Chapter 132: Today (8)

Orff once believed that this monster was something created by Mark, the operator of the snuff website. Otherwise, why would it suddenly kill him without any warning?

However, in the twenty-third loop, after witnessing the horrific death of Professor Abel, he was no longer so sure.

After killing Abel, something seemed to happen to the monster—it hovered in midair, as if someone had pressed a pause button, completely motionless.

“I’m a police officer! It’s dangerous here—get back!” Seeing that several students in the distance were actually filming with their phones without any regard for their safety, Sawitt shouted sharply and waved at them.

“Is that guy crazy? Shooting at thin air…”

“But he says he’s a cop—guess we should call campus security!”

The students didn’t dare linger any longer. Chattering among themselves, they crouched slightly while clutching their phones and quickly retreated.

Sawitt ignored their nonsense. Once there were no more students within the firing range, he raised his pistol and fired several more shots toward the monster.

The bullets entered the monster’s body as if striking air, then passed straight through its back and landed in the bushes behind it. From beginning to end, not a single mark was left on the creature.

That monster, which appeared to be made of flesh and blood, had no physical form at all!

“Jesus! What the hell is that thing?!”

“Mrs. Salaman, please help the chief!”

The two officers were clearly seeing such a shocking scene for the first time. Fear spread across their faces as they turned to the psychic for help.

However, unexpectedly, while everyone in the car could see the flesh-and-blood monster, the only person with supernatural abilities—the psychic, Mrs. Salaman—widened her eyes in confusion, her face filled with astonishment.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t see any monster you mentioned… Including Sawitt—what exactly is he shooting at? Is there something in midair? Because I didn’t see anything, and I didn’t feel anything either…”

“Mrs. Salaman! This isn’t the time for jokes—that thing is already charging at the chief!”

“Oh no, boss!”

In just those few exchanged lines, the flesh-and-blood monster that had been suspended in midair suddenly moved.

With a series of crack-crack sounds, it twisted its neck, lifted its head, and fixed its gaze on Chief Sawitt, who was firing his gun.

“Zzzzt…”—like a television with bad signal—several white, mesh-like interference patterns suddenly flickered across the monster’s body. In the next second, everyone’s vision blurred for an instant. When they refocused, the creature had already appeared right in front of the chief, face-to-face with him.

“Damn it—what the hell are you?!”

Even someone as experienced as Sawitt couldn’t help but have his pupils dilate and cold sweat break out across his forehead when confronted at such close range by such a creature.

He shouted loudly to bolster his courage while stepping back quickly, trying to put distance between himself and the monster.

Unfortunately, the flesh creature gave him no such chance.

Pssh!

The monster raised its hand, revealing thick, pointed nails. With a hoarse roar, it drove its fingers straight into Sawitt’s eyes.

Just like its exposed teeth, the creature’s nails were formed by layers of different people’s nail fragments stacked together. They resembled mussels clinging to seaside rocks—pressed tightly side by side—emerging from narrow nail beds and clustering densely together. Some nails were short and rounded, others long and sharp; some were rough with fine ridges, while others were manicured, painted with delicate stars, or adorned with now-dim rhinestones…

Countless nails, like the blades of a meat grinder, sank deep into Chief Sawitt’s eyes, shredding the eyeballs into splattering blood and tissue fluid. Then, amid the officers’ horrified and furious screams, the monster’s hand pushed further inward, burrowing deeper into the brain—until a large burst of blood exploded into the air.

The back of the chief’s head burst open like an overinflated balloon. His heavy body fell backward, triggering another wave of terrified screams all around.

“Ahhh! I’ll fight you to the death!”

One of the officers was very close to Sawitt. After witnessing the chief’s death with his own eyes, rage overwhelmed him. Gripping his pistol, he flung open the car door and charged straight at the monster.

Inside the vehicle, the other officer was already scared out of his wits. He grabbed Mrs. Salaman, hoping that this well-known psychic from Dalami City could do something. But even after witnessing the chief’s death, Mrs. Salaman still insisted that she hadn’t seen anything strange, nor had she sensed anything at all.

They only argued for a couple of seconds. When he turned his head again, the officer outside who had been shouting in fury had already been attacked by the flesh monster—his eyeballs burst, and he died instantly.

“Crack… crack-crack…”

After killing that officer, the monster slowly twisted its neck, producing faint sounds of joints misaligning, and turned to face the inside of the car.

“No! Don’t!” Stimulated by the string of deaths, the last remaining officer finally broke down completely.

Forgetting all about his mission, he burst into tears, crying and shouting as he ran out of the car, stumbling as he fled into the distance.

Seeing this, Orff hurried after him.

The monster seemed to have locked onto the officer and Orff. After the two fled, it did not attack Mrs. Salaman in the car. Instead, it changed direction and pursued them directly.

Leaving the warmth of the jeep, the winter wind swept over them in biting gusts, bringing piercing cold. After running for only a short while, Orff fell behind the officer, whose physical condition was far superior.

Thud! He tripped and fell.

When he lifted his head again, the blood-red flesh monster was already right in front of him.

Am I going to die again…?

Just as that thought surfaced, a tall, slender figure wearing long boots suddenly stepped out from the darkness. She glanced with interest at the empty space in front of him, then looked at Orff—who was trembling uncontrollably, on the verge of fainting—and a thoughtful expression appeared on her face.

“Hey, Orff—next time you’re in a loop, remember to come find me and tell me, ‘the third monkey.’ Got it?”

“W-what?”

“Zzzzt…” There was no time left for Orff to react. In the blink of an eye, the white, mesh-like interference patterns—like those on a TV with poor signal—reappeared across the flesh monster’s body.

The blood-red color in his vision suddenly expanded. Orff stopped asking questions and stared wide-eyed.

Amid a sky filled with crimson, he entered his twenty-fourth loop.

…

“Because of what you told me, in the twenty-fourth loop, I found you again.” In the twenty-fifth loop, Orff dejectedly took a sip of the soda Everly had given him and continued, “Just like in the previous loop, after hearing my description of the flesh monster, you were going to refuse me again. But when I told you what happened in the twenty-third loop, and repeated the message you asked me to pass on, you suddenly agreed…”

“So what does that phrase actually mean?” Misha interjected curiously.

“Well…” Since it was her own “riddle,” Everly tapped her chin, thought for a moment, and quickly figured it out. “It should refer to the ‘Three Wise Monkeys’ from Xia Country.”

“The Three Wise Monkeys?”

“Yeah. It’s a common artistic motif in Xia Country, originating from a saying in the Analects: ‘Do not look at what is improper, do not listen to what is improper, do not speak what is improper.’ The first monkey covers its mouth, meaning ‘speak no evil’; the second covers its ears, meaning ‘hear no evil’; and the third covers its eyes, meaning ‘see no evil.’ So the ‘third monkey’ I told Orff to mention means ‘do not look.’”

“I see! Everly, you know so much!” Misha praised sincerely, then turned to poke Orff, urging him to continue.

Orff nodded, his ears turning red.

…

In the twenty-fourth loop, after a round of discussion, Orff and Everly once again formed an alliance.

This time, Everly didn’t rush to deal with the website operators inside and outside the school. Instead, she focused her attention on the flesh monster.

Clearly, compared to the human operators, this creature—which couldn’t be destroyed by physical means—was the greatest obstacle to Orff ending the loop.

“First, look into Mrs. Salaman for me. See if she’s suspicious,” Everly assigned Orff a task.

The ever-diligent Orff immediately got to work as soon as he received the order. Meanwhile, Everly didn’t stay idle either. She took out pen and paper and began jotting things down, organizing her thoughts.

In the previous loop, she had instructed her future self to accept this commission. To prove that the message truly came from her, she had even included a “verification code” that only someone from China would understand. After hearing that code-like phrase, Everly was basically certain that Orff wasn’t lying.

So under what circumstances would she be willing to take on such a dangerous task?

—Naturally, when the danger wouldn’t truly threaten her.

In other words, in the previous loop, she hadn’t become the monster’s target. Combined with the “do not look” code, Everly inferred that in the last loop, she had probably been like Mrs. Salaman—unable to see even a trace of the monster.

From this, it seemed that only those who could see the monster would be attacked by it. Or perhaps only those selected as its targets were able to see it in the first place?

Pushing the reasoning further—why was there a difference between the twenty-second and twenty-third loops?

First, she reviewed what she had done in each loop.

In the twenty-second loop, Everly interrogated and dr*gged Abel and Ronald, reported Charlie, shot and killed “the Butcher,” and finally drove past Mark’s house—only to encounter something supernatural.

In the twenty-third loop, Everly had done nothing except lend her car to Orff.

There were too many differences between loops to analyze easily, making elimination difficult.

In such a situation, introducing other control groups would simplify the problem considerably.

Everly chose two control groups: one was the city police officers who could see the flesh monster and were attacked by it, and the other was Mrs. Salaman, who couldn’t see the monster and was never attacked.

Just at that moment, Orff had finished gathering his intelligence.

“Mrs. Salaman is good friends with Sawitt. The two have a close relationship… She was born with a strong gift of inspiration and, from a young age, could see things others couldn’t and hear sounds that shouldn’t exist. After her husband passed away, as a widow, she took up work as a psychic to make a living, helping the living communicate with deceased loved ones.”

“Through her seance rituals, Mrs. Salaman can allow the spirits of the dead to possess her. At that time, her voice becomes identical to the deceased, and she can speak secret phrases known only to the deceased and the client. People say she is extremely effective.”

“Does Mrs. Salaman have any other abilities, like exorcism or sealing evil spirits?” Everly asked.

Orff tapped rapidly on his computer for a moment, then shook his head. “No, it seems the only thing she can do is communicate with spirits.”

Everly nodded. “Got it.”

Judging by this, Mrs. Salaman did have some ability, but not much—she could essentially be considered an ordinary person with sharper-than-average senses.

Everly first listed what Mrs. Salaman did in the twenty-third loop in her notebook: she sat in the car with Orff all afternoon.

Then she listed what the ordinary police officers did: they reviewed Charlie’s evidence collected by Orff with the chief and also sat in the car with Orff all afternoon.

The first person—Mrs. Salaman—clearly had stronger abilities, yet she saw nothing and wasn’t attacked by the monster. The second—the ordinary police officer—saw the flesh monster and was killed by it.

This comparison made the answer almost obvious: viewing the evidence is a necessary condition for being attacked by the monster.

Of course, there was another possibility: that Mrs. Salaman carried some kind of protective talisman shielding her from the monster, preventing her from seeing it.

But this seemed unlikely. Orff had mentioned that when all three people in the jeep could see the monster—except Mrs. Salaman—she had been genuinely surprised.

Mrs. Salaman was Sawitt’s friend, and nothing suspicious had been found about her; she wouldn’t deliberately “trick” someone close to her. Therefore, Everly leaned toward the first explanation.

After arriving at this conclusion, Everly tested it against other cases:

In the twenty-second loop, she and Misha had both seen the evidence Orff had collected, so when the flesh monster appeared, they could see it. In the twenty-third loop, Abel and the chief were attacked in turn. One of them—the “creator” of the evidence—couldn’t have avoided seeing it, and the other had seen Orff’s evidence in the car. Both were consequently killed by the monster.

All these observations aligned, suggesting that her reasoning was highly likely to be correct.

This meant that in the current loop, as long as Everly continued not looking, she could avoid being hunted by the flesh monster and safely assist Orff.

As for Orff, his situation was a bit more complicated…