I can rewind time to prevent death

Yan Junze returned to the staircase entrance.

"Go up to the second floor and jump straight down from a suitable spot?"

He thought about it, then dismissed the idea.

Jumping down would also be on the street side, and the noise would be quite loud—it would definitely attract the attention of the Back-faced Woman standing at the door.

"This woman, when exactly did she start taking an interest in me? Following me all day long, appearing from time to time to give me a fright." Yan Junze was puzzled, not understanding what had attracted this woman's attention to him.

Could it be simply because he was handsome?

Since he couldn't leave from upstairs, he thought about checking out the basement.

According to his understanding from his previous life, given that Tianmeng District was roughly in the south of Hua Country before his rebirth, these suburban self-built houses usually would not have basements.

And if a basement was to be built, it was likely that the original plot of land was a depression. To save construction costs, local people wouldn't fill in the depression before building; instead, they would use the land as it was, constructing a basement below and putting up beams around, building the house above it.

So if Yan Junze's guess was correct, due to the natural geographical features from before, the basement could connect to the outside.

He quickly returned to the basement. Yan Junze turned on both of his flashlights, then started at the basement stairs, following the wall and carefully looking for the vents piece by piece.

His focus was on the locations with cross-shaped ventilation outlets. Since the basement must be ventilated, these outlets had to face outside.

Soon, Yan Junze found three vents, facing three different directions, and each had faint moonlight peeking through, but he wasn't sure which one would allow him to crawl out.

First, he placed the stepladder at the first vent and looked for a long time. Then he moved the ladder to the second vent, and as he approached this vent to carefully peek outside,

"What are you... looking at?" A woman's voice sounded out of nowhere from behind him.

"Damn!"

Yan Junze was startled and nearly fell off the ladder.

After steadying himself, his heart pounded madly. He thought for a moment, then without turning around, he asked, "Are you Ye Zhennan or..."

He had just spoken a few words with Ye Zhennan, and some of them even sounded slurred. He still did not have a deep impression of the woman's voice.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"I'm Zhenzhen." The voice came again.

"Zhenzhen? It must be Ye Zhennan then, but... the Back-faced Woman might also be called Zhenzhen."

Yan Junze still did not turn around, asking, "Which vent here can I use to get outside smoothly?"

"Why not take the main entrance?" the woman's voice asked curiously.

This time, Yan Junze was sure that the woman behind him was Ye Zhennan. He turned around and saw the woman in a white dress floating behind him. He said, "There's an Evil Spirit outside, more powerful than you, waiting for me. Can you deal with her?"

Ye Zhennan shook her head: "I can't get out."

"So I have to find another way." Yan Junze pointed at the vent, "Which one can I break open to climb out?"

"Here." The next second, Ye Zhennan's voice suddenly came from the third vent.

This woman's Spirit was flitting in and out so unpredictably, leaving Yan Junze dumbfounded.

With no choice, he climbed down the ladder, carried the stepladder to the third vent, and after climbing up, he looked out and felt the space outside seemed to be much wider.

But how could he make a hole big enough to crawl through? At this moment, Yan Junze missed the days when Zhou Dali was around.

If that guy were here, considering the kind of vent it was, he could probably just tear it open with his bare hands and make a big hole.

Experience more tales on empire

"Is there a sledgehammer in the house?" Yan Junze asked.

"Come down first," Ye Zhennan said.

Yan Junze was puzzled but climbed down from the ladder and stood aside.

Meanwhile, Ye Zhennan continued to float in mid-air, her white dress billowing.

She moved closer to the vent, suddenly opened her mouth, and a long tongue shot out with a bang, hitting the vent. After the dust settled, the vent had been turned into an opening large enough for one person to climb through.

Yan Junze's eyes widened: "That impressive?"

Ye Zhennan retracted her tongue, looking somewhat bashful as she reached up to wipe the corner of her mouth: "Sorry for the embarrassment."

I have to say, this is the most cooperative evil spirit Yan Junze has ever encountered.

"Since your tongue is so powerful, why didn't you just use it to strangle me when I was moving your body just now, instead of using your hands?" Yan Junze voiced his question.

"I just wanted to kill you, not disgust you to death," Ye Zhennan answered.

Well, as a ghost who loved beauty and cleanliness when she was alive, that was quite frank.

Yan Junze was at a loss for words.

He climbed up the stepladder again and crawled out through the hole he had just opened.

Once outside, Yan Junze didn't hurry to get up. Instead, he shone his flashlight into the basement behind him and saw that Ye Zhennan had disappeared.

He immediately turned off the flashlight, and using the moonlight, looked around the area, noting the terrain was slightly sunken here. He was right at the back of the house with the number 39 on its doorplate. There was a small path coming from one end, passing through here and winding towards the other end.

After surveying the area for a moment and making sure he didn't see the Back-faced Woman, Yan Junze quickly got up and left at a brisk pace.

He followed the path to the main road and then made his way back to his rental, where he went straight to bed without washing or brushing up, utterly exhausted from the night's ordeal.

The task of "The Hanged Woman" was still incomplete, and he would have to come up with a plan quickly the next day, so he needed to rest as much as possible to regain his energy for the task ahead.

After contemplating for a moment, he released Ke'er.

Ke'er appeared and immediately uttered a sound of surprise before quickly embracing Yan Junze, her face full of longing, as if she were seeing a long-lost relative.

This scenario unexpectedly gave Yan Junze a very strange feeling, as if, for a moment, he too had missed Ke'er.

He allowed Ke'er to embrace him, a bone-chilling cold seeping into his body.

Yan Junze spoke, "I'm going to sleep for a while. You keep watch and listen for any movement around us. If the Back-faced Woman gets close, make sure to wake me up first before you run! Do you hear me?"

"Hmm."

Yan Junze covered himself with the blanket and peacefully fell asleep.

The next day he slept until past ten in the morning, when he was woken by a call from Zhou Dali.

Zhou Dali strongly suspected that Yan Junze was feigning illness merely as an excuse to go out and relieve stress. Their homeroom teacher, Xiang Decai, had already expressed concern about this, so Yan Junze had no choice but to call his father and have him speak to the teacher directly, requesting an additional two days of leave.

Regardless of the approval, Yan Junze got up and headed to the bathroom outside to take a shower and wash his hair, fulfilling Ke'er's long-unmet desires.

After that, he went next door to Lin Dong's place.

This time, Lin Dong was not lying on his bed, but on a rocking chair at home, with a cup of strong ginger tea placed beside him. His good friend, Old Li, had come over early in the morning to bring him breakfast.

The two of them were chatting.

Yan Junze hadn't even begun to speak when he entered and saw that there were cut pieces of youtiao (fried dough sticks) on the table.

Lin Dong smiled and said, "Those youtiao haven't been touched, and the bowl of soy milk hasn't been drunk either. If you haven't had breakfast, then eat it, otherwise it will be wasted."

"Okay," Yan Junze replied with no pretense, sitting down and dunking the youtiao into the soy milk before eating it with big bites.

"Uncle Lin, there's something I've heard from others, and I wanted to ask you about it." While eating, Yan Junze spoke.

"Go ahead," Lin Dong said, lighting a cigarette and taking a puff.

"About house number 39 on our street, I heard that their son drowned. Is that true?"

"Yes, that's right, he died in a reservoir."

"What about the body?"

"After it was retrieved, they buried it."

Old Li chimed in, "It was quite tragic. That boy used to hang out with a few kids from the western back street. They often played games in the abandoned Lin Family courtyard. Who would've known that one day, a fire broke out in the courtyard, and all those kids were burnt to death inside. Not one came out alive."

Yan Junze, who was mid-bite with a youtiao, paused and said, "Huh, what a coincidence!"