Saori Tsuruyo had learned a lot from Li Mo, including the fact that a ghost's thought process and actions differed from those of a living person. While they might retain some consciousness from their mortal lives, their logic and rules were primarily governed by their ghostly nature.
"What would happen if I shot her with the Bizarre pistol right now?"
A bold idea suddenly occurred to Saori Tsuruyo: use the ghost-suppressing ability of the Bizarre pistol to subdue the Shigure ghost outside.
But she couldn't bear the consequences of failure.
It would be one thing if shooting the Shigure ghost had no effect. But if it triggered some unknown rule of the ghost, allowing it to enter the inn through the window, the consequences would be unimaginable.
Li Mo was still in the inn, waiting to awaken. Saori Tsuruyo couldn't take that risk.
"Drip... drip..."
The Shigure ghost continued its attempts. At one point, its right foot nearly cleared the threshold.
The Bizarre pistol Saori Tsuruyo had taken from Shigure Kira almost went off by accident.
Dawn was about to break. The Shigure ghost turned around, no longer trying to cross the threshold, and headed back the way it came.
It left a trail of wet footprints in its wake.
Saori Tsuruyo didn't turn on her phone, afraid the light would attract it. But seeing the dawn rising on the horizon, she figured it would be daytime soon enough.
"After trying all night, the ghost outside seems to be lifting its foot higher and higher, but there's still a significant height difference before it can cross."
"Is this the notebook's prophecy? That 'she' will only find the captain on the third day and then kill her."
Saori Tsuruyo quickly analyzed the information about the ghost that looked identical to Shigure Kira. It had clearly come from the lake.
Just as Saori Tsuruyo let her guard down, the ghost turned around and walked back to the inn's door once more.
"It's almost morning, and she's still not leaving?"
"The notebook predicted she would find the captain at 9:04 PM on the third night..."
Before Saori Tsuruyo could figure it out, the Shigure ghost's body began to melt, turning into a pool of still, dead water.
Saori Tsuruyo suddenly realized something and immediately rushed to Shigure Kira's room. As soon as she pushed open the door, her ankles were submerged in icy lake water.
The entire room was filled with the chilling, bone-piercing water.
Shigure Kira clutched a wet blanket, wrapped tightly around herself. But she wasn't trembling as before. Half of her body was no longer flesh and blood, but made of lake water.
"Saori..."
"Captain? What happened? Your body..."
Saori Tsuruyo rushed to Shigure Kira's side. Shigure Kira lowered the blanket, revealing the part of her body that had been invaded by the lake water.
It was crystal clear, transparent.
A large part of her body had already turned transparent.
"I think I'm about to die. I can't even feel the cold anymore," Shigure Kira sighed, speaking calmly.
"It's okay, Captain. We can ask the notebook what to do."
"Saori, we both know how this ends. It was within our expectations from the start. There's nothing to say. The notebook didn't stop it back then, which means this situation was part of its plan. It might not answer our questions now."
"How will we know if we don't try?"
Saori Tsuruyo took out the notebook and anxiously asked a very broad question: "How can we keep Captain Shigure Kira alive?"
[...]
The notebook remained silent, not even opening a single page.
A person who had lost their value was not worth negotiating with.
"If you don't talk, I'll kill you with this gun... You're a ghost, you won't die, but I'm sure you'll have to pay some price."
"I want to hear how to save the captain's life, right now."
[...]
The notebook remained silent, choosing to ignore Saori Tsuruyo's threat.
Or perhaps it knew that Saori Tsuruyo would never shoot it with that gun, because she couldn't afford the cost of destroying it.
After all, Saori Tsuruyo was only its temporary owner.
"Damn it!"
Saori Tsuruyo angrily slammed the butt of the gun against the notebook. This thing was even harder to use than she had imagined.
Seeing this, Shigure Kira sighed and shook her head, advising, "Forget it, Saori. Don't use it anymore."
"If even he was pushed to the brink by this notebook, what chance do we have?"
"I'll leave the inn today. That ghost is looking for me. After I leave, it will follow me and won't enter the inn."
"I've already told you everything in the diary. Relay it to the moody guy when he wakes up. He'll find the best way to deal with the Bizarre Thing."
"The notebook doesn't lie. If we do this, we can definitely get this world back on its normal track. Just as I will die, it's all an unchangeable... future."
Shigure Kira threw off all her blankets, got dressed, and covered the transparent parts of her body.
Saori Tsuruyo bit her lip, not knowing what to say to comfort her.
"If we do nothing, its prophecy will come true!" Saori Tsuruyo said stubbornly.
"But there's nothing we can do," Shigure Kira said, getting out of bed and walking out of the room.
Like the Shigure ghost, she left a trail of wet footprints with every step.
"I'll leave the pistol in your care."
"I should go. I'll leave the rest to you."
And so, Shigure Kira left the inn, walking step by step towards an unknown place.
Saori Tsuruyo wanted to stop her, but just as Shigure Kira had said, she had to leave.
If the ghost entered the inn, not only would Shigure Kira die, but she and Li Mo would die with her.
The best outcome was for Shigure Kira to leave the inn and wait for the ghost to appear in front of her in a deserted place, and then be killed by it.
After Shigure Kira left, the lake water in the room gradually receded, but the lake water in Saori Tsuruyo's heart did not.
Li Mo had entrusted most of the Bizzare items to her, holding high expectations for her.
But she seemed to have failed those expectations, watching helplessly as Shigure Kira waited to be killed by a ghost.
Saori Tsuruyo sat on the bed, her hands covering her face, her lips trembling.
After watching the Shigure ghost all night, Saori Tsuruyo still wasn't the least bit sleepy, only feeling helpless.
"What have I done?"
"What can I do?"
"If it were my brother, what would he do?"
During the day, the Jingyue Inn did not open. Not only because Saori Tsuruyo was too busy to handle it alone, but more importantly, in her current state, it would be difficult for her to deal with the ghost guests.
Time ticked by, second by second. Saori Tsuruyo stared at the 8:00 PM on her phone, her hands clenching involuntarily.
She knew that Shigure Kira was somewhere, waiting for death alone.
The captain must be so scared... all alone...
---||---
Li Mo slept in the innermost and safest room on the second floor. The scent of rosemary wafted like a mist, filling every corner of the room.
The blue-purple petals glowed brighter and brighter, surrounded by a faint sprinkling of light.
In an endless, dark void, Li Mo found himself on a small path in a forest.
"Didn't I already die... Hua didn't come."
"No, no... that's not right!"
"I'm Li Mo, not Mo."
Li Mo clutched his forehead as a flood of memories surged through his mind, almost destroying his fragile consciousness.
Tens of thousands of years of indelible, clear memories, like a vast ocean, tried to squeeze into a small puddle.
Li Mo reached out and, without hesitation, used "Usurp," temporarily forgetting most of the irrelevant memories in his dream at the cost of making his memory space even more fragile.
After his mind cleared a little, Li Mo looked up and observed his surroundings.
All around him was an untouchable darkness, so black that even his cloudy eyes couldn't see through it. Only a paved path lay before him, seemingly guiding him forward.
Many flowers bloomed beside the path. Li Mo recognized them as the rosemary given to him by Irene Adler.
"...Where am I? Haven't I left Mount Taixuan yet?"
"No, the fact that rosemary can appear here means that this path was left for me by Irene."
"Perhaps I can return to reality through this path, or perhaps I'll walk into an even more desperate abyss."
"I have no other choice but to follow this path."
Charging into the darkness was an option, but doing so would probably only lead to being forever lost in it.
Just like—
The Bizzare cave.
Both had only one way out: to follow the path it paved for the living, and never to venture off in any other direction on one's own.
Besides, if Irene really wanted to kill him, she wouldn't have to go to such trouble. The worst outcome would be to be enslaved as a spirit she commanded after walking this path.
But that was better than being dead.
As long as he had his humanity, he could still communicate. And if he could communicate, it wasn't a dead end.
Li Mo clearly remembered that Irene had enslaved the spirits of three different creatures—a wolf, a snake, and an owl.
"The most complete Bizarre Thing hasn't lost its self, and can even ignore the rules of certain death... I have to tell Mei this when I get home. She might be able to figure something out."
"Right now, I need to get out of here and go back to reality to deal with the Bizarre Hua."
Li Mo's memories of the real world stopped at the moment he triggered the "look back" and "make eye contact" rules. After the ghost said, "I got you," he lost consciousness.
His head felt like it had been lifted.
Then his consciousness fainted, as if he had fallen asleep and had a very, very long dream.
He didn't know what happened after that, but it didn't stop him from solving this "forty-year wedding."
Yes, just like in the previous worlds, the origin of the Bizarre Thing in each world basically came from a specific event.
And these events all ended in twisted, unfortunate, and regrettable tragedies, creating the source of the Bizarre Thing and corrupting the protagonist of the event.
He had jumped into the Mirror Lake in exchange for the identity of a "human."
Only then could he escape the characteristics of a mirror and give Hua true happiness.
But there was one thing Li Mo was curious about. The memories of the Previous Era clearly didn't match the later memories and contradicted reality, full of paradoxes.
Was he a mirror in the Previous Era? That didn't seem right either. The first person he met was Hua, so he absolutely couldn't have Elysia's personality. Instead, he should have been like Hua, a reserved and honest person.
Unless... Li Mo needed evidence to prove his theory, the real truth about him and Hua in the Previous Era.
Li Mo looked down at his hands.
Perhaps it was because he had just woken up, but he was in a good state, his mind working quickly.
He also had an idea of how to deal with the source of the Bizzare Thing in this world.
"My previous attempts were not wrong. If I want to solve the source of the Bizzare Thing, I do have to honestly complete the entire wedding process."
"But... the person I was supposed to marry—the ghost bride—was not the right person from the beginning."
"There's only one possibility as to where the real ghost bride is."
Only that place could explain why he hadn't seen Hua arrive that day.
Because she also wanted to become "human," to walk with him to the very end.
Whether it was Project EMBER or their promises, neither of them cared about any of it.
This was humanity's oldest and simplest act. It was bloody, cruel, foolish, yet it could also be called romantic.
Its name was—a lover's suicide pact.
Li Mo walked quickly along the path full of rosemary. Soon, he reached a seashore, where a small boat was docked.
Li Mo didn't hesitate for long and jumped in.
Instantly, the boat began to sail on an endless, deep, and silent ocean.
The sea was filled with sparkling points of light, like a sky full of stars, shining with a dazzling blue light.
Strangely, Li Mo didn't see his reflection in this ocean. Things related to Bizarre Thing must have corresponding connections. The boat was a dead object, with no reflection. Did this mean he was already dead?
Perhaps there were other reasons.
Li Mo didn't dwell on this question for long. In a sense, he was indeed dead right now.
In a daze, the boat had already reached the other shore of the Sea of Souls.
After getting off the boat, Li Mo looked back. Under the soft moonlight, the night curtain fell, and the Sea of Souls presented a dreamlike picture. In the boundless expanse, the waves gently lapped against the shore, accompanied by a faint sound. The blue light, like catkins, was aimlessly sent to the shore where Li Mo was.
The next second, it was abruptly pulled back.
Behind him was only an endless sea, and nothing else.
It was hard to imagine that such a vast ocean could be crossed in just a few minutes.
The boat's speed was not fast; it could even be called turtle-like.
"There is no concept of time here."
Li Mo immediately concluded.
"Strange place. I'd better stay away from that woman in the future. You can't believe a single word from an Bizarre Existance."
"'Tell you all the rules and abilities?' But the premise is that we meet again. Telling me and then killing me is not out of the question for her to fulfill her promise."
"I can't trust her."
"..."
Suddenly, Li Mo remembered Irene's emphatic statement that he only trusted himself.
It seemed to be true, but in dealing with countless Bizarre Thing, he would encounter all sorts of people. Some ghosts disguised as living people could be easily seen through, while others were well-hidden, showing no ghostly characteristics at all.
He had been killed by a ghost disguised as a living person before, stabbed again and again.
Li Mo shook his head, preparing to blink. As soon as he closed his eyes and opened them again, he saw an unfamiliar ceiling.
He was not standing on the shore, but lying in bed.
"I'm back?"
"This should be a room in the Jingyue Inn."