Zhou Huai nodded, thinking to himself that as expected.

This little girl was aware of her own physical condition.

He continued to probe.

"When did this condition of yours start?"

"How long has it lasted?"

Natsume Rinku hugged her knees and fell into memories.

Zhou Huai did not rush her, just quietly looking at her.

He had plenty of patience.

After a long while, Natsume Rinku slowly raised her head.

"Probably... it started when I was six years old."

"Back then, I could always hear a voice in my mind."

"There was a very gentle older sister who would always talk to me when I was asleep and tell me many stories I couldn't understand."

"At that time, I thought it was just an imaginary friend of innate creation."

There was self-deprecation in Natsume Rinku's voice.

"Because Mom and Dad were never home, and older brother... older brother didn't like me either."

"I was very lonely."

"So, I was very glad to have the older sister accompany me."

"Until... until the year I turned nine."

Her voice dropped even lower, filled with fear.

"That day, older brother became a Class Transferrer and brought back a lot of bugs."

"He said he wanted to make me a little braver."

"Then, he dumped all those bugs onto my body."

"I was so scared, those bugs crawling on me, biting me... it hurt so much, it itched so much..."

"I cried and begged older brother to take them away, but he just stood to the side and laughed, laughing very loudly."

"He said as long as I could endure not crying, he would let me go."

"But I couldn't help it..."

The little girl's tears broke through the dam once again, sliding down from her eye sockets in large droplets, dripping onto the old tatami mat and soaking into a small dark patch.

"Just when I thought I was about to be bitten to death by the bugs..."

"It was the older sister who helped me disperse the bugs."

"Ever since then, my body became very strange."

"I would always fall asleep inexplicably, sleeping for a very long time."

"Sometimes, when I woke up, I would find myself in a completely unfamiliar place."

"I knew that was all done by the older sister."

"Back then, she had already begun to slowly control my body."

Zhou Huai looked at her, waiting for what came next.

"At first, she only came out occasionally."

"But recently... recently the number of times she came out became more and more frequent."

When Natsume Rinku reached this point, she could no longer control her emotions and burst into tears.

"She wants to completely snatch away my body!"

"She wants to kill me, she wants to completely replace me!"

The girl abruptly raised her head, her pair of eyes red from crying.

Like a drowning person catching onto the last straw of life, she crawled in front of Zhou Huai with all her strength.

"Older brother... am I going to die soon?"

Zhou Huai looked at her, his gaze calm without answering.

He merely reached out his hand, gently placing it on top of the girl's shivering head.

Softly asking in return:

"Do you want to die?"

Natsume Rinku shook her head frantically, tears splashing everywhere along with her movement.

"I don't want to die!"

"Older brother, I don't want to die! I want to live!"

That was right.

Even with a Hell-difficulty start.

Father, mother, and older brother were all not good things.

An unknown monster still lived inside her body.

Yet this little girl had never thought of committing suicide.

Struggling to survive in a nightmare-like life.

This was far stronger than those people who wanted to jump off a building upon encountering a little setback.

For some reason, Zhou Huai seemed to see his own shadow on the little girl.

Doing so much, even sparing no effort to lurk into Sakura Country, wasn't it just to snatch back the Pendulum of Life so he could successfully survive?

For nothing else.

Just based on her words "I don't want to die, I want to live".

Just based on this will to survive.

Zhou Huai decided to help her.

He gently touched Natsume Rinku's head, his voice exceptionally soft.

"Don't cry."

"I can help you."

These few words, like the first ray of morning light piercing through endless darkness, instantly illuminated Natsume Rinku's despairing world.

She abruptly raised her head, and in those eyes swollen from crying, an unbelievable brilliance erupted.

Hope seemed within reach.

"Re... really?"

She excitedly reached out her hands, tightly grabbing Caesar's arm, as if grasping the last straw.

Wearing Natsume Masahiro's face, Zhou Huai calmly nodded.

However, his tone changed, and the expression on that roguish face turned serious.

"However, although I can help you, the only one who can truly defeat her is yourself."

He stared into the girl's eyes, word by word.

"She wants to occupy your body, what about you?"

"Do you have the courage to fight her to the end even if it means death?"

Natsume Rinku was stunned by Zhou Huai's serious appearance.

In those clear eyes, fear and hope intertwined, and finally, an unprecedented brilliance condensed within them.

A moment later, this twelve-year-old little girl's gaze also became resolute.

She looked at Zhou Huai, and very earnestly, using all her strength, said:

"Older brother, I do."

Zhou Huai smiled.

He gently touched Natsume Rinku's little head once again.

"Remember what you said."

Natsume Rinku looked at him with a blank face, not understanding the meaning of these words.

The next second.

The gentle smile on Zhou Huai's face suddenly vanished, replaced by an icy indifference.

That large hand of his that had just been gently stroking the top of the girl's head abruptly moved down without warning, like a pair of iron pliers, tightly grabbing Natsume Rinku's slender neck!

"Ugh..."

The expression on Natsume Rinku's face instantly froze.

All hope, gratitude, and reliance transformed into extreme terror and bewilderment at this moment.

She completely didn't understand what had happened.

Clearly just a second ago he was a gentle older brother promising to help her, why the next second, was he trying to kill her?

The feeling of suffocation surged in like a tide.

The air was instantly extracted, and a burning, searing pain came from her lungs.

She instinctively stretched out her hands to scratch the arm choking off her life, but the other party's hand was like cast iron, unmoving.

"Older... brother..."

She wanted to beg for mercy, wanted to question, but from her throat could only come weak and painful rattling sounds.

Her legs kicked wildly on the tatami mat, making dull "thud thud" sounds; that was life making its last futile struggle.

Zhou Huai remained unmoved.

Controlling Caesar, he coldly gazed at the young, tender face beneath him that had turned purplish-red due to oxygen deprivation.

The girl's pupils began to dilate, and the brilliance in her eyes rapidly dimmed.

Her struggle grew weaker and weaker, her limbs gradually hanging down powerlessly.

Consciousness, like sinking into the deep sea, was swallowed by boundless darkness and coldness.

She was about to die.

Zhou Huai calmly felt the rapid fading of the girl's breath of life.

He raised his eyes, as if peering through this frail shell to lock gazes with another existence hidden deep within.

"She's going to die right now."

"Aren't you going to make a move yet?"

As expected!

The next second!

A majestic, icy, and tyrannical energy, like a volcano slumbering for a millennia, suddenly erupted from within Natsume Rinku's body!

Boom—!!!

Black waves of Qi swept out, and Caesar's arm choking her neck was violently knocked away by this immense force.

Natsume Rinku's body, which had already gone limp, eerily and slowly floated up, half a foot off the ground.

Those pupils of hers, unfocused from oxygen deprivation, suddenly widened!

At this moment, there was no longer any fear or innocence belonging to a twelve-year-old girl in those eyes.

Replaced by endless coldness, antiquity, and... bone-deep malice.

She stared fixedly at Caesar, or rather, stared at Zhou Huai behind Caesar.

A hoarse, overlapping, non-human voice spat out word by word from her mouth, filled with heart-palpitating majesty and fury.

"I have no grievances or enmity with you, why do you target me time and time again?!"