After returning to the corridor again, Mu Dai felt something was wrong.

Those real experiences of her life—shouldn’t they have happened naturally? Why did they now seem like she had intervened and mended them herself?

Little Seven walked while chattering incessantly: “I told you it’s best not to interfere, but you just couldn’t hold back. Fortunately, fortunately, you were still adopted by Huo Zihong, so the main direction hasn’t changed.”

Mu Dai became suspicious: “If I don’t interfere, Hong Yi won’t adopt me. I couldn’t possibly get involved with the evil bamboo slips, much less meet Luo Ren and my friends. You’re lying to me, aren’t you? If I don’t interfere, my life would have ten thousand possibilities. Only by interfering everywhere can I find the one way out.”

Little Seven said: “How can you not trust me? I’m a good person.”

Its thin long arms stretched upward, growing thinner and thinner, like tendrils hooking onto that ray of shadow on the sundial’s surface, suddenly dragging it down one notch.

How could a shadow be dragged?

Mu Dai had no time to think about that much, shouting: “What are you doing?”

What right did it have to speed up her time?

Little Seven’s voice no longer sounded like a child’s, speaking coldly and deliberately: “I told you not to interfere, but you insisted interference was right—so now, will you interfere or not?”

Having said that, its two arms suddenly pushed hard on Mu Dai’s shoulders. Caught off guard, Mu Dai stumbled and fell into the ripples.

It was night, no moon, the pitch-black construction site and abandoned building like the city’s shadow, impenetrable to light.

Mu Dai suddenly shivered.

This was eight years ago, the night she and Shen Wen had their accident.

In the night wind, sounds of screaming and calling for help drifted faintly. Mu Dai’s scalp tightened, her calves uncontrollably twitching. She broke into a run toward where the incident was happening.

Little Seven ran with her, or rather, it was more like a floating black specter, circling around her, round and round, talking non-stop.

“Are you going to save her?”

“Have you thought about it? If you save her, she won’t die. Huo Zihong won’t move with you, there won’t be a bar called ‘Gatherings and Partings Follow Fate’ in Lijiang, Yi Wansan won’t go work there, everything that follows will change.”

Mu Dai stopped abruptly.

Little Seven was right. The result she wanted was for the five of them to come together again, but if Wenwen was safe, everything that followed would change.

She looked up blankly at the high part of the abandoned building, where several blurred black shadows were violently shaking on the unfinished balcony.

If she wasn’t mistaken, in a little while, young Mu Dai would fall from the third floor, and Wenwen would experience the most tragic nightmare a girl of that age could face.

Little Seven was satisfied with her stopping: “That’s right, think of the big picture. Don’t you want to get out?”

Mu Dai turned to look at it, then looked up high, suddenly saying: “Go to hell!”

She ran to the bottom of the building in a few steps, her figure like lightning, scaling up the outer wall of the abandoned building.

Behind her, Little Seven screamed hoarsely: “You’ll regret this! You’re finished, you’ll never get out!”

Would she regret it?

The moment she crashed into young Mu Dai’s body, her mind suddenly became clear: as long as she remembered Luo Ren, regardless of whether Huo Zihong moved to Lijiang later, she could go find him. She and Luo Ren had many points of encounter, like that misty Yangtze River cable car, or that fruit stand near Liberation Monument.

When studying under Meihua Jiuniang, she had said: “Master, if only time could flow backward. If I had martial arts then, I would have fought desperately to save Wenwen—if only I could do it over again, how wonderful that would be.”

Now, wasn’t this exactly the “do it over again” she had always longed for?

She gritted her teeth, kicked away a thug directly in front of her, grabbed Wenwen and pushed her outward, roaring: “Wenwen, go, don’t worry about me.”

Shen Wen cried and refused to leave.

A brick swung over, hitting her shoulder. This group of thugs was numerous, fighting with wild entanglement and desperate brawling. One against many, dragging along Shen Wen, she would inevitably be at a disadvantage. Mu Dai pushed her out forcefully: “Go!”

Shen Wen cried loudly and turned to leave.

Good that she left. Mu Dai smiled. These bastards—she had long wanted to properly deal with them.

Hatred accumulated over many years surged out like a tide. Knee strikes, palm slaps, hand chops—every move showed no mercy. But after each move, for some reason, she felt increasingly exhausted.

When she kicked another thug away, she looked up to see Little Seven’s two arms hanging from the abandoned building’s window, swaying in mid-air like a hanged ghost, saying: “I warned you, you couldn’t stay long to begin with, and you’re still fighting. Fighting will consume your energy faster, you know?”

“Are you still going to fight? Won’t you retreat quickly? If you finally collapse from exhaustion, you can leave, but what happened to Wenwen before will happen to you from back then.”

This bastard—it had never mentioned this before. Now it was swinging there, grotesquely telling her these things.

Mu Dai didn’t want to believe it, but didn’t dare not believe it. She gritted her teeth, mustered her last breath, kicked away the person blocking her, and flipped straight down from the wall.

The moment she went down, from the corner of her eye she saw someone holding an iron shovel from the construction site, shouting and running back in from the stairway entrance.

That was…

As her body hit the ground, Mu Dai realized.

That was Wenwen! She had come back. She hadn’t left. She had found a weapon and run back to help her!

Tears suddenly poured from Mu Dai’s eyes. She looked up to see several people throwing a black figure down.

Almost without thinking, Mu Dai instinctively lunged forward, trying to catch her.

Shen Wen crashed straight onto her. This impact nearly killed her, the back of her head hitting the ground hard, her entire bone structure seeming to shatter. She saw Shen Wen struggling to get up, crying and shaking her body, saw the black shadows from upstairs streaming down, saw Shen Wen screaming as she was dragged away…

…

When she opened her eyes again, Little Seven was dragging her back into the ripples. Mu Dai stared at it, suddenly sprang up, and slapped its face.

She didn’t know what the touch felt like, only that Little Seven’s head spun around and around on its neck several times from her slap, then turned back.

Then it covered its face and screamed: “Hitting people, you’re hitting people!”

Mu Dai roared: “Why didn’t you say so earlier!”

“I did say it. I told you not to interfere. Blame your friend—knowing that even two of them together couldn’t beat those guys, why did she come back? Did she think that coming back with an iron shovel would let her win?”

Little Seven snorted through its nose, muttering: “This is just being stupid. If she had run away, wouldn’t everyone have been happy?”

Running away would certainly have made everyone happy.

But was Wenwen wrong to come back to help her, knowing the danger?

Little Seven was still nattering: “See, all for nothing. I told you not to interfere from the start. Anyway, this trip hardly changed anything…”

Mu Dai walked very slowly, almost absent-mindedly watching the rippling frames beside her.

She saw Huo Zihong and Shen Wen’s family find the construction site, saw Shen Wen’s mother nearly faint, saw the hospital, saw the cemetery, saw their home being smashed, saw herself kneeling…

She said quietly: “How could it be for nothing.”

She was glad she hadn’t stood by and watched, even though once again, by the smallest margin, she had lost such a good friend.

Little Seven kept telling her not to interfere, to put her head down and run forward.

Should she interfere or not? This re-experienced first half of life—should she strive to make it completely similar to her previous life, or should she follow her heart?

She had regrets and had made mistakes. Some say people can’t make the same mistake twice—if you do it a second time, it’s not a mistake but a choice.

Entering the Viewing Four Mirage Tower, Little Seven’s words harbored malicious intent, half true and half false. She had to make her own choices.

The right choices.

The ripples swayed. Mu Dai stopped walking.

It was evening, the room was dark, she could vaguely see the outline of a bed and the person on it.

The bedside lamp suddenly lit up. Teenage Mu Dai sat up from the bed, got down barefoot, seemed about to go to the bathroom, but after just two steps, suddenly sat cross-legged on the floor.

Mu Dai let out a long sigh.

She had seen this scene before at Dr. He Ruihua’s office—it was a video recording made by Hong Yi.

She smiled and said to Little Seven: “Multiple personality disorder—that’s the term, right? Around this time, I was probably about to develop multiple personalities.”

Having said that, she stepped into the ripples and sat cross-legged on the cold floor, directly facing little Mu Dai.

She stared at her teenage self.

So small, really small, thin and delicate, with childishness on her face but bewildered eyes, constantly muttering: “What to do, what should I do…”

Then she reached under the pillow and pulled out a knife.

Mu Dai held her breath, her gaze never leaving for a moment: perhaps things would unfold slightly differently from the real world. Would little Mu Dai commit suicide? The reason that knife ultimately didn’t pierce her heart—was it because she had interfered again?

Clang! The fruit knife fell to the floor. Mu Dai heard cackling laughter.

Little Mu Dai was laughing, cackling, her fingers delicately twirling the hair hanging on her shoulder. Suddenly she tilted her head and said: “It’s not my fault, Wenwen, not my fault.”

The next instant, her expression suddenly became terrified, screaming: “Not my fault, I didn’t do it on purpose, I’ll never ask you to see a movie again, really!”

She cowered all over, suddenly crawling aside on all fours, groping to push open the wardrobe door, shivering as she crawled inside.

A forest of chills crept up Mu Dai’s spine. She stood up and slowly moved to the front of the wardrobe.

She saw little Mu Dai curled in a corner of the wardrobe, timidly talking to the dark corner.

“Mama, do you want to eat peaches?”

“I never stole anyone’s meat pancake.”

“If Hong Yi doesn’t like me, she’ll send me back. I don’t want to go back.”

Little Seven’s clamoring voice rang out beside her: “Oh my, she’s had a mental breakdown, she’s crazy.”

Mu Dai said sternly: “Nonsense, not crazy. I just couldn’t bear it then, so… so multiple personalities. Dr. He showed me the video—there were three personalities, the main personality hidden, then later there was Little Pocket…”

Little Seven’s thin long arms climbed up the cabinet door: “This is crazy…”

Mu Dai said nothing. The room was extremely quiet—she could hear the clock’s tick-tock counting seconds. Looking back, in a hidden angle, there was a glimmer of light. That was Hong Yi, worried about her, following Dr. He’s advice and placing a video recorder in her room.

Mu Dai suddenly strode forward and instantly entered little Mu Dai’s body.

Then she walked straight to the corner of the room, moved aside the miscellaneous items used for concealment, took out the video recorder, pressed the button, and rewound it.

Little Seven asked her: “What are you doing?”

“Erasing this segment.”

After erasing it, she put the recorder back, took the alarm clock, placed it directly in front of her, and sat cross-legged again.

The second hand was luminous, with a faint green glow, moving regularly around that dial, keeping proper time.

Mu Dai kept staring at it. Little Seven’s thin long body bent down grotesquely, its football-shaped head swaying in front of her, asking: “What are you doing now?”

Mu Dai said: “I’m tired, need to rest a bit.”

“Don’t rest too long.”

“I know.”

She stared at the dial, a smile slowly appearing at the corners of her lips.

Back then, Dr. He had said: “Mu Dai, you need to learn self-hypnosis, to turn your gaze inward and dialogue with your other personalities.”

Mu Dai slowly closed her eyes.

Turning her gaze inward.

Entering that already collapsed, chaotic spiritual world.

This frail little Mu Dai needed to strip away the sense of guilt she couldn’t bear at this moment, and also needed a protection that was unprincipled and strong.

In this collapsed and chaotic spiritual world, there would be no Little Pocket and Mu Dai Number Two.

But that was okay—she could shape them into existence.