The next second, the beautiful skirt was indeed lifted bit by bit, past the knees, revealing fair thighs tightly bound by bluish-purple ribbons. The flesh was squeezed so hard that it left a mark, and finally—
Purple lace garter belts.
Irene: "..."
Li Mo: "..."
Irene: "You're really looking?"
Li Mo: "Didn't you say that if I kept looking, you would tell me how to save MEI? I can distinguish between important and trivial matters, and I will definitely not drop the ball at a critical moment. I believe you are not a person who goes back on their word."
Irene: "Really? Is that what you really think?"
Li Mo: "Yeah."
Irene: "..."
Li Mo: "..."
Irene: "You've already looked, why not... touch it?"
Li Mo: "...Business first."
Irene: "Hmph! You fake Chinese man!"
Li Mo: "...Does everyone know my identity now? Wait, what does that have to do with my origin?"
Irene: "Isn't there an old saying in China?"
Li Mo: "What old saying?"
Irene: "Since you're already here..."
Li Mo: "That makes sense. If I touch it, will you tell me?"
Irene: "Of course!"
Li Mo took a deep breath, his eyes fixed on the righteous Irene.
Two deep breaths, three deep breaths...
Alright, any more deep breaths and he wouldn't be able to breathe.
"I hope you don't regret this."
Li Mo strode forward, his gaze never leaving Irene's "domain," and put his hand in...
Irene: "Mmm! Mr. De-Detective..."
Li Mo: "What are you calling me for?"
Irene: "You... why are you so skilled?"
Li Mo: "Practice... makes perfect, I guess?"
Irene: "..."
The two fell into a silent stalemate. The door was suddenly pushed open, and a group of people saw Li Mo and Irene's ambiguous actions at the banquet. Just as they were about to complain, Li Mo froze time with a sideways glance and then teleported them out.
Irene showed a subtle, well-timed expression.
Li Mo felt a little guilty and wanted to look away, but their previous agreement still stood. He didn't want to add more trouble and waste time, so his gaze remained on Irene.
"Alright, you can tell me now. What do I have to do to save her?"
Li Mo pulled his hand back and put it behind his back.
He rubbed his fingers together a few times. They were sticky and uncomfortable.
Irene tried hard to suppress the blush on her face, calmed the waves in her heart, and regained her calm expression.
Her frivolous tone became serious.
"How does Mr. Detective view the Source of the Bizarre? You have the aura of the source on you. I think after that person sacrificed herself, you must have learned something about the Source of the Bizarre."
Li Mo didn't pause and answered directly, "One misfortune, one fortune."
The Bizarre brought despair, but also life.
Rebirth in destruction, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.
It gave all incomplete worlds a chance to live, but inevitably brought death and terror.
Painful survival, or a brief death.
Which one was correct, no one could say for sure.
Li Mo couldn't judge the correctness of its existence from a single perspective.
Even if he did, it would be meaningless. It was not an existence that humans could imagine or criticize.
After a while, Li Mo raised his own question: "How do you know about this?"
Faced with Li Mo's question, Irene unhurriedly straightened her skirt, smoothing it with her hands.
"The second to last page of the notebook has my mark on it. If you open it now, you might even smell a hint of..."
Irene suddenly pressed against Li Mo. Her delicate skin was smooth and flawless. An alluring fragrance gradually emanated from her barely-there dress, like the rosy forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden.
Her softness pressed against Li Mo's chest, her warm breath caressing his ear.
"This kind of scent~~"
Li Mo retreated a step without changing his expression, his attitude serious. "I understand. you can communicate with the notebook. No wonder you know so many secrets. Let's put this question aside for now and continue with the business at hand."
Irene smiled sweetly, closed her eyes, and tilted her head back. After a slight rise and fall of her chest, she slowly opened her magnificent wine-red eyes.
"I believe you have tried to go back to the past through various Bizarre abilities, all of which ended in failure."
"Because the past has been severed. Even if you now have the ability to go back in time, you can't go back. No one can reach nothingness. It is an existence that has never existed. From the perspective of human existence, it can never be touched…"
"However, just because humans can't touch it doesn't mean it can't be touched."
As her voice slowly fell, Irene showed a meaningful look.
Just because humans can't touch it doesn't mean it can't be touched.
Li Mo pondered the meaning of this sentence. Strictly speaking, he was not human now. As a Bizarre entity, he couldn't go back to the past. So what else could reach nothingness?
Seeing Li Mo deep in thought, Irene didn't keep him in suspense any longer. She took out a rosemary flower and gently blew on it.
Instantly, bluish-purple light spots floated to all parts of the banquet hall like dandelion seeds. The magnificent and luxurious palace immediately became dilapidated and desolate.
"Memory is the language of rosemary," Irene sighed softly.
"The entrance to the broadcast room of St. Freya Academy," Li Mo recognized the place where he was.
His powerful memory made it impossible for him to forget every event he had experienced, every person he had met, and every detail he had seen.
Li Mo placed his hand on the door of the broadcast room and quickly erased the rule of "open the door and your head gets cut off."
In fact, it wasn't erasing, but transferring it to himself.
"Creaak..." the sound of friction sounded. The door opened, and the small broadcast room was crowded with students. Their hair was messy, they were skinny, and their young faces were haggard, their eyes lifeless.
The light on the ceiling flickered dimly.
It was exactly the same as he had seen it before, seventeen students and one teacher.
"Student, come in quickly! There's a ghost outside!"
The teacher urged in a gruff voice, constantly waving his hand for Li Mo to enter the broadcast room.
The other students also showed expressions of fear, and some echoed the teacher's voice.
Li Mo did not respond, because at this moment, he was already in the broadcast room. These people were not talking to him, but to the him in his memory.
The him in his memory was right beside him.
Li Mo stood in the corridor, silently watching the high-spirited, hopeful, and confident version of himself from long ago.
The him in his memory did not go in. He deliberately pretended not to know anything and teased, "Teacher, you're a grown-up. Do you still believe there are ghosts in this world? I'm a staunch materialist. I don't believe there are things in this world that science can't explain."
He reached into the bag in his clothes, took out a silver coin, and threw it into the crowd.
The moment the Bizarre coin landed, the director came out and picked it up.
And Li Mo was almost in sync with the director who had been replaced by the head ghost.
But their purposes were worlds apart. The moment the coin was picked up, a crack quickly appeared. Li Mo gently twisted it to repair it, and the coin was still intact.
"This is just a memory. Even if you interfere, you can't change anything," Irene reminded him.
"I know."
Li Mo did not explain his reason for doing so.
He shifted his gaze to the timid Saori Tsuru in the corner.
The scene of everyone dying in the auditorium was still vivid in his mind…
"So, what do you want me to do in this memory?" Li Mo asked.
Irene walked over to Ekri, and the rosemary scattered bluish-purple light spots, covering the cracks on Ekri's neck.
"You'll know soon enough."
Time passed quickly. Ekri Shaw's identity was exposed, and Memory-Li Mo revealed the fact that she had been replaced by a ghost.
A crack circled her entire neck.
After Ekri gave her last words, Memory-Li Mo led the other students out of the broadcast room and ran to the next safe place.
In the silent broadcast room, Ekri sat on the floor with her back against the door. Her dilated pupils were like the chandelier on the ceiling, flickering erratically.
Sometimes bright, sometimes dim.
"She" might not have been the students' homeroom teacher, but she had indeed fulfilled her duties during this time. And the last thing "she" needed to do was—not to cause trouble for the living.
"She" was already dead.
This was the final gift of the dead.
And the living would do their best to live on, and then one day, give new meaning to the death of the deceased.
"This is not my memory," Li Mo immediately looked at Irene. "I don't have a memory of Ekri Shaw waiting for death in the broadcast room. At this time, I should be on my way to the auditorium."
The memory scene remained in the broadcast room, not following Memory-Li Mo's perspective.
Irene smiled. "This is just a memory, but I didn't say whose memory it was, did I? There's yours, hers, the students', and even… the head ghost's."
Li Mo was taken aback but didn't say much.
Time passed silently. "Crack—!"
The sound of a spine breaking caught Li Mo's attention.
Li Mo immediately looked back and saw Ekri's head constantly detaching from her body.
"Ugh, ahh!"
Ekri tried her best, her hands desperately pressing her head onto her neck to maintain her living consciousness.
Unfortunately… her efforts were in vain.
Her two hands dug into her scalp, drilling into her skull. Ekri was like a headless fly, bumping around in the broadcast room, leaving behind bloodstains and flesh everywhere.
Suddenly, Ekri stood still, dazed for a moment.
It was this moment of daze that her head broke off from her neck. Only a few vertebrae connected her head, and she was at risk of dying at any moment.
Her head detached from her neck, and Ekri's consciousness could no longer be maintained. It would dissipate at an extremely fast speed.
When her living consciousness completely dissipated, it would be the time for the head ghost to become active.
"She is fighting the ghost's rule with her living consciousness. When the spine completely breaks, she will completely fall to the fate of death."
Three minutes had passed since the head ghost was supposed to revive. In these three minutes, Ekri seemed to have seen something through the head ghost's memory.
"No, I can't… I have to… leave something behind…"
Then, Li Mo's eyes widened, and he couldn't help but take a step forward.
Ekri, who had been pressing her head to keep it from falling off, let go with one hand, tremblingly reached out to grab the ID card from her chest, and at the same time bit off her own thumb.
The spine continued to crack. Ekri propped herself up and walked to the controller, using the wound on her broken thumb to write the crooked word "Thre"—
It was this action that caused her to lose the pressure from her arm, and her head detached directly from her neck, the spine breaking.
The moment her head completely fell off her neck, her body, following the commands transmitted by her nerves, instinctively wrote the last letter—d.
Ekri's body fell to the ground, losing its ability to move. Only a bloody head crawled and squirmed madly.
The head came to the body, used its mouth to pull out the ID card, then bit its thumb and placed it on the ID card, adjusting the direction to face the auditorium.
After that, it was completely replaced by the head ghost, hopping and jumping to attack the auditorium…
"..."
"..."
Seeing this scene, Li Mo was silent.
Irene walked up to Li Mo, her eyes deep, the rosemary back at her fingertips.
"A living consciousness fighting a Bizarre rule. Although the human always loses, at least during the time of confrontation, the living and the Bizarre share memories, and can still control their own bodies to leave a final footprint."
Although what most people left behind in the end were meaningless things.
Li Mo walked forward and moved Ekri's body to the back of the mountain.
This action was meaningless in objective fact, but it was meaningful to Li Mo.
He had not helped her, but he had truly felt her kindness.
For both emotional and rational reasons, Li Mo wanted her to have a decent death—to return to her roots and turn to dust.
"Mr. Detective, are there some things in your heart that you would be willing to do again and again, even if you had to start over countless times?"
"..."
Li Mo did not answer, but the answer had already appeared in his heart.
"Even the boundless universe will one day head toward extinction and become a dead void."
"After a long period of time, any particle will infinitely approach its initial position. In the end, all particles will 'just right' return to the familiar time node in your and my memory."
"It could be now, or it could be the future, or the past."
"All things are born and die, circulating endlessly. All particles will eventually return to the starting point, and we will also return to our original state."
"It's just that this process is infinitely long, an unimaginable length of time for ordinary people… but after everything returns to nothingness, there will no longer be any existence in any corner of the universe that can perceive the passage of time."
"Therefore, the moment of extinction is the eternal beginning. Death is rebirth. When you die, it is when you are reborn."
"Of course, all of this is based on the premise that the system is isolated and there are no extra variables…"
Irene gently squeezed the rosemary, squeezing out bluish-purple juice, and wrote the number "99" on the table.
Cross the sea of death, and you can reach the shore of rebirth.
The line between reality and virtuality grew increasingly blurry. The memory space gradually collapsed with the decay of the rosemary.