Under the streetlamp by the roadside, Alice stood rigid with tension, her voice a mix of anticipation and unease as she spoke to me.

  “Z, it’s time you told me the truth, isn’t it?” She watched my face intently. “Zhu Shi is long gone, and there are no other passersby around to overhear us. I don’t know why you couldn’t tell me more about my friend earlier, but now it’s just the two of us. There’s no reason to keep hiding things anymore.”

  “You’re right. I do need to explain it clearly,” I nodded. “But first, I have a question for you. Didn’t you mention before that you saw fragments of the divine seal back in the apocalypse era?”

  Though puzzled by the question, she answered honestly. “Yes, I did.”

  “What did those divine seal fragments look like?” I pressed.

  She paused, clearly wondering why I was asking for such specific details and whether she should reveal them. But realizing she still needed my help, she finally spoke. “…From the outside, they looked like irregular pieces of hard black material, with a texture like jade. And for some reason, touching them gave no sensation of cold or heat—as if the concept of temperature didn’t apply at all…”

  “You actually touched one?”

  “My friend and I obtained a divine seal fragment by chance during an incident,” she replied. “But right after that, we were attacked by a Great Demon and forced to separate.”

  “You don’t have a divine seal fragment with you. Which means… the fragment is in your friend’s hands. Are you really okay telling me something that important?”

  “It’s fine. In fact, I want to ask you to take care of my friend,” she said. “We once tried to abandon the fragment because keeping something so valuable was far too dangerous. But for some reason, it seemed strongly bound to my friend—we couldn’t get rid of it no matter how hard we tried.

  “If you truly value the divine seal fragment, then I hope you’ll keep my friend by your side. She’s just a frail little girl, completely unsuited to a world full of anomalies, and even less suited to staying near me.”

  So she was essentially entrusting her friend to me—like leaving someone in another’s care.

  Back in the apocalypse era, she had kept her friend close because losing her would mean death. But now that her friend had also arrived in this peaceful time, that necessity no longer existed. She needed to separate from her as soon as possible. And in this unfamiliar peaceful era, the only person she could entrust her to was me.

  Since living together with her friend would make hiding the divine seal fragment impossible anyway, she might as well lay it all out openly.

  Perhaps she was also testing me with this information. If I showed too much greed, she’d take her friend and vanish. With her spatial transfer ability, escaping my grasp would be effortless.

  “But in the end…” Alice’s voice softened, revealing a rare vulnerability, “…at the very least… could I see her one last time? I just want to talk to her. After that, I won’t see her again…”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you meet her,” I said.

  “What?” She froze.

  “What you just described—the divine seal fragment—does it look like this?” I pulled the fragment from my pants pocket and held it out for her to see.

  “The divine seal fragment!” She recoiled as if struck by lightning. “Why do you have it? Did my friend give it to you? That’s impossible—it shouldn’t be transferable to anyone else. Unless—unless—”

  She frantically scanned the surroundings, as if searching for a third person who wasn’t there.

  Wait—did she think the fragment in my hand belonged to her friend, and that her friend was already dead, which was how I ended up with it? Seeing her growing panic, I quickly clarified, “Your friend hasn’t come to this era. The one I have is a different divine seal fragment.”

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  “Huh?” She went completely still, like someone hit with an acupoint.

  “Here’s what happened…”

  I gave her a rough summary of how I’d entered the misty dream realm and come into contact with her friend.

  “…She’s still wandering alone through the apocalyptic ruins, even having forgotten her own name, and in at most ten more days she’ll turn into an industry demon?” Alice said, completely at a loss.

  “More precisely, only seven days left now,” I corrected. “So what’s her name? Tell me first, so I can pass it on to her the next time I enter the misty dream realm.”

  “Little Bowl—her name is Little Bowl! ‘Little’ as in small, and ‘bowl’ as in the dishware!” She answered instantly, then asked urgently, “Z, when can you enter that misty dream realm again?”

  “That’s not something I can control…” I noted the name down mentally, then started calculating in my head.

  The first time I entered the misty dream realm was in the basement of the fifteenth-floor apartment; both No. 1 and No. 2—Little Bowl—had entered it then too. The second time was the night after Alice left, when they and No. 4 Xuan Ming also entered. The gap between those two was about four days, and now three days had passed since the second.

  If the misty dream realm occurred every four days, then I should be able to enter again tomorrow. Of course, with such a small sample size, the reliability of that guess was low. But it probably wouldn’t take another full seven days before the next entry, right?

  I tried to calm Alice down. She seemed to understand there was no rushing it and forced herself to suppress her anxiety.

  We no longer stood still but continued walking toward home.

  “By the way, isn’t the name ‘Little Bowl’ kind of unusual?” I asked, trying to change the subject. “Did you give it to her?”

  “There’s a bit of me in it, I suppose…” Alice answered vaguely, clearly still preoccupied with thoughts of No. 2—Little Bowl.

  “Then what about the name ‘Xuan Ming’? Does it ring any bells?” I asked next. “The No. 4 in the misty dream realm called himself ‘Xuan Ming,’ and No. 2—Little Bowl—had a very strong reaction to that name, like she was terrified. Do you know why she’d be afraid of it?”

  Her expression instantly darkened. “The No. 4 you mentioned earlier was Xuan Ming?”

  “Yes. Is there a problem with that?” I asked curiously.

  “I told you before: in the apocalypse era, survivors consumed by madness become industry demons. And the reason my friend and I were separated was because of an attack by a Great Demon… In truth, a ‘Great Demon’ is simply the highest rank of industry demon.” Her voice grew heavy with gloom. “In a way, industry demons represent one possible endpoint for humanity in the apocalypse era. An endpoint means no further progress is possible. Once someone becomes an industry demon, they basically can’t grow stronger through their own power anymore.

  “So the strength of an industry demon largely depends on how strong the person was before they fell. If they were weak in life, becoming an industry demon might only grant them some bizarre abilities at best. But the stronger they were before, the more terrifying their power becomes after.”

  I caught the implication. “In other words, only those who were among the absolute strongest in life have a chance of becoming the highest-ranking Great Demons after death?”

  “Exactly,” she nodded. “In the apocalypse era, there were never more than ten Great Demons at any time. And the one that attacked us was called the ‘Calamity Demon.’

  “The Calamity Demon was a Great Demon skilled in manipulating flames. People in the apocalypse era believed it was the fallen form of a once-powerful figure named ‘Xuan Ming.’ It was that Great Demon who scorched my soul.”

  Calamity Demon…

  The character for “calamity” (灾) is composed of a roof radical over fire—implying a naturally occurring blaze.

  If only someone on the level of Xuan Ming—a Great Impermanence—qualified to become a Great Demon, then what about the others?

  Alice said there were no more than ten Great Demons in the apocalypse era. That number struck me particularly hard. There were also no more than ten Great Impermanences. Could it be that all future Great Demons were once Great Impermanences?

  “Alice, how many years before the present era were you living when you crossed over?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Time and space in the apocalypse era were extremely chaotic. Some places believed the end had come over a hundred years ago, while others thought it had only just begun not long before.” She shook her head.

  “What about Zhu Shi, then? You seemed to think she looked familiar earlier. Did you ever see her back in the apocalypse era?”

  As I asked, I couldn’t help thinking about myself.

  Alice might not have gathered concrete evidence of the approaching apocalypse yet, but the many clues I’d encountered already made its existence feel undeniable. The reality of the apocalypse was growing stronger in my mind by the day. Things I never used to consider, I now pondered seriously.

  For example: where would I be, and what would I be doing, after the apocalypse arrived?

  From what Alice and No. 2—Little Bowl—described, even though the post-apocalyptic world was desolate and deadly, a small number of survivors still struggled on amid the ruins. There were people like Alice, “blessing cultivators,” and powerless ten-year-old girls like Little Bowl. Though I didn’t yet know exactly how the apocalypse would descend, I didn’t believe I’d simply die in a catastrophe where even ordinary people could sometimes survive by sheer luck.

  People in the apocalypse era believed the Calamity Demon was the fallen Xuan Ming—that was what Alice said. And since she used the word “believed,” it implied there might not be ironclad proof. Just as a living person doesn’t say “I believe I’m still alive,” truly self-evident things don’t require belief—they’re simply accepted as fact.

  So—though it might sound arrogantly presumptuous—was it possible that the Calamity Demon wasn’t Xuan Ming at all, but the future version of me?

  And if not… then where was I?