Chapter 23: Golden Pear – The Altered History

The wound on her neck no longer pained her much; her resilience and capacity for recovery were truly beyond her own expectations.

Yet, Jin Xueli’s irritation grew more intense, as if her heart had been overgrown with weeds that no amount of clearing could eradicate. It was unthinkable that history possessed such tenacity; changing a minor detail had failed to alter the trajectory of events. People always said that one wrong turn at an intersection could change one's entire fate—what a lie that was.

To have a stalker turn into a "destined soulmate" was a sickening thought.

Jin Xueli glanced at the corpse. This was the first time she had killed a legendary "immortal" resident, and she had only managed it by tricking it with words. It was hard not to feel uneasy, fearing that in the blink of an eye, it might stagger back to its feet. Thus, she found herself checking on it every few moments. However, her worries were unfounded; death had soaked into the body like cold water, leaving it thoroughly frozen in place.

After observing the corpse for a while, she relaxed slightly and turned the fire trough back on.

She would try one more time. This time, Jin Xueli intended to sever the possibility of their meeting at the root.

She melted a candle from the same timeframe, watching the transparent wax tears drip into the air, once again forming a pool. Within the pool, a tiny Jin Xueli and a tiny Amber stepped out of a miniature taxi, chatting as they entered the bar. Jin Xueli watched them enter through the main door, then turned her gaze back to patrol the street.

She remembered clearly that on that night, when the stalker Anthony approached her, he had said, "You must have arrived at the bar before me. Otherwise, there is no reason I wouldn't have noticed a girl like you walking through the door."

While one shouldn't take pickup lines seriously, in retrospect, it seemed Anthony had indeed arrived a step later than she did.

Suppressing her mounting frustration, Jin Xueli stared unblinkingly at the bar's front entrance. Many people were heading to the bar that night; within twenty or thirty minutes, four or five groups of strangers had emerged from successive cars. She had never seen so many miniature living people, clustered in twos and threes, moving through the night and the lamplight; it was difficult to distinguish them. Her eyes were beginning to blur when she finally spotted Anthony turning the corner.

According to the instructions, "suicide" through wax tears seemed possible, but it hadn't specified whether one could kill others. Jin Xueli intended to test it. What could be more final than turning him into a corpse?

She was originally unwilling to kill lightly. In fact, since becoming a hunter, although she had seen many dead, not a single one had died by her own hand. But tonight, it felt as if a shell within her had cracked, and something different was clawing its way out. It made sense—she had already killed "herself"; what was the big deal about killing a person from the past, a stalker at that?

If she couldn't kill him, she would find another way. Regardless of the outcome, it would at least be a step toward understanding the functions of the "wax tears."

Jin Xueli’s finger hovered over Anthony’s head like a giant celestial body about to crash into the Earth and extinguish the dinosaurs. He remained oblivious, hands in his pockets, looking tall and carefree—a decent-looking man.

...If she crushed him, she would have to wash her hands afterward.

Jin Xueli curled her knuckle and struck the meticulously styled head with force. She had expected the sensation to be similar to crushing a large insect, but instead, it felt like pressing against a sliding ball. The stalker stumbled, pushed only half a step away by her forceful strike, and quickly regained his balance. He was not only alive, but didn't even seem to feel any pain. Anthony looked down, cursed, and kicked a stone away.

...Could it be that she couldn't reach in and kill others? That she could only kill herself?

That was truly laughable.

Despite her indignation, two subsequent attempts seemed to confirm this hypothesis: she tried to push the miniature Anthony into the road, but an oncoming car dodged him in time, and he only received a few curses from the driver. After much effort, she managed to pull down a signboard lamp, timing it perfectly, but it curved in mid-air and smashed into the ground just inches from Anthony's nose.

The stalker was indeed no ordinary person; having narrowly escaped danger several times, he remained unbothered and walked into the bar as if nothing had happened.

"One of the most powerful artifacts"—what a load of nonsense from the broadcast. If it couldn't kill people and couldn't stop a meeting, what was the point of this broken candle, even if it contained the past? In the end, wasn't everything just as it was, with nothing changed?

Enduring her irritation, Jin Xueli flicked the wax tears, searching for herself. She had become quite proficient in operating the wax tears and quickly found the moment the two met: the tiny Anthony pushed open the dark red back door, saw the tiny Jin Xueli, and walked over to start a conversation.

"I didn't have the courage to ask for your number, and I'm not the type to hit on girls," Anthony said with a sigh. "But you know? On my way here, a signboard lamp suddenly crashed down in front of me, so close... If I had walked half a step faster, I would be dead. Thinking that life is full of accidents, I didn't dare let this chance slip away..."

She had actually helped him upgrade his lines?

Jin Xueli had played a computer game called *The Sims* when she was younger; watching the scene in the wax tears, she felt a strange sense of familiarity and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

However, this was no computer game.

Jin Xueli watched her tiny, oblivious self exchanging numbers with Anthony, sighed in frustration, and closed the fire trough. She had to let the wax tears cool and solidify, allowing the history of their meeting to "set," before she could melt it again to change the past.

The tiny Jin Xueli pushed open the back door for what felt like the hundredth time, stepping out of the room thick with music and alcohol to get some air.

A convoy of pitch-black Mercedes SUVs emerged silently from the night. Each vehicle, modified with anti-terrorism and bulletproof features, maintained an equal distance as they drove past the bar’s back entrance.

Just as the last vehicle was about to pass, Jin Xueli reached out and shoved it toward the back door. The matchbox-sized SUV, caught by this force, swerved uncontrollably, veered off the road, and with the sharp screech of tires, slammed its nose into the bar's back door.

The back door, which hadn't been fully latched, had its panel dented and hinges twisted by the impact, hanging crookedly—it was clear it would no longer close.

The tiny Jin Xueli stared at the SUV two steps away, her face pale.

Oh, she’d forgotten to protect her past self... Never mind, at least she hadn't been hit and wasn't dead. It wasn't as if she *wanted* to be involved with a stalker; why was she suffering so much now? Giving her a scare served her right.

With a sense of detached annoyance, Jin Xueli watched her tiny self back away in a hurry, shouting to someone, "Help! There’s been a car accident!"

If the bar suspended operations because of this, perhaps it could disrupt their meeting—

Before Jin Xueli could finish the thought, the driver’s door of the SUV was shoved open. A man in a black suit stumbled out, flipped behind the open door, and crouched down. A gash had been torn into his left temple; blood, curly hair, and a headset were all matted together. But most conspicuous of all was the 9mm pistol clutched in his hands.

The tiny Jin Xueli nearby pressed her lips together the moment her eyes fell on that black handgun.

Once the car was attacked and immobilized, he had jumped out immediately to avoid being trapped; he hid behind the door to use it as cover against potential snipers. Even though he seemed to have suffered a significant impact, the 9mm was held steadily in a position that allowed for an immediate counterattack, his slightly bent elbows not trembling in the slightest...

Whether inside or outside the wax tears, Jin Xueli could tell: this was a highly trained private bodyguard.

And the other cars?

Jin Xueli turned her head immediately and saw that the convoy hadn't hesitated for a breath; they had already scattered. The remaining four SUVs had changed lanes, altered directions, and accelerated into the depths of the night and the city lights in an instant.

"Their level of professionalism is very high..." she thought.

At the same moment the tail car was attacked and lost control, the convoy had abandoned it, broken formation, and turned in different directions to rapidly increase the distance between them... This was clearly a pre-planned crisis protocol. Such a protocol generally served only one purpose: to protect the car carrying a VIP, so that potential enemies wouldn't know which vehicle the VIP was actually in.

"...No, it is currently impossible to determine what was done to the vehicle. Yes, we are not under attack for the moment."

The man in the black suit crouched behind the door, speaking lowly into his headset: "Although the issue with the car is strange, I have detected no signs of artifacts being used in the vicinity... Correct, there is a bar here, and there are witnesses nearby; they should have already called the police."

*Artifacts?* Did he just say artifacts?

Jin Xueli was immediately intrigued and leaned in closer—fortunately, the man in the black suit was just a tiny character in the wax tears and could not see the giant human ear floating in the sky above the car, capturing every word he said.

"...Understood," a few seconds later, the man in the black suit replied quietly, "During the subsequent negotiations and handling, I will not mention Mr. Wei’s name."

*Mr. Wei?*

Jin Xueli froze.

A VIP, and his surname is Wei... Could it be that the person the convoy was guarding so strictly was Wei Xilai, the man of unrivaled wealth and status in Blackmoor City?

Wei Xilai was indeed of high status, but he wasn't a head of state; the fact that his security was this tight clearly meant he knew he was in danger...

Could it be that his death in the near future wasn't due to natural causes, but was instead man-made? Had he sensed months ago that someone intended to assassinate him, which was why he had implemented such tight security measures?

Though curious, Jin Xueli hadn't forgotten her initial goal. She looked back at the back door. The car accident had drawn all the patrons out; some were watching the commotion, some were on their phones, and others were taking photos to post on Twitter. The man in the black suit was sensitive to the situation and, to avoid causing chaos, had already tucked his 9mm back into the holster under his jacket—though he kept a hand pressed against his coat, ready to draw at any moment.

Amidst the onlookers, the tiny Jin Xueli and Amber were whispering to each other; a few steps away, the tiny Anthony was glancing at them repeatedly.

Within seconds, he walked over and greeted the tiny Jin Xueli with a smile.

*What the hell,* was there no way to prevent herself from meeting Anthony?

Jin Xueli cursed inwardly, but after a moment's consideration, she decided to put the matter of the stalker aside for now.

The fact that Wei Xilai had appeared in her wax tear history meant he must have some connection to her fate... And that was the interesting part: what could the soon-to-be-dead richest man in Blackmoor City possibly have to do with her?

She left the tiny Jin Xueli and the stalker to the side, followed the trail back to the time the Wei Xilai convoy had appeared, and once she estimated she had found the approximate location, she lit a new fire trough.

If she could keep an eye on Wei Xilai’s history, she would surely be able to unearth quite a bit of information...

The more one waits for something, the slower it seems to come.

Jin Xueli touched the melting wax, adjusted the fire, and felt impatient and restless, her mind wandering. She scanned back and forth, only realizing two things after quite some time:

One, the segment of wax tears where she and Anthony met due to the car accident had solidified, becoming the latest version of history.

Two, the corpse on the exhibition hall floor had disappeared, she knew not when.