Chapter 88
Ren Li took out the matchbox and handed it back to Qin Zhou.
Qin Zhou took it and squeezed it in his hand. The corners of the matchbox weren’t sharp. After all, it was a matchbox from four years ago. The box had gotten damp and the corners had already become soft and pliable.
Ren Li’s time rewind too had questionable points. But the three of them weren’t discussing it for the time being. It was Lin Yi’s turn to tell what had happened last night.
Having gone through several Rule Worlds, Lin Yi has been trained. When Qin Zhou and Ren Li turned to look at him, waiting for him to narrate, he didn’t feel any nervousness anymore. He said smoothly, “My time in the past last night must have been shorter than Ren Li Ge’s…”
Lin Yi lay down with the photo in hand. He forced himself to fall asleep as soon as possible, but falling asleep without his actual MP4 player wasn’t very easy; especially when Lin Yi knew that there would be a task waiting for him once he falls asleep. Purposely trying to sleep just made it harder to fall asleep.
He replayed the audio in his mind countless times before he felt the tiniest, almost negligible sense of sleepiness.
He didn’t know how much time it took before he managed to fully mature this sleepiness.
After falling asleep, the white light appeared under the crack of the door again. Lin Yi turned over and got out of bed. He then opened the door.
Upon opening the door, Lin Yi found that he was still in this bedroom. However, the walls of this bedroom were painted white instead of wallpaper-ed.
In other words, he’d gone back to a point in time before the apartment had burned.
There were no newspapers pasted on the windows and Lin Yi could see the sky outside. It was a rainy night.
The sound of the pouring rain partly masked the sounds coming from the living room.
Hearing the movements in the living room, Lin Yi didn’t dare to open the door rashly to go investigate. He couldn’t guarantee that Shunxi wasn’t there outside in the living room. And he also couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t bump into Shunxi the moment he opened the door.
He thought for a while and turned his gaze to the window.
The rain was heavy and even though the windows were a bit old, the noise he made pushing the window open was completely suppressed by the sound of the rain.
Lin Yi first stuck his head out in the rain and when he found there was somewhere he could step on, he didn’t hesitate and stretched out half of his body.
He placed his feet on the air conditioner rack but he didn’t dare to put his whole body weight on it. He simply leaned against the narrow window sill using the air conditioner rack as support. He then carefully peered into the window of the living room.
Raindrops kept rolling down against the window pane. The heavy rain instantly drenched him, making it difficult to open his eyes. But even so, Lin Yi could clearly see what was going on in the living room.
One person and one corpse.
The person was Cen Qian, sitting on his wheelchair, trembling all over, staring at the corpse on the ground.
Lin Yi also recognized the corpse. It was Cen Qian’s mother who was pictured with Cen Qian in the photo.
Lin Yi peeked through the window. The corpse was still bleeding, the width of the wound was the same as that of Zhou Qi and Jiang Wang. They’d all died by the same blade or in other words, they all died by the hands of Shunxi.
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.
While looking at the wound of the corpse, Lin Yi also found that Cen Qian was holding something tightly in his hand. It sparkled from time to time under the light of the living room.
Pa kjr j vljwbcv cfmxijmf, bcf atja tjv yfibcufv ab Jfc Hljc’r wbatfg. Pc atf qtbab, Olc Tl rjk Jfc Hljc’r wbatfg kfjglcu atlr cfmxijmf jgbecv tfg cfmx.
Ktf vfjat bo tlr wbatfg rffwfv ab tjnf yffc j tfjns yibk ab Jfc Hljc. Jfc Hljc kjr agfwyilcu ecmbcagbiijyis yea tlr fzqgfrrlbc rffwfv ab yf qfaglolfv.
Lin Yi watched for a while and then withdrew to the bedroom.
Lin Yi didn’t dare to sit on the bed lest he get it wet so he could only stand in a corner of the bedroom.
He was waiting for Cen Qian’s next move or rather, what would be the next development of this time rewind.
But he never got to see it as he was met with the white light that brought him back.
“Senior, Ren Li Ge,” Lin Yi said, “That’s it.”
Apart from seeing this scene, there didn’t seem to be any other useful clues. He didn’t run across Shunxi either.
While talking, they had already arrived at the news agency building. They stopped by the flower bed.
The three of them weren’t in any hurry to go in. Qin Zhou said, “Let’s make our analysis.”
Lin Yi nodded. “En, en.”
Qin Zhou put the wire hairpin and matchbox beside the flower bed. Lin Yi had returned the photo when he got up that morning, so Qin Zhou found a clean stone from the flower bed and put it next to these two things.
Lin Yi saw Qin Zhou’s slender finger first touch the wire hairpin.
Then Qin Zhou said, “Cen Qian didn’t show up.”
This was the biggest questionable point in the wire hairpin time rewind.
Because Cen Qian hadn’t appeared, some parts of their previous inferences were about to be overturned. For example, the time rewinds might be irrelevant to Cen Qian.
Lin Yi thought for a while and said, “Maybe Senior was late.”
This was possible. In the previous time rewind, he and Qin Zhou went to find the cause of Zhou Qi’s death together. Because Qin Zhou had fallen asleep earlier than Lin Yi, Qin Zhou arrived first and quite some time had passed before Lin Yi arrived.
Qin Zhou couldn’t deny this but Lin Yi immediately raised a bigger point of doubt. “The trigger object doesn’t belong to Cen Qian.”
The wire hairpin belonged to one of the participant but it still triggered the time rewind.
Ren Li had been thinking about Qin Zhou’s question but after hearing Lin Yi give a possible answer very quickly, he moved to thinking about the point Lin Yi raised.
Qin Zhou just turned his head and said: “In the 4-4 Rule World, the past affects the present, the present affects the future and the future also affects the past.”
Lin Yi: “Time is a closed loop.”
Just like how Lin Yi hadn’t known Cen Qian at first but after going through the time rewind on the first night, he not only knew Cen Qian but also knew his relationship with Cen Qian.
That is to say, Lin Yi from the ‘future’ went to the ‘past’. ‘Future’ Lin Yi then saved ‘past’ Cen Qian in the ‘past’.
When the timeline developed to the ‘present’, the ‘present’ Lin Yi now also knew the ‘present’ Cen Qian.
So the three time periods of the past, present and future have closed a loop.
Ren Li understood this, but he just didn’t understand what Lin Yi and Qin Zhou meant by bringing up the closed time loop.
“Ren Li, it’s like this.” Lin Yi took the initiative to explain, “The wire hairpin might not belong to Cen Qian in the ‘present’ but we can’t guarantee that it won’t belong to Cen Qian in the future.”
Since the three timelines of the past, present and future formed a closed loop, it could barely explain way how the wire hairpin that didn’t belong to the ‘present’ Cen Qian could trigger a time rewind.
Ren Li said, “But the wire hairpin is with Shunxi.”
Qin Zhou: “Don’t forget the ip address of the anonymous source. Now that Shunxi’s out of prison, he might follow the ip address to find Cen Qian. He might drop the wire hairpin in Cen Qian’s hands. All this is possible.”
Ren Li thought for a moment. “En.”
It was very possible. They had speculated before that Shunxi was after Cen Qian because Cen Qian had seen Shunxi’s face.
Their discussion regarding the wire hairpin had come to a dead end for now. Qin Zhou moved his hand to the matchbox.
Ren Li said, “Why didn’t Cen Qian run away?”
Qin Zhou moved his hand to the rock. Here was the answer as to why Cen Qian didn’t try to escape when Shunxi broke into his house.
Cen Qian’s mother had died at the hands of Shunxi so Cen Qian decided to die with Shunxi after so many years of being suppressed by Shunxi.
So the only questionable point remaining from the time rewinds of these three objects was how Shunxi disappeared from right under Ren Li’s nose.
The answer was obvious. Shunxi, like them, also has the ability to travel through time.
This made the whole main plot suddenly become very confusing.
Did the 4-4 Monster give Shunxi the ability to time travel when it had been setting up this NPC or was Shunxi hiding among the participants?
The former will only increase the difficulty of them finding Shunxi while the latter will instantly turn the situation into hell mode. Who was it that could be hiding among them?
Only the 4-4 Monster.
Worst case scenario, the 4-4 Monster must know all the mechanisms that can trigger a time rewind. It could continue to go back in time to create a fake main plot to confuse them.
Like the 16-8 Monster, it started with a trick.
“For the time being, don’t consider the scenario that Shunxi is the 4-4 Monster.” Qin Zhou said, “Unless the way to the main plot is blocked, there’s no need to increase our burden from the get go.”
Lin Yi felt that Qin Zhou’s words made sense. If they didn’t consider that Shunxi might be the 4-4 Monster, the main plot was quite clear.
Cen Qian was a poor child.
Because of saving a cat, he lost a leg. In the process of rescuing stray cats, he unfortunately met the serial killer “Shunxi”, causing him to be targeted by Shunxi.
Perhaps it was Cen Qian’s flaws that made Shunxi choose not to kill him immediately, hunting him like a cat hunts a small mouse instead, catching and releasing until the mouse is exhausted before finally eating it.
And thus, Shunxi ruined Cen Qian’s present. Perhaps he did more things but what these things are, they’d still need more time rewind trigger objects to find out.
Once the main plot can basically be determined, the next step is to find the 4-4 Monster hidden among them.
Although the three of them have been cooperating, they also knew quite well that there was a higher probability of the 4-4 Monster being among the three of them rather than among the rest of the participants.
But also because they were three people, just like in Fight the Landlord, there would always be two who are allies. Qin Zhou will used the simplest and crudest way to attract the hatred of 4-4 Monster – announcing the Rules of Death.
The primary objective of a Monster is to keep the Rule World running. If no one dies, the Rule World it created would be meaningless and it won’t be able to enjoy preying on the Rule World participants.
It can hide among them and face off with them in a contest of courage and wits but it won’t be able to bear having no one die in its Rule World.
Lin Yi nodded. “I agree.”
Ren Li used to work alone before. After considering the pros and cons of attracting the 4-4 Monster’s attention he also nodded. “Okay.”
Qin Zhou though furrowed his brows, a complicated look on his face.
To be honest, the only thing he could be sure of thus far was that he wasn’t the 4-4 Monster.
As for Lin Yi and Ren Li, he still had no clue.
After looking at Lin Yi and seeing his eagerness, Qin Zhou reached out and tapped Lin Yi lightly on the head. “I’ll do it this time.”
Just as Lin Yi was about to say something in protest, Qin Zhou said, “It’s my turn.”
Last time in the 7-7 Rule World, it’d been Lin Yi who attracted the Monster’s attention. Now, it was his turn.
Lin Yi could only accept his decision to do it himself. He nodded. “Okay.”
Qin Zhou: “We’re already quite late. Let’s go up first.”
Lin Yi: “Okay.”
The three of them walked into the news agency building. By the flower bed, a man wearing a cloak appeared. He picked up the stone that had just been used to represent the group photo and put it in his pocket.
The weather was fine and his beautiful fingers shone like jade in the sunlight.
Thank you for the update ❤️💯
if cen qian wasn’t in a wheelchair i would have probably thought it was another case of double personality but that theory is scrapped for now ig uess
It was very confusing…..jade like fingers 😶who is this
if it is beautiful fingers, could be Lin Yi.
I also thought this how protagonist are described, you know heaven defying beauty 😭😅
Yes, jade like face, jade like fingers, peach blossom eyes or phoenix eyes… Sometimes I can’t imagine them as people 😀
👍😂😂😂
Same. A
Also, ShunXi was said to be 1.82cm – LY is also this height…
Thank u for the update. The murderer is not lin yi! I think there are multiple murderes lin yi might be one or maybe the jade hand just mention above is another lin yi and there’s two??!
Maybe cen quian is not really in a wheelchair? And that is why shunxi was more short in one of the Time rewind.
Cen quian was forteen years old after all. Or maybe shunxi is the brother of cen quian or some family member. Ther House has three chamber so it’s possible.
Shunxi is the future Lin Yi, isn’t he? The author emphasizing “beautiful fingers” in the last sentence of this chapter, and who’s the character that the author keep describing as a person with “beautiful hands” or “beautiful fingers”? It’s only Lin Yi.
beautiful jade like fingers…..hmmm…..im having my suspect on someone….. .
Shunxi is either Cen Qian or Lin Yi.. Just hope he’s n ot Lin Yi..
Beautiful fingers 💅💅🏻= Lin Yi