Chapter 359 Extra: Su Xuan from the Previous Life

Chapter 359 Extra Chapter: Su Xuan of the Previous Life

In a now-vanished temporal rift within the Void Sea, on a timeline referred to as the "Previous Life," this story once unfolded:

Su Xuan had been hiding for over a year in "Honghuai City," a sanctuary of his own creation. His sole purpose was to evade the mysterious forces operating under the crimson moon, who sought to capture the Mermaid Remnants for their own ends. Though his meticulously crafted "mother Lin Wan" and younger brother "Su Bai" resided in the three-story building of "Honghuai City," an indelible sense of regret and longing gnawed at his heart. Eventually, Su Xuan could no longer resist. He ventured once more to Misty Mountain, pleading with the Ghost Witch to allow him to return, if only for a fleeting, distant glimpse.

The Ghost Witch no longer possessed puppets as exquisite as the "Su Xuan" he had once fashioned. Even a hastily procured, barely usable puppet would crack and crumble within minutes under the strain of Su Xuan's immense power. Despite this, Su Xuan remained resolute, begging the Ghost Witch to transport him to the place closest to his mother and brother.

Driven by this desperate yearning, Su Xuan, encased in an entirely unfamiliar shell, materialized in the cold, sterile hallway of a hospital.

The corridor reeked of disinfectant. Dim, yellow lights cast long shadows across the icy tiled floor. A hospital room door stood slightly ajar, nurses whispering amongst themselves, the air thick with a suffocating tension.

Su Xuan's wish was granted; he saw his younger brother, Su Bai. But at that moment, Su Bai was sifting through the meager belongings left behind by their mother, Lin Wan, after her passing. These "relics" were little more than a few towels and clothes. As he sorted, the teenage boy, already haggard beyond his years, could no longer contain his grief. He crumpled into a corner, curling up and sobbing uncontrollably.

Su Xuan stood there, motionless, listening as a nearby nurse recounted the tragic tale: why the deceased mother had been in a car accident, why the boy who should have been bound for university had abandoned his studies, why their once-happy family had utterly collapsed.

Every word felt like a sharp blade piercing Su Xuan's heart.

Watching the boy weep in the corner, the borrowed shell Su Xuan inhabited instantly became riddled with cracks. Though his body trembled and staggered, he turned without a word and left the real world, returning to Misty Mountain under the crimson moon. He ignored the Ghost Witch waiting nearby, walking away as if blind to everything around him, numb to the core.

In that moment, only one thought occupied Su Xuan's mind:

He still had a chance to change all of this.

"You want to enter the Void Sea, don't you?" the Ghost Witch said, having witnessed everything that transpired in the real world. As a... friend, he could vaguely discern Su Xuan's intentions. "You want to find a rift that leads to the past, to alter what has already happened?"

Su Xuan remained silent, tacitly acknowledging the Ghost Witch's conjecture.

"You have no fixed point; you'll get lost in the Void Sea with no way back. That's no different from death," the Ghost Witch's voice was low, like a somber prophecy. "Or is your goal to let yourself 'die' in the Void Sea, to escape all that has transpired? Su Xuan, is running away your hobby?"

"At least your brother is still alive," the Ghost Witch rose from his seat, his gaze piercing through a nearby vertical mirror as if he could see the boy in the real world. "He is no longer the child who fell from the window. He has endured countless hardships as a human, stronger than you can imagine. Perhaps both of you wish that human woman were still here, but he certainly wouldn't want to see you sink into the Void Sea for a fleeting possibility."

"What you should do is take care of him," the Ghost Witch admonished, gazing at Su Xuan, who once only thought of indulging in worldly pleasures.

Su Xuan let out a deep sigh and said slowly, "You're right. Even if I never return from the Void Sea, Su Bai will surely persevere and live on. But if I succeed, I can mend the life I messed up."

His voice carried a note of fierce resolve, clearly unwilling to relinquish even the slightest glimmer of hope.

Unable to dissuade Su Xuan, the Ghost Witch produced a special white cord. He had Su Xuan tie one end around his left wrist and fastened the other end to Misty Mountain. A silver bell was attached to the cord.

This way, Su Xuan could use the cord to find his way back from the Void Sea, and the Ghost Witch would know if Su Xuan was still alive.

As Su Xuan had said, he and the Ghost Witch weren't particularly close, but they were both solitary souls wandering under the crimson moon, with few others to confide in. Perhaps... they could be considered friends.

Su Xuan's eyes showed no hesitation as he turned and vanished into the boundless depths of the Void Sea.

The Void Sea was like an endless, dark ocean, turbulent and fraught with unknown dangers. It could perceive the thoughts, even the desires, of those who entered, but it would ignore or even reject them, sometimes deliberately letting intruders sink gradually into rifts that tormented them.

In the depths of the Void Sea, chaos and darkness were like thick ink, devouring all light and hope. Su Xuan drifted through the Void Sea, indistinguishable from the lost Eerie Entities within. He was trapped countless times by its illusions, struggled innumerable times in the abyss of despair, yet never gave up his search for temporal rifts. Having abandoned the power of the mermaid clan, he lost his way countless times, but each time, the tug on the white cord by the Ghost Witch and the distant, yet near, ringing of the bell restored his senses.

The sound of the bell traveled along the white cord, piercing through the Void Sea's darkness, a beacon telling him that a path home still existed.

During this time, Su Xuan accidentally glimpsed a vision of the future through a rift.

In that rift, Su Xuan saw Su Bai struggling in the Nightmare World, fighting for survival against the onslaught of various Eerie Entities, moving forward alone in the darkness. Su Xuan didn't know why a human would enter the Nightmare World, but he understood that the fate of humans under the crimson moon was destined to be tragic.

So Su Xuan continued his search for rifts. The longer he stayed in the Void Sea, the more it drained his power. The chaos of the Void Sea was like a giant monster, greedily consuming his vitality.

Su Xuan's body grew weaker and weaker in the Void Sea; each step forward felt like walking along the edge of a cliff.

The sound of the Ghost Witch's bell gradually grew faint. Su Xuan knew his time might be running out.

The darkness of the Void Sea was like an endless net, trapping Su Xuan firmly within. But a sliver of hope still burned in his heart, a faint glimmer of light telling him he could still press on.

The elders of his clan often said that mermaids could swim in the Void Sea because it regarded them as its people.

Perhaps because the Void Sea still remembered Su Xuan as one of its former people, perhaps because Su Xuan's obsession became a coordinate, or perhaps even the Void Sea knew he had no time left—a rift finally appeared before Su Xuan. Holding the white cord, he leaped into the rift and found himself on a rain-soaked street in Honghuai City.

Cold rain lashed at Su Xuan's face. The lights on either side of the street flickered hazily through the downpour.

Not far away, he saw his brother, Su Bai, being driven out of his home by relatives holding IOUs because he couldn't repay the debts "Su Xuan" had left behind. In the heavy rain, Su Bai had nothing but his school uniform on his back. The relatives coldly told him to go live at the hospital and sarcastically wished him luck in affording their mother's subsequent medical bills.

Su Xuan knew he had finally arrived at a time before their mother, Lin Wan, had passed away.

But just then, Su Xuan no longer had the ability to do anything—

No, that's not right!

There must still be something he could do!

Su Xuan thought of his mother, who would soon die, of Su Bai curled up in the corner, and of the Su Bai he had seen in the rift, dragged into the world under the crimson moon—

Having abandoned his mermaid powers, Su Xuan could only create one more coordinate anchor.

A coordinate anchor involves binding an object to a specific temporal or spatial rift. Once the object becomes an anchor, whether mermaids, other Eerie Entities, or even humans, can use it to find their way to that fixed rift within the chaotic Void Sea.

This object must either be intimately connected to a specific point in time, like a severed finger or an important memory, or possess special power itself.

By now, Su Xuan's body was growing increasingly weak; he didn't even have the strength to follow the white cord back out of the Void Sea.

...

Finally, Su Xuan made his decision.

He cut the Ghost Witch's white cord. At the severed end, he left a message. Then... he chose to transform himself completely into a coordinate anchor, silently embedding himself within the shadow at his younger brother Su Bai's feet.

He carried this rainy night, this point in time before their mother was gone, and remained with his younger brother Su Bai forever.

...

After an unknown length of time, the Ghost Witch, far away in Misty Mountain, heard the sound of the bell on the cord, but the cord itself lay slack on the ground.

The Ghost Witch retrieved the cord. It had been deliberately cut, seemingly informing a not-so-close and somewhat troublesome friend of his departure.

And at the severed end of the cord, a message had been left using his power:

"I'm sorry. In the end, I couldn't find a way to fix everything. But one day in the future, I saw Su Bai's fate of being drawn into the world under the crimson moon. The last thing I can do is leave a faint glimmer of hope for my last remaining family. Friend, if one day he truly finds himself in a desperate situation, please use the method I left behind to give him a chance to start over."

"Goodbye."

"And... I'm counting on you."