50 Friend 1

Chang'an has never been someone good at putting on a false facade, and as his friend, I considered myself to have a deep understanding of his personality.

There is a stubborn, or rather, a twisted streak to his character. If you directly ask him to do something, he might just comply; but if you issue a strict prohibition against doing something, a rebellious streak is bound to well up within him, driving him to do the forbidden thing anyway—and to do it with great fanfare, terrified that someone might miss the fact that he did it.

Therefore, I was well aware that if I suddenly distanced myself from him without saying a word, or bluntly told him right here that our friendship was over, he would never accept it. More than that, he would likely come hound me every single day. That was a scenario I wished to avoid. I had no desire to let the disaster Maza had dragged me into spill over onto him.

Deep within my heart, I had already formulated a concrete plan to distance myself from Chang'an and other normal interpersonal relationships. This process of distancing would not happen overnight, but rather step by step.

Yet, even though I had brewed up my speech in advance, the moment I laid eyes on Chang'an's face, I suddenly had no idea what to say, and the carefully prepared words instantly evaporated into thin air.

I could only struggle to force myself back into the proper state of mind.

Perhaps all of this was just an excuse; perhaps I simply wanted to spend a little more time talking with a good friend during our final moments. It did not matter what we talked about.

Chang'an sat with me at the long table of the fried chicken restaurant, smiling as he pulled and loosened his collar, chatting with me about what he had been up to over the past two days: "I've been staying at the military hospital all this time. The food there is healthy, sure, but it tastes awful. Plus, nobody there talks to me, and my mom can't speak either."

I gave a dry, perfunctory response: "How is your aunt doing now?"

"Still the same, lying motionless in bed," he said.

The mother of both Chang'an and Zhui Shi was in a vegetative state. According to Chang'an, one day she had suddenly and mysteriously fallen unconscious, never to wake up again. Although all her vital medical data indicated that her physical body was healthy, she simply refused to wake up. Were it not for the fact that her physiological functions continued, she could practically be treated as a corpse.

Chang'an had naturally racked his brains trying to figure it out, to no avail. Zhui Shi certainly understood the truth, and by now, I understood it as well.

This was "Soul Loss Disease."

With an unknown source of transmission, an unknown method of spreading, and an unknown treatment... this was not even a condition that conformed to normal medical definitions; it was far closer to a curse inflicted by anomalous entities. Those afflicted had all lost their souls, forming a globally spreading anomalous phenomenon.

Maza was the world's single awakened survivor, which was the fundamental motive behind Lu Shan scouring the entire country to find her.

If Maza truly were a doomsday time-traveler, then logically speaking, her awakening should have nothing to do with Soul Loss Disease, meaning studying her would yield no answers, let alone help Chang'an's mother.

Yet I held other thoughts on the matter. Why had she happened to time-travel into the body of a Soul Loss victim, and why did that victim happen to possess a physical form almost identical to her original body? Was her time-travel truly entirely unrelated to Soul Loss Disease?

From my perspective, if she refused to maintain a relationship with me, my only option would be to imprison her and hide her away where no one could ever reach her. Conversely, as long as I could ensure our relationship continued—and provided she herself was willing—it would not be entirely unacceptable for Lu Shan to utilize her in finding a cure for Soul Loss Disease. This was undoubtedly something Chang'an would also be thrilled to see.

Yet there was a crucial problem here: the blatant disregard for Maza's fundamental rights displayed by certain factions under Lu Shan during their search for her gave me a faint, unsavory whiff of foul play. I had little room to talk about others disregarding fundamental rights, but that did not prevent me from harboring suspicion and vigilance toward those who engaged in such behavior.

Chang'an continued to grumble: "My sister, on the other hand, is something else. Normally she visits Mom all the time, but the moment I show up, she vanishes without a trace, leaving me there to face it all alone. Don't you think that's strange?"

Knowing that Zhui Shi had been busy with the fallen demon hunter incident at the time, and unable to discuss this topic with Chang'an, I could only offer a vague, harmless reply: "Perhaps your usual behavior isn't very upright, and she's annoyed with you."

He paid no attention to this, merely sighing heavily: "When she was little, she was clearly a sweet girl who loved music and liked hugging and playing with a guitar. Look at her now, walking everywhere with a guitar case; she's probably playing in some band somewhere. But ever since she changed her name a few years ago, her attitude toward me has somehow turned ice-cold..."

What Zhui Shi was carrying inside that guitar case right then was hardly a guitar; it was most likely the sharp sword she had brandished in front of me last time.

While thinking this, I caught the crucial detail in Chang'an's words: "Changed her name?"

Chang'an seemed to have mentioned something similar to me in the past, but at the time I had no idea of Zhui Shi's true identity, nor any particular interest in her, so I had simply let the topic slip by.

"Yeah, isn't her name 'Zhui Shi' now? Don't you think a name like that doesn't really sound like a girl's name?" Chang'an countered.

"The name Zhui Shi does sound quite neutral, but giving a neutral name to a girl isn't all that bizarre, is it?"

"Let me tell you, this 'Shi' (拾) isn't the 'Shi' meaning 'to pick up'; it's the uppercase numeral for 'ten' (十)," Chang'an provided the answer from an unexpected angle. "Our Zhu family has a rather strange tradition; for some reason, we always give our descendants numerical names. For instance, my mom's name is 'Zhu Jiu' (玖, nine), and further back we had 'Zhu Ba' (捌, eight), 'Zhu Qi' (柒, seven), 'Zhu Liu' (陆, six)..."

That was certainly a rather mystical tradition.

The Zhu family was a local hidden wealthy clan, and in the past, I had never associated them with anomalies.

Seeing Zhui Shi conceal her identity as a demon hunter from Chang'an before, I had assumed she was a lone-wolf demon hunter whose family was unaware of it. Now, it made me wonder: could it be that the Zhu family itself harbored certain secrets, only Chang'an was left in the dark?

"What about other siblings?" I asked.

"Usually, they give all the children a non-numerical name first, and only after selecting an heir from among the children do they exclusively change that heir's name," he said. "For example, my sister used to be called 'Zhu Jiuxing', and she started going by 'Zhu Shi' after entering junior high."

"Your name is Chang'an, and hers is Jiuxing; those really do sound like names for a pair of siblings," I remarked.

"Even though we aren't biological siblings, that is," he said with a melancholy tone. "You know it too, I'm just an illegitimate child born to some woman my old man picked up outside, and the person lying in the hospital isn't my birth mother either. Even though in my heart she is my real mother, and she was exceptionally good to me, but..."

"Is that why you've constantly avoided visiting your aunt?"

"I know I'm throwing a tantrum, but... do you think the reason Zhui Shi has been distancing herself from me is because of this too..." he said with an empty tone. "And my dad never coming to see me, could it also be because..."

He always put on a thick-skinned act in front of others, yet at this moment, he revealed a vulnerable side before me.

Because he was my friend, I had made inquiries in the past. His father was a high-ranking official within the official factions and had been missing for many years.

It was not that Chang'an's father had met with misfortune somewhere; rather, he seemed to be secretly engaged in covert activities that were inconvenient to disclose publicly. Perhaps it was related to certain classified government engineering projects. His official position within the government apparatus remained intact, but he was simply absent from his post. Moreover, he seemed to be silently keeping an eye on Chang'an from the shadows; whenever Chang'an caused trouble that required damage control, his father would deliberately dispatch people to handle it.

As an adopted son-in-law married into the Zhu family, his footing was not particularly secure to begin with. As his illegitimate son, Chang'an naturally could not feel normal familial warmth within the Zhu family. I had suspected in the past that Chang'an's constant propensity for stirring up trouble outside, aside from venting his negative emotions, might also harbor a hidden motive to catch his father's attention.

"He's probably caring for you in his own way; it's just that due to work reasons, he can't show his face publicly," I consoled.

"I hope so," he brushed the topic aside and turned his attention to another matter. "Right, Ah Cheng, about that cave... the cave in the room on the fifteenth floor, you remember it, right?"

"Of course I haven't forgotten."

"Actually... I have some regrets. It wasn't after meeting you that I became interested in anomalous things; I'd always wanted to prove the existence of anomalies before. But I... I ran away from that cave, I didn't even dare go inside," he gritted his teeth. "For the past two days, I've kept having nightmares, dreaming that a massive hand reached out from inside the cave and dragged me down into the pitch-black abyss. Afterward, the entrance vanished, and I couldn't find a way out no matter what... I feel like, rather than living in constant terror like this, I might as well..."

As he went on, he suddenly grew dejected, laughing at himself: "Sorry... what kind of silly things am I saying? Just forget what I just said. No matter how you look at it, it's way too crazy..."

"I'm sorry, but you might be disappointed when you hear the next piece of news," I said. "Regarding that cave you mentioned, it won't appear anymore."

"......Ah?" His eyes widened, "What!"

"Actually, the reason I asked you out was also to tell you this," I said with firm resolve. "I've already explored that cave, and due to some processes that are inconvenient to explain, the cave has now completely vanished."

"Wait! Don't just gloss over it like that. What kind of process is 'inconvenient to explain'?" he pressed.

I took a breath, hardened my resolve once more, and began to weave a lie: "The issue isn't there; it's what happened afterward."

He stared at me: "Afterward?"

"I might have been cursed by that cave. The reason I can't tell you the whole process is also because I don't know whether the information I share might cause you harm. You should know this, right? Merely knowing about anomalous entities can create danger." I adopted a grave tone.

"Ah, um, some new urban legends do have that kind of setting, like memes or something..." He nodded, half-comprehending, before being struck by shock, "So you've been entangled with that kind of thing!?"

"Yes. Just telling you over the phone might lack a sense of reality, so I'm telling you face-to-face right now," I said solemnly. "For a while after this, it would be best if we stopped hanging out."