Zhu Shi looked back and forth between Alice and me with a mixture of shock and suspicion.

  This situation was honestly predictable.

  As long as Zhu Shi and I were working together to investigate the monsters, it would have been far stranger if we didn’t eventually run into Alice at the same time. And without any prior coordination with Alice, there was a high chance she would unintentionally reveal that we already knew each other.

  “Plan ahead and you stand; fail to plan and you fall.” While it’s not exactly my personal motto, I often operate on that principle. So logically, I should have prepared for a moment like this.

  Logically.

  In reality? Not even close.

  It might surprise people who know me, but I hadn’t even seriously considered the possibility until it happened.

  There’s an old saying: “Care makes one chaotic.” When facing someone you care about deeply, you lose your usual composure and can’t maintain your normal rhythm. Only now did I truly understand the power of that proverb. Over the past few days I had imagined finding Alice again and again—yet none of those imaginings carried any practical weight in reality.

  I could think relatively clearly about the time before finding her, and about what might come after. But the moment of “actually finding Alice” itself—I couldn’t face it calmly. The event was simply too important to me; it concerned the very core of my life. Whenever I tried to picture the scene in my mind, all the mental ink went toward sketching Alice herself, leaving almost nothing for the surrounding details.

  In short: I could imagine what Alice might say to me when we reunited, and what I might say back—but I never once considered whether anyone else might overhear that conversation, or how they would react.

  This was bad.

  All the lies I’d told Zhu Shi in the past—to keep her and Mount Luo from discovering Alice had been right under my nose—were finally coming due.

  While I was frantically trying to think, Zhu Shi’s gaze had already turned sharp. “—Senior Brother Zhuang?”

  Could you please not call me “Senior Brother Zhuang” at a time like this?

  “Let’s talk somewhere else first,” I said reflexively, changing the subject. “The commotion earlier was too loud. Look—people are already starting to stare.”

  The monster had smashed through the compound wall and then screamed while being burned alive. Residents from nearby buildings had begun to appear—some stepping onto balconies, others opening windows to peer out. In the distance, a few security guards seemed to be heading this way.

  Alice’s expression flickered with the familiar urge to slip away alone. I knew that look all too well; she used to wear it often when we lived together.

  To stop her from teleporting away on the spot, I quickly said, “Alice, don’t go. We have a lead on that Karma Demon.”

  She had already begun to turn, but at my words she spun back, instantly alert. “Really? Z, if you’re just messing with me again—”

  What kind of thing is that to say? Have I ever messed with you? The words nearly slipped out, but when I glanced at Alice, then at Zhu Shi, I swallowed them and said instead, “I promise I’m not messing with you.”

  “You two seem awfully familiar…” Zhu Shi murmured. She was clearly starting to realize I had been hiding a great deal from her.

  Alice released the illusory recurve blade in her hand; it dissolved into the air. She bent down, picked up the severed hand from the ground, pulled a plastic bag from her pocket, and stuffed the hand inside.

  We left the scene quickly.

  On the way, my mind spun with a dozen different thoughts at once—how to explain things to Zhu Shi, what questions to ask Alice about where she’d been these past days, why the thermal signature and GPS bracelet had both stopped working, and so on.

  At the same time, an emotion strong enough to drown out all those thoughts surged inside me: pure, overwhelming joy.

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  I had finally found Alice.

  The happiness was so intense I felt like declaring today my personal lucky memorial day.

  After putting some distance between ourselves and the compound, we stopped outside a small grove of trees.

  Alice pulled her cat-whisker mask back up over her face.

  “Z, you said you have a lead on that Karma Demon. What is it?” she asked first. “And who is she?”

  “Senior Brother Zhuang, what exactly is your relationship with her?” Zhu Shi asked, looking at me gravely. “You told me before that you didn’t know anything about her. Was that all a lie?”

  “Wait, wait…” I raised both hands in a placating gesture. “One at a time. One at a time…”

  I felt like a man caught cheating—standing between two women I’d been secretly involved with, now facing them both at once. Of course, my relationships with them weren’t romantic in that sense. Zhu Shi was my friend. Alice was my… what, exactly? My goal? My former housemate? My criminal target? In any case, nothing messy or romantic.

  Better to focus on something fortunate to calm myself down. Thank goodness Lu Youxun hadn’t come along to the front line. If he had, Alice’s existence would have been exposed. Last night before we parted he’d promised not to spy on me again with binoculars or similar tools. Hopefully he’d keep his word and hadn’t seen any of this.

  “Can I tell her about you?” I asked Alice first.

  “You mean the apocalypse and time travel?” She studied me, as though gauging my stance. “It’s fine. I intended to make those things public from the beginning. Though even if I say them now, no one will believe me.”

  “Apocalypse? Time travel?” Zhu Shi echoed, puzzled.

  Alice thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll explain it myself.”

  In the past, she had told me the truth to test how people of this era would react to news of the coming end. Now it seemed she was treating Zhu Shi as another test subject.

  She laid out everything: that she was a traveler from the apocalypse, that the end was approaching, and the details of her interactions with me over the past days.

  In exchange, Zhu Shi revealed her own identity as a demon hunter and the existence of Mount Luo.

  Throughout the exchange I occasionally interjected to clarify my relationship with Zhu Shi while quietly observing Alice’s current condition.

  Her health was clearly much better than when we lived together. Back then her face had often been pale; she would sometimes sway while walking, and even standing for too long would tire her. Now her posture—whether walking or standing—was steady. Her complexion wasn’t exactly vibrant, but it no longer carried that unmistakable look of frailty.

  More than that: she had just gone toe-to-toe with a monster in close combat and taken its head. Lu Youxun had said monsters could withstand barrages of gunfire, with dynamic vision and reflexes sharp enough to track bullets. Yet all those superhuman qualities had been effortlessly surpassed by Alice.

  With combat ability like that, the old Alice hadn’t actually needed to steal a real gun while infiltrating the public security bureau for information. Then again—perhaps back then she had been so weakened that even ordinary firearms were necessary for her.

  “Soul wounds,” she had called her injuries. I wondered how far that damage had healed.

  “Mount Luo… demon hunters…” Alice absorbed Zhu Shi’s information. “So that’s how it is. The cultivators of this era really are hidden away…”

  I noticed she used the word “cultivators.”

  In the past, when introducing herself, she had also used terms like “blessed cultivator.”

  “Cultivator” was the transcendentalist term for demon hunters—one of their core demands was to replace “demon hunter” with “cultivator.”

  If, in the apocalyptic future, the term “demon hunter” had vanished and been replaced by “cultivator,” did that mean the transcendentalists ultimately won the internal conflict within Mount Luo?

  Zhu Shi frowned slightly at the word “cultivator,” but she didn’t dwell on it. Instead, her expression turned thoughtful.

  During the conversation I had noticed her occasionally slipping into that piercing gaze. Though her eyes hadn’t changed color, she was almost certainly using “Bu Zhou Mountain” to determine whether Alice’s claims about the apocalypse and time travel were lies or truth.

  She had said before that she usually didn’t use the ability on allies. Clearly, in her eyes Alice wasn’t an ally yet—just an unknown “freelance demon hunter” whose alignment was still unclear.

  After a moment, Zhu Shi spoke cautiously. “I’m sorry… but I still can’t believe what you’re saying about the apocalypse and time travel.

  “You said you intend to make these things public—presumably so people of this era can mobilize and stop the end before it begins. But without evidence, no one will believe your prophecy.

  “Can you provide any proof for what you’ve said?”

  “Isn’t my blessing power proof enough?” Alice asked—likely remembering how I once told her that if she used her supernatural ability in front of me, I would believe her.

  Zhu Shi glanced at her. “You mean the reversion power you used against that monster earlier?”

  “You—!” Alice started.

  Reversion power? Was that what she called the ability Alice had demonstrated earlier? I mentally filed away the implications of the name.

  “Sorry. When someone activates a special ability in front of me, I can see exactly what it does. During your fight with the monster earlier, I caught a glimpse without meaning to.” Zhu Shi spoke calmly. “I admit the power you displayed doesn’t belong to any system I’ve encountered before. But in the world of demon hunters, there are countless mysterious mana systems. Your power alone isn’t evidence that the apocalypse is coming.”

  “Mm…” Alice’s gaze turned wary and troubled.

  “And… may I ask you something?” Zhu Shi’s expression grew suspicious. “At first I thought I was seeing things, but the more I look at it, the more wrong it feels…”

  “What are you talking about?” Alice asked, puzzled.

  Zhu Shi’s gaze settled on Alice’s left wrist.

  “What is that thing you’re wearing on your wrist?” she asked.

  I suddenly felt like I was sitting on pins and needles.

  She was staring at the red GPS bracelet on Alice’s left wrist.