The voices within the Forbidden Tower echoed continuously.
The distance between Zhou Xuan and the fleshy buds’ spikes ahead was slowly decreasing.
For a moment, his consciousness began to blur, making it hard to tell whether he was walking towards the spikes or the spikes were approaching him.
"You’re a damn fake Buddha! Keep dreaming your sweet dreams!"
Zhou Xuan once again formed the Zen Meditation Handprint, using his regained clarity to swing his arm and chop off those fleshy bud spikes with Bone Teeth,
and golden blood splattered everywhere.
"Hehehe, you can cut down these flesh-made spikes, but can you cut down the spikes in your heart?"
"Zhou Xuan, stop deceiving yourself, you never came to Jing Country, there never was a Jing Country!"
"Changed tactics, huh? Not using my grandmother to trick me anymore?"
Zhou Xuan sneered, relying on his moment of clarity to stride down the stairs once more, leaving the tower was now his only objective.
"You won’t make it out... look at the stairs."
Zhou Xuan glanced sideways at the stairs, clearly he was on the second floor, but the staircase continued spiraling downward, with no idea of how many floors it extended.
And the spiraling staircase seemed to wrap around a bottomless pit.
There’s no telling where this pit leads.
"Then I just won’t go!"
Zhou Xuan pulled out the Wash Away Injustice Talisman from his pocket, seeking to hide in the rift of time.
"Mingjiang Prefecture’s Qiye Temple Forbidden Tower, August 25th."
He filled in a date, the Wash Away Injustice Talisman was vibrating, he was entering the time-space rift, yet when the talismanic script went still, he still heard the sounds of the Forbidden Tower.
"Hehehe, Zhou Xuan, stop deceiving yourself, what Wash Away Injustice Talisman, what Jing Country, what Zhou Lingyi, they’re all your imaginations, even the name Zhou Xuan, you fabricated it yourself. Do you know why your creation Zhou Lingyi could talk with you for so long but never mentioned your grandmother?
Hehehe, because your grandmother is the thorn in your heart, you want to avoid your grandmother, you won’t mention her again! You escape in dreams; you don’t want to wake up... you want to escape, but can you escape your whole life?"
"I’m not in a dream, I’m in reality."
"Then look if you’re really in reality, I’ll show you the secret of your grandmother."
The sound of the Forbidden Tower suddenly ceased, and Zhou Xuan found himself back on the day of the car accident in his past life.
It was just after sunset, Zhou Xuan was driving on the highway, only five kilometers away from the exit to his hometown, when suddenly, he saw something dart out in front of him.
He immediately slammed on the brakes, a harsh screeching of tires and asphalt reverberated around him.
Luckily, things turned out fine, the car stopped with only half a meter to spare from hitting the creature.
Narrowly escaping disaster, Zhou Xuan’s heart nearly leapt out of his chest.
He panted heavily, reaching for a cigarette from the glove compartment, lit one up, took a deep drag, composed himself, and released the brake, attempting to restart the car.
As he raised his head, the cigarette between his lips trembled as he witnessed a horrifying scene.
The creature he almost hit was a sheep.
And now, the white sheep stood on its hind legs in front of the car, its mouth grinning like a person, seemingly smiling.
Zhou Xuan suddenly felt panicked, fearing that his tension had led to a hallucination, he rubbed his eyes, adjusted his mood once more, and looked back at the sheep, which was no longer smiling but instead vomiting a large heap onto the car’s hood.
Among the mass of filth lay an undigested human hand.
The hand’s skin was cracked, and on the wrist was a white Jade Bracelet.
Zhou Xuan immediately recognized it, that Jade Bracelet was the one he had bought for his grandmother.
Which implied that this hand belonged to his grandmother...
Without another word, Zhou Xuan hit the accelerator, crashing deliberately into the sheep.
The sheep was knocked several meters away, Zhou Xuan’s eyes reddened, continuing to mash the accelerator, ready to ram again, when just then, a large truck rammed into his car, shoving it into the guardrail.
Zhou Xuan was battered beyond recognition, yet he struggled to open his eyes, wanting to see if the sheep was dead...
But when he looked over, there was no sheep on the ground, only an elderly woman lying there.
The elderly woman’s wrist wore the white Jade Bracelet.
"Grandmother? How could it be grandmother?"
Zhou Xuan strained to scan his surroundings, realizing it wasn’t the highway, but the country road in front of his own home. On the roadside, two rows of poplar trees stood, with a pond not far ahead...
"Could it be that I’m really avoiding it? Because I accidentally killed my grandmother, I don’t want to admit it?"
Zhou Xuan suddenly entertained this sorrowful thought.
He finally couldn’t hold on any longer, his head drooped, slumping onto his seat.
He vaguely heard the sirens of an emergency vehicle, overhearing nurses talking.
"This man ran over his grandmother."
"He has mental illness, there was Bromine Acid in the car, probably a relapse."
"Tsk tsk, truly a menace, driving with a mental illness."
"Bromine Acid? The name sounds familiar, have I taken Bromine Acid? Impossible, I’ve never taken this medicine, I didn’t run over my grandmother! I could never have hit my grandmother."
Zhou Xuan’s vision faded to black, his mind in turmoil, conflicting thoughts clashing, as hospital monitors beeped in his ears.
"Li Ling, you bastard, got crazy and drove a car?"
The voice brimmed with anger.
"Is it Dad, is Dad also blaming me for killing Grandmother?"
Zhou Xuan’s name in his past life was Li Ling.
"Don’t blame Lingzi, did he want this? He visited Liu Director from the psychiatric department not long ago, who assessed his condition as recovered, hallucinations, delusions all gone, who would’ve known..."