The wound on her neck had mostly stopped hurting. Her resilience and recovery rate never ceased to surprise her.
But Jin Xueli’s irritation kept building, like weeds choking every corner of her mind — impossible to pull out, no matter how hard she tried.
Turns out history was more stubborn than she’d given it credit for. Change one small detail, and sohow the whole trajectory stayed the sa. People always said that missing a single turn could send your life in a completely different direction. What a load of garbage.
A stalker, of all people, putting on this whole destined-lover, fated-soulmate act. Just thinking about it made her sick.
Jin Xueli glanced at the corpse.
This was the first ti she’d ever killed one of those supposedly unkillable residents — and she’d only managed it by talking it to death, literally. She couldn’t quite shake the unease. Every so often she had to look over, half-convinced it would co lurching back up off the floor the mont she stopped watching.
But she was worrying over nothing. Death had soaked into that body like cold water, freezing it solid, leaving nothing behind.
She studied it for a mont longer, then let out a quiet breath and opened the fire slot again.
One more try. This ti, Jin Xueli planned to cut off any chance of their eting right at the root.
She lted the candle from the sa window of ti and watched as transparent Candle Tears dripped down through the air, pooling into a still, glassy lake.
Inside that lake of wax, a tiny Jin Xueli and a tiny Amber stepped out of a miniature taxi together, laughing and talking as they walked into the bar. Jin Xueli watched them disappear through the front entrance, then swept her gaze back out to the street.
She rembered that night clearly. When the stalker Anthony had approached her, he’d said: "You must have arrived before . If I’d walked in while a girl like you was coming through the door, there’s no way I wouldn’t have noticed."
Not that you could take a pickup line at face value, but thinking back on it — Anthony really had shown up slightly after her.
Jin Xueli swallowed down her frustration and kept her eyes fixed, unblinking, on the bar’s front entrance.
The place had been packed that night. Within twenty or thirty minutes, four or five groups of strangers had climbed out of a string of cars. She’d never had to track this many tiny living people at once, all of them clustered in twos and threes, moving through the dark and the lamplight — nearly impossible to sort out. Her eyes were beginning to blur. Then, finally, she spotted Anthony rounding the corner.
From what she’d read, "suicide" through the Candle Tears seed possible. But nothing ntioned whether it could kill soone else.
Jin Xueli decided to find out.
What could be more conclusive than simply turning him into a corpse?
She’d never been eager to kill. In fact, since becoming a Hunter, she’d seen plenty of dead bodies — but not a single one had died by her hand. Not until tonight.
But sothing had cracked open inside her this evening. Sothing that hadn’t been there before was clawing its way out.
Then again, she’d already killed herself. Trying to kill soone from the past — a stalker, no less — hardly seed worth agonizing over.
And if it didn’t work, she’d find another way. Either way, she’d at least learn more about what the Candle Tears could actually do.
Jin Xueli held her finger suspended directly above Anthony’s head — like so massive celestial body hanging over the Earth, monts away from crashing down and wiping out the dinosaurs.
He had no idea. Hands in his pockets, posture easy, tall and loose-limbed. He looked, she had to admit, like a perfectly decent man.
...She’d have to wash her hands after crushing him.
Jin Xueli curled her knuckle and brought it down hard on that carefully styled head.
She’d expected sothing like squashing a large bug. Instead, it felt more like pressing down on a slippery ball — the stalker stumbled, shoved half a step sideways by the force of her blow, then steadied himself almost imdiately. Not only was he still alive, he didn’t even seem to be in pain.
Anthony looked down, muttered a curse, and kicked a pebble away.
...So you couldn’t just reach in and kill soone else? Only yourself?
That was almost funny.
As annoyed as she was, two more attempts only seed to confirm the theory. She tried nudging tiny Anthony into the road — an oncoming car swerved around him in ti, leaving him with nothing worse than an earful of abuse from the driver. She managed to pry loose a neon sign, tid it carefully, and watched it arc through the air and slam into the pavent right at Anthony’s feet, grazing his nose on the way down.
The stalker was clearly not an ordinary person. After brushing past danger three tis in a row, he strolled right into the bar without so much as a second thought.
So "most powerful Illusion." The broadcast had seriously oversold it. Can’t kill anyone, can’t stop a chance eting — what was the point of this pathetic little candle containing the past at all?
In the end, wasn’t everything exactly the sa? Nothing changed?
Swallowing her frustration, Jin Xueli moved through the Candle Tears, searching for herself.
She’d gotten fairly good at navigating them by now. It didn’t take long to find the mont they t: tiny Anthony pushed open the dark red back door, spotted tiny Jin Xueli, and walked straight over to start talking to her.
"I didn’t have the guts to ask for your number. I’m not the kind of guy who goes around chatting up girls." Anthony said it with sothing like wonder in his voice. "But you know what? On my way here, a neon sign ca out of nowhere and crashed down right in front of — this close. One more half-step and I’d have been dead. When sothing like that happens, you start thinking about how unpredictable life is, and you can’t let monts slip by..."
She’d upgraded his pickup line for him?
Jin Xueli had played The Sims as a kid. Watching tiny Anthony and tiny herself swap numbers through the Candle Tears, she felt a disorienting, almost dreamlike sense of familiarity — and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
But this wasn’t a video ga.
Jin Xueli watched that tiny, oblivious version of herself do exactly what she’d been hoping to prevent — exchange numbers with Anthony. She let out a quiet, irritated sigh and shut the fire slot. She needed to let the Candle Tears cool and set, to lock this new version of events in place, before lting them again and trying to rewrite it one more ti.
Tiny Jin Xueli — she’d lost count of how many tis now — pushed open the back door and stepped out of the bar, leaving behind the thick tangle of music and alcohol fus, breathing in the outside air.
A convoy of matte-black rcedes SUVs rose out of the night without a sound. Every vehicle was armored — blast-proof, bulletproof — maintaining perfectly even spacing as they rolled past the bar’s back door one by one.
As the last one was about to pass, Jin Xueli reached out and flicked it toward the back door. The SUV — no bigger than a matchbox — was caught by the force, its front end wrenching sideways. With a sharp shriek of tires, it slamd nose-first into the back entrance of the bar.
The door, which hadn’t been fully shut to begin with, took the full impact — panels caved in, hinges twisted out of shape. It hung there at a crooked angle. Anyone could see it wasn’t closing again.
Tiny Jin Xueli stood two steps away from the SUV, face gone pale.
Oh. Right. She’d forgotten to protect her past self. Oh well — she hadn’t been hit, hadn’t died. Good enough.
It wasn’t as if Jin Xueli had asked to get tangled up with so stalker. If past-her had to suffer a good scare because of it, honestly, she had it coming.
With a sort of detached, vaguely contemptuous indifference, Jin Xueli watched tiny-her stumble back a few steps and shout at no one in particular: "Soone call for help — there’s been a crash!"
If the accident shut the bar down temporarily, it might be enough to keep the two of them from ever crossing paths —
She hadn’t even finished the thought when the driver’s door of the SUV was shoved open. A man in a black suit half-fell out of the vehicle, scrambled around to the far side of the open door, and dropped into a low crouch. His left temple had split open on impact; blood, dark curls, and an earpiece were all matted together in a tangled ss.
But the most noticeable thing was the 9mm pistol held steady between both hands.
Nearby, the mont tiny Jin Xueli’s eyes landed on that gun, her lips pressed into a thin line.
The car had been hit. It couldn’t move. He’d bailed imdiately — because staying inside would have made him a sitting duck. He was sheltering behind the door — using it as cover against any potential sniper. Despite taking what looked like a significant blow, the 9mm was still held in a firing position, elbow slightly bent, not so much as trembling...
Both the Jin Xueli inside the Candle Tears and the one outside it arrived at the sa conclusion: this was a highly trained private bodyguard.
Which ant the other vehicles —
Jin Xueli turned imdiately. As expected — not a mont wasted. The rest of the convoy had already scattered in every direction: the other four SUVs had each broken formation simultaneously, changing lanes, splitting off, accelerating away into the depths of the dark streets and scattered lights.
That’s an impressive level of professionalism, she thought.
The instant the rear vehicle was hit and disabled, the rest of the convoy had abandoned it, dissolved the formation, and peeled off in separate directions — creating maximum distance between themselves in a matter of seconds. This was clearly a crisis protocol they’d prepared for in advance.
Protocols like that generally served one purpose: to protect whoever was riding in one specific car within the convoy, and to make sure any potential enemy couldn’t determine which car that was.
"...No, I can’t confirm what was done to the vehicle at this stage. Correct — no hostile contact so far." The man in the black suit crouched behind the door, speaking in a low voice into his earpiece. "The situation with the car is strange, but I’m not seeing any signs that an Illusion was used in the area... Understood. There’s a bar here. Civilians in the vicinity — they’ve likely already called the police."
Illusion? Did he just say Illusion?
Jin Xueli’s interest sharpened instantly. She leaned in closer — fortunately, the man in the black suit was just a tiny figure inside the Candle Tears, completely unaware that a massive human ear was hovering in the air above his car, catching every word.
"...Understood." A few seconds passed. He spoke again, voice low and asured. "In any dealings or communications going forward, I will not ntion Mr. Westley’s na."
Mr. Westley?
Jin Xueli went still.
An important figure. The surna Westley. Could it be — was the person this convoy was protecting none other than Westley himself, Blackmoor City’s most powerful and wealthy man?
Westley certainly held an elevated position in society, but he wasn’t a head of state. The fact that his security was this tight could only an one thing: he knew he was in danger. Real danger.
Was it possible that his death, not far off from now, wasn’t from natural causes — but from soone’s hand?
Had he sensed soone was planning to assassinate him months in advance, and put these ticulous security asures in place because of it?
Curious as she was, Jin Xueli hadn’t lost sight of why she was here. She glanced back at the rear entrance.
The crash had drawn everyone outside — so gawking, so on their phones, a few already posting photos to Twitter. The man in the black suit had read the situation quickly; to avoid causing a scene, he’d already tucked the 9mm back into the holster beneath his jacket. His hand still rested over it, ready to draw at any mont.
In the middle of the gathered crowd, tiny Jin Xueli and Amber were speaking quietly to each other. A short distance away, tiny Anthony was glancing over at them repeatedly.
A few seconds later, he walked up, flashed a smile, and said hello to tiny Jin Xueli.
Unbelievable. Was there seriously no way to keep herself from running into Anthony?
Jin Xueli swore silently, but after a mont’s consideration, decided to set the stalker problem aside for now.
The fact that Westley had appeared in her Candle Tears history ant his fate had crossed hers in so way. And that was the interesting part: what possible connection could she have with Blackmoor City’s wealthiest man, who was about to die?
She left tiny Jin Xueli and the stalker to their own devices, and worked backward through the Candle Tears from the ti the Westley convoy had appeared, tracing her way to an approximate point before lighting a new fire slot.
If she could track Westley’s history, there was no telling how much she might uncover...
The more you watched sothing, the slower it moved.
Jin Xueli touched the lting wax, adjusted the fla, touched it again — restless, impatient, her thoughts scattered. Her gaze drifted aimlessly around the room.
It wasn’t until so ti later that she suddenly registered two things.
First: the section of Candle Tears in which she and Anthony had t because of the car crash had solidified again, locking into place as the latest version of history.
Second: the corpse on the gallery floor had vanished.
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