In the dim room, the clouds outside grew heavier, dusk sinking like thick ink and filling the air with drowsy gloom.

On the bed, Ye Weibai held Philia and simply lay there, still as stone.

Silence weighed on him; the girl stirred, startled and shy.

Her cheeks flushed like dawn, her lips pressed like a sealed letter.

Her sleep pants had bunched; her calf showed. Her shirt had shifted, baring a flat belly.

The room was so quiet he could hear Philia’s heart thumping, drumlike in the hush.

Her cheeks flushed, teeth worrying her lip, lashes trembling; she carried the raw scent of an unripe peach.

With her small warmth in his arms, Ye Weibai showed no haze of pleasure.

His expression was grave, his dark eyes cold with resolve, like winter steel.

He let out a breath.

“Philia.”

“Eh—eh?” The girl blinked, then caught up. “Wh-what... is it?”

Before he answered, she felt a hand cover her left chest—Ye Weibai’s left hand.

He set his palm there, steady, unflinching.

Her eyes went wide, yet before disbelief could break across her face—

“Philia, listen carefully—”

He spoke, and he let fall a word forbidden to Philia—[Monstrosity].

Without a veil, Ye Weibai said it plain, soft as a pebble dropped in a well.

At once, he fixed on her face, her bearing, and the cadence of her heartbeat.

Six months ago, Philia saw a [Monstrosity] kill and eat her parents.

Such a child, no matter how bright, hearing [Monstrosity] should falter.

Faces can lie; a heart’s drum betrays truth and should pound wild.

Crude as it was, a nameless threat pressed on Ye Weibai like a storm front.

He had to act.

He felt time no longer allowed delay.

Come then, Philia—let me see what has you [Locked]!

Yet what stunned Ye Weibai was—

“Wh-what?” The girl replied, blank as mist. “Xiao Bai—what did you say? I... didn’t catch it.”

Her heart was fast, but it didn’t spike.

She was calm—calm in a way that defied reason.

Ye Weibai drew a long breath. His pupils trembled, as if a truth had clicked.

He lifted his left hand away and said slowly, “Philia, listen to me—”

Philia hummed obediently, like a small sparrow, signaling she was listening.

“[Monstrosity] killed your parents. That hurt, didn’t it?”

Ye Weibai voiced what shouldn’t be voiced, with cruel clarity.

“What did that [Monstrosity] look like? You saw it, right?”

“When a [Monstrosity] eats a person, the sound—probably like when you chew meat, isn’t it?”

“It’s all teeth tearing flesh—same sound.”

He kept repeating [Monstrosity], each word a blade.

A seasoned adult would be flayed by it—grief, rage, collapse—let alone a girl barely nine.

Yet the girl only tilted her head, as if she hadn’t heard.

No sorrow, just puzzlement. “Go on, Xiao Bai.”

She urged him to continue.

Ye Weibai fell silent.

So that’s it.

He finally understood.

She hadn’t overcome that tragic past, nor covered it, nor forced herself to forget.

She had [Screened] it.

Philia had screened out all data on [Monstrosity]!

Memories of it devouring her parents, even the very existence of [Monstrosity] in reality—she [Screened] them.

She couldn’t recall the past of [Monstrosity], couldn’t hear any mention of it.

Even—Ye Weibai guessed—if a real [Monstrosity] stood before her, she’d not see it.

Because she didn’t want to see, she would [Not See].

—That is [Self-Deception].

Remarkable.

In Ye Weibai’s previous World, this repair was barely possible even with a top hypnotist.

Here, a lone child had operated on herself.

Is that worth celebrating?

It seems so. This way she won’t weep over the past, won’t be shackled by it—freed, released—

“Freed—what a lie.”

Ye Weibai muttered, face set like stone.

Left to pile up, this ends in collapse.

It brews the most terrifying, vast, twisted [Aberration].

That is the girl’s only ending.

The [Screened] negativity wasn’t purged.

It was shoved into some nameless corner in her body, like trash dumped in the heart’s deepest, darkest, dampest nook.

Ignored for now, uncleaned trash only piles up.

One day it will ferment and erupt, like a collapsing mountain of waste, burying Philia.

…

…

Timeline: [X=2].

“Out of paper.”

Ye Weibai lay on the bed and paused his recollection.

He shut the notebook he’d filled with scribbles.

He twisted his body with effort and slid open the bedside drawer, hunting a new one.

“Huh?”

His fingers met something heavy.

He pulled it out—a finely packaged tome, not the sort an ordinary home would keep.

Its cover was black calfskin, the title in a tongue he didn’t know.

Gold filigree traced it, faintly austere, faintly noble.

“The stitching, paper, binding—costly. A noble’s book. How did Uncle Shaun have this?”

Ye Weibai wetted his lips, shifted, and opened the book.

On the flyleaf, a single line met his eyes—

[When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back—thus a Monstrosity is born.]

What did that mean? A book about [Monstrosity]?

Ye Weibai didn’t stew.

He turned the page.

At the first line, his expression stalled.

[A Monstrosity springs from the darkness within humans.]

[The origin of the first is lost, yet the birth of the second is plain.]

[The human who kills a Monstrosity becomes the second—like the hero who slays the dragon and becomes it.]

[Gaze into the abyss, and it gazes back.]

[For no reason we can cite, ordinary humans who witnessed a Monstrosity are likelier to turn.]

[Among those with darkness, curses, hatred, the chance is near fifty percent.]

“So... its origin?” Ye Weibai murmured. “A Monstrosity forms from those who harbor hate and have seen one?”

[Monstrosity] is transformed from humans?

From humans harmed by [Monstrosity].

Such a person—like... Philia?!

In that instant, Ye Weibai saw it clear and solved the thorn that had lodged in his mind since entering Xibei Village.

Why did the villagers wear fearful yet fake smiles?

They fear Philia might turn into a [Monstrosity], and they fear their own fear would trigger her, speeding that turn.

So they can only bare smiles they themselves don’t believe—smiles bound by a [Rule].

If they don’t smile, the girl becomes a [Monstrosity].

If they don’t smile, they’ll be eaten by the [Monstrosity] she becomes.

So they have to smile.

And Philia? Does she know that [Rule]?

“No doubt. She knows.” Ye Weibai sighed.

She must know.

That’s why she fought so hard to [Screen] all news of [Monstrosity].

Not just forgetting the tragic memories—refusing every bit of data about it.

Only so would she not turn into a [Monstrosity].

Not become the [Monstrosity] that killed and ate her parents and shattered her simple joy.

Thus—everything fits.

“What a twisted, dark World.” Ye Weibai exhaled helplessly. “[Monstrosity] is a cruel plague—ruining joy and dragging others into the abyss to merge with darkness.”

With this, Ye Weibai understood the strangeness on the villagers and on Philia.

Yet two stark questions still stood.

First, what is a [Monstrosity] exactly?

Then, cruel as it sounds—why haven’t the villagers [Killed] the girl?

Dark thought, but Ye Weibai didn’t think human nobility runs so deep that they’d tolerate a live time bomb beside them.

Human nature is tangled.

There are kind souls like Uncle Shaun and his daughter, yes—but plenty with twisted hearts and timid fear.

Under the threat of death, human nature warps beyond imagining.

Then—who?

Who is protecting Philia and threatening those villagers?

…

…