Chapter 286: Prumeliam

“Put down your guns, or this fat pig’s head explodes in the next second!” John pressed the muzzle of his gun tightly against Chief Ebunick’s temple, eyes bulging, face twisted in fury.

“Go ahead and shoot.” The leather-clad man showed not the slightest sign of compromise; he strode forward with his pistol, barking:

“Shoot, coward! If you still have that thing between your legs! Why don’t you shoot? Are you too scared? Or have you already offered your cock and your manhood to the devil?”

Chief Ebunick’s face turned ashen, his legs trembling uncontrollably; he stammered, “J-John! What’s wrong with you? Don’t be reckless, John, don’t shoot...”

Watching the leather-clad man advance step by step, Officer John clenched his teeth, his index finger hovering over the trigger but unable to pull it.

—The ghoul cannot kill directly; it can only lure the living through lies and deception. Only the ‘tiger demon’ that enslaves these ghouls can truly kill.

The Freymisret family called them ‘necromancers.’

Ning Zhe stood with his hands raised in silence, puzzled: “In the dream, the ghouls in Vanessa Castle showed no signs of intelligence, couldn’t communicate verbally, wandered aimlessly like mindless automatons, mechanically obeying the ‘ghost’s’ orders—like wind-up clocks.”

But in the real world, Officer John, now a ghoul, retained human intelligence—he could speak, converse, display vivid expressions and emotions, even point a gun at the chief’s head and threaten the investigation team.

“What causes the difference in intelligence between ghouls inside and outside the dream?”

As Ning Zhe pondered this, a gunshot suddenly cracked, followed by a rapid, firecracker-like barrage. Officer John raised his right arm and fired at the chandelier hanging from the arched ceiling; with expert European-style iaido, he emptied all eleven rounds from his magazine within two seconds.

Handguns have poor long-range accuracy, but under this saturation fire, the chains suspending the chandelier snapped. The investigation team’s four guns opened fire simultaneously; blood blossomed across Officer John’s chest. The heavy crystal chandelier crashed down, striking directly at the wooden table where the chessboard lay, and the black-dressed girl standing motionless before it.

—Ghouls cannot kill directly, but they can bypass the rules to kill indirectly.

Ning Zhe confirmed once again: ghouls in the real world possessed intelligence—not the mindless, mechanical corpses of the dream.

Ning Zhe didn’t care whether the investigation team lived or died; he cared only about the ‘tiger demon’ that turned people into ghouls—what was its true core rule? Watching Officer John fall, shot down, Ning Zhe took two quiet steps forward to get a closer look.

But the moment he stepped forward, his leg retracted involuntarily.

“Huh?” Ning Zhe was startled: “What’s going on?”

Instantly, his entire body lost control and was forced backward. He watched in disbelief as bullets flew out of Officer John’s chest, retracing their path back into the gun’s chamber; the blooming blood wounds sealed shut; the falling chandelier rose back to the arched ceiling.

As the broken iron chains restored themselves, the eleven bullets returned to Officer John’s magazine.

Ning Zhe and Chief Ebunick retreated back to the six members of the investigation team. At the entrance, grimy and dusty, Carmack and John had just stepped inside.

Ning Zhe turned his head and saw the black-dressed girl raising a pale, delicate hand, her luminous fingertip pressing against a ‘pawn’ at the center of the chessboard, about to push it forward one square.

Time had returned to the moment she moved the pawn.

She had taken back her move.

Before Ning Zhe could think further, the black-dressed girl spoke softly, her voice as tranquil as moonlight on a still pond: “Marine, the one on the right is a ghoul. Eliminate him.” The woman called Marine didn’t hesitate—she drew her gun, aimed, and fired. In less than half a second, the bullet pierced Officer John’s forehead.

So fast—American iaido.

Ning Zhe couldn’t help but glance again at the maid, Marine. This woman’s combat strength might surpass his own.

“This!” Chief Ebunick was stunned, then furious; he whirled and roared: “You’ve gone too far, Miss Freymisret! Even as a lady of the Freymisret family, you cannot execute a loyal officer without legal judgment!”

So her name was ‘Freymisret.’

Prumeliam Freymisret—Ning Zhe memorized the name.

The investigation team reacted swiftly. The leather-clad man immediately moved to subdue Carmack, still reeling from his colleague’s death; another member expertly removed Officer John’s gloves.

“Missing a pinky on the left hand—this officer has indeed become the devil’s servant.”

Maid Marine nodded. Prumeliam lowered her head in silence. She did not move another pawn as before, but instead ‘raised the cannon,’ pulling a chess piece engraved with the red character ‘ Pao ’ behind the pawn.

Chess is an ancient game originating over two thousand years ago in the Warring States period, when China had not yet developed firearms. The ‘cannon’ in chess did not refer to gunpowder artillery, but to a stone-throwing catapult.

No error in any single character or content—look carefully!

Catapult, written as ‘ Pao ,’ later became homophonous with ‘ Pao .’

After raising the cannon, Prumeliam removed her hand from the board and stood still. Ning Zhe now had a good guess: if she moved the raised ‘ Pao ’ back to its original position, what would happen?

Time would rewind to the moment before she made her first move.

From the reactions of the investigation team and Chief Ebunick, they seemed unaware that time had been reversed. To them, Carmack and John had just entered the room, and Prumeliam immediately recognized John as a ghoul and ordered Marine to shoot him.

“Only the player retains memory of the undo?” Ning Zhe speculated silently: “But if that’s true, why do I retain my memory? I’m not the player—why wasn’t my memory reset by the undo?”

What makes me different from everyone else here?

After a moment’s thought, Ning Zhe considered several hypotheses:

1. I am an Ascended One; everyone else here, except Prumeliam, is probably not.

2. My life is bound to Lan Shiwen through Taiyi; Lan Shiwen’s death triggers death regression—a rule involving time, possibly conflicting with the ‘undo’ rule, which also manipulates time.

3. Like Prumeliam, I’ve been classified by the chessboard as a ‘player.’

(End of Chapter)