Chapter 90: “You Are About to Die.”
Chapter 90: “You Are About to Die.”
Chapter 90 "You're About to Die."
Listening to the landlady's description, Lena pondered deeply.
In the world of the occult, there were many factors that could cause the phenomenon of "multiple versions of oneself appearing simultaneously."
From what Lena knew alone, there was a mirror ritual capable of creating mirror selves indistinguishable from the original, as well as the "shadow clones" of the Shadow Domain and the "life duplication" of the Life Domain...
But this dungeon was special.
The closer Lena got to the snowy mountain, the more she could sense a tremendous force interfering with everyone's destiny, making it increasingly difficult for her to predict which direction the future would take.
If other Ability Users from different domains were like drops of water in the torrent of destiny, helplessly swept along toward unknown riverbeds,
then the usual Lena was like a babbling brook, joyfully flowing toward her desired destination while gathering and influencing the limited droplets around her.
Yet near this mystical peak, Lena felt as though she had merged into an immeasurably vast and turbulent river, gradually losing control over her own direction and having to submit to a far greater force...
The disparity in power was too vast, just like a handful of water before an endless river—equally insignificant and powerless.
Lena was certain—this must be the power of a superior from the Fate Domain.
And as a devout follower of the Lord of Fate, she knew well:
In the palm of the Lord, the domain adjacent to and coexisting with fate was time.
If on this snowy mountain, time and fate had both fallen into chaotic disorder, then the "extra people" the expedition team saw...
Could they actually be versions of themselves from other timelines?
Lena thought her speculation was quite reasonable, so she tried entering the currently known information into the System Panel.
With a "Ding-dong," the system's prompt tone confirmed her correctness:
「**Heard the snowy mountain rumor—faith makes miracles.**
**Exploration progress +10%.**」
「**Unlocked special secret—the mystery of the expedition team, and deduced the general truth.**
**Exploration progress +30%.**」
「**Task 2 (Side Quest): Explore the legends and secrets behind the snowy mountain. Current total progress: 40%. Congratulations, you are far ahead of other players!**」
「**Keep up the good work and continue exploring.**」
Only a few hours into the dungeon, and the side quest was already partially completed...
Lena thought happily, as expected, the "Sacred Mountain" shrouded in the power of fate would favor the Lord's believers!
A faint smile curled at the corner of her lips as Lena continued maintaining her act as an innocent child in front of the landlady.
Perhaps worried that spreading such unsubstantiated rumors would harm local tourism, the landlady repeatedly emphasized that Lena should not take these stories to heart or casually share them with others.
Lena naturally bobbed her head meekly.
Now that she had a preliminary understanding of the snowy mountain, the next question was: why had Zhang Sr. come here all those years ago?
Given his incurable disease and strong will to survive, Lena could understand if he had heard of the mountain's miraculous rumors and come specifically to seek miraculous healing at its base. But...
Had he really only prayed?
Every year, countless visitors came to this place to pray for themselves and their loved ones, as numerous as stars. Even the expedition teams that insisted on ascending the summit had not suffered any casualties or disappearances. So why was it that Zhang Sr. alone had vanished into the trackless snow wastes?
"By the way, auntie," Lena undid her windbreaker and pulled out a photo from an inner pocket, gently sliding it toward the landlady, "do you recognize the man in this photo?"
The landlady squinted, carefully examining the crumpled photo before her.
Lena had taken this photo when Zhang Ming had earlier removed his backpack to show everyone the medical records. Exploiting her petite frame, she had stealthily swiped it.
After all, no matter how much she had jumped up and down, she couldn’t see the details on the paper in Zhang Ming’s hands. So she had decided to take a different approach—to glean more intelligence from this employer who seemed intent on hiding the truth.
When her hand had slipped into Zhang Ming’s backpack, Lena hadn’t had time to pick and choose. Letting fate decide, she had grabbed the first thing that touched her palm, quickly crumpled it, and stuffed it into her pocket...
It wasn’t until Lena had slipped away unnoticed and unfolded the crumpled paper that she realized she had taken an old photo.
A childhood photo of Zhang Ming and his father.
In the photo, young Zhang Ming held the hand of a tall man, his plump, childish cheeks squeezing into a smile as he nervously looked at the camera.
Zhang Sr. at the time likely hadn’t yet been terminally ill. He was tall, energetic, and though his features were ordinary, he carried an air of gentle refinement, a bookish demeanor.
He wore a polite smile, holding his son’s hand with one hand and an attaché case with the other, also facing the camera.
Despite their similar appearances, the atmosphere between the two was distant, making the photo seem less like a parent-child snapshot and more like a publicity shot.
The landlady leaned closer to the photo and suddenly exclaimed, "This man... I’ve actually seen him a few times! Is he a relative of yours?"
Under further questioning, the landlady recalled, "This was many years ago, but because he behaved so differently from other tourists, he made quite an impression."
"Back then, he rented a room here and stayed for several months. He would leave early and return late every day, snooping about near the snowy mountain, jotting notes in a thick notebook. No one knew what he was up to."
"Our inn offers daily cleaning services, but he insisted on doing everything himself, refusing to let anyone step foot in his room."
"After a while, his furtive movements made us wary. Some even suspected he might be a fugitive from justice, and we came close to alerting authorities... But then, a few days later, he cleared out abruptly, never to return."
Listening to this, Lena was almost certain that Zhang Sr.’s disappearance was no accident. He must have taken deliberate, calculated measures to cheat death.
For example, after the world's medicine failed to cure him, he had turned to dark arts...
But in the world of the occult, knowledge and power often came with both miracles and prices.
Without proper guidance, amateurs could easily commit deadly transgressions or be lured into horrific ends.
After a moment’s thought, Lena suddenly put on a disarming smile. "Auntie, could I have a piece of paper and a pen? I’d like to draw the snowy mountain in the distance to show my elders!"
The landlady, fond of this polite and precocious girl, had no reason to refuse.
As she handed the items to Lena, the landlady glanced at the protective eyewear Lena had never taken off and asked curiously, "Aren’t you going to take off your glasses indoors? Those things look tight—aren’t they uncomfortable after wearing them for so long?"
Behind the lenses, Lena’s pale silver eyes flickered.
Truthfully, the goggles had been uncomfortably stifling on her face for so long, but she couldn’t risk exposing her uncanny iris color to the locals—as far as she knew, no human ethnicity naturally had argent eyes in this world.
To pass unnoticed, she had to rely on the lenses’ reflections to obscure them slightly.
So Lena deflected the landlady’s concerned question with an offhand explanation.
Once she had the paper and pen, Lena neatly compiled all the intel she had gathered.
Then she folded the written side inward, creasing it into a paper airplane.
Standing by the window, she gazed at the snow-capped peaks in the distance and murmured, "That Mr. Yi... I can't see through his origins or identity... He's like a cosmic black hole vortex, devouring every revelation fate gives me, making it impossible to discern anything about him..."
With that, Lena spread her hands, letting the snow-filled wind outside snatch the paper airplane and carry it high into the sky.
Since she couldn’t determine whether he was friend or foe, she would let fate make the choice for her.
"May the Lord of Fate watch over—may this message either be torn apart by the storm or carried only to where it ought to go... to those destined to see it."
"There is no third possibility."
......
Yi Fengchu was still arguing with his "old friend" Zhang Ming.
The portly man had repeatedly hinted—both overtly and subtly—that their group had a search mission on the mountain and couldn’t afford to travel with Yi Fengchu, for fear of ruining his trip.
"Is that so?" Yi Fengchu’s smile remained unchanged as he sighed. "But hearing about what happened to Uncle Zhang has left me too distraught to enjoy sightseeing alone."
"We’ve been neighbors for so long—if not like family, then at least as friends for over a decade. Let me do what I can to help Uncle Zhang."
His words were earnest and impassioned, enough to make anyone praise him as a "helpful and kind" neighbor.
But Zhang Ming remained unmoved!
Convinced he knew Yi Fengchu’s true nature better than the other players, he refused to believe Yi Fengchu was acting purely out of goodwill.
Even Yi Fengchu’s gentle smile seemed sinister and distorted in Zhang Ming’s eyes, as if beneath that pleasant facade lurked something cold, cruel, and viscous... something... not human.
A monster will always be a monster—no matter how much it learned or mimicked, it could never truly pass as human.
Zhang Ming stared into Yi Fengchu’s unnaturally dark eyes and couldn't suppress a shudder.
*See? Only I know his true face...*
Distantly, Zhang Ming thought:
*As he grew up, his expressions, behavior, and movements became more like a normal person’s—but—*
Only these eyes never changed.
They remained exactly the same as when they first met in childhood.
Back when the Yi family had just moved next door, young Zhang Ming had been excited to hear there was a boy his age in the neighboring house. His father had taken him along to greet the new neighbors.
Heart pounding with excitement, little Zhang Ming approached the Yi family’s gate step by step.
Through the iron fence, he spotted a boy crouching in the yard—slightly younger than him, with soft black hair slightly overgrown at the nape of his neck.
Dressed in overalls, the boy was turned away from them, prodding the ground with a stick as if playing alone.
Perhaps hearing their footsteps, the boy suddenly froze and turned his head—
The moment their eyes met, the eager smile on little Zhang Ming’s face drained away.
Those pupils staring back at him were unnaturally dark and bottomless, like polished obsidian embedded in his sockets, devoid of any childlike innocence.
Under that gaze, Zhang Ming felt for a moment that he wasn’t facing another boy his age, but rather being scrutinized by a wild beast—its gaze like a cold, razor-thin blade, flaying him open, laying bare every weakness until all that remained was for the beast to sink its teeth into his throat.
With a whimper, little Zhang Ming stumbled back, hiding behind his father.
Had he known the neighbor’s kid was this creepy, he never would've come!
"Don’t be scared, Xiao Ming," Zhang’s father murmured, though he too sensed something unsettling about the boy. For politeness’ sake, he urged his son forward. "Go on, say hello to your new friend."
Clutching his father’s suit jacket so tightly the fabric wrinkled with sweat, little Zhang Ming stammered, "I-I’m Zhang Ming... I live next door..."
"Hello," the boy replied slowly. "I’m Yi Fengchu."
Silence fell again, oppressive.
Little Yi Fengchu’s gaze slid past the trembling Zhang Ming and settled on his father, staring unblinkingly for a long time.
It would've been laughable—a grown man feeling unnerved under a child’s stare.
Just as Zhang’s father was about to ask if the boy’s parents were home, little Yi Fengchu spoke:
"Uncle... your luck is terrible."
"You’re going to die," he said, gesturing with the stick toward the ground by Zhang’s father’s feet with chilling solemnity. "Just like them."
Zhang Ming remembered—that day had been overcast.
As the boy uttered those eerie words, an icy, damp wind brushed the back of little Zhang Ming’s neck, rustling the ivy crawling over the iron fence.
In the dim light, the vines turned nearly black, their shifting shadows twisting into grotesque human faces covering the wall behind the boy.
The clustered faces swayed in the wind, mouths silently agape, their hollow sighs blending with the breeze like faint, grieving whispers.
That sound—along with Yi Fengchu’s words—would haunt Zhang Ming’s nightmares:
*You’re going to die you’re going to die you’re going to die...*
At the time, Zhang’s father had looked down, bewildered. There was nothing at his feet—what "them" was the boy referring to?
Though thoroughly unnerved, he merely frowned, unwilling to argue with a child.
And yet.
The next day, torrential rains flooded the neighborhood. Little Zhang Ming watched as countless earthworms emerged from the soil in Yi Fengchu’s yard—their coiled, ruddy bodies littering the ground in heaps, especially dense where Zhang’s father had stood. The dead worms lay in limp clusters, like some dreadful portent.
The following month, at a routine physical, Zhang’s father learned he had a malignant tumor in his brain. Sitting silently in the living room, he gazed at the diagnosis for a long time, that child's voice echoing in his mind once more—
Or rather, that *prophecy*. —*"You’re going to die."*