The Bizarre Hua's emerald eyes shone, and her gentle smile gave Li Mo an illusion.
"No, you're not willful at all," Li Mo said lightly, his voice still calm.
He tried to express himself better, but his mental state didn't support it.
The Bizarre Hua seemed to see this and took the initiative to hold Li Mo's right hand. This might be the first time in her life, and it might also be the last...
"That's good. I was afraid... you would think I was too willful and abandon me like before. It's so good. You didn't abandon me this time."
The Bizarre Hua showed a bright smile, happy and cheerful, without any sadness of impending death.
She was beautifully adorned, her eyes sparkling. With a light turn, her skirt fluttered.
It was just that, under the transparent white wedding dress, her healthy skin was turning stiff and gloomy little by little, as if covered by a thick layer of frost.
Li Mo didn't know how to answer. From a realistic point of view, he had never intended to keep her. In other words, not only would he abandon her, but he also wanted to kill her.
But from an idealistic point of view, he had indeed fulfilled his original promise and practiced the vows he had once made. It was just that due to reality, things had changed.
"Continue the wedding?" Li Mo asked nonchalantly.
"No, I don't have much time left."
The Bizarre Hua nodded, glanced at the back of her hand, and tried to move it a few times, only to find that the skin on the surface was rapidly shrinking, and the bones inside her flesh were out of control. The erosion of ten thousand years suddenly condensed at the moment she removed the red veil herself, devouring every inch of her flesh and blood.
If she continued the wedding, she could finish it before she died.
But in that case... she would miss an excellent opportunity.
"Let me use the remaining time to make up for the miss I created. Mo, are you willing to walk with me on this last journey?"
"With pleasure."
Li Mo followed the Bizarre Hua's pace, crossed the threshold, and walked out of the mansion.
The moment he left the mansion, all the relatives and friends and festive decorations turned into a handful of yellow earth and piles of white bones. On the trees full of lanterns and ribbons, black crows had already stood, sometimes flying up and hovering in the sky.
The Bizarre Hua walked ahead, holding Li Mo's hand and walking quickly through this town that had carried their brief peaceful years.
The Bizarre Hua also finally understood what Mo meant when he said "my time has begun to turn" when he first found her.
Presumably, Mo's mood at that time was the same as her own now, anxious, but more expectant.
Expecting the days after reuniting, expecting a life of being together day and night.
The Bizarre Hua walked faster and faster, and Li Mo followed closely behind. Every place they passed, the town returned to its original appearance, dilapidated, desolate, full of devastation, with broken walls and ruins. Only the boundless yellow sand roamed over the ruins.
Yes, this town should have been buried in the wheels of time long ago, crushed into dust.
Along the way, Li Mo did not speak, nor did the Bizarre Hua.
The two were very quiet, walking on the road without saying a word.
But in each other's hearts, they had their own dreams, imagining what would happen in the future, what they could do in the future.
It was just that Li Mo thought further, while the Bizarre Hua only thought about tonight.
When they were about to walk out of the town, the Bizarre Hua stopped, stood in place, turned around, and put her hands behind her back.
It was midsummer, but soft white flowers like goose feathers floated down from the sky, piece after piece, blown by the warm summer night wind.
The flying snow filled the entire world with a silvery frost.
The snowflakes fell on Li Mo's face, but did not bring any coldness.
Although the town had long since become a dead town, Li Mo heard pedestrians rushing by on the street, and the snow on the ground made a "rustling" sound as they stepped on it.
"With this, my story should end here."
The Bizarre Hua naturally squeezed out a sweet smile. For this, she had practiced countless times in a room that Li Mo couldn't see, in front of a mirror.
Because the Bizarre Hua knew that when she smiled, Mo would also smile happily.
Although the process of practicing was always unsatisfactory, in the erosion of ten thousand years, it was difficult for her to smile from the bottom of her heart. Most of the smiles she practiced in front of the mirror were quite stiff and forced.
Afterward, the Bizarre Hua understood that she had long since lost her pure emotions and could not smile like before.
But as long as she thought of Mo's silly appearance of wanting to give her happiness, it didn't seem so difficult to smile.
"Our reunion is both a beginning and an end."
The Bizarre Hua extracted an ice-blue Xuanyuan Sword from her memory. Its name was Ruoshui. Before they parted, Mo had only brought this sword.
"Let it all end. From now on, as long as you still remember me, remember the me who once stayed in your memory."
"Hua will not disappear. The only thing that disappears is the Bizarre Hua that makes you feel pain."
The Bizarre Hua held Li Mo's hand, manipulating him to hold Ruoshui tightly, and transmitted all the fatal points to Li Mo's memory.
"I have fallen into a demonic state. Those who have fallen into a demonic state must be executed." The Bizarre Hua said this sentence very heavily, as if giving Li Mo a command.
A faint green light flashed in Li Mo's eyes.
Soon.
Her right foot was crushed and broken...
The tendons in both her hands were severed...
All her internal organs were destroyed...
The most serious injury was to her heart, with more than ten wounds. But the most fatal wound was to her head.
It was a fatal sword wound.
The strange summer snowflakes fell on the wound and mixed with the flowing blood, slowly sliding from the wound that would no longer heal to the snow below.
Crimson, and glaring.
The Bizarre Hua stretched out her blood-covered hand and gently caressed the face of Li Mo, who was holding Ruoshui and piercing her head, slowly and gently stroking his pale lips.
Li Mo's eyes were as cold as the flying snow in the sky.
As the oracle-like echo in his mind resounded again.
The longsword in Li Mo's hand pierced deeper into the skull, and the shattered bones, along with the dripping liquid, fell to the ground.
"Your gaze... is finally on me..."
"You found me, Mo."
"I'm very happy..."
"I'm sorry..."
「I lied to you」
The last sentence was not spoken. The Bizarre Hua's hand that was caressing Li Mo's face suddenly dropped, and she fell to the ground without moving again.
Her pupils were completely dilated, losing focus.
Only a faint smile remained on her face.
As the Bizarre Hua had said, she had been killed.
Bizarre will not die, they will only exist in another form of pollution. But a Bizarre that exists in a transformed form will not be the same Bizarre as before, the essence has already changed.
This also meant that Hua might have become a pool of chaotic, disordered, and unconscious memory, existing in some dark corner of this world.
She would be forever lonely, wandering in the boundless nothingness, without meaning, and no one would search for her lonely soul.
Li Mo pulled out Ruoshui and glanced at Hua, who was lying in a pool of blood and white flowers. Perhaps that kind of continuation was more painful than death.
At least death was a one-time thing. Whether it was sadness or joy, it collapsed in an instant and then disappeared.
The endless loneliness and desolation was the greatest fear in the world.
"I still remember everything. She didn't want me to forget."
Li Mo recalled all his memories and did not find any abnormalities.
Despite this, Li Mo still took out the notebook.
Even if the Hua in his memory was honest and kind again, Li Mo would not believe it.
The Bizarre Hua could tamper with his memory, so she could naturally beautify herself in his memory.
Therefore, the notebook that would not lie was very important at this time.
But the notebook was not willing to answer every question. At least Li Mo felt that it would not answer this one.
But the rule of the fourth page was to answer every question. Although the answers were strange, he could always find some clues in them to prove whether his memory had been tampered with.
"Has my memory been... no, have my memories of Hua been distorted and modified."
Li Mo asked a very precise question.
[...]
The first page did not answer. Answering this question would not cause Li Mo to die from Bizarre Kiana's pollution.
[...]
The second page did not answer either, which was expected. After all, the rule of the second page was to ensure his survival. He had already survived, so the second page would naturally not give a statement.
The notebook skipped the third page and stopped after turning to the fourth page. Words began to appear on it.
[My name is Li Mo. I have ignored many things and forgotten many things.]
[I have lost everything, memories, consciousness, emotions, family... no, this is definitely not the ending I expected. I have to find a way to change this tragedy...]
[Pollution is irreversible. No existence can escape it. Once contaminated, the only end is death, and then distortion after death.]
[Mei is dead... no, impossible... she's clearly fine, she has a heartbeat, she has her own logic, she has all the self-characteristics of a living Mei...]
[Mei seems to like Shenzhou's paper-cutting very much. When fulfilling her promise, she took the initiative to invite me to try paper-cutting. Her technique is very skilled.]
[Ai... Aili... Elysia... Elysia, are you Elysia?]
[No living person can survive from the hands of Bizarre with their own self. Never, and I will be no exception. My name is Li Mo. When you see this sentence, I am already dead.]
"..."
"What does it mean?"
Even the extremely calm Li Mo couldn't figure out the logic of the fourth page for a moment. It was chaotic, twisted, and the rules seemed to have changed.
Apart from the chaotic memory and logic, it no longer told some extremely outrageous futures.
After the Bizarre Hua died, the rules of the fourth page changed?
This might be good news. The rule of answering every question had not changed, only the narrative rule had an unknown change.
But it was also bad news. In the short term, it would be difficult for Li Mo to verify what the rule of the fourth page was, which meant that the credibility was greatly reduced.
"Ignoring and forgetting, a narrative on the level of memory. I have indeed forgotten a lot, just like the me in Bizarre Kiana's world. Perhaps before meeting Mei, I had been to other worlds. But this is not the point. Without a specific time and date, I cannot judge whether it is a general narrative or a specific narrative."
If it was a specific narrative, it would prove that the Bizarre Hua had indeed modified his memory. How she modified it was still unknown.
Removing Changle from his mind half a month ago could also be considered a modification, but this degree was irrelevant.
The overall narrative could not clear the suspicion either.
Therefore, regarding whether the Bizarre Hua had modified his memory, Li Mo maintained a wait-and-see attitude, leaning towards the idea that it had been modified.
"The second sentence says I have lost everything. There is no time stamp, so I can't judge."
"I remember the third paragraph. This is what Mei once told me, it's her research result. Bizarre pollution is irreversible, and time is a catalyst. No matter what existence it is, once contaminated, it will become twisted and bizarre with the passage of time. It's just that most people simply don't live that long and will die before being twisted, becoming a silent ghost that can almost never be awakened."
"So the fourth page is actually my memories at various time nodes?"
"It's very possible, because the previous narratives of the fourth page all indicated specific times and specific events. The change in style was definitely not something that happened overnight. The Bizarre Hua must have done something to cause an unknown change in the logic of the fourth page."
Li Mo asserted. From the intuitive narrative feeling, a part of it was the memory stored in his mind. If it were marked with time, Li Mo would be more confident in confirming it.
"Mei is dead?"
"..."
Suddenly, Li Mo fell into a dark silence.
"Not necessarily, maybe it's a problem with expression. Let's continue thinking about the back."
Li Mo skipped this sentence.
"Mei likes paper-cutting. This is something I don't know. After returning to my own world, I'll ask her to verify the accuracy of the fourth page a little."
"The penultimate sentence is a bit strange. Elysia is Elysia. Could it be that I will meet a ghost disguised as Elysia later?"
Li Mo didn't think any ghost could disguise themselves as Elysia. First of all, the ability to disperse pollution was almost impossible to replicate. Plus, Li Mo only believed that the Elysia of his own world was Elysia.
He even dared to question himself, let alone an Elysia who suddenly popped up from another world.
As for the last sentence, Li Mo had seen it too many times. The first page of the notebook had repeated it countless times.
But as Li Mo escaped from death time and time again, he gradually understood that the death predicted by the first page was not absolute, or rather...
The fact of death had indeed happened, but it was in a space-time that could not be changed. After he got the prediction, he would not repeat the previous plan, but would change his plan to avoid the end of death.
The first page had a deep connection with Bizarre Kiana. It was reasonable to explain it with space-time.
The fourth page only changed after the Bizarre Hua died. Did it mean that its narrative was indeed related to memory?
"First, let's find Hua."
Li Mo couldn't get a valid answer from it. After the fourth page was filled with content, it no longer replied. The most important thing now was to bring back the Hua in the Taoist temple.
Coincidentally, it was almost seven in the morning, the best time to travel through the Bizarre cave.
Soon, Li Mo entered the Taoist temple again and saw Hua sitting on the ground in a daze, as if thinking about something.
"Hua, we'll talk about what happened before when we get back. Now, leave this world with me."
Hua was stunned for a moment, her eyes trembling. She grabbed Li Mo's outstretched hand and nodded.
"Okay."
"Mo.
(End of Volume III: Return to Taixu)