had died.
In the end, he was almost numb—his consciousness dissolving completely.
Was this the end?
Relieved, he surrendered to the dark.
In the final instant, he seemed to turn and glance back at the source of all these illusions, finally glimpsing the true face of those deaths. They became countless black pages fluttering in the air. Like snow, they gathered into an ocean of sorrow and despair, outlining a silent world.
Perhaps that was the true form of the Book of Fate.
A cold, lonely world where one would die in solitude.
……
……
The room returned to silence, broken only by the faint sound of branching phenomena endlessly scribbling upon the pages of the Book of Fate.
The illusory Crow quietly gazed at Huai Shi, as if seeing through his shell into the blazing essence burning fiercely within him.
It was clearly only the consciousness of one man, yet when his thoughts collided, the sparks they gave off shone like dazzling flames.
The Crow glanced at the Book of Fate and could not help but sigh. “As I thought… If it weren’t for the book constantly drawing out your essence, you would’ve awakened years ago…”
Ever since she awakened from the book, she had been watching Huai Shi constantly.
Because of this, she could judge from countless signs: Huai Shi had probably already set one foot inside the gate of transcendence long ago. Otherwise, an ordinary human would never have been chosen by the Book of Fate as its bearer, and she would never have bet on him so easily.
And now, upon the very page before her eyes, the words “Stress Period” in parentheses beside Huai Shi’s name grew ever thicker, as if gathering strength to transform.
But each time it began to change, it would meet some unseen resistance, and return to its original state.
Soon, an invisible force guided the feathered pen to the blank space of the book’s upper pages, drawing a curved arc.
As time passed, the arc slowly extended, gradually forming into a perfect circle—but no matter what, the final small gap could not be closed.
“Still missing something?”
The Crow muttered in surprise.
Normally, the Stress Period was the process in which one’s true nature separated from the Sea of Silver and their essence became independent, gradually returning to the consciousness.
During this time, the unique soul of a transcendent being would be forged.
This period was usually very brief—depending on the soul’s structure, the shortest record in history was only five minutes and twelve seconds; even the longer ones took no more than five or six months… Even for the Crow, this was the first time seeing someone who, after six or seven years, had yet to complete this stage.
Even if the constant essence-draining by the Book of Fate had left him in a ‘hollow blue’ state all these years—this was still too ridiculous.
She had thought that, with the shock of all those recorded deaths from the book, Huai Shi would break through in mere minutes. But she never expected that, even though this guy stood at the threshold, he would simply rub against the doorway and refuse to step through!
His soul’s forging was missing just a little.
Just a tiny bit…
“What exactly is missing?”
The Crow narrowed her eyes.
Something crucial had been overlooked by her.
The feeling was deeply irritating. But no matter how she pondered, she could not figure out why.
The existence of the soul was the sublimation of one’s nature and consciousness—the crystallization of human essence. And because each person was unique, the world held countless distinct souls.
For this forging to stall—there could be only one cause.
Huai Shi himself.
But even when she tried to search his records through the branches of phenomena, she could only read the part of his life after he picked up the Book of Fate at the age of ten.
Before that—only blankness.
Yet between the lines, she could clearly sense that Huai Shi was trying to hide something. But what exactly—it was impossible to see.
If Huai Shi refused to speak, this would forever remain a secret.
As the Crow pondered, the incomplete circle changed once more.
Dark ink welled up from within, outlining a ‘crescent moon’ along the curve.
“…A lunar phase?”
The Crow was momentarily stunned, then softly sighed. “How rare.”
Though the soul’s structure had yet to be completed, its nature had already emerged—in the Book of Fate’s classification, the lunar phase represented a person’s very essence—the soul itself.
Souls under the lunar phase classification typically possessed abilities aimed at manipulating the soul—such as mind control, consciousness alteration, and spiritual healing. To most transcendents, this branch was a symbol of strangeness and mystery.
“Unfortunately, the scope is too small.”
The Crow shook her head, displeased. “Far too small…”
Through tricks and fear, one might achieve momentary success, ruling in shadow and darkness. But in this world, the center stage would never belong to those who only lurked in the dark.
No one knew how much time passed before Huai Shi’s breath grew heavy and his eyelids began to flutter—as if waking from a dream.
She sighed, and the branches of phenomena gently lifted, tapping the moon’s center with the tip of the pen.
Leaving behind a single dot of ink.
And the Crow’s color grew ever paler.
“I’ve given you this chance, Huai Shi,” she softly murmured. “Whether you can build the bridge from illusion to reality… is now up to you.”
……
……
“It’s done.”
A trusted subordinate burst excitedly into the office, holding an external hard drive. “Master, this contains all the surveillance footage since that bastard Chen Quan stole the box. Everything along the way.”
“Did you clean up properly?”
The man called Master looked as if he hadn’t slept for days. His bloodshot eyes gleamed red as he lifted his head, his gaze vicious.
His subordinate flinched instinctively, forcing a smile.
“Don’t worry, Master. I got someone else to handle it. Our names are nowhere near this. If anyone digs, they’ll only find him.”
“Good.”
The Master took the hard drive and said nothing more, pacing the office back and forth. After a long hesitation, he finally made up his mind and stomped his foot.
“Go tell those old men and hags—we’re holding mass this Saturday night. Everyone has to come. Anyone who doesn’t… need not bother coming ever again.”
The subordinate froze. “But didn’t we just hold one a few days ago? They’re used to coming at the end of the month…”
“Then make up some excuse, damn it!” the Master roared, glaring fiercely. “Do I have to think up every excuse for you? Tell them it’s God’s birthday or something!”
“Yes, yes, of course. Whatever you say.”
Terrified of provoking him further, the subordinate fled.
In the silent office, the prematurely aged middle-aged man stood for a long time before quietly closing the door. After pacing for a while longer, he finally plugged in the hard drive and began to watch the fragmented footage within.
It started with that man in the warehouse suddenly pulling a gun, killing, stealing the relic, getting wounded in the counterattack, exploding, fleeing… until he ducked into an alley.
As the timeline fast-forwarded, a young man carrying a guitar case walked into the box. Soon after, he emerged again, and the footage froze.
Frozen on that slightly youthful face.
“It’s you…”
The Master leaned closer to the screen, his crimson eyes staring intently at the boy in the image.