Chapter Six: The Hall of Contracts
Late at night,
The moon hung in the sky like a silver plate.
Inside the room, Li Can stood behind the gray curtains, his gaze silently peering through the narrow gap at the residential area across the street.
It was a cluster of old apartment buildings, each only eight stories high and lacking elevators. Though the exterior walls had been cleaned and repainted a few years ago to match the city’s development, they had once again been overtaken by lush, green climbing vines.
Most of the residents in this old neighborhood were elderly, early to bed and early to rise. At this hour, not a single window was lit—darkness pressed heavily across the entire block.
Meow!
A mottled stray cat, drawn by something, slipped through the iron fence separating the buildings from the road and disappeared into the night.
Li Can’s gaze shifted upward, locking onto the eighth floor, leftmost apartment of the building directly opposite. Its window was wide open, the cream-colored curtains billowing outside, rising and falling with the wind. It seemed as though a shadow stood silently before the window.
Li Can’s pupils contracted, and he quickly withdrew his gaze.
“This guy is dangerous!” he muttered, pacing restlessly around the room. He descended the narrow staircase to the first floor to check the rolling shutter door, making sure it was firmly locked. Still uneasy, he dashed to the kitchen, grabbed a vegetable knife, and hid it beneath his pillow upstairs.
This was the second floor of a restaurant, usually used for storage or midday naps; now, it had become Li Can’s refuge.
Everything had gone smoothly until Su Rui’s parting words nearly made Li Can spit blood in disbelief.
“Brother Liu lives in apartment 1 on the eighth floor of that building. If you run into trouble you can’t handle, go ask him for help...”
“Are you crazy? You want me to ask a potential psychotic murderer for help? Isn’t that like sending a lamb into the lion’s den?”
Every time he recalled that terrifying image, Li Can couldn’t help but shudder.
“The real trouble is the landlord! If I don’t deal with him, I’ll never have peace!”
He exhaled the pent-up frustration he’d been holding for so long, and as he replaced it with a breath of fresh air, the salty tang of dried kelp drifted into his nostrils.
It came from the dried kelp stored in the room.
“Never mind Liu Huadong for now—just this kelp is enough to drive me mad.”
Li Can fell back onto the bed in a spread-eagle position, staring silently at the cobwebs near the energy-saving lamp on the ceiling.
The entire day had felt like an endless roller coaster, leaving him physically and mentally exhausted.
From being the acclaimed chef of the Imperial Court to a humble restaurant worker, from a fully equipped luxury apartment to a bare storage room above a restaurant...
Li Can was not someone who chased pleasure or coveted fame; otherwise, he would not have continued to devote himself to culinary artistry after achieving both reputation and fortune, refusing all interviews and media exposure.
As a result, the world knew his name, but not his face.
Still, he was only human. Faced with such dramatic change, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment.
“There’s also this...”
Li Can sprang up from the bed and pulled out the sun-shaped necklace hanging around his neck.
“This thing has been with me for a year, but never changed as it did today. If my guess is right, the strange events earlier are mostly connected to it.”
“If that’s the case, things are even more complicated.”
“First, whether my experience is time reversal or foresight, from a scientific standpoint, both involve ‘time’—in other words, it can alter the trajectory of time.”
“Second, what triggers this necklace? Is it the wearer’s death, or is it random?”
“Lastly, it came from my father. Did he know its power?”
Li Can tried to recall the past, but found he couldn’t say what his father’s actual profession had been. The only certainty was that his father frequently traveled for work—either out of province to purchase goods, or to negotiate with clients. In the six months before the fatal car accident, his father had been so busy that even his shadow was seldom seen, and his mother had never argued with him about it.
“Absolutely no clues.”
The more Li Can thought, the more muddled his mind became, a throbbing pain twisting between his brows.
Just as he was about to get up and grab a bottle of mineral water from the table to soothe his nerves, his head spun violently, darkness clouding his vision, and he pitched forward.
Anemia?
Li Can didn’t have time to think; instinctively, he crossed his arms to protect his head from injury.
Splash.
The expected pain didn’t arrive—instead, there came a sound of water, utterly out of place.
But the floor was dry...
Li Can straightened up and found everything around him had changed.
Bright.
Vast.
He was no longer in the cramped second floor of the restaurant, but standing atop an endless ocean.
He stood upon the water’s surface, gentle waves rippling beneath his feet, yet he could not sink.
The sky was empty—no clouds, no stars, no moon. Nothing at all.
Li Can quickly checked himself; everything was as usual, except the sun necklace was gone.
Behind him, the sound of water splashing grew louder.
He turned to see something rising from the depths, like a fountain.
As the waves parted, a round wooden table was revealed, its surface covered in cracks like shattered glass.
Behind the table was a chair woven from tree vines, but no one sat there.
Li Can knew he was caught up in another bizarre event, but he managed to keep his composure and approached slowly.
On the table lay a stack of papers...
No, calling them paper wasn’t quite right—they looked like ancient books, haphazardly bound with animal hide.
Four golden characters were emblazoned on the cover.
[Divine Contract]
“This could never have been written with a ballpoint pen,” Li Can thought, not knowing why such an odd notion surfaced at a time like this—perhaps just to distract himself from the tension of the unknown.
He opened the cover. On the first page, new words appeared.
[When you arrive at the Hall of Contract and open the Divine Contract, it means you are qualified to become a proxy of the gods]
Li Can looked around.
“Hall of Contract? There’s nothing here but water—no trace of any ‘hall.’ And what is this ‘proxy of the gods’?”
He turned the page.
[The world you see may not be the true world. Do you wish to truly understand it?]
“What a peculiar feeling. But really, who wouldn’t want to know?”
Li Can frowned slightly and kept turning.
[The following content may overturn your understanding. Please prepare yourself mentally.]
He turned again.
[Drinking the Eternal Sea water for the first time will allow you to leave the Hall of Contract and forget everything you experienced here.]
He flipped once more.
[If you continue reading, the Eternal Sea water will lose its effect. If you regret your choice, it will end in death!]
“Damn it!”
Li Can finally understood the strange sensation that had been creeping up on him.
From the moment he saw the cover, his curiosity had been piqued, and the subsequent words only fueled it further, making it nearly impossible to resist the urge to keep reading!
This was clearly a deliberate trap—an irresistible lure for anyone who saw it!
Li Can deeply despised whoever had designed this content.
The script was ancient and majestic, yet every phrase oozed with adolescent melodrama.
But none of that mattered now.
At this point, the mere fact that the sun necklace came from his father was enough reason not to retreat.
He kept turning the pages...
(To be continued...)