I can rewind time to prevent death

"Ah!" Hearing this, Liu Jialan covered her mouth in horror.

"In my panic, I threw the sack over my shoulder, catching most of the creature's body inside, and then I quickly picked up the snow shovel I had tossed to the ground and began to beat it fiercely. Both of my hands went numb from the beating, but I didn't know how many times I struck it. Only when the sack stopped moving did I stop. I sat in the snow for a moment to catch my breath, then stood up and looked. I found that I had shattered the creature's body completely; even the snow shovel was bent."

"Is it dead?" asked Liu Jialan.

"It didn't move this time," Wan Shouguang nodded. "I put the remains of the dead dog, including its head, into the sack, scooped up all the spilled blood clumps from the ground, then drove it five kilometers away to bury it in a desolate mountain."

Liu Jialan nodded blankly, and after a while, she asked, "And after that, it never appeared again?"

"No."

"Even a stray dog can become one of the strangenesses?" Liu Jialan was still very astonished. "And it turned into a kind like the Corpse Spirits, with a physical body and an Obsession."

Her husband was a master weapon maker for the Exorcist Brigade, so she naturally knew much more about strangenesses than the average person.

"I couldn't believe it myself that a dog could turn into strangeness. You know, there is a certain probability for that to happen, with triggering conditions, and it also relates to the surrounding environment and its own Obsession," explained Wan Shouguang. "But to my knowledge, I have never heard of an animal turning into strangeness after death to seek revenge on the person who killed it. If this were the norm, we shouldn't be eating pork, chicken, or fish."

Liu Jialan looked at him, puzzled.

Wan Shouguang went on, "Later I thought, if the dog could dig its way out of the ground where it was buried and run back here to seek vengeance after being dead for three days, could it have something to do with where I buried it? So I went back to the big tree in the grove to take a closer look."

"Did you find anything?" asked Liu Jialan.

Wan Shouguang shook his head: "It seemed very normal when I went there, but I still had doubts, so I went home and brought back a magnetic field detector from the brigade. After returning to the big tree, I did indeed find an anomaly."

"What anomaly?"

"The magnetic field at that place wasn't fluctuating normally but was almost parallel, and then suddenly there would be a peak in the waveform. It was a typical magnetic field disruption caused by strangeness. At first, I thought there was strangeness nearby, but the Spirit Detector picked up nothing. Yet it still detected a very strong disruption in the magnetic field."

After pausing, Wan Shouguang continued, "I could only suspect that the place was special, possessing the effect of causing the surrounding magnetic field to fluctuate in the same way. The thing is, it was a dead dog I buried there, but after magnetic field assimilation, the long-gone magnetic field of that dead dog was reactivated. So it resurrected, retaining its memories from life to seek vengeance on me."

"What do you mean by saying this now?" Liu Jialan looked at him, confused.

Wan Shouguang hesitated for a moment, his gaze suddenly twinkling with excitement, and he said word by word, "I want to bury my son's body there."

Liu Jialan had already had a hunch, and her brow furrowed, looking somewhat unsettled: "What if this is just your speculation, and it isn't like that at all?"

"It's not speculation, the stray dog is the proof," said Wan Shouguang with certainty. "After I buried it the second time, this situation never occurred again. It proves that it's the burial site that's the issue. And considering I'm not an Exorcist but managed to kill it a second time by physical means, if that dog were truly strangeness, my actions wouldn't have been enough to kill it; it would have come back."

Liu Jialan shook her head: "But you said, after the stray dog resurrected, its head was cracked open, its blood clotted into chunks. Think about it, can any normal organism live like that?"

"Things are different now! There's strangeness everywhere; can we still apply common sense?" Wan Shouguang spread his hands. "I've examined the autopsy report carefully. My son's rib cage was broken in three places, one of the breaks pierced his heart – that was the fatal wound. The broken rib has been removed and repaired at my request."

Saying this, Wan Shouguang reached out and took Liu Jialan's somewhat cold hand: "Also, my son's left femur was broken, but not shattered. I had them fix that too, it wasn't a fatal injury. Apart from that, the rest of his body is intact. I want to try, I have to try. Congcong hasn't left us, I know it, and you do too; he... has always been right here."

Tears welled up in Liu Jialan's eyes as she began to cry softly, her hands covering her face, unable to speak any further.

"Come." Wan Shouguang grabbed Liu Jialan's arm. "Help me with this, sooner rather than later. If too much time passes, I'm afraid that even if we bury Congcong under that big tree, it won't work anymore."

The moonlight was pure.

Under the night sky, two figures pushed a garden cart filled with soil out of the villa. Inside the cart were two iron shovels, a hoe, and two flashlights.

Looking around cautiously, the two of them sneaked up to Wan Cong's grave.

Wan Shouguang looked up at the sky: "We can still see with the moonlight for now, no need for the flashlights. Let's begin."

The old couple took up their tools, one of them digging open the grave while the other piled the dug-up soil to the side. Both were of an age, their movements not quick and their efficiency low, but neither said anything, just silently digging.