Quadruple split.

Chapter 2773 Time
"What...is this...a situation...?"

Xueyin's legs went weak, and she knelt down on the ground, clutching her chest and breathing heavily. She looked up at the two terrified twin shop managers in front of her and asked in a hoarse voice.

Just now, Xueyin, who was suddenly frightened, subconsciously opened her mouth to sing a few lines of a song to calm herself and the mouse down. However, just as she activated her symbolic power and tried to add that invincible and omnipotent 'magic' to her voice, the residual power emanating from the Rice brothers almost destroyed her voice and instantly killed that heavenly sound.

Xueyin, who was directly affected by the backlash, was as if she had been mute for the previous two minutes. Not only could she not utter a single word, but her voice, which never tired no matter how many times she sang encores, was in so much pain that she almost fainted. Only now was she able to speak again with great difficulty.

The mouse lay limply on Xueyin's lap, curled up in a ball, shivering and clutching its tail.

As for Gu Xiaole, he was distracted by helping Xueyin withstand the oppressive aura unconsciously emanating from the Rice Brothers, and now he was lying on the ground with a pale face. Just as he was about to say something, he suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood.

She never imagined that these seemingly ordinary twin shop managers would be so powerful, in a way that she couldn't even comprehend.

In that instant, Gu Xiaole felt like a small boat in a raging storm, or perhaps not even a small boat, but just a simple and fragile fallen leaf. She was quite certain that if the Rice brothers' oppressive aura had been directed at her even slightly, Gu Xiaole would probably be a corpse by now.

The girl didn't feel ashamed, because she was certain that even if there were a few Emperor-level beings here, they would have died if they had been targeted even for a moment.

So it's not shameful or embarrassing, it's just a tiny bit... well, I should say a tiny bit perverted.

[This level of strength... it feels like she's at least at Aunt's level, right? Maybe even as strong as Uncle! My god, what kind of monsters are these two? And most importantly... why did Mo-chan scare them like this!?]

Gu Xiaole struggled to get up, staring at the Rice brothers who still seemed on high alert. After catching her breath for a while, she slowly wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth and asked them in a weak voice, "Tell me first, Mo-chan... what happened?"

"Sorry, just a moment, we'll be done soon."

Ferry pursed his lips, then snapped his fingers, summoning a golden, warm current that swept over Gu Xiaole, Xueyin, and Shushu.

The next moment, the two humans and the demon breathed a sigh of relief. The discomfort they felt vanished in an instant. Not only that, but the strength of the three of them even increased slightly at that moment. In terms of the rat's more intuitive feeling, it was as if they had gained twenty years of cultivation.

And so, Gu Xiaole, Xueyin, and the adorable girl who had returned to human form sat obediently on the sofa and waited, while Ferry Rice and Joe Rice nervously checked... all sorts of things that the three of them couldn't understand at all, including whether a certain unremarkable item in the shop was properly closed, whether Mo Tan had woken up from his coma and blown up the Earth in a fit of rage, and so on.

……

Three minutes later——

"call."

After completing a series of tests that the three girls couldn't understand, Ferry Rice let out a sigh of relief, then turned to her twin brother and asked with a forced smile, "Seriously, Joe, my face hurts a lot right now."

"agree."

Joe, his face ashen, chuckled dryly and said with utter despair, "This is the first time in my life I've realized how annoying the 'jinx' trait is. Good heavens, just two months ago we were actually thinking of making a board game with jinxes as its theme."

Ferry slumped his shoulders in frustration and asked with a sigh, "So, are we still going to do it? The 'Lucky Prophet'?"

"Go ahead and do it, why not?"

Joe shrugged, saying with a nonchalant "what's the use" attitude, "After all, judging from the current situation, we really can't get any worse off."

Ferry made a funny face, then sat back down on the sofa with Joe. He bowed slightly to the three ladies in front of him and said apologetically, "Well then, I apologize again, ladies. Our behavior just now was really not gentlemanly."

"We must admit that the seriousness of this matter far, far, far, far, far exceeded our expectations, to the point that we have inadvertently offended the three of you."

Qiao sighed, then raised his head sincerely and said seriously, "But please understand, all of this is absolutely necessary. After all, if we make a mistake, not only Brother Mo Tan, but all of us could be in trouble."

Xueyin: "...Eh?"

"Please tell us, what exactly happened to Mo-chan?"

Unlike Xue Yin, Gu Xiaole had already deeply realized the power of the Rice brothers, and had watched helplessly as these two powerful individuals were thrown into disarray by Mo Tan. At this moment, after erasing the [Strange and Unusual] shop from the main plane, and with sweat still pouring from his forehead, he immediately asked nervously, "Can you help him?"

Ferry nodded slightly and said softly, "In fact, we already tried to help him."

"Although it was just a fleeting glimpse... if the two of us hadn't reacted faster, those outsiders probably would have already caught up with us."

Qiao glanced out the window with lingering fear and said with a wry smile, "To be honest, if we didn't know Brother Mo Tan, we probably would have taken him straight to the outcasts to find the manager by now..."

"so."

Xueyin frowned slightly and asked angrily, "What exactly happened? Can't you consider the feelings of those who don't know the truth when you're chatting?"

"Actually, I'm pretty much the same."

Gu Xiaole casually chimed in. Clearly, although she was indeed an undeniable anomaly and one of the best among Japan's younger generation, due to the 'retribution' that plagued her, Gu Xiaole, whose fate was afflicted by the Three Waters Star, had not actually heard many of those stories from long ago. Even now, although that fate had been completely conquered by Gu Xiaole, for safety's sake, the girl still had not been told much, especially about what happened before that major event.

In this regard, she probably knew more about the Rice brothers' inexplicable panic than Xueyin did.

"This one……"

Joe hesitated for a moment, then turned to look at Ferry, and after a long deliberation, asked, "Shall we say it?"

"Speak up. With Brother Mo Tan in this state, we can't keep anything from him any longer."

Ferry sighed and said helplessly, "Besides, they're not ordinary people either. They know it, so they know it."

"So, to put it simply..."

Qiao looked at Gu Xiaole, Xueyin, and Cha Nu again, and said seriously, "Besides his mental problems, Brother Mo Tan is probably also involved with something even more troublesome."

"That thing is called—[Sin]."

Ferry picked up where he left off, then shrugged at Xueyin and Gu Xiaole, who were still staring at him with wide eyes: "That's all."

"Gone?!"

Xueyin was stunned and asked in astonishment, "That's it? How could it be gone?"

What is a crime?

Gu Xiaole frowned and asked a very pointed question: "Is it that disaster that caused such a huge commotion more than twenty years ago?" "A disaster..."

Ferry scratched his head, his expression somewhat complicated, and said, "That statement isn't actually very accurate. Of course, it was indeed a disaster, but the concept wasn't that terrible back then. Although it could even be the trigger for a world war under certain circumstances, ultimately, the so-called 'world war' still conforms to the rules of this world. After all, people will always start wars for one reason or another, and in most cases, all of this is within a controllable range."

Xueyin tilted her head and asked curiously, "What about what's outside the controllable range?"

"Outside of controllable range..."

Joe sighed and said quietly, "Although it's a bit abstract, you might as well understand it as an ambitious madman trying to forcibly extract this abstract and terrifying existence from the category of 'concept' and wanting to control, utilize, and dominate it."

"More abstractly—"

Ferry rolled his eyes, then shuddered with lingering fear: "That person actually succeeded."

"What does this have to do with Mo-chan? Why did that [Sin] find Mo-chan?"

Gu Xiaole clenched his fists, staring intently at the twin brothers, and gritted his teeth as he said, "No matter what we were fighting against back then, in my memory, it all ended in a great victory."

"A resounding victory...?"

Joe shook his head and said calmly, "A total of over a million anomalous individuals died across all timelines, and at least seven hundred parallel worlds were forcibly pushed into their final moments. This level of cost can hardly be called a great victory."

"Of course, none of this concerns you."

Seeing that Xueyin and Gu Xiaole were both a little confused, Ferry skipped over this topic, which he didn't really want to talk about much anyway, and said, "All you need to know is that Brother Mo Tan has gotten involved with something not so good."

Xueyin narrowed her eyes and said quietly, "Judging from your description just now, it seems to be much more than just 'something not very good'."

"In short, we have good news and bad news."

Joe raised his hands, extending one index finger from each, and asked seriously, "Which one do you want to hear?"

Gu Xiaole sighed: "I'm not in the mood for jokes right now..."

"Then let's save the good news for later!"

Xueyin rubbed her hands together and exclaimed, "We want to hear the bad stuff first!"

"it is good."

Ferry nodded slightly and said in a light tone, "The bad news is that, in principle, given Brother Mo Tan's condition, he simply cannot live a healthy and normal life to this age. You must understand that he is just an ordinary person, and among the countless consequences for an ordinary person who is associated with [sin], death is merely the least significant price, let alone growing up healthily like a normal person."

"But I have serious doubts now..."

Gu Xiaole frowned and said softly, "Whether Mo-chan really had a 'healthy upbringing' now, even when we were kids, he was far more precocious than a little kid like Dongzi and he was somewhat... abnormal. I suspect that his mental state was already off back then."

However, Qiao shook his head and said seriously, "No, no, no, Miss Gu, your understanding of the concept of 'healthy and normal' is too narrow. To us, as long as Brother Mo Tan doesn't become a mentally broken cripple, doesn't chase people around with homemade weapons, and doesn't awaken any terrifying abilities to wreak havoc, then he is a healthy and normal person."

"Yes."

Ferry nodded vigorously, pointing to his head in agreement: "Even if he does have some minor problem 'here,' he's a healthy and normal mental patient. And as far as we know, Mo Tan is definitely one of the more outstanding individuals among his peers."

"What about the good news?"

Xueyin blinked excitedly and asked, "If the bad news isn't too bad, the good news must be really good, right?!"

Joe blinked. "The good news is he's not dead."

Xueyin: "Wow—"

Gu Xiaole: "..."

"This is really good news. In fact, we have no idea how he managed to pull through."

Ferry shrugged and spread his hands, saying, "You know, when it comes to being associated with [sin], it's impossible for anyone to last for more than twenty years. It's a kind of 'pollution' that's so intense it's hard to describe in words. Under normal circumstances, this kind of 'pollution' would not even take a few hours to destroy an ordinary person, but he has persisted until now."

Joe chimed in with a straight face, "That's right. We just discovered that the [Sin] within him is exhibiting an incredibly 'stable state,' and the words [Sin] and 'stable' should theoretically never be together."

"what about now?"

Gu Xiaole looked down at Mo Tan, who was still lying on the table with a pained expression, and asked with heartache, "Why has he become like this now?"

"..."

The Rice brothers exchanged glances, and finally Ferry sighed with a complicated expression, saying slowly, "Now, his mental state seems to have deteriorated considerably, but of course, that's not the most troublesome thing."

"The most troublesome thing is..."

Joe covered his forehead with his hands and said in a deep voice, "As his mental state deteriorated, the previously stable [sin] also began to become active."

"Oh..."

"Now, Mo-chan..."

"It could be a day, a week, or a month."

"But it definitely won't take more than a year."

"Brother Mo Tan, he..."

"There may not be much time left."

Chapter 2764: The End

(End of this chapter)