He is the leader of the Tantric sect in Chagdu.

It was completely dark by then.

The village of Xiu is quiet at night, with only the windmills and waterwheels by the river. Perhaps due to the wear and tear on the wooden axles, they make a slight "clicking" noise when they operate, but this noise is easily dispersed into the night by the gentle breeze.

The two returned to Abram's former home, an unremarkable little house standing on the south side of the riverbank, slightly downstream.

"Welcome." After Ai went in first, Abram turned around and closed the door. He habitually reached out to touch the wall, and after feeling around, he belatedly realized that this was not the apartment I lived in in Dunling. He smiled awkwardly, "I forgot, this is not the apartment I lived in in Dunling."

He had no choice but to follow the wall and grope his way deeper into the house in the dark.

In the darkness, Ai's figure flickered like a still frame. He frowned slightly, then said softly, his voice seeming to seep out from every corner of the room: "It's really inconvenient, a place without electricity."

"Indeed... it's a bit strange to be back here so recently." From the other side, Abram's indistinct voice came from a corner, "Let me look for it, in the past... the gas lamps were always kept here."

Then came a series of noises as things were overturned.

After everything quieted down, Abram sounded embarrassed: "Sorry, things aren't quite the same here as before."

"Of course, you haven't been back for six years." Ai sighed, rummaged through her backpack, and pulled out a flashlight from Rhodes's belongings—a detective always needs to carry one.

With a sharp crack, most of the room was illuminated, revealing, as expected, a complete mess. The clumsy young man had knocked over everything along the way.

But anyway, it's his own home.

Ai shook his head, his thoughts inexplicably scattered. He looked out at the Rusty Village shrouded in darkness and suddenly felt a strange sensation...

Before the advent of electrical technology, light was such a precious thing to life at night—it was a rebellion against darkness and against ignorance.

Primitive and controlled light can only be born from fire, and fire is a scorching and violent thing. It cannot be imprisoned in the palm of a tender skin. So, it warns them with the principles of "scorching" and "burning" until the power of "light" is held in the palm of people in a safer and more proper way.

Ai held the flashlight beam and manipulated the shadow in a childish way. The light was blocked, and the black shadow cast on the wall looked like a giant, full of an invisible sense of oppression.

First the flame, then the electricity—we try to get closer to the essence of that radiance, to find the answer to the fleeting, fading spark.

This pursuit has permeated history and become an instinct.

And I am also chasing after this layer of history...

He chuckled twice, casually moved a chair over, leaned back in it to relieve his fatigue, and opened his eyes only a narrow slit, shining his flashlight directly into Abram's eyes without any attempt to avoid it.

Perhaps caught off guard by Ai's actions, Abram instinctively tried to cover his eyes with his hands, but the next second a cold object was pressed against his forehead—

Upon realizing where the chill was coming from, cold sweat instantly soaked his entire body.

"Want to chat sometime?"

Ai smiled, completely ignoring Abram's astonished gaze. His unpredictable temper seemed utterly illogical. He spoke softly in a casual tone, "You've already escaped until now... Now it's just the two of us here, such a perfect setting. Don't you have anything you want to say to me?"

"Wha...what do you mean?"

Seeing that Abram maintained his composure on the surface, but his violently contracting pupils betrayed his fear, Ai smiled even more gleefully.

-Your vessel trembles and is riddled with holes—and I am happy to see it that way.

The tall man rose from his chair, his face, seemingly calm and gentle in the light and shadow, yet exuding an inexplicable coldness. He circled Abram, who was slumped on the ground, and finally stopped directly in front of him, placing his hands on his knees and slowly squatting down.

"Ever since then, there's been something I just can't figure out..."

His tone was erratic, his deep voice flowing from every ray of light and shadow, "I don't understand—why would you give up on the search or rescue efforts so quickly just because it's only a 'missing' story told by an old pastor, and only three days have passed? Human hope is a strong thing, it shouldn't be so fragile... This makes no sense."

Ai stroked the young man's hair, revealing his forehead, and murmured to herself, "Your sister Lily, the one who made you come all the way from Dunling to this place, trying to take away your relative..."

- But a stranger's word "disappearance" pronounced a "death sentence".

"Why?" Ai suddenly tightened her grip, tearing at his scalp, lifting his terrified face close to her own, staring at the twisted, ferocious expression—

Tell me, why?

"..."

Abram's eyes were bloodshot and swollen from the pain. He kept taking deep breaths and repeating the same sentence over and over: "I don't understand what you're saying."

"no problem."

Ai raised an eyebrow, then loosened his hair, clapped her hands lightly, her expression unchanged: "It's still early, the sun has just set, we can take our time."

He slowly stood up, pacing around the house as he muttered to himself, "Let me tell you a secret—I'm not actually from Issu. I come from a country outside Issu. The place I live in is a city even more prosperous than New Dunling..."

.

(That damn bastard...)

Abram, who was lying silently on the ground, let out a deep breath.

(This guy, who was abnormal from the beginning, has finally revealed his true colors—he's a complete madman!)

(How should we resist now?)

While Ai was still talking to himself, Abram secretly observed his surroundings... He stared blankly at a spot just two steps away where he saw a beautiful silver pistol lying on the ground.

(He... he actually forgot this thing on the ground?!)

He unconsciously swallowed, then quickly covered his mouth, startled by the sudden sound. Abram's eyes gradually hardened.

You despise yourself, you will pay the price for your arrogance and contempt.

On the other side, Ai was still rambling on:

"In my city, buildings can be built to be more majestic than mountains and denser than beehives... But behind all this prosperity, etiquette is in a state of utter decline—in that context, 'missing' is indeed no different from 'murder.' But even so, at least people will try to struggle, hoping to get lucky by reporting the case to the police or conducting a private investigation."

"But you didn't do anything..."

Ai stopped and let out a sigh that was completely flat: "So... in your understanding of Rusty Village, the disappearances that happen here can be equated with death."

He lowered his voice: "What caused your distorted perception...?"

Abram didn't bother listening. He hid behind the table, avoiding eye contact—as if he wouldn't be noticed as long as he wasn't in Ai's sight.

Ai didn't really pay him much attention, and inexplicably changed the subject, continuing, "Actually, back in the church days, I could have easily taken advantage of your standoff with the old pastor, pointed a gun at your heads, or even used some cheat code to force you to expose each other's true nature..."

-If we had done that back then, we might have been able to speedrun this dungeon.

The next second, Ai silently turned her head away. "But I didn't do that—do you know why?"

Before the question was even finished, Abram, who had been lying prone on the ground, suddenly sat up. The young man, whose survival instinct was at its peak, snatched the pistol in front of him almost instantly, aiming the dark muzzle at Ai.

"Hahahaha, you lunatic! You're all flesh and no brains, you idiot! What do you mean by 'from outside Ys'? What do you mean by 'more prosperous than New Dunling'...?"

His expression was ferocious, his face beaming with the glee of turning the tables: "Now go ahead and say something, show me how arrogant you can be!"

"no problem."

Seeing this, Ai nodded without any change in expression and continued with a smile, "Because, well, I've just roughly figured out the underlying rules of this dungeon. I think... even if I speed through the quest in the simplest and most brutal way, after I get out of here, am I going to get the rewards from Little White? That guy isn't some kind of system..."

"So now I understand, the mission is just a guide in the direction—and the exploration of the echo is a kind of role-playing and reenactment. What I need to do is to retrace history, to personally collect and witness everything that happened here, rather than destroy it..."

Being overly pragmatic is not a good mindset.

"In that case, you're much easier to deal with than that old guy who seems to have so many entanglements: even if I hadn't run into you before, you would have slunk back to Dunling at this point—so even if I killed you here, history might not have changed at all. Tsk, it sounds pathetic, but your role is perhaps just that insignificant..."

- Perfect timing to use it to unlock my new Persona.

Lot's dark eyes blinked, becoming even deeper and more vibrant.

I am now a container, containing Lot: this guy who lived a comfortable life thanks to his father, was somewhat famous, yet still persisted in his dream. In the long course of history, who would remember such a person?

Perhaps it's just me.

Now—his anger burns like a raging fire, and the justice he believes in demands a trial.

Ai Yi appeared calm, but the other party was clearly getting impatient.

Abram couldn't make sense of what she had just said, so he reacted somewhat agitatedly: "Madman...madman! I don't want to know what you're talking about. I even considered you a comrade before. Now, if you don't want to die, get out of here right now—"

Even with a gun pointed at him, Ai Yi still had a smile on his face. He even started to take a step forward: "Tell me, what exactly is happening in the darkness of this village? Bloody rituals, human sacrifices, conspiracies in the dark... or something even more disgusting. I don't know and I'm too lazy to guess—after all, my persona is that of a hothead who is good at using 'action' rather than 'thinking,' a detective who is second-rate in everyone's eyes."

(Don't come any closer!)

The young man standing on the road of radiance was trembling so violently that he knocked over the flashlight beside him, and his hand holding the gun was shaking so badly that it was almost blurry.

"So, you want me to investigate further?" Ai didn't let him off the hook, taking the final step forward, the relentless pressure crushing Abram's reason.

The next second, he pulled the trigger with a resolute air.

"—" The bullet left the chamber, and all was silent.

Silent shooting is without sound, and it is closer to darkness than sight. In those angles not illuminated by light, the dissolving darkness transforms into an uneven skin.

The bullet pierced through the illusion woven from shadows, striking the other wall with undiminished kinetic energy.

Abram was startled, then his hair stood on end. He sensed the gaze coming from behind him and felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave—

This is a cruel light mixed with the judgment.

Before it, everyone should feel a chill run down their spine.

The next moment, a hand like a steel clamp gripped his neck, tightening without any restraint, and then lifting him up—and then, the scales of time began to go out of balance. In the endless pain, the light at the edge of his vision began to tremble, until Abram's vision was plunged into complete darkness.

As if sinking into the deep sea, the suffocating sensation enveloped everything like amniotic fluid, and he felt like he was going to drown—even though he was an adult, he had to relearn how to breathe like an infant… But there seemed to be no oxygen around, and the thick feeling of drowning blocked his pupils, throat, and nasal cavity, and brought a numbness to his limbs as if they were being soaked and swollen.

Most of your senses were locked down, with only a chilling voice gradually amplifying in your ears: "How should I put it? You and that old pastor are kind of flirting. The moment he utters a 'safe word,' you don't dare to go any further... You're really in sync, are you afraid of letting me, an outsider, know some truth?"

Watching Abram's face gradually turn purple, Ai's dark eyes flashed with mockery: "It's really too strange... The way you two acted back then, that picture of grandfatherly love and filial piety, didn't look warm at all. Instead, it was like two interlocking iron hooks tearing at each other's flesh. If you weren't careful, you would both be torn apart and disemboweled—"

-This is such a wonderful relationship, I'm so touched.

Without warning, the next moment, a heavy punch slammed into his abdomen. Abram's stomach contracted violently, and the uncontrollable physiological reaction caused him to vomit a mouthful of clear mucus from his strangled throat.

Then, another punch—

"Cough cough—" The tearing pain reactivated Abram's almost drowning senses. In the superimposed suffocation and pain, he could only make hoarse groans and no other sound.

Only when Ai stopped her heavy punch with a look of pity, and then held the face, which was covered in snot and tears, up in front of her again, did she change her tone and speak softly:

You have one more chance to say something.

"Cough cough..."

As precious air entered his trachea, besides confusion and fear, Abram's bulging eyes were filled with resentment and anger. It took him a long time to adjust his breathing and barely get used to the suffocating feeling.

As if accepting his fate and knowing that prayer was meaningless to the madman before him, he stared at Ai for a long time, then chuckled from deep in his throat and squeezed out a light, self-deprecating remark.

"What do you think you know?"

.

.

"What do I know..."

Aye did not deny it. He began to walk around on his own, dragging Abram, who was like a lump of dead flesh, across the room, and then pressing his head hard to the ground.

"I may not know anything, but I can show you something first."

The choking throat was finally completely released, and the long-awaited air rushed into Abram's nostrils. He greedily inhaled the oxygen...

It wasn't until my sense of smell, which had been amplified many times over after a long period of silence, that I finally detected a faint scent that shouldn't exist there.

It tasted like licking rust with the tip of your tongue, sweet and fishy like snake venom.

Abram suddenly stopped breathing.

His pupils trembled.

"..."

The light followed Abram's gaze, illuminating the corners that remained in darkness.

He saw many messy marks in front of him.

Beneath him was a nearly congealed, dried bloodstain seeping from a wide-open door.

The bloodstains looked as if they had been burned by flames and had turned black. If you touched them, you could pull out thick, ointment-like threads—with broken down feathers stuck to them.

Then there were more traces of it spreading outwards.

"Did you see that?"

Ai pressed his head into the pool of congealed blood.

This is a living creature struggling fiercely with the will to survive even after losing its ability to move—the marks it left on the ground, made by its hands or some other part of its body… It stretched its wings into the floor, dug its nails into the cracks in the wall, trying to stay here, but its resistance was still unsuccessful.

"Lily...?"

Apollon could no longer stand upright, his trembling lips could not utter a complete word, and his back collapsed as if it had broken.

"You already knew this would happen... so why are you so surprised?"

Ai said jokingly, the white spot in the center of her pupils gradually enlarging. The "white beak" was a mournful song for its winged kind, and the principle of the remains was recounting the echo of this place's past.

He saw a winged shadow being dragged through a pool of blood, with broken bones and tattered feathers beneath it, almost crushed like a fragile bird before being carried away.

"This place, a murder, a bloodbath, a tragic lament: your sister, just three days ago, lived here, like an ordinary girl... and now, everywhere are her gruesome remains, her feathers torn from her skin and broken on the ground, her hollow, light bones crushed, and the cries of birds still echo in this house—her father is dead, her brother has fled, no one can save her, and even the blood that flowed has not completely dried..."

Anger and violence intertwined, it was hard to tell whether it was Ai or Rhodes... only an increasingly piercing roar squeezed out from his demonic, heavy breathing, revealing a set of white teeth:

"Because of fear? You're afraid of death? What is chasing you, threatening you, intimidating you? Or is it something more important than the lives of your family?"

Ai suddenly changed her tone, her voice low and somber: "Or perhaps, what you fear is not those evils."

Abram, who was pinned to the ground, trembled violently the moment he heard those words, and then a foot pressed down hard on his head.

"Those who have gone missing, whom you equate with death, including your sister—you have accepted their fate of being killed, even though you could have stopped it all with a simple gesture."

He roared menacingly, "This isn't the capital. You're in Dunling. All you need to do is report the crime and wait. You don't have to do anything, and you won't be in any danger. The Anti-Corruption Bureau of Isu, those law enforcement officers who are still in their prime and haven't yet fallen into corruption, can completely save those innocent people who are suffering misfortune, and save your loved ones."

"But you didn't do that. Instead, you hid outside like a turtle for six years, until a certain deadline was approaching. Only then did you cautiously return here alone, pretending to be looking for your sister, trying to fill some of the emptiness in your heart."

- Just like a fugitive returning to the scene of his crime.

"If it were just silence in the face of evil, perhaps some people would still defend you, but... your 'unprincipled hiding,' 'trembling in the face,' 'being blackmailed,' 'keeping the secret'—so many keywords piled together, then there's only one possibility."

Abram had given up struggling at some point; his dull eyes were empty and lifeless, and his boneless, limp limbs seemed dead.

Ai silently withdrew her gaze, seemingly unwilling to look at the filthy red liquid any longer.

"Abram, sin is something that never fades—even if you run away your whole life, even to the ends of the earth, even if you forget your past, you are still its prisoner."

Now it was Lot's turn, his dark gaze seeming to tear his vessel apart and crush it, as he proclaimed judgment:

"You committed evil deeds here."

.

.

The frozen silence seemed to last until the end of time.

Ai closed her eyes silently, calming her violent breathing.

After everything quieted down...

Ignoring Abram, who was slumped on the ground, he sighed and sat down, using the wall as a pillow.

Gradually, he heard birdsong...