Chapter 19

Horne had no mood for jokes. He half-narrowed his eyes and stared fixedly at Moroz. The other’s expression was not fear, just a bit aggrieved. A pair of eyes blinked deliberately several times before lowering.

Silence entangled between the two. Horne made no further moves, and Moroz kept his surrendering pose.

The air twisted inexplicably. Past Moroz, Horne shifted his gaze evenly and saw a mass of transparent jelly wriggling by the window behind him. This mass of jelly was separated from them by just one wall, but it stood there motionless, as if staring at Horne, silent in a way that sent chills down the spine.

Realizing something was wrong behind him, Moroz asked nervously, “Brother, is there something behind me?”

A few seconds later, Horne sheathed his knife and released his hold on Moroz. “Nothing.” He took a step back and gave Moroz a cold glance, his eyes devoid of emotion.

Moroz relaxed but did not turn to look. He knew what was outside the door. He just did not like Horne’s gaze like that—it was the kind of look that wanted to isolate him from everyone else, but he did not want to be isolated.

At that moment, Moroz wanted to tell Horne that he was Hels. At least, Horne would not hold 100% vigilance against Hels.

‘Perhaps.’

Moroz let out a long breath and straightened the clothes on his chest that Horne had just wrinkled. A bit aggrieved, he said, “Brother, I’m not playing any little tricks in front of you.”

Horne completely ignored his words and walked straight to the living room sofa to sit down. He took out the note he had picked up in the previous timeline.

What he cared more about was that the previous information mentioned the third experiment on November 25th. Now it was the 30th, preparations for the next experiment had begun, yet one day later on the 1st, they conducted the fourth experiment. This should not have happened. Either their information was wrong, or the fourth experiment was hastily organized.

For an institution like the Nuclear Research Center, every experiment was rigorous and fully prepared. Temporary experiments should not occur.

What happened between November 30th and December 1st?

With that thought, Horne stood up, circled around the sofa, and walked to the center of the living room.

Sure enough, that diary lay on the ground.

Moroz still stood at the doorway, unmoving, just watching Horne. But Horne had no intention of sparing him any attention and did not care about his movements. His focus remained on the game characters.

Suddenly, Moroz felt that this was fine too. Horne treated everyone with this attitude.

On the sofa, Horne crossed his legs, his back leaning against the soft backing. He appeared cold and solitary, his shadow blurred and reflected under the faint dim light overhead.

A very, very long time ago, it was the same scene. Horne sat at the desk, holding a paper book from one or two centuries ago, quietly reading in the attic study for an entire day. Sunlight reflected through the attic window outside, gradually turning to moonlight, swaying into starlight in Hels’s heart.

Horne knew a gaze had always been piercing his back, but he did not care. He pondered the contents of the diary.

[2048.3.1] Victor is a bastard! Clearly, I proposed this experiment report, but in the end, his name was written on it. All my reports have to write his name!

This was from an even more distant past, and it seemed this technician was a coward, while Victor, playing the engineer, was undoubtedly a robber.

[2048.3.31] The review passed in one month. What exactly did that reviewer check? Does she really believe in ghost particles?

Ghost particles? Was that the name they gave to those particles that fused with biological cells?

“Brother.” Unable to hold back any longer, Moroz walked over. Horne said nothing, still immersed in pondering these clues.

Moroz spoke on his own. “Every time we cross a street, we arrive at a different timeline of that street. The memories of each timeline are incomplete. The problem is how many timelines we need to go through, how many memories we need to gather to make them complete and real, and how everyone merges them afterward.”

He knew these things. In the silence, Horne thought of something and suddenly looked up to ask, “Did you cross the fog alone?”

His gaze finally held emotion beyond vigilance, even if just curiosity. Moroz’s mood instantly improved. He grinned and answered, “Yeah, this is my fifth timeline. I’ve only gone to the past ones.”

Horne gave a muffled “Mm.” So Moroz had completely ignored his arrangements. Shortly after he left, Moroz had crossed the thick fog alone, shuttling through different timelines, even faster than him, until they met.

“How about it? Don’t you think I won’t drag you down anymore?” Moroz leaned close to Horne’s face, a bit too close. Before Horne could speak, he seemed to notice something and quickly retreated a step to maintain distance between them.

An extremely cautious retreat. Horne thought of Hels.

“We have two futures,” Horne set aside the sudden stray thought and did not answer Moroz’s question. He only discussed game-related matters. “One where the December 1st experiment succeeds, and one where it fails.”

“Oh, Schrödinger’s cat.” Moroz reacted even faster. “So we need to know what happened from the 30th to the 1st.”

This young man was a bit too clever.

“What’s your information?” Horne gestured for him to continue.

Horne asked one question, and Moroz immediately answered, as if eager to pour out everything he knew. “I’m just a businessman, at the tail end of the Forbes list. Very vain, wanting to reach the top, so I manipulated the bidding to snag this project’s investment. It wasn’t supposed to be mine originally.”

Horne’s leg swayed slightly. He said lightly, “Manipulating bids is an economic crime.”

Moroz spread his hands, utterly nonchalant. “Yeah, so several relatives of the people investigating me died.”

His sincerity was somewhat disorienting, but what he said matched the records in his own diary so far. He was not deliberately lying. That was enough.

Horne did not care about this man’s intentions, as long as he cooperated to quickly complete this game.

Moroz continued, “So I’m the investor and the beneficiary. I found Victor and made him the lead in charge.”

“Why choose Victor?”

Moroz scratched his head. “Don’t know yet.”

“Alright, any other clues?” As soon as Horne asked, a loud crash came from upstairs.

“Bang!” Something smashed down.

Moroz had no reaction at first, but in the instant Horne looked up at the ceiling and then shifted his gaze back to him, he shuddered all over. He rushed two steps to Horne’s side and hugged his arm, burying his head in it.

“Brother, I’m scared.” His voice was muffled.

Horne had experienced scares from the previous two timelines, so this noise now made him much calmer.

The ceiling light swayed slightly, and the person clutching his arm trembled faintly. Horne did not shake him off and asked flatly, “What are these things? Do you know?”

These things existed in every timeline. It was hard to imagine how Moroz faced them alone.

Moroz shook his head, his face rubbing against Horne’s black work uniform. The outfit was loose, made of standard military combat fabric, suitable for high-mobility missions. The only drawback was that it was a bit stiff and not comfortable to hug.

Moroz’s voice was muffled. “I’ve encountered them before too. Whenever I hear sounds like this, I run, so I only know there are two kinds of ghosts on this street. One is inside houses—they have no physical form, just make noises. Maybe they do have form, but I run too fast and never saw. The other is the street ghosts, the kind I just told you not to touch.”

Oh, no wonder. With that, Horne remembered to ask, “What is that bell-ringing ghost?”

As he spoke, the kitchen knife “ding” fell to the ground. Moroz gripped Horne’s hand tighter. As Horne just stood up, Moroz yanked him to the corner by the wall, as if the three-walled enclosure gave him some sense of security.

“I don’t know what it is, but the bell-ringing ghosts only appeared when I entered the fourth street. They just wander the streets. As long as we enter a house, they won’t follow.” Moroz thought for a moment and added, “The house ghosts have been there from the start, just not as frequent.”

“Also…” Moroz paused for a long time. Just as he was about to speak, a faint whooshing sound of something slicing through the air came from nearby. Moroz heard it almost immediately.

It was an extremely sharp assassination carried on wind. Moroz instinctively wanted to shield Horne behind him, but he quickly released his hand at a speed too fast to see clearly and froze in place.

No matter how cold or ruthless Horne appeared, he knew what kind of person Horne really was.

The knife that had just fallen to the ground rose into the air, its blade aimed at them as it flew over.

“Watch out!” Moroz shouted involuntarily. In that instant, Horne immediately pulled Moroz into his arms and flipped to the side, so fast it was almost in milliseconds.

“Ding!” The blade embedded into the wall with a piercing friction sound. Right where they had just stood, the blade sank halfway in, the handle vibrating for several seconds before going still.

Moroz was frightened, sitting on the ground with a face full of lingering shock, too stunned to speak.

Horne half-knelt on the ground, checked that the young man in his arms was unhurt, then released him and stood up. His gaze fell on the knife deeply embedded in the wall. His eyes sharpened, and he said curtly, “Let’s go.”

He opened the door and headed out. Moroz scrambled up from the ground and immediately followed.

Horne roughly understood now. The more timelines they crossed, the more clues they gathered, but the greater the danger. At first, the house ghosts only made noises and damaged the structure. Now they actively attacked. Houses were unsafe, and so were the streets.

“Brother, wait for me.” Moroz jogged a few steps to catch up with Horne, and then the two walked side by side.

There were two or three bell-holding ghosts on the street. When no one was around, they were blobs of transparent jelly. Upon seeing someone emerge, they would silently follow, not fast but persistent until close to the player. Once close, they rang their bells, turning into a puddle of mud-like substance that wrapped around the player’s body.

The two figures moved quickly, and the ghosts could not catch up.

As they hurried, they quickly exchanged their prior cooperative information. After thinking for a while, Moroz decided to tell Horne, “Brother, my personal task is to kill you.”