“When Lina woke from the dark—”

“Hm?” Ye Weibai’s brow lifted like a raven wing.

“Something wrong?” Heat flared in Lina first, then words snapped out. “[Demon King]—are you staring just to laugh at me?”

The black‑haired youth smiled, a moon-thin curve. “No. It’s good we agree on what you are—Lina.”

“[Demon King], you’re the one who should worry. Your face looks even worse—paper-pale.”

“Aha, yeah.” His mouth tilted, that teasing shadow of a grin. “So do me a favor, my [Deity], and give me the details.”

Seeing no advantage, Lina let the anger sink like a stone. “When Lina woke from the dark, I was already inside that down-and-out middle-aged man.”

“Wait.” Ye Weibai cut in like a knife through silk.

Annoyance prickled like nettles. “Don’t keep provoking me, [Demon King].”

He shook his head, eyes steady as still water. “That’s not it. I’m challenging your premise. ‘Lina woke and entered a middle-aged man’—how do you know that for sure?”

“I saw—” The word snagged; her lips shut. Then doubt bled in. “I saw… Zhaomingming.”

“Exactly.” Ye Weibai nodded, calm as falling snow. “You didn’t lower your head to see your hands or body. No mirror to catch your face. No scent, no voice that was yours. If it was as you said, then when you entered that [World], pain wrapped you like thorns, and you couldn’t parse your own edges.”

Silence pooled. Then Lina spoke, slow as a drip. “But I’m sure—the one squeezing her throat was Zhaomingming. If not the middle-aged man’s body, whose body did Lina enter?”

“It could also be—” Ye Weibai’s smile folded away like a fan. “Zhaomingming.”

“What nonsense are you saying?” Confusion swirled, then irritation. “From the start, what have you been thinking, [Demon King]? If what you saw wasn’t what I did, why not say it straight? Are you correcting me just to feed your twisted fun?”

“Twisted fun? Mm… you can call it that.” He didn’t answer head‑on. “Either way, just trust me, Lina—right now, we move with one mind, don’t we?”

“One mind…” The phrase snagged in her chest, something about it off. She didn’t chase it. The [Demon King] spoke again. “Do you remember the scene you told me to watch?”

Lina sank into thought; the memory rose like a cold wind, dragging their focus from Yexiaobai to Zhaomingming—

On the school rooftop, a ponytailed girl in a loose school jacket shoved another “her” off the seventh floor. The body fell like a cut string.

That was the first fracture, the moment the sweetness cracked. The round-cheek romcom skewed toward the uncanny, even horror. The [World] began to buckle and shed plates, and the lens bloomed with fine, hairline fissures.

“This—”

A realization flickered like lightning behind her ribs.

“Yes. Two Zhaomingmings isn’t strange, is it?” Ye Weibai’s voice was a slow tide.

“So that’s what you saw?—After I entered the [World], I didn’t enter that man. I became another Zhaomingming?”

Ye Weibai shook his head, and posed a knife-edge question. “Did you become another? Or did you enter the original Zhaomingming?”

Lina froze. No answer came.

He rolled a lock of hair between thumb and forefinger, like twining smoke. “Common sense says you became a new Zhaomingming. But look at the pose—you said Lina was pinned over a trash can. That means you likely entered the Zhaomingming pressed to the trash can.”

“If it’s that, then I entered the original Zhaomingming. Which means… the middle-aged uncle became the new Zhaomingming, and then… strangled Lina?” Her mind caught the rhythm and ran, quick as flint. “That explains why Lina died the moment I arrived—Lina was killed by that uncle. But why did it appear as two Zhaomingmings killing each other? Only the [protagonist] Zhaomingming could pull that off. Why would she?”

Ye Weibai lifted his head and glanced at the longsword. He couldn’t see Lina sealed within the blade, yet Lina felt that glance land like a fingertip on glass. Then he said something that puzzled her to the bone. “On this point—Lina, you should be the one who knows best.”

“Know what?”

Ye Weibai paused, then looked “up.” In this immaculate white, there was no sky—only a direction deduced by gravity’s pull.

He seemed to watch something, or meet someone’s stare. Before Lina could ask, he spoke.

“Ah. So that’s it.” His chin dipped. “I get it.”

“You—[Demon King]—is talking to yourself fun?” The anger in her voice rippled like heat over stone.

“Lina, you’ve been stained by [human nature]. All these strange, even terrifying things around Zhaomingming—aren’t they easy to grasp, if—” The [Demon King] paused, then continued, “if—you step back into your role as a [Deity].”

“I’ve always been a [Deity]!”

“Alright, alright. My [Deity], keep that stance. Think about what you did in the [Hero King] [World]. The things you set in motion—crafting a [Cycle], picking pieces for Hero King and Demon King, building a stage, making those who were kin, lovers, friends butcher one another like chessmen. Didn’t that make everyone else think you were monstrous? Didn’t it earn a hatred so deep they spent millennia weaving a secret, vast design just to break you?”

At his words, the blade hummed, a thin tremor like a plucked string. Lina’s tone went dark and still as deep water. “[Demon King], what are you getting at? If you want to settle old debts, I’m ready. Do you think I—”

“But—I understand.” Ye Weibai cut cleanly across her anger. His voice was cool as shade. “I understand that you, as a [Deity], just wanted to keep the [World] from collapsing. You just wanted—to live. Same as every Hero King and Demon King. You just wanted—to live.”

Silence fell, deathly and absolute. Lina said nothing. It felt like rage choking speech—or some other tide pulling at her.

“Anyway.” Ye Weibai’s gaze returned to the mirror. The focus had already slid from Zhaomingming back to Yexiaobai. The time line had jumped to the next morning. A high school boy packed his bag for class, motions neat as folded paper.

Neither Ye Weibai nor Lina could know what shifted in the night.

“If I place your feelings onto Zhaomingming, it all makes sense—she might just want to live. Everything, all these ripples in the [World], radiate from her will to survive.”

“Why…” Lina finally spoke. Though she masked it, a tremor threaded her voice. Something in Ye Weibai’s words had scraped the old god raw.

“Who knows?” Ye Weibai sounded tired, sand-dry. “What force makes a girl kill another ‘her’ again and again? What rules, what fear, bind her? The only thing I’m sure of is—if this is a trap Xiaowei set for me, then my goal’s clear, isn’t it? Break Zhaomingming’s [Misfortune]. Earn her despairing, honest tears.

I have to find a way into the [World].”

…

…