Under the erosion of the mold, the third chapter belonging to Old Johnâboth its text and pagesâcompletely turned to ash, fluttering down with the wind.
After the ashes drifted away, a jagged, torn page suddenly appeared in the middle of the otherwise intact book.
On the left side of the torn page, the second chapter belonging to the previous user, âThompson,â still remained unaffected.
On the right side, there should originally have been a fourth chapter titled âGary.â However, because Old John had killed that Gary, the text on that page had already vanished, leaving it blank.
And now, under everyoneâs watchful eyes, blood-red letters slowly began seeping out of the blank pageâ
[Chapter 3: John
John Breton will die today at 16:10 in a car accident caused by fatigue (death by a certain vengeful spiritâs curse).]
Yes, thatâs right. The âlife extractionâ of the Book of Death had failed. But since Old John was holding and reading it, the book simply re-recorded his chapter again!
Seeing this, even though Everly had no supernatural abilities, she could faintly guess that just moments ago, the massacre between the mold and the text-based iron-thread worms had actually been a battle between two ârule-basedâ cursed objectsâthe Chain Letter Curse and the Book of Deathâwith the bookâs pages serving as the battlefield.
The outcome was obvious: the Book of Death, which Everly had placed such high hopes in, was completely outmatched by the Chain Letter Curse. It was thoroughly beaten, and even had a page forcibly torn out!
This book was a terrifying artifact that blades couldnât cut and fire couldnât burn!
Everlyâs heart sank heavily.
As expected, things would not go so smoothly.
Fortunately, the Book of Death had deep reserves. Even after losing a page, its thickness remained considerable. When Old John picked it up, it could still generate new chapters, meaning the bookâs underlying rules were still functioning normally.
Moreover, as Everly observed, when the mold came into contact with the text-based iron-thread worms, those writhing, worm-shaped letters had actually inflicted damage on the mold as well. It was just that the damage was too minorâlike dust-sized iron-thread worms opening and closing their mouths, managing to gnaw off only hair-thin fragments of mold. If you didnât look closely, you wouldnât even notice it.
As the saying goes, constant dripping wears away stone, and a rope saws through wood. If a single âtext wormâ could erase dust-sized patches of mold, what about hundreds of them? Thousands? Even tens of thousands?
The Book of Death still had many, many pages. A temporary disadvantage meant nothing. What mattered was who could endure longer. Even if, in the end, the beast known as the Book of Death truly couldnât beat the Chain Letter Curse, it could at least drain a significant amount of Narcissaâs power. At that point, with the full set of exorcism tools Everly had brought, they might still have a chance to fight back.
However, since the Book of Death could not immediately break the rules of the Chain Letter Curse, Old John had to prioritize the matter of forwarding the message.
After all, no one could be sure whether they and Old John would succeed in ending Narcissaâs curse before the final deadline arrived. To protect the innocent contacts in Old Johnâs phone, they had to seize control of how the curse spread.
Thinking of this, Everly took a deep breath and forced down the unease and panic surging in her chestâjust the mere thought of her grandfatherâs death left her mind blank and her heart aching as if it were being torn apart.
But now was not the time to sink into fear. She had to act.
As for the recipients of the forwarded message, Everly and Old John had already conducted their research. Among them, the primary choice was naturally the murderous man right in front of themâGary.
Apart from Gary, the two of them had also compiled five additional backup options. All of them were individuals found within the police systemâpeople who had committed grave crimes yet remained at large due to various circumstances.
Of course, considering the curseâs tendency to spread, Old John would not casually forward the message to those criminals unless absolutely necessary. After all, who knew whether those kinds of people would recklessly forward the chain message on to even more innocent victims?
Everly raised a hand to signal a pause to Old John, then turned and ran back to the car. She opened the glove compartment and pulled out a brand-new phone, along with a stack of fresh SIM cards.
These SIM cards had been bought at a convenience store on the way hereâprepaid cards that required no real-name registration, currently still in an âownerlessâ state.
Everly carried the phone and SIM cards back over to Gary.
By now, after the earlier ârepair,â the young manâs faceâpreviously blown apart by a gunshotâhad completely healed.
He lay on a blood-stained rack bed under the harsh beam of a spotlight. His skin was so pale it seemed almost luminous, his blond hair gleaming like gold. At a glance, he looked like an angel born from a pool of bloodâpure, innocent, almost untouchable.
When he saw Everly approaching, he rolled his eyes toward her, looking at her with anticipation.
âEverly, what were you doing just now? I could feel a very strong death aura⊠it smelled delicious.â
âGary, Iâve got a gift for you. Do you want it?â
Without waiting for his answer, she shoved the phoneânow fitted with a SIM cardâstraight into his hands.
âThis is a new phone. The number is XXXX. From now on, itâs your phone. Do you like it?â
Even if he didnât, it didnât matter. Since she said the phone was his, then it was his.
Gary blinked. His fingers fidgeted restlessly, brushing against the back of Everlyâs hand before she could pull away. A flush of excitement quickly rose on his pale face.
âAh, is this for me? Amazing⊠this is the first gift Iâve ever received!â
âDoes it have your phone number in it? Can I use it to call you?â
Donât even think about it. No chance.
With a cold expression, Everly struck Garyâs hand sharply with the gun stock, then stepped back and nodded toward Old John.
On their way here, the two had already analyzed every possible scenario and prepared corresponding plans. Receiving Everlyâs signal, Old John immediately took out his phone, found the chain curse message, and long-pressed to forward itâto the newly created contact: Gary No. 1.
The campsite had no signal, so ordinary text messages couldnât be sent. But Old John had been able to receive the cursed chain message even deep inside an underground shelter, which proved that ordinary network conditions did not affect this kind of cursed medium at all.
As expected, the moment the send button was pressed, the new phone in Garyâs hand immediately began to buzz. The screen lit up, displaying an incoming message.
Thus, the first required forwarding of the chain curse was successfully completed.
âGrandfather, continue,â Everly urged.
Old John nodded.
He exerted a little force and took back the new phone that Gary hadnât even fully warmed with his hands yet, then replaced it by pressing the Book of Deathâwhich had just recorded his nameâinto Garyâs empty palm.
âHey, donât snatch it! Thatâs the gift Everly gave me⊠ah? Whatâs going on, this little thing is biting me again!â
Gary tried to grab at it, but failed to reclaim the phone. Instead, he ended up firmly gripping the Book of Death.
According to Gary, the book seemed to âbite,â so the lakesideâfinally having calmed down for a momentâwas once again filled with his loud, chaotic complaints.
Despite having just failed a life extraction, the Book of Death was still functioning normally and had not suffered significant damage.
The moment Garyâs hand touched it, a new fourth chapter immediately appeared on the blank page adjacent to Chapter Threeâhis chapter.
Old John took the book back and, together with Everly, read it. They discovered that the newly formed Chapter Four was identical to the previous one: it still stated that the ruthless killer Everly would throw Gary into the lake at 16:28 that afternoon.
âDo we do it?â
âDo it.â
âHuh?â
Faced with Garyâs head full of question marks, Old John showed no emotional fluctuation at all. He raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger.
With a loud BANG, the newly formed Gary was once again sent to his death.
This time, the life extraction still failed.
After Gary died, it was as if âyesterday had returned.â Everly saw the blood-red, worm-like letters in Chapter Three begin writhing and boiling again. Familiar patches of mold re-emerged from all four corners, rapidly spreading across the entire page, launching another round of strangulation against the text-based iron-thread worms attached to the paper.
The one-sided slaughter did not last long before it ended with the sound of tearing paperârip.
Soon, the Book of Death gained another pitiful, dog-chewed-looking fragment of a page.
That made two pages gone.
Everly did not lose heart. During the waiting time for Garyâs next revival, she had already replaced the SIM card in Garyâs phone with a second new one.
When Gary No. 2âs facial flesh had fully regenerated, she repeated the same routineâshoving the newly re-registered phone into his hands and once again offering him a âgift.â
Gary No. 2, clearly unlearned by experience, smiled with his eyes and happily accepted the gift.
It seemed that no matter what she gave him, he would accept it without question.
Originally, Everly and Old John only intended to test somethingâto give the revived Gary a new number, send another cursed message, and see whether the ânew Garyâ with a new number could successfully receive the chain curse SMS.
If it worked, they could use this loophole to exhaust all five forwarding opportunities on Gary alone. If it didnât, at least they would still have backup plans.
But unexpectedly, by sheer coincidence, they had stumbled upon a BUGâ
By common sense, one person could have more than one phone and more than one number.
However, the Chain Letter Curse was a relatively intelligent rule-based curse system. To prevent people from being clever and sending the curse to different phone numbers under the same identity, the system would perform an identity verification check on the recipient after the message was sent.
For example, more than forty years ago, during the outbreak of paper-based cursed letters, villagers discovered that the same person could only receive one cursed letter. This made it impossible for them to âselect a few shared targets and concentrate the curse fireâ as a strategy.
In modern times, this rule had evolved into a different form: a cursed SMS could only be forwarded once to the same person. Even if that person changed to a new phone number, a second forwarding would still fail.
But today, the Chain Letter Curse system was confronted with a problem it had never encountered since its creation: it had been sent to a person who had died and then come back to life.
Q: Are Gary before death and Gary after resurrection considered the same person?
If you asked a human, nine out of ten would answer yes. Gary was still Garyâbeing resurrected did not mean he had become someone else entirely.
However, the Chain Letter Curse was not human. It was a system of rules, a set of operational logic constructed by a vengeful spirit. It possessed a degree of intelligence, but not enough to be truly flexible. It contained various logical loopholes.
Simply put, you could approximate the curse system as a piece of executable code. Once an initial value was input, it would automatically perform verification checks, conditional branching, and logical processing, ultimately producing a result.
And so, when Old John long-pressed the cursed SMS and attempted to forward it to Gary No. 2, a BUG emerged:
Old John â Gary No. 1 â No. 1 dies prematurely â forwarding completed once, chain breaks
â Gary No. 2 â identity verification (only executed when forwarding count â„ 2) â
â No. 1 dies early, No. 2 survives, identity check passes â
⥠No. 1 and No. 2 are the same person, identity check fails â
â No. 1 dies early, No. 2 survives, identity check passes â
⥠âŠ
Of course, since Everly had never been a rule-based vengeful spirit herself, she had no real understanding of how such systems constructed their rules. So the explanation above was merely her own mental reconstruction, and there might be inaccuracies or omissions. But she believed the core point of the BUG lay in the two conditionsââ and âĄ.
These two logical branches were originally impossible to satisfy at the same time. That was why, for a very long time, the system had run smoothly without any issues.
But this time, it had run into a very strange Garyâa person who died, came back to life, died again, revived again⊠a walking, breathing, resurrecting contradiction. In short, a massive bug in himself.
The two-minute âspinningâ of the SMS was actually the curse system internally wrestling with conflicting logic, performing a kind of left-hand-versus-right-hand struggle between rule branches. Judging purely from the text, condition â was clearly more objective and more authoritative, so after a period of internal conflict, the system ultimately selected condition â , and Gary No. 2 successfully received the message.
At first glance, the impact of this BUG didnât seem significant.
But then the mold appearing on the Book of Death made things unmistakably clear to both of themâno, it was far from insignificant.
It was enormous.
So enormous that the color of the mold had noticeably faded compared to before, and even its spread had slowed down.