Translator: Reina Editor: Killian
“Tsk,” Sun Zheng snorted coldly, his voice almost inaudible.
“What’s wrong?” Lu Xia was curious about his reaction.
Sun Zheng averted his gaze. “It’s nothing.”
Lu Xia looked at him for a few seconds, then lifted the corner of his mouth and patted the record. “Okay, let’s check the entry and see what’s wrong with the Chlorophytum.”
Sun Zheng returned his gaze to the record. Lu Xia saw that Sun Zheng’s lips were tightly pursed, seeming as if he was trying to stop himself from saying something, however, the more he tried to endure, the more he looked like he would blurt out the next second.
Lu Xia continued unhurriedly, “Obviously, the key to this record is not the plant…”
“So you also think there is something wrong with Aunt Liu?” Sun Zheng asked.
Lu Xia’s words were stolen right out of his mouth by Sun Zheng. He paused, then glumly continued, “Of course she has a problem…”
Sun Zheng’s eyes gleamed. “That’s right.”
“Actually, this record is similar to the first one,” Lu Xia said thoughtfully. “You also noticed it, right?”
“Mn. “Sun Zheng nodded, stretching his hand out to help Lu Xia.
Lu Xia waved his hand, gesturing that he could stand firmly by himself. “Of course Qi Tian did not dare to say it in the end, how did the handprint on her neck come from…”
He put the Chlorophytum down, and flipped the record book back several pages. “The reason why I felt something off was because their conversation seemed very unnatural. Look here.”
“If I knew it would be this dark, I’d ask Lao Wang the night watchman to find it for you,” I whispered to Xiao Tian.
Her shoulders suddenly trembled, and she cried out, “It’s so itchy!”
……
“What’s wrong?”
“It felt so fluffy, and it even tickled me…” Xiao Tian said, touching her hand subconsciously.
……
“Maybe it’s near Xiao Zhang’s desk,” I said while searching the area around Xiao Zhang’s seat. “Be careful not to damage or spill the reagents!”
I heard a lot of movement on Xiao Tian’s side. Even the chairs were moving. I was afraid she would break something, so I hurriedly stood up and took a look, only to find that she was there with her back hunched over. I couldn’t tell what she was doing.
“Xiao Tian?”
“Kitten!” Xiao Tian cheered, “Oh, is it there?”
……
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Don’t touch the cat!” I yelled then. I don’t know if that was because I remembered what the old aunt said, “I’ll get it out later!”
Xiao Tian fell silent again.
“Snfg rlcmf atfs mjwf yjmx ab atf tbrqlaji jcv kfca eq ab atf rfmbcv oibbg, atflg mbcnfgrjalbc tjr yfmbwf fzagfwfis eccjaegji.” Oe Wlj wbnfv tlr olcufg vbkc atf afza, ilcf ys ilcf.
Vec Itfcu’r fsfr ila eq. “Tfr. P ofia atf rjwf… Wljb Kljc vlvc’a gfjiis gfrqbcv ab jii atf atlcur Hl Kljc rjlv ab tfg.”
“That’s it! Though the two of them were together there and have both been talking, their conversations do not match up at all!”
And so, that led to another problem…
“Qi Tian thought that she was conversing with Xiao Tian. But…who was Xiao Tian actually speaking with, then?”
Lu Xia and Sun Zheng exchanged a glance, realisation slowly dawning on them.
“Xiao Tian was always speaking with that cat.” Lu Xia continued trailing his finger on the record book. “I examined all the parts where Xiao Tian mentioned the cat and discovered…”
“…that the cat is Qi Tian.”
When we finally reached the second floor, the dark corridor frightened us both and we grabbed each other’s hands.
“If I knew it would be this dark, I’d ask Lao Wang the night watchman to find it for you,” I whispered to Xiao Tian.
Her shoulders suddenly trembled, and she cried out, “It’s so itchy!”
Before either of us could react, I saw the flashlight in her hand shaking.
“What’s wrong?”
“It felt so fluffy, and it even tickled me…” Xiao Tian said, touching her hand subconsciously.
“When Xiao Tian first met this cat, it was when Qi Tian grabbed her hand. I didn’t think much of it at first, but the pattern became more and more obvious. See, when Qi Tian was walking behind Xiao Tian, Xiao Tian turned around and thought it was the kitten, but no one had seen any traces of this kitten except for Xiao Tian herself.”
I hurriedly turned my head in her direction, only to see the shadows of the rows of chairs from my peripheral vision. Because the light was too dim, when I passed by, the shadows almost made me think that the rows of chairs were full, with people sitting in them one by one.
Even if there was a cat, it was probably frightened by her movements and jumped far away.
“I caught it for a little bit, haha.” Xiao Tian was still smiling at that time.
“Qi Tian bumped into Xiao Tian, and Xiao Tian thought she had caught the kitten. Moreover, every time Qi Tian spoke, Xiao Tian would mention the cat. This means that to her, Qi Tian’s voice sounded like the meowing of a cat. There are several parts in the record which are like this. Especially the last part… when Xiao Tian caught the kitten…”
Then when we were almost halfway there, I heard her yelling happily in a low voice from behind me.
“I caught you, kitten!”
It felt like she was breathing onto my neck. It was cool.
“What she felt on her neck was not breathing but the hand that Xiao Tian used to grab the cat. And what Xiao Tian grabbed was not the cat, but Qi Tian.”
Sun Zheng nodded in agreement. “That’s why there is that black handprint on Qi Tian’s neck.”
“Yes, but in this way we have only managed to restore what really happened that day. Qi Tian and Xiao Tian came up to the second floor and into this laboratory where we are now. From the second floor onwards, Xiao Tian started mentioning about a cat that suddenly appeared and Qi Tian continued conversing somewhat normally with Xiao Tian, until… until she realised there was something wrong with the shadows, and by that time, Xiao Tian had already disappeared,” Lu Xia said while organising his thoughts. “But we have yet to crack the mystery. Why was it a cat? What is the connection between this cat and the pot of Chlorophytum?”
Sun Zheng looked at Lu Xia’s pensive look, and chuckled. “If you want to know what the connection is, then there is always Aunt Liu, right?”
Lu Xia made a gesture to stop him. “Don’t worry, this is the second question. Besides, there seems to be a connection between these two questions. Think about it. The Chlorophytum next to Aunt Liu’s table, the cat that Aunt Liu warned Xiao Liu about–wait! Have you noticed that there is a huge contradiction?!”
Sun Zheng looked at Lu Xia puzzled.
Lu Xia crouched and picked up the plant. “It’s this pot of Chlorophytum! If Aunt Liu likes it so much and no one dares to touch it, then why is it not next to her desk? How could it be out here?!”
Their eyes shifted at the same time, towards the gloomy laboratory behind the glass.
“So it means, after so many years, the Chlorophytum has been moved.” Lu Xia furrowed his brows. “But it’s strange. Why would they move it ? We have to go look at its original location.”
While saying this, he hugged the pot of Chlorophytum and walked towards the laboratory. Sun Zheng reached out to help him, but halted in mid-air, and only lowered his hand after a long while before catching up with him.
Lu Xia noticed Sun Zheng’s actions from the corner of his eye but didn’t say anything.
He was already worried about the potential problems his changing foot might bring, and the entry with Xiao Tian and Qi Tian made him even more convinced of his hypothesis.
He couldn’t let Sun Zheng come into contact with him anymore, Lu Xia told himself. Maybe one day you’d not even be able to tell if he’s a human or cat, or maybe… You’d attract that blood-dripping creature over…
He took two or three steps forward along the wall and heard a crack under his foot.
“Sun Zheng, be careful here,” he turned to tell Sun Zheng, but found that Sun Zheng was standing next to him, looking at him with a raised brow.
Lu Xia ran a hand through his hair with a hint of amusement. “StrangeW why did I feel that you were looking at me from behind?”
“Huh?” Sun Zheng looked at Lu Xia. “I was standing next to you all along.”
Lu Xia turned around. “I really felt that you were standing behind me and looking at me…”
He paused halfway through his sentence. Because he realised that there was only a wall behind where he had been standing.
Sun Zheng looked at his strange expression, feeling puzzled.
Lu Xia continued to walk forward, only to feel that the gaze on him from behind, that illusionary sensation he had, was somewhat real.
“It isn’t opening. We can’t enter.” Sun Zheng fiddled with the lock of the laboratory. “It’s locked.”
“Let me try,” Lu Xia said eagerly.
Sun Zheng pushed him away. “Don’t waste your energy. This door is too sturdy to be opened with force.”
Lu Xia smacked at the door bitterly. It was indeed different from those of other departments. It was probably a door which was replaced after renovation, and was much thicker than the others.
He walked around to the row of glass panels again, and said to Sun Zheng: “It seems that it was a necessity to have a doctor as a partner.”
Sun Zheng squinted at him, thinking, why are you still hung up on why your brother decided to partner up with Yan Yang!
Lu Xia didn’t notice the change in Sun Zheng’s expression. He picked up the flashlight and pointed it through the glass into the dark laboratory.
The light from the flashlight penetrated the layer of glass, resulting in a vague and hazy halo of light passing through into the laboratory, the edges fuzzy.
It swept across the scene slowly, illuminating the table, the lamp, assay test reports, test tubes on the cabinets…
“It’s impossible for us to tell which one of these is Aunt Liu’s desk,” Lu Xia complained to Sun Zheng.
“Of course. There’s also the problem of whether Aunt Liu is still here.” Sun Zheng seemed to have anticipated this situation, and his tone was calm.
“However, I can try to restore the scene that day, the scene when Xiao Tian entered the chasm…” Lu Xia’s flashlight stayed on the table in front of the glass. “Do you still remember when Xiao Tian entered the chasm?”
Enter the chasm? Sun Zheng was taken aback. It was obvious Xiao Tian had entered the chasm, but he hadn’t carefully considered when exactly she entered it.
“It was definitely not when she reached the second floor. At that time, Qi Tian could still see her,” Sun Zheng answered after careful consideration.
“Of course it isn’t,” Lu Xia stared at the table. “Recall the details again. If my guess is correct, Xiao Tian entered the chasm when Qi Tian was standing in front of Aunt Liu’s table.”
After searching around but being unable to find the key, I stood up, and found Xiao Tian standing by the aunt’s desk. She seemed a little strange, so I went over to the table. She was standing opposite the table at that time, motionless, looking over with bright eyes, and seemed to be smiling.
“There, It’s the kitty!”
I glanced around. Other than the old aunt’s office table, there was only that pot of Chlorophytum.
……
“I didn’t find the key, let’s drive the cat out!” I saw a figure walking beside me in my peripheral vision, and her footsteps were following me lightly and quickly, so I turned around and walked towards the door.
“Xiao Tian was standing in front of the table, looking at Qi Tian who was opposite her. That was the moment. After that, the Xiao Tiao which Qi Tian saw was no longer Xiao Tian herself… Her footsteps and her shadow disappeared.”
Lu Xia stared at the table, imagining it as Aunt Liu’s desk. Putting all the factors in the entry into place, Xiao Tian should have been standing on the right and Qi Tian on the left then. Qi Tian’s torch was on Xiaotian, and Xiaotian was staring at something, motionless…
There, the kitten…
Qi Tian had looked around, only to find the Chlorophytum…
“All the key points of the entry are concentrated in this place, the cat, the Chlorophytum, Aunt Liu, entering the chasm.” Lu Xia stared at the table, as if staring at the Xiao Tian and Qi Tian who had been standing there. “Why did Xiao Tian start seeing Qi Tian as a cat? Why did Aunt Liu remind Xiao Tian not to touch cats? Could it be that the cat…would guide Xiao Tian to a certain place…”
“Yes, if we think about it along this path, it also explains why that cat had to be Qi Tian,” Sun Zheng responded. “Because Qi Tian took Xiao Tian to the laboratory. Maybe the cat was waiting for this moment, the moment when she walked to the pot of Chlorophytum at Aunt Liu’s table!”
Lu Xia nodded. His brows were still pulled into a furrow, as if he had yet to completely accept this explanation.
Was the problem really with Chlorophytum? He looked down at the pot he was holding. If so, then why did no cat or anything else jump out at him after he’d held it for so long?
If… A bold idea suddenly struck him. He spun around, startling Sun Zheng.
“What if we were misled from the beginning and the problem wasn’t with the plant at all?” Lu Xia became a little agitated. “Did Aunt Liu really reprimand Xiao Tian because she touched that pot of Chlorophytum? Could it be…because Xiao Tian happened to also touch something else near Aunt Liu’s desk? What was Xiao Tian looking at at the end? Was it Chlorophytum? No, it was the place where Qi Tian was standing. Qi Tian was standing in front of Aunt Liu’s desk. That’s where the real problem is!”
“You mean, it was a spot very close to the pot of Chlorophytum, but because the plant had a special meaning to the hospital, so everyone thought that the problem was with the plant?”
“Yes, because everyone disliked Aunt Liu, so they thought that there must be something wrong with the items she cherishes. It was this mentality that misled them, and in turn, misled us too. Therefore, if the problem does not lie with the plant, then it can only be the area in front of Aunt Liu’s desk, the spot which Qi Tian was standing on.”
“So when Xiao Tian entered the chasm, the thing Xiao Tian was staring at was not the plant but another location?
This would explain all the previous questions which didn’t add up. What was the connection between Chlorophytum and cats? There was no connection at all. The cat was just there to lead Xiao Tian over to a certain spot in front of Aunt Liu’s desk. This is why Aunt Liu knew about the cat too, because the key to that was the spot right in front of her own table!
Lu Xia nodded in excitement. He put the plant aside and walked to the door in large strides. “Come help out, it seems that we have to find the location of Aunt Liu’s table.”
And I thought I was smart.. What is their IQ? How can you be making these connections in such a short amount of time? 😭