Chapter 21: Chapter 21: Hiding a Leaf in the Forest

They were clearly so close, yet the young Xu Yuan had to shout every word for Gao Tian to hear him. Gao Tian knew their respective spacetimes were about to return to normal. They weren’t separated by two meters, but by more than twenty years.

Gao Tian raised his voice in kind, shouting back at Xu Yuan:

"What method?"

Xu Yuan’s faint, intermittent voice drifted over:

"Hide a leaf in the forest!

"The best way to hide a leaf is in a forest!"

The young boy said something more, but Gao Tian could no longer hear it. As the owner of the leather shoes approached, all supernatural power in the vicinity was suppressed, including the boy’s time-piercing Ghost Eye.

The mist gradually faded, and with it, the young boy and the joystick in his hands.

The spot where he had been standing was empty, leaving only a dust-covered, unplugged arcade machine.

The connection between their two timelines was severed. The young Xu Yuan returned to more than twenty years in the past, and Gao Tian remained in the present.

’Asking the young Xu Yuan to find his own corpse from more than twenty years in the future was probably a bit much.’

Still, the words he spoke before the connection broke lingered in Gao Tian’s mind.

’The best way to hide a leaf is in a forest.’ What did that mean?

Gao Tian turned and started walking out of the arcade. At the same time, he pulled out his phone to check the chat history in the group chat.

’If my words to the young Xu Yuan from twenty-odd years ago actually influenced him, wouldn’t that change the current state of this timeline?’

’The adult Xu Yuan shouldn’t have become a ghost, and the Jialan Society chat group probably wouldn’t exist anymore.’

’Maybe Xu Yuan learned the place of his death and avoided Sapphire Mall, meaning he wouldn’t have died. He’d still be alive, a preeminent Ghost Hunter.’

But to Gao Tian’s disappointment, the chat history on his phone was identical, with no difference from before.

The Ghost Cave had released a black packet, and Xu Yuan had been in the group looking for someone to deal with his corpse...

This timeline hadn’t changed.

’Right, time is just a big loop,’ he thought. ’The Gao Tian from the previous cycle probably met the young Xu Yuan in Sapphire Mall, too. But the boy still grew up, died the same way, and became a powerful ghost. So, this timeline’s young Xu Yuan won’t change his destiny over a few words from me, either.’

He had spent about an hour in the dilapidated arcade and found almost no clues. As Gao Tian walked out, he remembered to use his walkie-talkie to contact the others scattered across different floors:

"Have you found any of the corpse pieces?"

Xia Ta’s voice came from the other end of the walkie-talkie:

"We’ve searched the entire mall, and we haven’t found a single piece yet.

"Gao Tian, what were you doing before? You suddenly went completely silent.

"We were worried something had happened to you."

Jiang Yang’s voice cut in:

"If we keep searching like this, we’ll never find the pieces before the mall closes. For it to be hidden in a bustling mall without being discovered, it must be in a place no normal person would ever think of."

Several newcomers chimed in at once, their voices a chorus of despair.

Gao Tian ignored them and answered Xia Ta’s question first:

"It was a small matter, I handled it. We can talk about it later when we have time.

"By the way, Xia Ta, let me ask you something." 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Xia Ta:

"Gao Tian, go ahead."

Gao Tian:

"The best way to hide a leaf is in a forest.

"What do you think this saying has to do with the second green-text mission?"

Xia Ta:

"Where did you hear that strange saying?"

Gao Tian:

"It just came to me."

Fortunately, Xia Ta didn’t press him on the source of the phrase.

The walkie-talkie went silent for a moment before Xia Ta’s voice sounded again:

"You hide a leaf in a forest because a forest has the most leaves. A single leaf hidden among tens of thousands of others would indeed be very difficult for a searcher to distinguish.

"So, following that logic, the place to hide a piece of a corpse would be among tens of thousands of other corpse pieces.

"Are you saying the body is hidden among tens of thousands of other bodies?"

That was obviously wrong.

Without needing anyone else to point it out, Xia Ta refuted her own idea:

"This is a mall, not a graveyard. Where would all those bodies come from?"

Suddenly, Jiang Yang cut in:

"Since you’re talking about the relationship between the forest and the leaves...

"What does Sapphire Mall have the most of?"

Boss Jin chimed in:

"Merchandise?

"Shops?"

Su Jiu’s timid voice piped up:

"Money."

That was clearly wrong.

Xia Ta and Gao Tian said in unison:

"People."

Hide a leaf in the forest.

Hide a leaf in the forest.

That was it.

Gao Tian suddenly understood the true meaning of the words the young Xu Yuan had desperately shouted to him before the connection between their timelines was severed.

’It seems I underestimated the young Xu Yuan,’ Gao Tian thought. ’The person who knows you best is always yourself. Without his hint, who knows how long a bunch of fools like us would have spent searching Sapphire Mall.’

’If their theory was right, then the adult Xu Yuan’s way of thinking was truly audacious. When Gao Tian first saw the green-text mission, he never would have dreamed that Xu Yuan would hide his own corpse in a place like this after death.’

’That made sense. No wonder no one had discovered a body that had been lying around for years, despite the mall’s massive daily foot traffic. Xu Yuan had performed a little magic trick: he had placed his body right in front of everyone from the start, yet all the people who came and went every day seemed to be under a spell, turning a blind eye to it.’

"The body is hidden..."

Gao Tian lowered the walkie-talkie.

From the mall corridor outside, the clear sound of footsteps approached him.

Gao Tian stood his ground, waiting for a figure to cast a shadow from around the corner.

"My old classmate, why the rush to the third-floor arcade? Won’t you have a drink with me?"

It was that damned, persistent old security guard.

He had only used the Memory Ghost to hypnotize the man, implanting a memory of them being old classmates. He hadn’t expected the old guard to become so attached, chasing him all the way here and insisting on buying him a drink.

Gao Tian smiled.

"Sorry, I lied to you. I was never your classmate.

"The reason you have this false memory is that I’ve mastered the killing rule of a ghost. It allows me to use language and psychological suggestion to implant nonexistent memories into your mind."

Abruptly and without reservation, Gao Tian had just revealed his greatest secret to a complete stranger.

A look of confusion appeared on the old guard’s face, as if he couldn’t understand a word Gao Tian was saying:

"A ghost’s killing rule?

"What’s that?

"Do ghosts even really exist in this world?"

Gao Tian continued speaking at an unhurried pace:

"But I don’t need to feel too sorry. Because you’ve deceived me, too.

"You’re not human at all, are you?

"For Xu Yuan to be able to hide his own body in Sapphire Mall for so long without being discovered...

"The greatest secret is that his body was divided into numerous pieces, and each piece was sewn onto a person.

"That way, when Sapphire Mall opens every day, these six ’people,’ each carrying a piece of a corpse that isn’t their own, walk separately through the mall’s various floors. No customer would ever notice that a part of the security guard they just brushed past belongs to a dead man."

Gao Tian’s gaze fell upon the old guard’s left hand, which was covered by a black glove. The hand seemed to be beyond his control, constantly leaking a black, foul-smelling fluid onto the floor.

’There’s no mistake. This old guard’s left hand is Xu Yuan’s severed arm!’

This was the greatest secret of the green-text mission, the truth behind the young Xu Yuan’s riddle: "hide a leaf in the forest."

The old guard looked at his own left hand, his expression not one of dawning realization, but of even deeper confusion:

"What you’re saying... it seems to be reminding me of something, though I don’t know why...

"It was about three years ago, I think.

"I was on my night patrol in the mall when I heard a strange laugh coming from a distant corner. The mall had already been cleared of people, so I went over, intending to tell whoever it was to leave.

"But when I rounded a corner, I saw something utterly terrifying... I still can’t remember what it was. I just fainted the moment I saw it.

"When I woke up, it was already the next morning. The mall was bustling with people again, and it was as if nothing had happened the night before. I started my daily patrol as usual.

"From that day on, I felt like I could never leave the mall. I didn’t need to eat or rest. Every day after the mall closed, my memory would be wiped clean. The next morning, I’d find I couldn’t control my own body and would just start another day of patrols..."

Gao Tian, of course, knew the reason for the old guard’s memory gaps.

The strange laughter he heard and the terrifying scene he witnessed that day was Xu Yuan being killed by a vicious ghost in a corner of the mall.

Before his death, Xu Yuan had used some kind of supernatural item to divide his corpse into five pieces, attaching each piece to a different mall employee.

The people chosen to carry his body parts had to be five regulars at the mall. That way, their repeated daily appearances wouldn’t arouse anyone’s suspicion.

From that point on, these five employees were neither human nor ghost. They became mere vessels for Xu Yuan’s corpse pieces, wandering the mall day and night. The sole purpose of their bodies was to hide Xu Yuan’s remains, to the point that they even forgot their own existence.

It had to be said—Xu Yuan’s plan was audacious, the supernatural item he used was incredible, and his methods were utterly ruthless.

"So, how exactly am I supposed to remove this piece of corpse from you?"

Gao Tian’s eyes fell upon the old guard’s rotting hand, which was still dripping with ichor.

The next moment, he drew the tip of his Ghost Transformation Spear.

The spear’s blade was unimaginably sharp. With a single, clean strike, it sliced off the old guard’s wrist as smoothly as cutting through tofu.