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Baihe couldn't remember how he got back to the hotel where he was staying.

He thought that after tonight's events, he would be so terrified that he wouldn't be able to sleep.

But in reality, Shirakawa overestimated himself, and his consciousness sank almost the instant his head hit the pillow.

He slept soundly and had a series of chaotic nightmares.

The scene of a dark shadow swooping down in the darkness, the screeching sound of the ground, the silent swaying of the eavesdropping figures on the ceiling, and Mary's final transformation into a doll, is nothing short of a chaotic dance of demons.

Baihe was jolted awake as if he had a stroke when his phone rang, and instinctively threw the phone off the bedside table.

"Oh no! My phone!"

Fortunately, although the screen was cracked like a spider web, it still seemed to work and was alerting the parents to an incoming call.

"Mom and Dad?"

Baihe took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down before answering the call.

"Xiaohe! What's wrong with you? I haven't heard from you all day! You didn't reply to my messages, and I've called you several times before you finally answered!"

Hasn't replied to your message all day?

Baihe subconsciously looked out the window and noticed that the sky was yellowish-pink, approaching evening.

He actually slept for a whole day; no wonder his parents were so worried.

Ever since he had a stomach ache in the middle of the night and went to the hospital alone, his parents have become extra sensitive, asking him to send a message every day to let them know he's safe.

After what happened yesterday, Baihe has forgotten about it.

A wave of guilt washed over me, mixed with an indescribable lingering fear.

Baihe forced a tired smile and instinctively lied, "Dad, Mom, don't worry. I worked too late yesterday, and when I got home I went straight to sleep. I slept so soundly that I didn't hear the phone."

"Working overtime again? How many times have I told you, your health is the most important thing! Is your stomach okay? Have you been eating on time? You've already earned enough money, there's no need to keep working so hard." The mother asked a barrage of questions, full of concern.

"Okay, I'm fine. I've eaten. Don't worry about me," Baihe mumbled in response, but a pang of sadness welled up inside him.

He desperately wanted to tell his parents about the unbelievable events of the previous night and seek some comfort, but he couldn't.

That sounds like utter nonsense.

Baihe reassured his parents for a few more minutes, promising to take care of his health before hanging up the phone.

Baihe rubbed his throbbing temples and checked his contact list. Apart from his parents and a few unimportant work groups, there were very few red dots on his message list.

That's normal. The people on the contact list are either subordinates or colleagues. If they take the initiative to contact you, it's because they have something to discuss. Most of the time, we just quietly remain in the background as each other's contacts.

My fingers stopped as the river continued to slide down.

There are two unread messages in the pinned contacts.

His wife and children, whom he considered estranged, also sent him messages to inquire about his situation.

Seeing these few short messages may not feel as caring as a phone call from my parents, but it's still a way of showing the necessary concern as a family member.

Baihe's feelings instantly became extremely complicated. After finishing the call and reading the contact information, he looked at his phone, which was starting to malfunction and the screen was beginning to flicker, and realized that it wouldn't last much longer.

Before he could even consider whether it was too late to buy a phone at this hour, his phone rang again.

The phone was tossed up and down, and I barely managed to catch it.

Baihe's hands were still shaking, and he felt that his phone ringing stress disorder wouldn't recover anytime soon.

"An unfamiliar number?"

Baihe thought for a moment and, instead of hanging up or connecting directly, took the elevator directly to the first floor of the hotel.

The people who came downstairs with Baihe looked at him with confusion, not understanding why this guy wasn't answering his phone and was just staring at it.

And what brand of phone is this? The signal is so strong! How can you make a call in an enclosed elevator?

Baihe pressed the call button only after confirming that he was within the range of the hotel and roadside surveillance cameras.

"If you want to see her one more time, come to this address."

A voice, both unfamiliar and somewhat familiar, gave an unfamiliar address that didn't sound like a popular street.

Baihe thought for a while before realizing that it sounded like the Taoist priest's voice from last night.

Is he really a Taoist priest? Baihe wasn't sure; the saying "once bitten, twice shy" perfectly described his situation.

"Could we change the address?" Baihe asked cautiously.

"...Okay, where would you like to meet?"

Baihe immediately told him which hotel he was staying at, and added, "If you feel this matter is something that cannot be made public, I can book a private room."

"it is good."

……

Baihe was lucky; although he booked the private room a bit late, there were still some vacant rooms available.

He sat alone in the spacious private room, but felt even more uneasy than he had been in the ruins the night before.

His fingers tapped unconsciously on the table, his gaze occasionally drifting towards the door, his mind rehearsing what he was going to say later.

"How should I thank the Taoist priest? Should I receive some cash first? My phone is completely broken, so I can't transfer money, but isn't that a bit vulgar...?"

"I wonder how Mary is. Why didn't I ask her about her situation earlier? Is she still alive? Did the Taoist priest let Jack escape...?"

Just as Baihe was lost in thought, there was a knock on the door. He was so startled that he almost jumped up from his chair.

"Mr. Bai, your guest has arrived."

"Please come in!"

The newcomer had changed into a simple black casual outfit, and the subtle sense of detachment in his eyes made Baihe connect him with the Taoist priest from last night.

"road……"

"Just call me Ji Mo." Ji Mo noticed his confusion and casually explained, "That outfit is too flashy and inconvenient, so this is more low-key."

"Oh! That's true!"

Baihe remembered that yesterday he had also seen a Taoist robe and rushed over without thinking.

Wearing that outfit, it's impossible to keep a low profile; anyone who comes into contact with Ji Mo will have a preconceived notion.

Ji Mo was followed by a petite figure who kept her head down, wearing a baseball cap and a mask, completely covering herself up.

"You can take them off now," Ji Mo said, maintaining the air of a Taoist priest.

Beneath the hat was her familiar long, wavy golden hair, but the texture inexplicably felt much more plasticky.

Underneath the mask, half is a real face, and the other half is a doll's face.

Similar joint-like connection marks can also be seen at other joints.

The intense uncanny valley effect sent chills down Baihe's spine. He subconsciously moved backward, his voice unusually clear.

Ji Mo seemed oblivious to his lapse in composure, casually pulling out a chair and sitting down before posing the question:

Do you know her?

Baihe swallowed, unable to tear his gaze away from Mary's inhuman half-face: "...I know her."

Last night, Mary used that eerie form to buy him time to escape.

Ji Mo nodded and stopped talking, pouring himself a cup of tea, seemingly waiting for him to ask a question.

As Baihe looked at Mary, the swaying shadows on the ceiling of the abandoned building from last night uncontrollably resurfaced in his mind...

"What exactly is she?"

"You can think of it as a demon. When it's happy, it protects the family and makes it prosper. When it's unhappy, it kills people and rips out their hearts to help itself accelerate its cultivation." Ji Mo held his teacup, calm and composed. "Sometimes, widely circulated legends are not necessarily just fabrications by our predecessors."

"...!"

Mary said she and Jack were the same kind of creature, and the Taoist priest said that legends might not be fabricated, so... Mary really did kill someone?

Baihe inexplicably recalled an experience he had with Mary on a trip. At that time, Mary was focused on her phone, not looking at entertainment apps, but rather slowly scrolling through a long list of contacts as if admiring a collectible.

When Mary noticed Baihe's gaze, she didn't hide it and openly showed it to him, indicating that she originally had more contacts in her phone than she does now, and that the number of contacts she has now been reduced.

Under what circumstances would Mary delete a contact?

Baihe dared not think about it too much, and even felt that he had been too slow to react when he was a little annoyed at the time.

Seeing that Bai He had almost finished imagining things, Ji Mo slowly spoke:

"The other demon was killed yesterday. As for her, I see that she still has the will to repent. I will take her back to the Taoist temple and suppress her for two or three hundred years as a punishment."

"Originally, I only needed to call you to let you know, but she insisted on seeing you one more time, which is why she made this trip."

Two sentences successfully made Baihe feel both happy and flustered.

"She's been restrained by me, so don't worry about her hurting you." Ji Mo got up and left, making sure to close the door before leaving. "I'll only give you five minutes. If you have anything else to say, say it quickly."

Only Baihe and Mary remained in the room, staring at each other in silence.

Baihe didn't know how to bring it up. Before yesterday, he and Mary were still good acquaintances, but now she was going to be imprisoned. The police who arrested her... no, the Taoist priest, was someone Baihe had personally found.

After witnessing that the other party was a ruthless and inhuman killer, he dared not look directly at Mary again.

He never imagined that his feelings for someone could change multiple times within a month.

Time does not stand still for the two of them in silence. As a ghost story, Mary is more sensitive to the passage of time and realizes that there is not much time left.

Mary tilted her head, a gentle curve appearing on her human side of her mouth, while her doll-like side remained cold and expressionless. She spoke softly:

"I actually understand what you're thinking."

Baihe's heart clenched suddenly.

Mary continued, her tone as if stating a fact unrelated to herself:

"I know that during that time, you... developed a little crush on me, didn't you? After all, I'm so cute and considerate, and that will never change... completely different from your wife."

Bai Yan turned his head away guiltily. He had indeed complained to Mary that his wife had changed a lot, that the once gentle person now only complained and argued with him, and that her figure was not as good as before.

"But that's just my facade, Shirakawa."

Mary's voice lowered, and a complex emotion flashed across her half-face, a mixture of pity and self-loathing:

"That's why sometimes, when I see you genuinely satisfied, even a little happy, I feel like... I've done something worse than murder."

Baihe opened his mouth, wanting to refute, wanting to say that he was not completely deceived, wanting to say that even now that he knew the truth, that feeling of excitement was not fake.

But when the words were about to come out, I realized that I had no position or evidence.

His attraction to her was indeed based on the illusion of her being cute and considerate.

When the illusion is shattered, I can't help but feel afraid and want to get away.

"Back then, I was thinking," Mary's voice drifted, carrying a hint of unrealistic longing, "since you don't like your family anyway and have thought about living with me, why don't we... just take you away? Escape to a place where there are no other humans, just the two of us. Just like in many stories, since the world rejects us, we'll escape the world."

Her gaze fell on Baihe's suddenly contracted pupils, then dimmed again.

"But when I discovered that Jack had impersonated me, using my voice and identity to approach you, I realized... it's impossible."

Mary gently shook her head, her blonde hair swaying, seeing more clearly than anyone else:

"Because what you've fallen in love with has always been just a facade. Once you see the whole me, see Jack, see just the tip of the iceberg of our world, all you'll feel is fear and a desire to escape. Just like now."

"No, that's not it!" Baihe blurted out almost without even knowing why he was denying it.

"No," Mary interrupted him, her voice suddenly taking on an undeniable tone. "It has to be this way. Shirakawa, follow your heart's fear."

Mary put her hat and mask back on, concealing her unsettling face, and seemed to have returned to being an ordinary little girl.

Let's just say that our meeting was a dream.

Mary's voice came through the mask, sounding somewhat muffled:

"Everyone dreams, but when you wake up, you should distinguish between reality and fantasy, and love other human beings just like you."

"Your wife and children, your parents."

Baihe was momentarily dazed, recalling his parents' earlier phone call and his wife and children's online messages. But those few seconds were enough for Mary to walk to the door.

She leaned against the doorframe, not turning around, but simply saying softly:

I wish you happiness.

The door was gently closed.

Baihe stood frozen in place, Mary's last words echoing repeatedly in his ears.

A dream?

Those palpitations and dependencies, like grasping a ray of sunshine in the cold reality... is it really just an elaborately woven dream in which even he himself participated?

But the real fear in his heart, the uncontrollable fear of the unknown and non-human things, is what he truly feels.

Baihe slowly sat back down in his chair, looking at the empty private room opposite him, feeling as if a part of him had been taken away forever with the sound of the door opening.