Those who went back to their memories were awake and aware, but they couldn’t control their bodies. They could only watch the tragedy happen, unable to do anything to stop it. That made the whole experience even harder to bear.

So the moment Qiu Fa opened his eyes, he knew he had fallen into a trap. He was back on the day of his fifth birthday.

His mother placed a tiger hat on his head and led him downstairs to meet his relatives, who had traveled from all over the country. His brothers and sisters all adored him, spoiling him endlessly. Gifts piled up like rain, and everyone offered him bright smiles.

No matter how hard he struggled, he was trapped inside his childhood body, forced to watch everything play out.

“Little tiger, what are you doing? Come over here!”

“Xiao Fa, come on.”

“What’s wrong, young heir? It’s your birthday today. Cheer up a bit!”

They gathered together, waving him over for a family photo. After the photo would be the banquet. The banquet… where their blood would stain the halls. This warm, loving home was about to become a place of absolute despair. And he was forced to watch his parents and family smile, knowing they were all walking toward their doom.

Agony surged like a rising tide, drowning the shore.

Suddenly, the pitch-black gatekeeper emerged from the void behind him like a grim reaper. The three-meter-tall shadow enveloped Qiu Fa, allowing him to break free from his childhood body.

But by then, the bright, warm home had already filled with a dark fog, turning cold and desolate.

“Who are you? What did you do to my son?!” a woman shrieked.

Qiu Fa froze and spun around. His mother was staring at him with shock and rage, while his young self lay unconscious on the floor. Breaking free from that memory felt like tearing off a suffocating suit.

Before he could process the situation, his mother lunged at him with a fruit knife. Her strike was swift, precise, and lethal. As Qiu Fa dodged, he felt the cold blade brush past his skin, leaving a slight sting.

Pain?

He paused for a moment. Then a gunshot rang out. Pain shot through his shoulder. He looked up, shocked. His mother was holding a gun, staring at him with cold anger.

The Qiu family matriarch was a top graduate of the Twelve Zodiac Academy. Her skills far surpassed her peers. Through sheer talent, she had risen from a beat cop to a captain, and even after marriage, she served as the chief of the Yunjin Prefecture Police Bureau. Her martial arts and shooting skills had never grown rusty.

Qiu Fa’s eyes darkened. Another presence approached from behind, carrying a sharp wave of killing intent.

“Father…” Qiu Fa muttered.

“Dear! He killed Xiao Fa! Kill him! Kill him!” his mother shrieked. Her hair was messy, and her eyes held a frantic, desperate rage. She truly saw him as the murderer of her child. Her gun barked again, aiming straight for his vitals.

Soon, his brothers and other relatives arrived. The black fog completely swallowed the house.

Since he failed to pass the stage, the most brutal failure penalty appeared. Every loved one from his memories turned their weapons against him.

This was the penalty of the hidden stage within Qiao Ming’s ultimate skill, Despair Labyrinth.

The trap was devious. It set an impossible condition, used Guiding Voice to dredge up the target’s deepest memories, and then created physical illusions based on those memories. The stronger the loved ones were in the target’s memory, the more powerful the illusions would be. And if these illusions killed the target, they died in the real world as well.

Qiao Ming sat in his room, watching Qiu Fa’s screen without any surprise.

No one could pass this hidden stage, least of all Qiu Fa. He was destined to die here. This was why Qiao Ming hadn’t teamed up with Shi Gang to fight Qiu Fa; there was no need to share the credit.

“Now, can you bring yourself to kill them all over again, Qiu Fa?” Qiao Ming murmured.

Even if Qiu Fa knew they were fake, the memories were real. There had always been a debate about whether the Qiu family massacre was caused by Qiu Fa’s Atavist power going wild. Many believed he did it because the flesh of his family found under his fingernails was solid proof. Qiu Fa himself must have spent years questioning whether he was the one who destroyed his family.

With that doubt in mind, could he really strike them down?

Qiao Ming already knew the answer. He turned his gaze away from Qiu Fa and focused on Jing Pei’s screen. She was the one he loathed the most.

---

Compared to Qiu Fa’s dramatic tragedy, Jing Pei’s past life had been a slow, quiet river, though it was filled with sharp rocks.

Her mother had been a well-known beauty in their hometown. Unfortunately, she fell for a terrible man before she could graduate from college. Duped and pregnant, she dropped out of school, returned home, and gave birth to Jing Pei.

Rumors started spreading. People claimed her mother had been a mistress to a wealthy businessman in the city, and she only returned because the man’s wife found out and made a massive scene.

In a tiny town, gossip spread like wildfire. A beauty like her mother naturally drew attention. Even with a child, men constantly flirted with her and offered favors, which irritated the local wives and neighbors.

The rumors grew wilder. Jing Pei’s grandparents, who already favored boys over girls, felt deeply embarrassed by her birth. Naturally, they never treated her well.

When she was three, she slipped and fell into a lake. Her grandfather stood nearby, watching without immediately helping. Jing Pei could see the hesitation in his eyes—he was debating whether to just let her drown. Without a child, his daughter could find a better match.

But his conscience won in the end, and he reached down to pull her out.

Although her mother and grandparents tried to deny the gossip, nobody believed them. The neighbors gave Jing Pei a nickname, “Little Fox.” It sounded cute, but anyone who knew the subtext meant “little homewrecker.”

“A little fox born from a big fox. She’ll grow up to steal other women’s husbands too.”

“She looks just like her mother. So young, yet already so flirtatious.”

“Little fox, don’t follow in your mother’s footsteps, or you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

When adults hates someone, their children followed suit. Even kids spat those toxic words at her, constantly bullying and isolating her.

Treated with cold indifference at home, she faced the same at school. In a small town, her classmates were the neighbors’ children. They brought the rumors to school, and soon, everyone believed the lies. They either ignored her or threw away her textbooks and notebooks. Even the teachers hates her, often throwing chalk at her or kicking her out of the classroom for no reason.

Jing Pei stood before her childhood self. Bending down, she gently wiped a chalk mark off the little girl’s forehead.

When she was in the sixth grade, her mother remarried a wealthy businessman.

Her stepfather treated them well at first. But during her second year of middle school, he crept into her bed late one night. Jing Pei pulled a knife from under her pillow and slashed him.

Being young and frail, she only managed to nick his arm. Terrified by the look in her eyes and wanting to avoid a scandal, her stepfather backed off.

When Jing Pei told her mother the next day, her mother slapped her instead. Sobbing, she cried, “Why is my life so miserable? What did I do to deserve these terrible men? None of you want me to have a good life. You all just want to ruin me!”

Her mother was always wallowing in self-pity. Having never received enough love growing up, she was easily swayed whenever someone showed her a bit of kindness. The man apologized, claiming he was drunk and made a mistake, and her mother chose to believe him—or rather, she refused to believe otherwise.

For high school, Jing Pei studied hard and got into a prestigious provincial school far from home. She was the only student from her county to make it, finally leaving those toxic pests behind. She spent a few happy weeks at her new school, and the teachers liked her, often hinting that her poor middle school had held her back.

But the happiness didn’t last. Because of her looks, she was dragged into the typical high school drama of unrequited crushes. Wealthy classmates looking for trouble dug up her past and spread it everywhere.

“No wonder she seems so fake. Her mother was a mistress, after all.”

“Exactly. Acting all aloof and focused only on studying. I thought she was some high-class lady, but she’s just a little fox.”

“I bet she has a boyfriend outside school.”

“I heard she was already sleeping around in middle school…”

It felt as if an invisible hand kept her from stepping into the light. The shadows of endless malice followed her, trying to drag her into the mud. Seeing his chance, her stepfather attempted to tame her, hoping she would grow terrified of the outside world like her mother and seek shelter in his arms.

“Actually, there’s something I want to tell you,” Jing Pei suddenly said to him.

“What is it?”

“My brain doesn’t seem quite right. Why don’t you take me to a doctor for a checkup?”

“Huh?”

“Lately, I often feel like killing people.”

Terrified, the man immediately took her for brain scans and psychological evaluations. The brain scans showed she was healthy and possessed an exceptionally high IQ, but the psychiatrist diagnosed her with suspected antisocial personality disorder.

Wealthy people valued their lives. Frightened, her stepfather never bothered her again. However, someone eventually found the report in her backpack, sparking a new rumor that she was mentally unstable.

Then, a student fell to her death at school.

“It must be her!”

“Definitely. Yao Jiajia badmouthed her so many times. Since she’s crazy, she must have pushed her!”

“How terrifying. I don’t want to go to school with someone like that.”

Suddenly, everyone treated her as the killer. Parents demanded her expulsion, and neither her mother nor her stepfather defended her. The victim’s wealthy family vented their grief on her, and under the immense pressure, the school expelled her.

When the police report finally concluded it was an accidental fall, the school moved on. Those who had slandered her simply brushed it off. “Oh, so it wasn’t her,” they said casually. “But it was reasonable to suspect her. She isn’t normal anyway.” With that, they returned to their daily lives as if nothing happened.

Born in the mud, luck never seemed to favor her. Everyone she met was awful. Even when she kept to herself, trouble sought her out. Sometimes, you just had to admit some people were simply unlucky, encountering nothing but terrible people on their journey.

Jing Pei stood beside her teenage self, gently wrapping an arm around the girl’s thin shoulders in comfort.

Qiao Ming watched, a cruel smile plastered on his face. “I didn’t expect your past to be so miserable. Do you hate being born? Do you hate your mother for bringing you into this world when she couldn’t protect you? Do you hate your grandfather for wanting you dead? Do you hate your own looks for drawing so much attention? Do you hate that nobody ever came to save you? You must despise yourself, don’t you?”

But as he spoke, he froze. Something was wrong. Why hadn’t the gatekeeper moved?

He leaned forward. The screen focused on Jing Pei’s face, and his eyes widened. She was smiling!

She was actually smiling while looking back at her painful past. And worse, it wasn’t a forced smile at all.

Jing Pei’s eyes crinkled with genuine amusement, as if the school that had once wrongfully accused and expelled her was a scenic view.

“I had forgotten most of this. Thanks for bringing it back so I could experience it again,” Jing Pei laughed. “The more I see of my past, and the more I feel how fate tried to drag me into the mud to keep me down forever, the more I appreciate my current self—the one who beat fate, conquered malice, and now stands in the light.”

“I absolutely love myself.” The adult Jing Pei embraced her younger self. Cheeks pressed together, they turned to look at Qiao Ming. The two nearly identical faces flashed matching smiles—beautiful, yet chilling. “Qiao Ming, do you honestly think everyone gets trapped by their past?”

“Do you think everyone needs to be saved by someone else?”

In that instant, Qiao Ming’s heart skipped a beat. To him, Jing Pei no longer looked like a human. She looked like a vengeful specter coming for his life.

[Hidden Stage: Cleared]