I Am Your Natural Enemy

Dawn was about to break. Wen Yan was still at home, preparing to take Feng Wei and Tong Si to Central Plains County.

All of a sudden, his pupils dilated and then contracted. The ”Beast Nemesis” title he wore initiated an automatic Cloud Sync.

From that moment on, most of his memories for the upcoming day began to automatically synchronize.

Immediately after the sync, Wen Yan checked the time, took a screenshot, then subtracted the sync duration to narrow the margin of error to within three seconds.

After completing this step, his heart pounded wildly. Unable to help himself, he lit a cigarette, poured a cup of tea, and took several minutes to calm down before he slowly started to examine the synchronized memories.

As he suspected, there was indeed someone capable of rewinding time, and his ability was quite heaven-defying.

This time, the rewind hadn’t gone back to the point before the Glutton was killed.

And, just as he had guessed before, Little Mustache didn’t care about the Glutton’s fate.

He estimated that from the moment he knocked out the Doll Master with a slap, causing all the dolls to lose control, to his arrival in Guanzhong County where he spotted Little Mustache from a distance, only about ten minutes had passed.

Little Mustache had answered the phone and immediately initiated the rewind. There was a ninety-nine percent probability that the person calling him had discovered that all the Doll Master’s dolls had lost control and that the Doll Master himself was unreachable.

That’s why Little Mustache had acted decisively and immediately initiated the rewind.

Wen Yan closed his eyes, carefully reflecting. This meant that in the first cycle, the previous rewind, it was highly probable he hadn’t discovered the rewind at all, nor did he even know of Little Mustache’s existence.

He was probably also unaware of the Doll Master.

However, if he went to Central Plains County and met Luo Liang, he would inevitably discover that Luo Liang was a Fate Igniter and would use that knowledge to break through Luo Liang’s psychological defenses.

He would have done so regardless of whether he knew about the rewind or Little Mustache.

The initial reason he was investigating these matters was his discovery of a video that, in terms of both its sense of déjà vu and other aspects, was remarkably similar to Wang Xueqi’s earlier short video.

His purpose in seeking out Luo Liang was solely to investigate the live stream and the video.

He recalled his conversation with Luo Liang. The moment Luo Liang began to confess, it would undoubtedly prompt the Doll Master to act and silence him.

Once the Doll Master acted and left that doll behind, given that he knew Zhang Qihui, a professional in the field, he would definitely have been able to track down the Doll Master.

If he had managed to track down the Doll Master in that first cycle, then after the rewind, in the second cycle, he wouldn’t have caught the Doll Master so easily. The Doll Master would surely have been tipped off and fled much earlier.

This meant the reason for the rewind in the first cycle was fundamentally different from that of the second cycle.

In the second cycle—the previous one—it was the sudden appearance of the Beast Nemesis title that had aroused his suspicion.

In everything he did, he was extremely cautious, always first considering how he would have reacted to the situation if he hadn’t known about the rewind.

The only point of divergence might have been releasing some of the Water Ghosts when he was in the Southern Sea.

For some unknown reason, this seemed to have caused the subsequent events to unfold differently.

The second cycle was definitely the first time he learned of the Doll Master and the first time he apprehended him. The Doll Master’s shock had been genuine; it must have been his first encounter with an intruder in his own home.

If he had been forewarned, he would surely have fled much earlier.

Similarly, it was also definitely his first time meeting Little Mustache.

Then, he had triggered a Temporary Ability called Cloud Sync, which synchronized the events he experienced onto his Beast Nemesis title.

Because, as far as he knew, titles were the only things that wouldn’t be erased by a rewind.

Even if this title seemed to be exploiting some kind of bug, it still stubbornly resisted being erased by the rewind.

Now, it was the third cycle.

And this current moment was the new anchor point.

Little Mustache had established a new save point, which led to two possibilities.

One: his save point anchor had limitations, possibly time-related.

When he reached a certain point in time, he would be forced to set a new save point.

But Wen Yan carefully recalled that the timing of the Beast Nemesis title’s appearance in the second cycle didn’t align with this current rewind, nor did it seem to hold any particular significance.

It was highly unlikely that he had been forced to set a new save point at that specific time.

Two: it was possible he could set the save point relatively freely.

And by reaching this point, he (Little Mustache) confirmed that the event from the first cycle which necessitated a rewind had not occurred in the second cycle.

He had already successfully altered the outcome.

Therefore, he (Little Mustache) then set a new save point, making the non-occurrence of that particular event an established, unalterable fact.

However, less than a day later, the Doll Master ran into trouble, prompting Little Mustache to decisively rewind.

Wen Yan checked the time. At this moment, if he rushed to the Doll Master’s location, he would likely be too late to apprehend him.

The other party only needed to make a phone call to have the Doll Master flee immediately.

If he didn’t go through the motions of finding the Doll Master again and just charged straight there, he would inevitably reveal that he remembered the events of the second cycle.

And the Doll Master definitely wouldn’t remember the events of the second cycle; that would require a specific corresponding ability.

Wen Yan, for his part, wasn’t worried about being exposed, as he had never actually shown his face to Little Mustache.