Chapter 47.2: The Toast

The girl had clearly been forced to stay behind, and the only one who could possibly have such a deep obsession with keeping her here—or who could harbor such immense resentment over her departure—was Zhou Yong.

The flames still flickered in the kitchen. According to customary table etiquette, the final dish should be soup.

Li Zhuiyuan walked into the kitchen but saw no sign of the woman.

He approached the stove and saw black soup boiling within.

Just then, the bellows groaned to life again.

Li Zhuiyuan looked down and saw a hand stretching out from behind the stove, grasping the bellows handle and pulling it.

He moved to the back of the stove, following the arm—yet he saw no woman seated there.

Because the arm was extending from inside the stove itself.

Li Zhuiyuan crouched down until his line of sight was level with the stove’s opening.

The woman inside also looked up, flashing him a smile.

This stove wasn’t burning firewood—it was burning the woman herself.

She had crawled into the cramped confines of the stove, and the flames danced across her body, fueling the constant boil of the soup above.

Yet her face bore an expression of peace.

Perhaps this act of being consumed by fire was a way to alleviate the horrific torment she already endured.

Li Zhuiyuan, having recently self-harmed, understood this sensation well.

Zhou Yong wanted to preserve the illusion of a complete family, so he dragged both his wife and daughter into hell with him.

Perhaps at first, Zhou Yong didn’t know things would spiral to this extent.

But now, to claim he’s unaware would be ludicrous.

He knew. And he chose, selfishly, to deceive himself.

One thing is certain: the person who taught Zhou Yong this method absolutely knew the consequences. So why did he do it?

At first, one might guess he was a well-meaning figure, someone who pitied Zhou Yong for losing his wife and daughter, and offered this method as “help.”

But now, that assumption no longer holds. Anyone capable of such an act has nothing to do with kindness.

Li Zhuiyuan stood at the kitchen door. Seeing that the conversation in the other room hadn’t ended, he turned his gaze back to the girl and beckoned her over.

The girl crawled toward him.

During dinner, she had been forced into the role of “daughter,” just as the woman had been forced into the role of “wife.”

Strictly speaking, they were Zhou Yong’s Dead Sinkers.

But Zhou Yong didn’t possess that kind of power. He was nothing compared to the Dead Sinker they’d encountered at the cemetery last time.

That bronze coin was still buried out there—Li Zhuiyuan didn’t dare retrieve it.

The girl reached him. She had been trapped here, suffering, and now this boy was the first outsider to appear in “this place” in ages.

Her instinct to move toward him was driven by the sheer desperation to die.

Li Zhuiyuan placed his hand on her head, feeling a mass of wriggling movement beneath her hair. He knew what was under there.

But for now, he had to ignore it.

Following the method in the Black Book, he began adjusting his conscious resonance.

He wanted to see—through the girl’s perspective—what the person who helped Zhou Yong orchestrate all this actually looked like.

It was easy. She didn’t resist. In fact, she helped.

Li Zhuiyuan’s vision shifted. A blue mosquito net appeared. He was lying on a small bed, weak and barely able to move his head—no strength even to sit up.

Someone was crying. Turning his head, he saw Zhou Yong weeping beside a larger bed.

On that bed lay a woman—already dead.

Zhou Yong clutched her hand, sobbing with all his heart.

After a while, he began pounding the floor and cursing the heavens, questioning why fate and life had treated him so cruelly.

Then a voice spoke:

“I can reunite your family.”

The speaker wasn’t inside the room but outside, the voice coming through the window.

What shocked Li Zhuiyuan was how familiar the tone was. No—it wasn’t just familiar. It felt intimate, like someone from his own life.

But no matter how he reviewed his network of acquaintances, he couldn’t match the voice to anyone.

Zhou Yong looked up in a daze and lunged toward the window, seemingly eager to identify the speaker.

There should’ve been more conversation—how that voice convinced Zhou Yong, and how he was instructed to construct the bridge and all this setup.

But Li Zhuiyuan saw no more. The girl was too weak. She closed her eyes.

Had her father not cried so loudly, she might never have woken at all.

A long darkness followed.

Li Zhuiyuan waited patiently, sensing that before the girl died, more visions would come.

Sure enough, the darkness thinned.

Light began to seep in.

When the girl opened her eyes again, Zhou Yong stood at her bedside.

His face no longer bore pain—instead, it radiated joy from deep within.

“Lingling, don’t be afraid. Daddy found a way. We can keep living together as a family. Don’t be afraid—Daddy and Mommy will always be with you.”

The girl shut her eyes.

That should’ve been the end. She was likely about to die.

But just as Li Zhuiyuan prepared to disengage, he suddenly couldn’t breathe. His lungs burned.

What was happening?

If she had simply died in bed, this intense reaction shouldn’t be occurring.

Li Zhuiyuan felt a horrifying suffocation—like the drowning he’d experienced when first encountering Little Oriole.

He pulled out of the connection.

But though the contact was broken, the girl's pain remained. It grew sharper, as though he was becoming her, taking on all her emotions.

This was, in the literal sense, Consciousness Integration.

Her torment, her injustice, her despair—they all boiled within him like a kettle about to explode.

Li Zhuiyuan thought of the thing in the fishpond, the one covered in the faces of Dead Sinkers.

He hadn’t expected the Black Book’s method to have such violent side effects on its first successful use.

He couldn’t help but think: Are you an idiot?

Wei Zhengdao taught you this method. The very first time you use it, you suffer like this—and you still kept using it to control Dead Sinkers?

Do you trust Wei Zhengdao too much? Or is it your own arrogance and greed—believing you’re special enough to overcome the side effects?

If the dangers surfaced slowly afterward, that might be understandable. But when the symptoms are this blatant…

Ha.

You really have no right to resent Wei Zhengdao.

Even the fiercest flame dies without fuel.

Here, the fuel was your own emotions.

Unfortunately, Li Zhuiyuan had none left.

The fire went out.

What remained was a quiet sadness.

Because it was like someone had ripped open his scar again—then pointed at him and said, You’re a monster in a human mask.

Yes, that was his side effect.

He wouldn’t end up with dozens of faces on his body like the thing in the fishpond.

Still, this did give Li Zhuiyuan a new idea.

The little girl was too weak.

But what if he used a stronger Dead Sinker?

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