I can rewind time to prevent death

Yan Junze only felt a pain at the back of his neck, and then the pain began to slowly fade away as the lower part of his body seemed to become moist, as if it were blood.

He lay prostrate on the ground, his head to one side, gazing blankly ahead, his eyes gradually losing their luster.

In his fading vision, the Crawler Monster that was trembling in terror, lying there with a backpack on, had completely lost its composure.

Rewind!

Rewind!

Rewind!

In his subconscious, he had repeated the thought of rewinding countless times to no avail, and his consciousness began to slip away.

Convulsions, his entire body began to twitch due to excessive blood loss, but Junze could no longer feel it.

Everything before his eyes became blurry, the shadow of the Crawler Monster vanished, and the scenery outside the warehouse disappeared alongside it.

All he could see was a grayish-white world, a world of monochrome grey and white.

He felt as if he had fallen asleep, as if he was dreaming. He dreamt of his parents, his classmates, Ke'er, the Back-faced Woman, Aunt Mei, Resentful Granny, and Lv Xin...

In the dream, it seemed they were all smiling at him, with only Ke'er ceaselessly crawling around.

"Eh?"

Ke'er crawled onto his back, leaning sideways to bring her head in front of Yan Junze's eyes. She appeared perplexed, yet there was a hint of excitement.

"Ya ya ya ya..."

Ke'er recognized him, her little cheeks nuzzling gently against Yan Junze's face.

Gazing vacantly at all this, Yan Junze felt nothing, just existing in the grey world as an onlooker, silently observing everything happening before him.

In the moment before death, Ke'er's figure became increasingly distinct, as if he could see clearly the scenery and the objects around the setting she was in.

It seemed that Junze saw trees, green grass, and burial mounds, and then his consciousness started to fade bit by bit, completely vanishing.

...

Time passed, and the fish-belly white of the sky appeared, gradually dispelling the darkness.

At that moment, a light drizzle began to fall.

The cold raindrops fell onto the side of Junze's prostrate face, one by one.

Suddenly, his eyelid twitched.

About a minute later, he slowly opened his eyes, feeling as if lifting his eyelids was as heavy as lifting a thousand jun. Just opening them seemed to exhaust all his strength.

The moment he opened his eyes, a piercing pain coursed through his body, jerking his eyelids, but after his gaze gradually focused, his senses began to recover, followed by a wave of bewilderment.

"I'm not dead? I didn't die?"

Two minutes later, Yan Junze came to his senses.

Although he was still lying on the ground outside the Mountain Park warehouse, he found that he was stubbornly alive.

He tried to move his limbs, which felt almost alien to him but were still somewhat mobile.

After about five minutes, he propped himself up with his hands and slowly sat upright, the light rain continuing to fall. He looked at the spot where he lay; there was no blood beneath him. Then, turning his head to look around, Junze's pupils contracted, and his face showed horror.

He saw that the green-skinned child had nothing left intact except its head; its torso and limbs were mere fragments, with no other parts visible.

And the spot where he had been lying was not the position where he remembered collapsing against the rock wall; the ground where he had originally fallen was now soaked red with blood.

Junze believed that was the blood that had flowed out after his neck had been slashed open.

With that thought, he reached out to touch his neck, finding it unharmed, without even a scar.

He quickly checked his stomach and found the frightening wound was also absent.

He knew, though he couldn't see his back, that the wound there must have also healed because there was no longer a sensation of pain from a wound.

Instead, there was a deep exhaustion, as if every movement drained all the energy from his body.

Yan Junze noticed that Long-tongued Zhenzhen was still standing in the direction of the rock wall, silent as ever, in the same pose as before.

Turning once again to search for the Crawler Monster, it didn't take long to spot the creature under the eaves near the warehouse door.

Possibly because of the rain, the Crawler Monster had run under the eaves to take shelter. Otherwise, its parted hair on the head could easily stick together, making it troublesome to manage.

But Yan Junze noticed that when he looked at the Crawler Monster, the creature immediately shuddered involuntarily, stepped back, and the look in its eyes was not just fear but had reached the point of terror.

Yan Junze had the feeling that, right now, if he made his gaze even more fierce, the creature might very well scare itself into incontinence—if it was capable of urinating, that is.

What on earth... just happened?

Zhenzhen, being in the midst of the magnetic field chaos, might not know what happened.

But the Crawler Monster had clearly witnessed everything, and it seemed now to be extremely afraid of him, almost to an extreme degree.

Why is that?

Glancing at the mangled body of the green child on the ground, it looked as though its body had been torn apart by sheer force.

Who did it?

Just then, the Crawler Monster seemed to realize something. It no longer cared that its hair was getting wet and ran out from under the eave, picked up the camera from the flat rock, and returned under the eave.

Regardless, ever since reaping the benefits from the Atlas, the creature had been very loyal to Yan Junze. This was evident from how it risked its parted hair getting wet to fetch the camera so diligently.

"Camera?"

Yan Junze's eyes lit up slightly, but his body was really too weak to do much; being able to sit up was already quite an accomplishment.

Unable to stand, he crawled towards the eaves beneath the warehouse door, emulating the Crawler Monster's movements.

The Crawler Monster, seeing him approach, immediately scurried away in terror.

Once under the eave, Yan Junze reached out to it with a hoarse voice, "Camera... give it to me."

The Crawler Monster hesitated, looked at the camera it was holding, then wiped it a couple of times before shuffling closer to Yan Junze and carefully handing it over.

After obtaining the camera, the creature quickly retreated to one side, not daring to come close again.

Now completely limp and exhausted, Yan Junze couldn't leave for the time being.

Even if the boss of the "Tricky Silk" mission burst out of the underground space behind the tunnel, he couldn't care less. If he died, then so be it. There was no energy left to escape anymore.

The camera had been recording towards the direction of the warehouse a door all along, so it must have captured the events as they unfolded. Since Yan Junze couldn't find out the details himself, he had to resort to watching the playback of the recording.

Lacking the strength to leave, he leaned against the metal door, extended one hand and struggled quite a bit before he managed to adjust the playback video correctly. Find more chapters on empire

It appeared that the rain had only just started, and the camera hadn't been completely soaked through. Otherwise, it would have been damaged already.

Setting the playback to just when he had walked out of the warehouse, Yan Junze widened his eyes and stared intently.

The angle of the camera was a bit off from where his throat had been slashed, but thankfully, the scene was still visible. He quickly jumped the footage to the moment the Corpse Child's nail had severed his carotid artery.

In the video, he collapsed to the ground as a copious amount of blood spurted from his throat while the Corpse Child stood on him, watching silently.

Soon after, as his body lost too much blood in a short period, he began to twitch slightly.

About three minutes later, the twitching stopped, and he seemed to have... died?!

Yan Junze was stunned for a moment, then looked down at himself and checked his own pulse.

Alive, for sure!

Just then, in the video, the Corpse Child suddenly startled, leaping away from the body it had been standing on, landing nearby with a shocked stare at the prone body.

Yan Junze's eyes widened as he leaned in closer to see the screen, noticing what seemed to be a large amount of hair growing from his prone body at an alarming rate, clear even from a distance.

Then, his body got up in a strange and awkward position, head and limbs dangling as if they had no strength.

Once he became fully upright, he slowly turned around in a grotesque manner, presenting his back to the shocked Corpse Child.

And then, a scene occurred that struck Yan Junze with terror.

In the video, his own neck began to slowly rotate one hundred and eighty degrees to face the Corpse Child.

Recognizing this familiar scene, an unbelievable suspicion surged in Yan Junze's mind, making him blurt out something vulgar.

"Damn, so it turns out... I was subjected to Spirit-Splitting!"