094 Lin Wan

In my panic, a pair of hands yanked me swiftly out of the line of attack, and the strikes of the four mighty adversaries all missed their mark.

The place where I had been standing was torn apart by a storm of energy, reduced to a ruin.

“Are you all right, Zijian?” Lin Wan said, panting hard. To drag me back from the brink like that must have cost him an enormous amount of strength.

I had no time to ask what had happened to him. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting out of the Forbidden Forest and thinking of another way.

A shield of light appeared at once, covering Lin Wan and me as we fled the forest in a blur. The spirit-type ghost remained where he was, unmoving. Without his command, the four powerful figures merely stood there dumbly, making no move to pursue us.

The spirit-type creature gave me a sinister smile in the direction we had fled, then led the four strong ones deeper into the Forbidden Forest.

Lin Wan and I ran with every ounce of strength we had in our lives, and after several minutes we finally escaped the forest.

Six had gone in, and only two had come back. A disastrous loss.

“Lin Wan, what happened? Didn’t you lure Ox-Head and Horse-Face here?” I demanded angrily. If the plan had gone smoothly, none of this would have happened.

Lin Wan said helplessly, “We did lure Ox-Head and Horse-Face over, but...”

“They turned back as soon as they reached the Forbidden Forest.”

“Why?” Had they sensed our purpose and left only because the rules bound them?

“They seemed afraid of that thing too. After chasing it here, they suddenly stopped and ran off without looking back.”

“Could it be that even Ox-Head and Horse-Face can’t beat that ghost? That can’t be right. Han Xue’s attack clearly worked.”

“Are you sure it worked, and wasn’t just an act?” Lin Wan asked.

His question made my heart begin to pound. If the ghost had been deliberately hiding its true strength, then Han Xue and Su Mu, still deep in the Forbidden Forest... I quickly pulled out my phone, opened the chat with Han Xue, and started a voice call.

The call connected successfully. Han Xue’s weak voice came through.

“Did... it work?”

Her voice was very faint; she sounded as though she had only just awakened and had little strength left. I could also hear Su Mu nearby.

“No, but don’t worry. You and Su Mu hide for now. I’ll come find you right away.”

Without waiting for Han Xue to answer, I ended the call and grabbed Lin Wan, ready to go fetch reinforcements.

“Come on, Lin Wan.”

I looked at him. He was sitting there, motionless.

“What, are you giving up?” I asked, seeing how exhausted he looked.

Lin Wan seemed stung by my words and trembled slightly.

“Zijian, going back to bring help won’t work.”

“Of the people we have left, only Li Xinxin and Zhou Zitong are awakened contractors. Add me, and that makes three.”

“But our opponents are Midnight, Zheng Wei, and Zhou Zhen—three contractors with terrifying offensive power. Winning one-on-one is already too hard.”

“Not to mention the others.”

“And even if you go for help now, by the time we come back, I’m afraid Han Xue and Su Mu will already have fallen into the ghost’s hands.”

“Then what do we do?”

After hearing Lin Wan out, I could see it now: this was a dead end.

Could we really end here?

Then what had the people who died before us died for? Had they all died in vain?

No. I clenched my fist so hard it hurt, and a fierce will to survive surged up inside me.

“If classmate Zhou Zhenyu can go home to bring help, then I believe we still have a chance,” Lin Wan said calmly, and a playing card that was clearly not his appeared in his hand: the Three of Diamonds.

It was his close brother Lu Ling’s contractor card.

“Zhou Zhenyu is the first person at D University able to leave campus and go home. I imagine his family is far from ordinary. Of course, I mean his main branch.”

“You know a lot about Coal Head?” I asked.

I remembered that none of the things Lin Wan and I had discussed had anything to do with Coal Head.

Lin Wan gave a self-mocking smile and dodged my question.

“Don’t you think the Xiangxi corpse-driving lineage has a deep connection with the Diamond suit?”

“And your brother comes from Phoenix, the very place where that line originated.”

“Do you really think Coal Head can go back and bring help? He’s already under control!” I said helplessly.

“Don’t worry about that. Leave it to me. This time, I’ll use my hidden card.”

Lin Wan brushed the dust from his hands and stood up. The ruler of the Four Duty Deities and the Spade card shone together, and a surge of dark, ghostly light instantly swallowed him whole.

“Ancient Ruler! Awaken!”

A shiver that shook the soul itself burst outward, and everything around us was forcibly driven away by an invisible pressure. I gritted my teeth and held firm against it.

Lin Wan stepped out of the ghostly radiance, and the ancient ruler in his hand had already grown to about half a meter long.

“Zijian, you have to seize the chance. I can only use this move once a month.”

I still had no idea what Lin Wan intended to do, when he let out a soft cry:

“Rewind time!”

The scene before my eyes changed in an instant. My body returned uncontrollably to the old tree, and the spirit-type ghost that had been blasted away flew back at once.

Han Xue, now in her awakened state, suddenly canceled it and ran with me toward the outer edge of the Forbidden Forest.

Su Mu also turned around and followed close behind us at a run. The scattered group had gathered together again, and everyone was still in an uncontrolled state.

“Hey, Zijian, what are you spacing out for?” Lin Wan bumped my shoulder, and only then did I come back to myself.

“You disagree with my plan?” Wu Mingran fixed his gaze on me, waiting for my answer.

“What... what plan?” For a moment I had no idea what he was talking about. Wu Mingran frowned and repeated himself.

“The plan to lure Ox-Head and Horse-Face into a showdown with the spirit-type ghost.”

“I actually came back?” I muttered to myself, but the people around me were clearly already losing patience.

“Brother Lin,” Midnight said, sounding a little irritated, “do you have any other plan?”

I glanced toward Su Mu in the corner, who still looked terrified. It seemed that at that moment Su Mu really had been freed from control, but as long as he entered the designated range again, he would once more become the enemy.

“No. I disagree.”

This time my tone was firm. The others showed a flicker of confusion, but said little. The one left awkwardly holding the suggestion was Wu Mingran.

“Lin Zijian, you’d better have a better idea. Otherwise I’ll think you’re deliberately targeting me.”

Wu Mingran was clearly angry.

“Coal Head, this time we can only rely on you.”

I ignored him and his complaint. At this point, the only way to solve the problem was to get reinforcements as quickly as possible.

“Only by getting help from your own family can we defeat that ghost.”

Everyone froze. Midnight was the first to react, blurting out, “Brother Lin, I mean, I’m the first-ranked Spade-card contractor. You can’t look down on me like that.”

“You come in and tell people to bring reinforcements, and from home, no less.”

“Are we really that weak?”

“Hmph.” Wu Mingran was obviously dissatisfied with my suggestion, while Lin Wan and Han Xue simply looked at me, waiting for an explanation.

Coal Head froze, but the words that came next shocked us all.

“How do you know I can leave school whenever I want?”

The moment he said that, everyone’s face changed with disbelief, yet not a single person dared ask further.

Only Midnight stammered, “You... you’re serious?”

The ice-cold face of Coal Head broke into a faint smile, and he nodded.

“You’re not qualified to know my identity, so don’t ask.”

Midnight still wanted to pry out some useful information, but after that one sentence from Coal Head, he no longer dared continue.

“Well, then. I’m the strongest, all right,” Midnight muttered under his breath.

After painstaking explanation, we finally convinced the others just how terrifying the spirit-type ghost’s power was, and the whole group, including Su Mu, whom we had just rescued, withdrew from the Forbidden Forest.

Coal Head had already left ahead of us. After all, bringing back reinforcements meant a long journey, and the sooner he got moving, the better.

I also had the others leave first, leaving only Lin Wan behind.

I pulled him aside and asked, “Is your hidden card time rewind?”

Lin Wan looked like a frightened rabbit.

“How did you know? Don’t tell me I’ve already used it?”

He quickly checked the condition of his own body.

“No wonder I feel as if my strength has been drained completely. So I’ve already used my hidden card. Then it looks like something irreversible happened half an hour in the future.”

From Lin Wan, I learned the full extent of his awakened ability: by exhausting all his physical and spiritual strength, he could rewind time by half an hour. But everyone’s memories would be restored to their previous state.

As for why I still had my memories, Lin Wan didn’t understand either.

Since Coal Head was already off to bring help, there was no reason for Lin Wan and me to remain here.

We were just about to leave when the unexpected happened.

A black tentacle shot out from the forest and, in the blink of an eye, appeared beside us.

I watched helplessly as Lin Wan’s chest was pierced. Blood sprayed out and splashed across my face.

Before I could even cry out, Lin Wan’s entire body was lifted into the air and torn to pieces by countless tentacles overhead.

Chunks of flesh fell all over the ground, and blood rained down like a storm.

Something hard smashed into my face. It was Lin Wan’s ruler of the Four Duty Deities, the Three of Diamonds representing Lu Ling, and the Six of Spades, lying on the ground and stained red with blood.

“Lin Wan?”

“Lin Wan...”

“Lin Wan!”

I sank to my knees and tried to piece his body back together, fragment by fragment.

But no matter how many times I called his name, Lin Wan would never answer me again.