Chapter 1983

Ah..! Ah...

In the dim room, Lin An suddenly sat up, gasping heavily, like a drowning victim dragged ashore, his mind a blank.

The high-pitched buzzing constantly ringing in his ears was like a playback before death; faint light and darkness intertwined, leaving layered silhouettes on his retina.

"Calm down...! Calm down...!"

His chest heaved rapidly; Lin An forced himself to swallow saliva, feeling his head about to split, a strong sense of death lingering.

Looking at the familiar room, looking at everything around him, Lin An forced himself to calm down.

It wasn't that his mind was fragile and unable to accept this; rather, at this moment he could not even be sure whether he was still alive or not!

Am I dead or alive!?

Who am I!? Am I Lin An or a skull ghost!?

Is my head still there...? If I died, when did I die!? If I didn't die, where is my head!

Too many problems tangled together, like an invisible spiderweb enveloping him.

After a long while, as a drop of blood fell from his palm, Lin An slowly rose to his feet, his eyes fixed firmly on the door ahead.

"I must have... restarted..."

"This is the apartment, the entry point. No system prompt, because time hasn't reversed; I was merely resurrected and sent back?"

Lin An strained to suppress all negative emotions, beginning to sort out the clues.

He must first clarify one thing: whether the head on his neck is still his own!

Taking a deep breath, Lin An slowly touched his cheek—no rotting flesh, no bone—after a while he slowly opened his eyes, only then feeling somewhat settled.

"It's still my head... at least for now."

"If my head was replaced at the start of the mission, then the cause of activating the skull ghost can only be cognition."

"Just like Jiang Haochen, realizing his head was a skull ghost led directly to death. It also can't be that it wasn't activated temporarily, because I returned with Memory."

"So..."

Lin An lowered his hand, took a deep breath.

"So the time our heads were swapped was before the light gate! Not after entering the mission and 'dying'!"

"Has cognition not been completed? It's not as I imagined, that cognition is checked only at the instant of leaving; rather, insufficient cognition causes death when approaching the exit!"

"It's simple, but an extraordinarily cruel logic."

"If the skull ghost awakens gradually as they encounter more information, and detonates in the final headless ghost area."

"For Lin An, he has already completed the skull ghost's information; he would die at the moment of resurrection! Conversely, swapping heads isn't unsolvable! The mission has a solution, so there must be a cognition that allows one to swap heads and still live."

"And that layer of cognition is exactly what they lack!"

"His thoughts gradually cleared, Lin An let out a long breath; although the skull ghost's final killing method is terrifying to the extreme."

"But knowing where the problem lies makes it easy to handle."

"Where will the missing cognition be?"

"It can't be in the information we found, nor can it be Qing Kai's team."

"I and the bull have finished analyzing the information we found; if Qing Kai hid any information, knowing it's still incomplete, he couldn't have died before us! Given his personality, he would surely gather all clues; he would die before us only if forced to gamble by being chased by ghosts!"

"Then the cognition that allows one to live without a head can only be with Andre!"

"Jiang Haochen, while fleeing, didn't realize what Andre discovered, or perhaps he lacked our information here, and even after meeting up there was no time to complete it. Of course, the greatest possibility is that he gained no cognition at the mental hospital, while Andre conceived an incomplete cognition but died outright during testing..."

"It's like a jigsaw puzzle, both sides missing a piece..."

"Lin An furrowed his brows; he had thought of this as soon as he encountered Jiang Haochen."

"But back then the situation was urgent, he was exhausted from fleeing, and he could only gamble on whether his cognition was complete."

"If that's the case, the information Andre saw is key."

"Living without a head... what cognition can make that possible?"

"And what did he lack, causing him to die even after knowing one could live without a head?"

"Lin An raised his head, instinctively looking out the window."

"The mental hospital! If we find Andre before his death and complete his cognition, theoretically we won't die in the final act!"

One minute later.

Lin An shouldered a steel pipe taken apart and used as a spear, his gaze wavering in astonishment at the apartment building.

"Why... is there no one?"

"Did I restart and return to before the mission began?"

All around was silent; the whole city seemed to have only him. The apartment building was empty, and the room where the troll and others were was locked by an unknown force, which he couldn't open.

No mission prompts, no countdown, and no system shield.

Faced with such a bizarre scene, Lin An could only treat himself as having returned to before the mission began.

Not wanting to waste time here, Lin An took a deep breath, glanced back at the building behind him, and decided to head first to the mental hospital.

He hadn't not considered going to check the situation near the exit.

If the mission truly hasn't started, perhaps there are no headless ghosts there. But after careful thought, Lin An still gave up that tempting idea.

The final exit is likely where the skull ghost triggers a head swap. His cognition remains incomplete; if he's carelessly killed again, it would truly be a waste of the restart.

"If the mission hasn't started... at least there's little danger."

"Andre and his group are farthest from the exit; if everything is as I think, I can just bring Jiang Haochen and the others back to find Zhang Tie."

In his mind he quickly simulated a simple map.

Taking his current position as the origin, the exit is behind him, ahead is the workshop, further ahead to the right is the art gallery, and beneath the art gallery is the mental hospital.

In terms of efficiency, directly meeting everyone at the mental hospital is indeed the optimal solution.

Soon, he sprinted all the way.

After continuously passing through a large area of familiar buildings, Lin An finally saw the hospital sign bearing the words "Okayama Prefecture Mental Health Research Center".

But for some unknown reason, before Lin An entered the hospital, he couldn't help but turn back and glance at the distant pitch-black building.

The pitch-black building was like carbonized dead wood, straightly thrusting toward the sky.