Chapter 908: Determined to Die

Heimu stood again in front of the deep brown wooden door, and only one thought filled her mind.

She clashed with the door.

Her ash‑white long hair fell from her shoulders, the collar of her teacher's uniform still neatly wore the school‑badge pin, and the black fabric appeared especially crisp in the hallway's dim light.

"Three's the limit!"

She muttered to the door panel, "This time be normal for me!"

She raised her hand and knocked three times on the wooden door.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

She waited three seconds.

Five seconds.

Eight seconds.

Beyond the door was dead silence.

Heimu withdrew her hand from the door panel, her dark‑purple eyes narrowing slightly, a hint of an ominous premonition flashing in her pupils.

"No way?"

She talked to the door panel by herself, then took a deep breath and placed her hand on the door handle.

This time she even omitted the self‑justification of "I knocked," and the System Panel's permission lightly touched the lock code, the lock core snapping open with a click.

She pushed the door open and entered with a fluid, cloud‑like motion, more decisive and crisp than before, without any unnecessary hesitation.

The living‑room layout matched her memory perfectly.

A dark‑gray fabric sofa, cold medicine on the low coffee table, and half a plate of pickled radish.

And the middle‑aged man lying on the floor between the coffee table and the sofa.

His posture was almost the same as last time: upper body turned left, lower body right, left hand stretched forward just touching a coffee‑table leg, one leg half‑crouched, the other leg straightened, and only one slipper remained on his foot.

The dark‑red liquid on the floor seeped into the wood‑grain cracks like a spider web, its spreading direction unchanged.

Heimu stood at the doorway, staring at the corpse on the floor, her mouth corner twitching.

"Same posture. Same position. Good!"

Each word seemed squeezed out of a tooth gap, "He didn't even change the angle he fell. Does this NPC have a fixed death animation?"

She took a few steps forward, crouched, and reached to probe the side of the corpse's neck.

Warm.

There's residual heat.

All vital‑sign parameters on the System Panel read zero; time of death, five minutes ago.

This time she rode a motorbike at high speed all the way here, climbed the stairs at a pace of three steps per footstep, yet she was still five minutes late!

Heimu rose from beside the corpse, hands on her hips, looking down at the comically‑posed middle‑aged man on the floor, her mind beginning to race.

No matter how early she set out, her arrival at this door was always later than the time of death.

If this were a game, this mechanic would probably be called "Plot Kill".

"So you're determined to die?"

Heimu said a line to the corpse, her tone tinged with impatience toward the world's rules.

She lifted her foot to nudge the lone slipper beside the coffee table into a more upright position, then crouched to re‑examine the corpse's wound.

This time she looked more closely than before.

The wound lay on the left side of the chest, its edges neat, as if pierced through in one strike by some blade.

The torn fabric fibers around the incision were smooth, and the skin's tear pattern was clean and crisp.

The amount of blood was frightening, yet there was only one fatal wound.

She tilted her head, gauged the wound's angle and depth; her dark‑purple pupils contracted slightly. Given the angle and force, the attacker most likely approached from the front, delivering a single, decisive blow without hesitation.

Moreover, Hua's father's falling posture was comical, but judging from the position of his hands and the stance of his legs, he barely made any defensive or Blocking move.

A martial practitioner, even if chilled and sluggish, would instinctively produce some defensive reaction to a frontal attack.

But he didn't.

Either the killer was someone he knew and trusted, or the killer's strike was so fast he had no time to react.

Heimu drew a circle in the air above the wound with her fingertip.

Suddenly, footsteps came from the doorway.

Heimu's body stiffened.

She slowly turned her head toward the doorway.

Hua was standing at the doorframe at that moment.

Her ash‑blue low ponytail swung to the front of her left shoulder as she hurried, a few stray strands sticking to the thin sweat on her temple.

She still carried her schoolbag, the cuffs of her uniform slightly rolled up to reveal a sliver of wrist.

Her ice‑blue eyes first landed on Heimu, then slowly shifted to the floor, to the middle‑aged man lying beside the coffee table, and finally to the pool of dark‑red liquid.

Her pupils contracted sharply, and the schoolbag slipped from her elbow, crashing onto the floor.

Heimu gradually straightened, hands hanging at her sides, her expression control reaching its peak.

A smile tugged at her mouth corner.

"Stop."

She extended a hand, palm forward, making a restraining gesture.

"I know you have many questions now. The person on the ground is your father. He's dead. I'm standing beside him. No matter how you interpret this scene, there's only one answer."

Hua didn't look at her.

Her eyes stared fixedly at the corpse on the ground, and the thin layer of watery sheen in her ice‑blue irises gathered and thickened.

Heimu watched Hua's reaction, knowing that her opening line "I know you have many questions" had completely sunk into the water, not even a splash.

But she still had one thing to confirm.

A detail that was completely illogical.

"Before all this—"

Her voice suddenly rose a bit, forcibly pulling Hua's attention away from the corpse, "Answer me a question first. School's not over yet, right? How did you end up here?"

The question precisely struck a contradiction point on a timeline.

After she and Hua split up in the restroom, she went straight downstairs, rode a scooter, and rushed over, the whole trip taking an extremely short time.

Meanwhile, Hua should still have been in class; even if Hua skipped out and went home the moment she left, she couldn't be faster than the scooter.

So how did Hua appear at the doorstep at this Time Node?

Regrettably, Hua didn't answer her.

Hua's gaze merely rested silently on the middle‑aged man's body on the ground.

Heimu lowered her hand.

She massaged her temples, and her dark‑purple eyes flashed quickly at an angle Hua couldn't see.

"Sigh."

This clue was cut off again.

Hua didn't answer her question at all; she wasn't even sure whether Hua heard her speaking.

Fingers rubbed together.

The snapping sound spread through the air. Time began to flow wildly backward again.

All colors and lights were stretched into blurry streaks, buzzing.

Then everything fell silent.

The square on the hallway tiles. And the puzzled face before her.

Hua tilted her head slightly to look at her, a gray‑blue low ponytail hanging quietly on her shoulder, and her ice‑blue eyes held all the politeness and bewilderment a good student should have when faced with a suddenly frantic teacher.

Heimu's lips moved, speaking at a breakneck speed, each word popping out: "It's nothing, go back to class; the teacher already left early."

By the time she finished that sentence, she was already three meters away.

Her black short boots clacked densely on the hallway tiles, the hem of the teacher's uniform flaring high in the wind from her sprint, and her gray‑white long hair swung behind her like a straight waterfall.

Hua stood rooted, mouth open, the trailing sound of the word "lao" still drifting in her ear without landing, as Heimu's figure vanished around the stair corner.