Die, Replay, Repeat

Memories came flooding back like a tide.

With a loud bang, Fang Xiu fiercely crushed the remaining peach in his hand, shattering even the pit.

The young girl Peachface immediately let out a piercing scream.

Suddenly, the Peachface tree seemed to come to life, and a huge human face slowly appeared on the trunk. The face seemed to be a blend of many faces, both old and young, neither clearly male nor female.

"Is your obsession for your wife really that deep? Is this what humans call love? It can even break through the fog of memory," the huge face exclaimed in surprise.

"You should never have made me forget my wife. You deserve to die!" Fang Xiu's shouted, his voice like a fierce ghost.

In the next second, he vanished. A flash of silver light followed, and a scalpel was fiercely stabbed into the giant face.

The face let out an inhuman roar, and the Peachface tree swung its branches wildly.

Everyone who had been eating peaches was thrown out in an instant.

"Where am I?"

"How did I get here?"

"Who are you all?"

The people on the ground were all dazed, constantly voicing their confusion. However, their confusion only lasted a moment before they gradually regained clarity.

"The peach is poisoned!"

"It erased our memories!"

They exclaimed in shock, realizing how close they were to being lost forever. Losing their memories was almost as bad as losing their lives.

Fang Xiu ignored them and kept his gaze fixed on the Peachface tree.

He had used a significant amount of his pain-inflicting power, which should have been fatal, but the Peachface tree did not die.

He then noticed that several peaches on the tree had burst.

The peach pits they had eaten seemed to grow legs, quickly running to the base of the Peachface tree and merging into it.

As they merged, more peaches grew on the tree.

Fang Xiu suspected that this Specter had the ability to devour others' life force.

The Peachfaces were likely the lives it had consumed, forming the Peachface tree.

If the people had completely lost their memories after eating the peaches, they would have ended up as new Peachfaces on the tree.

The tree survived the attack because it had many lives; the peaches took the hit for it.

Fang Xiu frowned slightly. He was not afraid of a battle of attrition. He was much stronger now and not the novice who used to run out of energy with one strike.

However, Nightmare was lurking in Putuo Temple and had yet to show up, likely planning something big. If he spent most of his power fighting the Peachface tree, he would be unable to face Nightmare.

Perhaps this was Nightmare's goal, to use Specters and the dangers within the Specter Zone to continuously drain his Spiritual Energy.

Nightmare was wary of his pain-inflicting power, as seen when it dared not directly confront the scalpel at the Investigation Bureau.

At this point, Fang Xiu felt it was necessary to make use of the crowd as cannon fodder; after all, he couldn't afford to lose too much Spiritual Energy.

_'I've saved you all this way. Now it's your turn to contribute.'_

"Kill it!" Fang Xiu ordered the people around him.

The crowd was ready to act on his command, but suddenly, cries of anguish erupted among them.

"Brother!"

"Has anyone seen my brother?" a young man in a leather jacket asked in panic.

They looked around and realized someone was missing from their group, the leather jacket man's brother. The two siblings had been through a Specter incident together, became psychics together, and had supported each other through life-and-death situations. They had a very deep connection.

"Brother! You—" The man in the leather jacket stopped mid-sentence. To his horror, he saw his brother's face on a peach on the Peachface tree.

His face went through a range of emotions, ending in a heart-wrenching scream, "No! Brother! Why?"

Sadly, his brother had been unlucky. Perhaps because he had a big mouth, he was the first to finish the peach, lost his memory completely, and turned into a Peachface.

"Fang Xiu! You can foresee, can't you? Why didn't you predict this? Why did my brother have to die, he—"

In a flash of silver light, the man's eyes bulged in disbelief as he looked at Fang Xiu, then at the scalpel embedded in his neck.

His grip on Fang Xiu's arm weakened until he finally fell to the ground, lifeless, as the scalpel was pulled out.

The sight of Fang Xiu, with his crimson eyes and silver hair, holding a blood-stained scalpel sent chills down everyone's spine.

"I've saved you so many times, and just failing once makes it my fault?" Fang Xiu's calm voice was chilling.

His words made everyone shiver. It was true. In the face of a Specter, especially Nightmare, death or injuries were almost unavoidable. With Fang Xiu here, they had stayed safe for too long. So when someone did die, they felt it harder to accept, and they blamed Fang Xiu.

It was like the story of a kind person who fed the hungry every day. At first, the food was plentiful, but as resources ran out, the portions got smaller. The people turned against him, accusing him of cruelty.

Now, Fang Xiu faced the same problem. He had saved them time and again, but the one time he couldn't, they saw it as a failure.

Facing such attitudes, Fang Xiu had only one response: eliminate them.

He was already furious because the Peachface tree almost made him forget his wife. Now, with someone provoking him, he saw no reason to hold back.

"I know some of you might still be thinking the same way. Remember, never say it out loud in front of me, or there will be consequences," Fang Xiu warned, his calm voice sending chills down everyone's spine.

The people he had saved many times suddenly remembered that Fang Xiu was not a saint; in fact, he wasn't even what you'd call a good person. He didn't hesitate to kill.

Throughout their journey, the number of teammates killed by Specters was almost equal to those Fang Xiu had eliminated himself.

"I didn't save you because I felt sorry for you but because you were useful, capable of fighting. I hope you don't dig your own graves. Now, everyone, attack this Specter. Anyone who disobeys will face death!"