I can rewind time to prevent death

In room 011, two bare arms appeared from the ground at the doorway, as if someone was crawling on the floor, slowly making their way out.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Jiang Ruixin let out a scream because, at the doorway of room 010 which was closest to her, there were also two arms crawling out.

One could even faintly make out a bald head continuously squirming towards the outside.

The very next second, all flashlight beams went out.

"Ah!"

Bao Jie and Jiang Ruixin screamed again in unison.

The piercing screams made Yan Junze\'s ears buzz, and he was temporarily deafened.

Yan Junze felt that the most common sound he heard that night was women\'s screams, which made him doubt his decision to bring these two female classmates with him for Spirit Exploration.

Let\'s not even mention the strangenesses; just Jiang Ruixin\'s scream alone had made him shudder twice. Frankly, it was much more startling than if a strangeness had suddenly appeared before him.

Unexpectedly, although the flashlight beams were all extinguished, the light from the camera Bao Jie was holding was still on.

This light was the only source of illumination present, although very weak, very weak indeed.

Jiang Ruixin immediately clung tightly to Bao Jie, her voice trembling, "Jiejie, quick, shine it behind me, check if that thing has crawled out the door!"

Bao Jie quickly swiveled the camera towards room 010, then shook her head, "It\'s gone."

Zhou Dali also shouted, "Quick... shine it over here."

Bao Jie moved the camera again and shook her head, "Nothing."

"I mean... shine it on my feet," Zhou Dali\'s voice went back into the auto-tune mode.

The two girls, frightened, hastily backed away, and Bao Jie immediately directed the camera light onto Zhou Dali\'s feet.

They saw a gaunt man with yellowing skin, naked, lying on the ground, his twig-like hands firmly gripping Zhou Dali\'s ankles. His eyelids were open, revealing empty black sockets without pupils, and his mouth was also open, toothless, but with lots of white mucus sticking between the upper and lower lips, making no sound at all.

Thump!

Zhou Dali fell to the ground stiffly, motionless.

In the next second, everyone stopped moving, and an abnormal icy sensation spread simultaneously to their feet.

Bao Jie shakily turned the camera light toward her own and the others\' feet, only to see that each person\'s ankles were being held by a skinny, naked man.

Although these bald men had different features, they all had wrinkled skin, no hair, and were emaciated.

"Looking for replacements?" The idea popped into Yan Junze\'s mind again.

At this moment, the two girls were so terrified that they were unable to make a sound, just trembling like sieves, potentially fainting at any moment.

With a \'puff,\' the camera light finally went out, and the surroundings plunged into endless darkness.

The psychological horror brought on by the sudden blackout spread like an army of ants, enveloping and gnawing at the last bit of courage everyone had left. This pressure was insanely overwhelming.

Without a second thought, Yan Junze\'s mind raced with an impulse.

Rewind!

After a bout of dizziness, the flashlight\'s glow appeared beside them once again.

Zhou Dali, Bao Jie, Jiang Ruixin, and Junze were standing together, having returned to Storage Room No. 004, all positioned behind the door.

Yan Junze looked at the time. Just now, when there were 21 minutes left, he had spent 5 minutes with that young guard. So, this was the second rewind, and after the consumption of Different Dimension Energy, 16 minutes remained.

This third rewind consumed 4 minutes, which meant that now, after the rewind, there were only 12 minutes of rewind line energy left—they couldn\'t afford to waste it any further.

Of course, in his Spacetime Atlas, he still had 50 minutes of Different Dimension Energy stored. If possible, it was best not to use this energy at all.

What Yan Junze feared was that if they set the starting point from here and were still unable to escape the outside strangeness, they would fall into a desperate situation after exhausting all the energy.

In fact, 12 minutes was completely enough to get out of the basement floor. The most important thing now was to shake off that young guard outside, who might be an anomaly.

Footsteps sounded from the corridor, coming step by step towards Storage Room No. 004.

Zhou Dali and the other two were all listening intently to the footsteps; nobody spoke.

Yan Junze took the opportunity to recall the details of "Peeking From the Crack in the Wall."

He remembered that the penalty for the mission was to become a substitute, to trade for the freedom of the body inside the wall. Could it be that those identical, withered strangenesses they saw before the rewind were the ones left behind as substitutes?

But this thought didn\'t quite make sense—if there was already a substitute, why didn\'t the anomaly inside the wall leave this place, but instead still linger in the basement of Jianye Building?

Where exactly was the problem?

There were two hints for this mission: one was that the Evil Spirit was already pitiable, therefore it couldn\'t Lockdown; the second hint was that the secret was in its eyes.

"The secret is in its eyes?" Yan Junze muttered softly, his brain whirring at high speed.

Initially, all four of them had been lured by a multitude of illusions by that eye peering from the wall crack. If not for Jiang Ruixin\'s exceptional talent, using her Glaring Eyes Mastery to rescue everyone, without the Golden Finger, they might have been completely wiped out already.

"Eyes? Secret?" Yan Junze\'s eyebrows furrowed deeply.

By now, the footsteps outside had stopped at the door.

Yan Junze made a silent gesture, and then mouthed two words to the other three: "Strangeness!"

He then had Zhou Dali block the door, while he quickly moved towards the lying corpse.

Outside the door, the guard had started to enquire, "Is there... anyone inside?"

This time, though the other three looked puzzled, none of them answered.

Yan Junze swiftly picked up the corpse and dragged it towards the doorway.

Ever since the dry corpse had been dug out from the wall, those gray pupils appeared to have lost their ability to induce illusions. However, owing to their previous experience, everyone, including Yan Junze, deliberately avoided those eerie eyes.

After Yan Junze dragged the corpse to the door, Bao Jie and Jiang Ruixin, frightened, hastily hid to one side, not understanding why he was doing this.

Zhou Dali, though scared, did not move away since his hands were holding the door.

"Stop playing dumb, I heard noises, open the door!" the young guard said once again, and after failing to turn the doorknob, he knocked on the door.

Crouched behind the body, Yan Junze propped the corpse up, aligning its eyes with the doorway, and then said to Zhou Dali, "We\'re ready, open the door."