Uncle Fu rushed to review the palace’s surveillance footage.
In the recording, everything appeared normal from the moment the youth left carrying the plate—right up until he reached Xiao Deng’s room.
The instant he pushed open that door, it was as if he’d opened Pandora’s box. Everything spiraled toward uncontrollable chaos.
The plate crashing onto the carpet served as a clear signal.
Even through the screen’s distance, they could all feel it—in those few short seconds, the youth had been utterly consumed by terror, struggling against drowning.
They weren’t unfamiliar with seeing Shi Deng in this state.
Shi Deng was having an episode.
Uncle Fu felt inexplicable cold seeping into his bones, his voice trembling as he rasped, “Quickly! Go check Xiao Deng’s room right now!”
There were no surveillance cameras inside the bedrooms. He watched Shi Deng remain inside for only a brief time before emerging again, wearing that strange smile as he retraced his steps back to where they were.
The old man’s eyes, still sharp despite his age, saw clearly what happened next—the youth had sprinkled something into their food. Yuan Ting had nearly eaten it.
Uncle Fu had followed Shi Deng through so many time retrogrades, but this was the most terrified he’d ever been.
Never this afraid before.
He no longer cared what substance had been scattered into their meals. He prayed for only one thing—
That Xiao Deng was unharmed.
Ever since Shi-ge vanished, for reasons no one understood, the Leader had lost control over Yellow Springs. Even now, that blood river remained suspended above Shenhu City.
Time retrograde, the way it had worked before, was no longer possible for the Leader to implement. At most, he could only apply his time manipulation ability to small things like flowers and plants, or within very limited areas.
If Xiao Deng truly died at the Leader’s hands, and the Leader regained clarity afterward to discover he’d killed him himself…
Uncle Fu didn’t dare follow that thought any further.
The moment consciousness returned, the Leader would completely lose his mind.
When they burst into Xiao Deng’s room, everyone had prepared themselves for the worst possible outcome. But Xiao Deng was groggily tumbling off the bed and crawling toward the door when he looked up to see four shocked faces staring at him.
Xiao Deng collapsed weakly. “Shi Deng had an episode.”
Yuan Ting walked over nervously, grabbed him, and shook him slightly. “Are you alright?!”
Xiao Deng managed, “…I’m okay. Where’s Shi Deng?”
When Shi Deng had been strangling him, he’d concentrated on holding his breath with all his might. He’d nearly passed out for real, and after Shi Deng left, he’d been unconscious for a while before waking.
At precisely that moment, a violent wave of ability fluctuations erupted from the adjacent room. A time chain, completely out of control, lashed toward the wall and crashed through it with a thunderous boom, shattering the partition between Xiao Deng’s and Shi Deng’s bedrooms.
Everyone’s gaze turned toward the opening. The scene inside Shi Deng’s bedroom came into full view.
The youth was huddled in agony, arms wrapped around his head. The floor was covered with water stains and scattered green stars. A medicine bottle lay discarded carelessly, pills rolled across the ground. Everything around him was in complete, chaotic disarray.
He clearly couldn’t control his ability anymore. The time chains lashed out indiscriminately, attacking everything around him without distinction.
“They’re all dead…”
He knocked his head against the floor again and again, laughing and sobbing simultaneously.
The pills he’d swallowed were beginning to take effect. Shi Deng teetered on the knife’s edge between sanity and madness as his mind replayed with crystal clarity everything he’d just done.
Xiao Deng’s flushed, straining face. His weak, desperate struggles. The concerned, trusting expressions of his companions and Uncle Fu. The poison he’d sprinkled into their food… All of it transformed into massive needles that stabbed mercilessly into his brain.
Indescribable pain violently tore apart this false world, and he realized with devastating certainty that this world was real.
What had he done?
Shi Deng developed an almost overwhelming urge to escape from himself. He wanted to gouge out his own eyes, pierce his eardrums—that way he couldn’t see or hear the ‘shadows’ around him mocking him for killing the wrong people.
How could he have killed the wrong people?
His consciousness drifted up and down like a condemned criminal about to drown in the deep sea. He clutched at his own throat, forcing himself to taste that same suffocating sensation he’d inflicted on others.
The medication drove away the chaotic delusions clouding his mind, but Shi Deng only felt more desperate in the clarity that followed.
He tried to hypnotize himself into believing this was all fake, attempting to kill himself to return to the real world. If he died, everything around him would cease to exist, wouldn’t it?
“Shi Deng!”
“Shi Deng, open your eyes and look—we’re all fine!”
Someone was calling him.
It was Xiao Deng… and Uncle Fu and the others’ voices too.
Liars.
Those ‘shadows’ around him were definitely trying to deceive him.
Or it was a hallucination.
But the voices calling his name grew increasingly urgent and frantic. Shi Deng slowly loosened his grip. His neck already bore a horrifying mark where his own fingers had been. His lashes trembled faintly before he finally forced his eyes open.
On the other side of the wall broken by time chains, Xiao Deng, Uncle Fu, and his friends stood together, perfectly safe, watching him with deep concern.
“Shi Deng, we’re okay.”
Xiao Deng looked at him nervously. “I’m you when you were little, remember? I’m really good at this stuff, you know. Playing dead is my specialty.”
The youth, his face streaked with tears, stared at them blankly for a long moment. Finally, as if confirming this wasn’t a dream, he stumbled off the bed.
But then, as if remembering something, Shi Deng’s steps toward them came to an abrupt halt. Two seconds later, he actually began backing away instead.
The youth didn’t appear to be fully lucid. His voice was a low, broken murmur. “I… I can’t come over there. I’ll hurt you…”
How laughable.
He’d placed Xiao Deng within his sphere of protection, installed surveillance cameras throughout the palace corridors, even deployed time chains to guard him constantly.
He’d worked to spare Uncle Fu from fatigue, protected his companions during battles to minimize their injuries…
After Shi-ge left, he’d been determined never to lose anyone close to him again. He wasn’t unaware that his excessive protectiveness bordered on pathological, but he simply couldn’t control it.
Yet in the end, the one who hurt them was himself.
Shi Deng’s consciousness flickered between clarity and chaos, his entire being balanced precariously on the borderline between sanity and madness. The aura emanating from him was abnormally dangerous—like a powder keg ready to explode at the slightest spark.
Uncle Fu and the others held their breath, terrified of provoking him further.
This careful, walking-on-eggshells treatment—Shi Deng felt it acutely.
An irrepressible wave of self-loathing surged through him.
He was the one who’d done wrong. So why were they still being so careful with him, still caring about him with such concern? What they should be doing right now was locking him up as the threat he was, ensuring he could never hurt them again.
This thought flashed through the youth’s mind, and it seemed perfectly reasonable to him.
A strange, manic light kindled in his heterochromatic eyes as he spoke to himself: “I’ll protect you.”
He looked up with a smile. “Every threat that might harm you—I’ll eliminate them all, one by one.”
Under Uncle Fu and Xiao Deng’s horrified, helpless gazes, the youth severed the tendons in his own hands and feet, sealed off two of the three major meridians through which his abilities flowed, and collapsed onto the water-soaked floor with a smile still on his face.
What happened after that, Shi Deng’s hazy consciousness could barely remember.
He saw sharp porcelain shards embedded in his limp, useless arms. His limbs bent at unnatural angles, soaked in the spreading water.
He saw the sunflowers he’d trampled floating in the water, rotting. The brilliant golden petals had transformed into a dirty, dim black, drifting up and down with the current.
Just like his world.
***
[Through a tall window, a single beam of heavenly light fell.
In the dim room, the youth lay sprawled limply in a pool of water, his heterochromatic eyes completely lifeless and gray.
Green woven stars scattered across the floor looked exactly like real stars, illuminating a bizarre dreamscape tinged with blood.
Not far away were his friends rushing toward him.
Light and shadow carved the space into stark divisions.
He was like a sunflower rotting in water.]
The manga chapter ended on this scene. Comic readers sat bolt upright from their deathbeds of despair, forty-meter-long blades aimed straight at the inhuman Bald Brush (author).
[I’d completely forgotten about Shi baby’s illness ahhhhh if he’d actually accidentally killed Xiao Deng this time, he really would have gone insane!]
[He’s already NOT normal, okay?! A normal person wouldn’t do that to themselves (screaming)]
[So like, can he even be saved anymore wuuuu Sister Le please come through, save him!]
[Save… save the child… save… what do I do (holding needle and thread in confusion), this broken Shi baby, where do I even start sewing him back together QAQ]
[After Shi-ge left I’ve had zero sense of security wuuu, is he really never coming back? Look what Shi baby’s done to himself.]
[Logically speaking, now that Yuan’s gone and the timeline’s moving forward, shouldn’t this manga be finished? Why is it still serializing wuuuu I’m so anxious, they’re not ALL going to die right qaq]
[It’s like a sunflower that used to be warm suddenly grew thorns that only roses should have. Even though it wasn’t his choice, he still hurt people. So Shi baby hurts himself—he’s pulling out all those harmful thorns, making himself incapable of hurting anyone else.]
[…]
***
The wheelchair that had sat unused for so long was once again pressed into service.
Shi Deng refused to cooperate with any treatment this time. He even moved out of the palace entirely, having people build a small wooden cabin for him deep within the sunflower field beneath the rear cliff.
In the depths of winter’s coldest period, this field bloomed brilliantly anyway. Golden petals were dusted with fresh snow.
This scene from nature—something absolutely impossible under normal circumstances—Shi Deng had forced into existence. He hadn’t sealed off all his primary meridians, deliberately leaving one open precisely so he could still use enough of his ability to keep these flowers blooming in perpetual radiance.
To make wheelchair navigation possible, neat pathways had been cleared through the flower field and paved with marble. The winding paths led deep into the sea of flowers, where Shi Deng had isolated himself in the small wooden cabin.
No matter how much Xiao Deng cried or how the others tried to persuade him, he rarely emerged to see them.
After the Yuan Marrow incident, Yuan Guang had disbanded many of its members, and the organization’s overall image had improved dramatically compared to before. Occasionally, when ability users passed by this flower field while executing missions, they found the sight so peculiar they wanted to venture deeper inside.
Shi Deng grew increasingly irritated by the intrusions. Eventually, he simply surrounded the entire area with a ring of time chains serving as a fence, and erected a wooden sign planted outside that read: [Monster’s Dwelling – Living People Keep Out].
Time chains were far too distinctive and recognizable. After the flower field was enclosed, all ability users knew this was Shi Deng’s territory.
Seeing the sign declaring that monsters lived inside, though they didn’t dare approach for fear of angering the Yuan Guang Leader, their curiosity only intensified.
As harsh winter gradually passed, some people claimed to have accidentally glimpsed the ‘monster’s’ shadow within that flower field.
Some said they’d seen a white-haired old man weathered and silent beneath the setting sun and white snow. Others claimed they’d spotted stars glowing with soft green light. Still others insisted they’d heard strange, unprecedented melodies. And some swore that multiple monsters were actually imprisoned there, because they’d witnessed blurry, illusory shadows and heard low conversations.
The rumors grew increasingly fantastical. This eternally blooming flower field gradually took on mysterious, fantastical colors. Inevitably, people sought information, eventually tracking down Yuan Ting and the others who were close to Shi Deng.
Yuan Ting and those who knew the truth listened in silence.
There were no monsters. Just one person who had locked himself away.
This sunflower field gained a name: [Monster’s Dwelling].
***
Shi Deng’s expression remained indifferent as he pushed his wheelchair forward at an unhurried pace. Snowflakes settled on his gray-white hair and lashes, intensifying the aura of late-life weariness that clung to him. His pale fingertips brushed snow from the sunflowers.
Unable to apply much force, he didn’t care—he simply brushed away a few more times.
Since his killing intent could trigger his episodes, he’d stopped hunting exotic beasts entirely. Now he took his medication daily, controlling his emotions with meticulous care.
Unless something major occurred, he would never again use his ability to stand. He wouldn’t give himself any chance to harm his friends.
A glass jar rested in his lap.
Only half the green stars remained inside.
These Yellow Springs reed leaves contained fragments of Shi-ge’s memories—all beautiful, comforting recollections that could soothe his emotions.
He finally understood what Shi-ge had meant when he left, calling this jar of stars his “bit of selfishness.”
Shi-ge hadn’t been certain whether everything related to him would vanish after he disappeared. So he’d created these stars to preserve memories as a gift.
They say a person’s true death begins when no one in the world remembers them anymore.
Shi Deng thought—so Shi-ge had been afraid too.
Afraid that after giving him this new future, the old future would be forgotten.
These green stars loaded with memories were like an addictive poison to him. He couldn’t control his urge to open and watch them.
Each time he viewed one, that star would disappear forever.
This seemed to be his only remaining pleasure.
After finishing all these stars, he wanted to leave. To truly depart, to disappear in the absolute sense.
Xiao Deng would surely be well cared for after that.
Perhaps he should send Xiao Deng back…
His thoughts drifted aimlessly. The youth grew drowsy in the snowy weather. Lately, he always felt cold easily, his body temperature perpetually icy. It wasn’t due to weather or ambient temperature—he could vaguely sense that he wouldn’t live much longer.
The time chains outside suddenly trembled violently. Zhi Ze’s voice carried from far away, unable to disguise his tension: “Shi Deng, there’s an emergency!”
Above Shenhu City, atop the surging Yellow Springs, a wisp of black, feeble mist had abruptly appeared.
It was bound by chains, shrieking curses: “I told you I can’t die! You can’t kill me! Once I’ve recovered, let’s see if any of you lunatics will drag me down to hell with you again!”
In the snowy flower field, the youth’s eyes slowly opened.
With excruciating slowness, those heterochromatic eyes welled up with chilling coldness and savage violence. Terrifying brutality pressed beneath the surface calm.
The youth’s gaze turned toward Shenhu City.
***
**
Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152