Chapter 83: The Boundary of Motion and Stillness
Xie Lin took the stairs to the second floor three at a time, his hurried steps echoing in the tense silence. But the moment his eyes fell upon the scene, he froze. His hands, hanging at his sides, slowly curled into tight fists.
"Where is Wenwen?"
Liu Haoran, catching up a second later, only then sensed that something was terribly wrong. He scanned the room, his gaze finally locking onto the spot that held Xie Lin's undivided attention. There, next to the shattered remains of the ghost camera, lay a single black-and-white photograph.
The image captured Wu Wenwen, her form frozen in her final posture. Her right hand was raised high, as if she were still trying to press the shutter one last time.
Liu Haoran stood paralyzed, his lips trembling. "Wen… Wenwen can still come back, right? She… she definitely can, right?"
Xie Lin's jaw was a rigid line. He didn't answer.
"I don't believe it!" Liu Haoran's voice cracked with denial. "You wouldn't let Wenwen do something you weren't sure about!"
Xie Lin took a deep, shuddering breath. Then, in two sudden strides, he closed the distance to Zhang Katao and, without a word of warning, drove a vicious kick into his side. The man went tumbling to the floor with a pained grunt.
Before Zhang Katao could even process what had happened, Xie Lin was on him, his fists falling like a merciless storm.
"I calculated the timing perfectly," Xie Lin snarled, the words squeezed from between clenched teeth, each one dripping with venom. "The Butler couldn't possibly have come down this early! And it shouldn't have been Wenwen who was dragged in!"
He hammered punch after punch into Zhang Katao's face. But Xie Lin's lean physique was a disadvantage. Once Zhang Katao recovered from the initial shock, he began to fight back, managing to struggle partway up after a few frantic exchanges.
"What mistake could I have made?" Zhang Katao spat, a string of bloody saliva flying from his lips. "If I hadn't said that, why would she have volunteered to delay the Butler?!"
He had just managed to get to his feet when Liu Haoran, his mind finally piecing together the betrayal, kicked him down again. His eyes were bloodshot, a clear sign that he understood who the real culprit was.
"You son of a bitch!" Liu Haoran roared. "Just to buy yourself a little more time, you were willing to sacrifice one of my teammates? By what right?! I should have been the one to hold back the Butler!"
Liu Haoran was a burly man, his palms and the backs of his hands layered with solid muscle. He pinned Zhang Katao to the floor with his sheer weight, his fury lending him immense strength. While Zhang Katao had managed to block a few of Xie Lin's blows, he was utterly helpless now. With both men on him, he was quickly reduced to curling into a ball, his arms wrapped futilely around his head.
Xie Lin and Liu Haoran showed no mercy, their kicks and punches soon beating him until his breaths came in ragged, shallow gasps.
The others did not intervene.
If he dared to plot against their team, he had to accept the consequences. In a place like this, even if they beat Zhang Katao to death on the spot, none of them would feel the slightest bit of guilt. When a teammate was harmed by such despicable means, beating the perpetrator to death was a mercy. Skinning him alive and grinding his bones to dust would have been more fitting.
Besides, it was simply him reaping what he had sown. Regardless of whether Zhang Katao had lied about the item's capabilities, they would have never trusted him to be the one to delay the Butler in the first place.
Watching the brutal scene unfold, Yotsuya Miko felt a pang of regret. If only she had suggested they all delay the ghost together, perhaps this tragedy could have been avoided.
"Alright, alright, don't actually kill him," Haruto's calm voice cut through the violence. "He deserves to die, but absolutely not right now."
Seeing Haruto's complete lack of distress, a flicker of surprise crossed Miko's eyes. "Brother Haruto… Wenwen can still be saved, right?"
"She just turned into a photo. She isn't dead," Haruto replied with a casual shrug. "Of course she can be saved."
Xie Lin, who had felt a desperate glimmer of hope at Miko's question, felt his heart sink again at Haruto's nonchalant answer. He managed a bitter smile. "It's useless. If the camera hadn't broken, we might have had a chance. After leaving the instance, as long as we could spend the money within a month to have someone summon the Ghost Director, she could still be saved. But now…"
Thud.
Liu Haoran dropped to his knees. He couldn't afford to think about anything else. For him, as long as a sliver of hope existed, he had to cling to it with everything he had. They had survived so many impossible situations together; how could he let Wenwen die here, so trivially, like it was nothing more than a child's game?
"I'm begging you," he pleaded, his voice thick with desperation. "As long as you can save Wenwen, I, Liu Haoran, will follow your lead from now on!"
With that, he bent at the waist, preparing to kowtow. But just as his forehead was about to touch the dusty floorboards, an immense, invisible force lifted him back up.
"Don't be so dramatic," Haruto said, a hint of exasperation in his tone. "I never said I wouldn't save her. I actually quite like that little girl, Wenwen. She has a similar temperament to a friend of mine."
Whether it was out of the camaraderie he'd developed with Xie Lin's group, or because Wu Wenwen had acted as a living doll for him and Kaguya just the day before—happily dressing up as Reisen for a photoshoot—Haruto had no intention of standing by and watching her die.
"I figured something might go wrong, so I left a trace of Boundary Power on Wenwen beforehand," he explained. "You can think of it as me placing a lock on her. If she encounters any danger, it will immediately activate. Once I unlock it, she'll return to her normal state."
That could save her?
The others stared in disbelief. While most of them had never heard of this type of ghostly artifact, the logic seemed impossible. If a person had already vanished, dragged away by a ghost, could they really be forcibly pulled back and restored to their human form?
Xie Lin didn't understand the mechanics, but he understood the core message: she could be saved. His knees buckled in overwhelming relief, but before he could hit the ground, he too was stopped.
Haruto rubbed his temples, his tone helpless. "Stop with the kneeling already. Haven't you ever heard that a man's knees are worth gold?"
"They are," Xie Lin replied, a weak, shaky smile finally returning to his face now that he knew Wenwen was safe. "But only so you can cash them in when it truly matters."
It was the simple truth. He and Liu Haoran already saw Wu Wenwen as their own sister, having survived countless life-and-death trials together. If a few bows and scrapes could bring her back, what did it matter if their heads bled or they knelt a hundred times?
Haruto took the photograph from the floor. A faint, ethereal light—a trace of Boundary Power—erupted from the image. The scene within the photo began to reverse, the captured moment rewinding before their eyes.
Wu Wenwen's figure flickered and reappeared in the room. But before Xie Lin and Liu Haoran could even cry out in joy, a ghastly, spectral hand shot out from the dissipating photograph, intent on dragging her back in.
"Get the hell away from her!" Liu Haoran roared, his eyes bloodshot as he whipped out a blood-stained wood-chopping knife. He lunged forward to strike, but he was already too late.
In that critical instant, Haruto simply raised his hand.
"Boundary of Motion and Stillness—"
Before he could even finish the incantation, the ghost hand froze solid in mid-air, imprisoned by an invisible force. Without a moment's hesitation, Liu Haoran brought his knife slashing down. The spectral hand was severed with a wet, sickening thud.
But in that exact same moment, a line of blood split open on Liu Haoran's own right wrist—the one holding the knife. His entire palm detached and fell, landing on the floor side-by-side with the severed ghost hand.
Blood sprayed everywhere.
Only after confirming that the ghost in the photo had gone completely still did Liu Haoran's body go limp. He collapsed to one knee, pressing down hard on his severed wrist, his face a deathly shade of white.
"Haoran!" Xie Lin cried out, tearing a strip from his own clothes and frantically wrapping it around the stump several times to stanch the bleeding.
"Brother Haoran!" Wu Wenwen, having just shaken off the daze of her resurrection, saw the horrific scene. A cry of pure anguish tore from her throat.
"Impressive," Haruto murmured, a flash of genuine approval in his eyes. This kind of subconscious, reflexive action was the ultimate test of a person's character. He himself had experienced that kind of pain firsthand.
To chop off one's own hand without a second thought to save a companion—with courage like that, it was clear Liu Haoran truly saw Wu Wenwen as family.
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