Like Mu Dai, Yan Hongsha entered the Viewing Four Mirages Tower accompanied by a fierce spirit.

Like Cao Yanhua, Yan Hongsha felt that the fierce spirit’s words were full of lies and couldn’t be trusted, but unlike Cao Yanhua, she was too embarrassed to hit it.

“That fierce spirit,” she said, “acts cute and pretends to be foolish, and when talking to me, it uses a childish tone. There’s an old saying in the martial world: you don’t strike someone who’s smiling at you. Its skin is thick, and no amount of scolding can drive it away.”

So she just let it follow along.

This fierce spirit was like a chatterbox, never shutting its mouth the entire way.

“Its words are also contradictory – sometimes urging me to hurry, saying there’s not enough time, and sometimes telling me to stop and enter the wave shadows to do something. It really gave me such a headache.”

Sure enough, when it came to Hongsha’s situation, the fierce spirit had another set of explanations, leaving Cao Yanhua confused: “So which words are actually true?”

Mu Dai thought for a moment: “The key issue isn’t about true or false words. The fierce spirit’s purpose isn’t to lie, but to disrupt the entire situation.”

“It’s like a problem with five parts – everyone has to get it right for it to be correct. If one person gets it wrong, the whole thing fails.”

“So along this journey, the fierce spirit just randomly says things as it pleases, whether true or false doesn’t matter. And I think they’ve been communicating with each other all along.”

Yan Hongsha said hatefully: “Right! No wonder they were giggling and laughing, playing cat and mouse. They must be communicating with each other. Even if you’re going the right way, they’re not worried – as long as they can lead the others astray.”

Mu Dai asked Yan Hongsha: “What did you change?”

Yan Hongsha suddenly stopped talking. After a while, her eyes slowly reddened.

She said: “Mu Dai, I wanted to prevent my parents from having that car accident.”

Although she had been lovingly cared for by her grandfather and uncle throughout her childhood, Yan Hongsha always had a knot in her heart about losing her parents.

“I saw before the car accident happened – Dad was driving, and Mom was holding me in the back seat. I couldn’t help it, so I entered the wave shadow. The fierce spirit told me I could possess that little Hongsha’s body.”

So Yan Hongsha did just that.

“My mother was holding me, Mu Dai. I felt like it was the first time in my life being held by her. It felt so good – Mom smelled so nice.”

She took a deep, longing breath: “My mother was much more beautiful than me. Compared to her, I just grew up crooked.”

But in the end, she couldn’t change anything.

“I was too small then – just over a year old, couldn’t speak. Even possessing little Hongsha’s body, I couldn’t say anything – so many words rushed to my throat, but only came out as hysterical crying.”

“Mom kept comforting me, and Dad kept turning around asking if I was hungry or sick. All this back and forth distracted them, and then… the car accident happened.”

Yan Hongsha covered her eyes with both hands, constantly sniffling, her nose tip red. Mu Dai reached out to gently pat her back, and fine sand rustled down onto her bare feet – different from before, this time even in the wave shadow, the hourglass had started leaking sand.

Mu Dai felt somewhat uneasy.

After a long while, Yan Hongsha continued: “I was fine though – Mom protected me with her body.”

When the accident happened, she was still too young. All these years, her memories of her parents had been vague. When she asked her grandfather Yan Laotou, he always spoke evasively, roughly saying: car accident, your parents both died, you were lucky, heaven didn’t take you.

Such plain descriptions were far less shocking than experiencing it firsthand.

Cao Yanhua comforted her: “Hongsha, don’t be sad.”

Yan Hongsha wiped away her tears: “I’m not sad. I’m actually quite happy. My mother loved me so much, risking her life to keep me alive. I feel quite blessed.”

“But I don’t understand how this works – my parents’ death obviously happened long ago, so why does it now seem like it was caused by my random interference?”

“So I didn’t dare do anything else. No matter how much that fierce spirit nagged me, I just kept my head down and walked forward. After all, I didn’t have any regrets to make up for, until…”

Mu Dai softly interjected: “Until you encountered that incident with your uncle?”

Yan Hongsha bit her lip: “I didn’t want my uncle to die. Though my uncle was dissolute and unambitious, almost squandering the family fortune, he was always good to me.”

She desperately tried to stop Yan Jiuxiao from going to Five Pearls Village, and went to find her grandfather Yan Laotou: “Uncle’s debt – let’s find a way to pay it, even if we have to sell the house and land. Grandpa, don’t go disturb that guilty treasure well in Four Villages. Harming innocent people – I can’t sleep just thinking about it. All these years, have you really been able to sleep soundly?”

Before Yan Laotou could change expression, she turned and stormed out, slamming the door, crossed through the wave shadow, and returned to the corridor.

Something that made her blood run cold happened – the next wave shadow, and the one after that, completely deviated from what she remembered. There was no Zheng Mingshan bringing Mu Dai to their door, no two people traveling arduously to Five Pearls.

She understood – this was like a series of chain reactions. Since uncle hadn’t disappeared, grandfather wouldn’t need to use Zheng Mingshan’s connections to find any bodyguard, and she wouldn’t have met Mu Dai, unless…

Looking back, the wave shadows she had already experienced were shimmering faintly, about to disappear into darkness. At that critical moment, Yan Hongsha made a split-second decision and dove back into the mansion through the wave shadow.

She said: “If the mountain won’t come to me, I’ll go to the mountain. If you won’t come find me, I can come find you. I remembered this bar in Lijiang, so I bought a ticket and came.”

At Gathering and Parting as Fate Wills, when she asked about Mu Dai, Zhang Shu said: “That’s our little lady boss. She’s out on business but should be back in a day or two.”

Back in a day or two? Then the safest approach was to “wait.” Yan Hongsha made a quick decision: “Uncle, hire me to work here. I don’t need wages – I’ll even pay to work.”

…

Mu Dai had Cao Yanhua find paper and pen, preparing for them to discuss and sketch out the key points of the situation to sort things through. While waiting, she looked up toward the window – the snow peaks of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain were no longer visible.

A trace of something unusual flashed through her heart, but she had no time to investigate further – the paper and pen were already placed before her.

Yan Hongsha looked troubled: “Mu Dai, can we really sort this out clearly? I’m not good at this kind of analysis.”

In the past, when the five of them acted together, she was too accustomed to letting Luo Ren or Yi Wansan do the thinking. Those convoluted twists and turns – she was too lazy to listen, and when she did listen, she was completely confused.

Mu Dai said: “Hongsha, we absolutely must use our brains. You know that Luo Ren and Yi Wansan haven’t come out, right?”

Yan Hongsha fell silent. Cao Yanhua was quite confident in his intelligence: “Three cobblers are worth one Zhuge Liang. Surely we’re not worse than cobblers?”

Mu Dai drew a pentagon on the paper with five edges, marking each edge with the characters for metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. She drew a passage from each edge leading to the center, where she drew a triangle.

“According to the structure of the Viewing Four Mirages Tower, we all walked from the outside through corridors toward the inside, so I believe that the ‘endpoint’ mentioned by the fierce spirit refers to this central position represented by the triangle.”

Cao Yanhua squinted at the pentagon: “Little Master, are we at the endpoint now?”

Mu Dai said: “I think this endpoint doesn’t refer to space, or even time.”

She explained: “The Viewing Four Mirages Tower is an illusion, an illusion belonging to the five of us. Initially, we were separated. If we couldn’t meet, we would likely wander aimlessly in the so-called ten thousand possibilities – but after I met Cao Fatty, suddenly there were no more paths forward or backward in the corridor. No path means endpoint. This indicates that my and Cao Fatty’s illusion had reached its end.”

Cao Yanhua nodded vigorously, feeling this made sense. Before meeting Mu Dai, he had basically forgotten about the cable car encounter, but after meeting her, being able to enter and exit wave shadows together with Mu Dai, his consciousness was indeed clear – the illusion had ended.

So the endpoint wasn’t about how long or how far you walked, but about understanding yourself clearly.

Yan Hongsha realized: “So since I found you two, I’ve also reached the endpoint?”

Mu Dai nodded, pointing to the three hourglasses floating in mid-air: “Our hourglasses started leaking sand after entering this wave shadow. Xiao Qi said that when the sand runs out, that’s the moment we become stationary in real time – I guess at that time, the exit door will appear.”

That would be the connection between illusion and the real world.

Yan Hongsha gasped – each person’s hourglass had only a thin layer of sand left, the fine grains falling continuously, obviously about to run empty.

She became anxious: “But Luo Ren and Yi Wansan still haven’t come.”

“Yes, but Hongsha, you’ve reminded me of something.”

“When the wave shadows could no longer be freely entered and exited, you bought a ticket from Kunming and traveled to Lijiang to find me.”

Cao Yanhua immediately understood: “Little Master, you mean…”

Mu Dai said decisively: “We find Luo Ren and Yi Wansan through various means. Posting, missing person notices, asking Wan Fenghuo for help – we find them and help them reach the end of their illusions.”

After being stunned for a few seconds, Cao Yanhua understood and slapped the table: “Done!”

He turned to call Hongsha: “Hongsha, help me.”

There was a computer at the bar, and he brought down Mu Dai’s personal one too. On various social networks, major forums, and Weibo, Cao Yanhua typed rapidly, first drafting missing person notices with a reward of one million yuan.

Yan Hongsha instinctively objected: “This is nonsense – where would we get one million?”

Cao Yanhua said: “It’s an illusion anyway. What’s wrong with writing ten million? After we find them, we’ll return to the real world.”

That made sense too.

Mu Dai walked to the window and called Wan Fenghuo. The sunlight was beautiful, the weather clear and bright – on such a day with high visibility, how could the Jade Dragon Snow Peak not be visible?

The call connected. She identified herself and asked Wan Fenghuo for help, saying all expenses should be charged to Miss Huo Zihong.

Wan Fenghuo said: “Without any leads, just reporting names, there’s no way to search. You need to give some characteristics at least.”

Characteristics? Mu Dai’s mind raced, pondering deeply.

Luo Ren’s greatest regret in this life should be about Uncle Luo Wenmiao and those life-and-death brothers in the Philippines. Assuming Luo Ren’s intervention was successful and he rescued Luo Wenmiao, he would no longer have contact with the fierce spirit and would start forgetting some things related to the five of them. But the Philippines trajectory would continue, so the greatest possibility now was that Luo Ren was in the Philippines.

She said: “For Luo Ren, search two leads: first, Ningxia’s Xiao Shanghe, ask about Luo Wenmiao or Luo Pinting, see if they have contact with Luo Ren; second, inquire directly from the Philippines, Mindanao Island – he’s a mercenary…”

Crackling electrical noise came through the receiver, as if the signal was poor. Mu Dai walked outside a few steps and suddenly felt something was missing from her field of vision.

It was the flying eaves and roof corners at the farthest edge of the ancient town, silhouetted against the sky – they seemed to have disappeared.

Wan Fenghuo seemed to say something, but Mu Dai didn’t pay attention. She stared into the distance – it was true, those densely layered houses, one tier after another, were disappearing before her eyes.

Those towering signal towers, tall trees, low clouds, distant power lines – all disappearing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The phone cut out. Cao Yanhua shouted from behind: “Hey, no internet! Little Master, suddenly disconnected…”

His shout stopped abruptly, his gaze drawn to the scene outside the window.

Where those snow peaks, houses, trees, and clouds had disappeared, thick clouds of rolling yellow sand rose up, like a sandstorm, like fierce wind approaching. Huo Zihong passed by her side, and Mu Dai called out: “Hong Yi, what is this…”

Huo Zihong turned back and smiled at her, but at the corners of her curved lips, yellow sand suddenly scattered. Strong wind shattered the glass and rushed in, blowing Huo Zihong into a handful of scattered sand.

Not just Huo Zihong, but also the bartender, Zhang Shu, the tables, chairs – all instantly became wind and sand. Mu Dai crouched down, struggling to keep her eyes open in the sandstorm, faintly seeing brightness in mid-air.

Those were the three hourglasses, all now empty.

When the hourglasses run dry and shadows no longer move, what happens?

…

Mu Dai stood in the cold ruins of what remained of Gathering and Parting as Fate Wills, surrounded by broken tiles and crumbling walls, with thin mist swirling around. Vaguely, there were elongated, disproportionate shadows laughing strangely in the fog.

This was an isolated high platform surrounded by cliffs on all sides, with floating bridges extending from five directions into the distance, hidden by thick fog.

Yan Hongsha suddenly pushed Cao Yanhua with a trembling motion, saying in a low voice: “Cao Fatty, the door!”

It was a door – the back door of the bar. The entire bar had collapsed and fallen into ruins, but only that door, without frame or supports, still stood upright.

As if responding to Yan Hongsha’s words, just as she finished speaking, the door creaked open slowly from inside to outside.