TL: Hua
—
Wen Zheliu stared at the reddish-brown carpet on the floor in front of him, his thoughts spinning rapidly.
He thought of that newspaper again. If that was the scene hint he had found, then all the ghosts he was now encountering should match up.
If he looks at it this way, May is the daughter who killed her family, and the essay published in the newspaper is written by the boy. Will Leighton Owen and his missing wife appear next?
Wen Zheliu frowned, feeling that something was wrong.
He stood up, wandered around the living room twice, and was relieved to see a thick stack of old newspapers piled up on the windowsill.
Wen Zheliu stepped forward quickly and opened the stacks of newspapers. The owner who organized the newspapers seemed to be a very patient and obsessive-compulsive person. The creases of each newspaper are smoothed out neatly, and they are sorted by date and year. This saved Wen Zheliu a lot of effort. He pursed his dry lips and quickly found the newspaper of that day, according to the date of the newspaper in his pocket.
Unexpectedly, the content of the town newspaper was completely different from the one in his pocket. Not only did it not mention the tragedy of a family of three, but it also did not include a selection of elementary school students’ essays. The only two reports shared by the two newspapers are the one about the townspeople thanking Leighton Owen and the missing person notice. Wen Zheliu found that his eyes were blurred, and he only saw the headline “Real-time Discussion: Proposals to Strengthen the Supervision of Drug Trading”. The content below says that Leighton Owen protested to the mayor in his real name. The drugstores should be prohibited from selling pesticides and rodenticides to minors. His daughter accidentally put them in drinking water, nearly poisoning the whole family.
The rest was the big-page report on the Midnight Happy Show. Wen Zheliu flipped through newspapers spanning about two months, and almost all the headlines on the front page were about this show. Only a few small forums worriedly published data about how the crime rate in the town had risen dramatically since the Midnight Happy Show came out of nowhere and went on the air and how “People seem to have no bottom line, but they should not forget the education they received from a young age about love and responsibility.”
This is so strange…
From the very beginning to the present, the information Wen Zheliu received was mixed and chaotic. He could feel the connection among them, but he didn’t know how to connect them together, untie the knots, and restore the truth of the whole incident.
He bit his lower lip, crossed his arms with both hands, and tapped his arms lightly with his index fingers on both sides.
Funny enough, by now, being in the haunted den no longer brings him much fear. On the contrary, the answer hidden under layers of mist and spider webs attracts his attention even more. Wen Zheliu had never taken professional courses in this area, but he already regretted it a bit at the moment. He knew that attending a few criminal investigation and reasoning courses would at least be better than the current situation, where he was ignorant of his surroundings.
May came down from the stairs wearing an apron, and her hands were still dripping with water. She said with an apologetic smile, “I made soup, but it seems that there isn’t enough food at home, so I’ll have to go out to the little garden in the back and see if I can find a couple of turnips or something in there that I haven’t already eaten.”
“You even have a small garden at home?” Wen Zheliu asked.
May walked to the garden without looking back: “Yes, every family here has their own little garden, except my father used to be too lazy to grow flowers, so he did what he was good at and planted some vegetables! Just wait a moment; I’ll be right back!”
Wen Zheliu stared at her as she disappeared through the back door; his brows twitched slightly.
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.
“Qfii.” Lf weaafgfv ab tlwrfio, “Ktja’r ecvfgrajcvjyif. Ktfgf wluta yf jcbatfg uefra mbwlcu ijafg, jcv lo P’w gluta, atf qfgrbc mbwlcu kbeiv yf ……”
Dfobgf tf mbeiv olclrt rqfjxlcu, atfgf kjr j xcbmx bc atf vbbg.
Ciatbeut atf ogfdefcms bo atf xcbmxlcu lr gjqlv, atf rbecv lr cba nfgs ibev, pera ilxf j kbbvqfmxfg ajqqlcu bc atf vbbg klat lar yfjxr.
“… Mrs. Owen?” Wen Zheliu smiled slightly, walked to the door, and asked.
The person at the door was strangely quiet for a while.
“You know me.” Through the door, a low, soft, fuzzy female voice sounded from outside.
“It doesn’t count as knowing you, but I know a thing or two.” Wen Zheliu nodded. “What did you come to see me for?”
Mrs. Owen didn’t speak. After a while, she said in a deep voice, “Although I don’t understand how you recognized me, for your own good, you’d better get out of here quickly!”
“Me? Leave?” Wen Zheliu had an apologetic smile on his face. “If you don’t make things clear, I won’t leave.”
Mrs. Owen’s tone was severe and urgent. “You don’t understand how dangerous things are…”
Wen Zheliu suddenly had a brand new guess.
“May is your daughter, isn’t she?” He opened his mouth regardless and interrupted her directly.
Mrs. Owen abruptly went quiet.
The sudden guess in his heart was quickly confirmed, but Wen Zheliu didn’t feel relaxed at all. On the contrary, his mind was full of thoughtless questions. He cut to the chase and said, “May is in the small garden. If you need, I can call her over now so that you can communicate face-to-face.”
“No, no!” Mrs. Owen resisted and cried, “I can’t see May. I’m an unqualified mother; I don’t have the face to see her now! But don’t think you’re safe by staying here, he’ll find you and kill you sooner or later!”
“Let me guess again…this he—are you referring to Mr. Leighton Owen?” Wen Zheliu’s eyes were filled with amusement. “Your family is really strange. The younger brother accuses the older sister; the older sister slanders the younger brother; the wife comes to warn me about her husband; and what will the husband do? Is he going to come over and tell me that his wife is not trustworthy?”
“You are a wise man.”
“Thank you,” Wen Zheliu said. “Many people have said so.”
“I can’t tell you too much, but as you said, get out of here quickly; my husband is coming!”
Wen Zheliu no longer trusted the person outside the door. He pretended to be puzzled and casually reached out to open the peephole on the door.
He froze for a moment.
The person standing outside the door was neither a married woman from a good family background nor a lunatic with unkempt hair. When he looked closer, he could only see a blurry blood color, glaring profusely under the small lamp hanging in the hallway outside.
He saw a stiff female corpse with greenish-white skin, shattered cheekbones, and a distorted face with congealed blood and shredded flesh. A huge wound stretched from the corpse’s left shoulder to the belly, revealing the flowing, broken intestines.
Wen Zheliu’s pupils suddenly narrowed, and his throat became dry. He actually talked for so long with a walking corpse that had died tragically for a long time!
He “slapped” the peephole closed, took a low, trembling breath, tried his best to stop the cold air overflowing between his teeth, and asked, “So, should I go with you now?”
“You should come with me.” The female corpse opened and closed her lips; her cloudy pupils were lifeless. “Open the door; come with me!”
“… You’re the one who should go!” Wen Zheliu said harshly, “As you said, your husband will come over again. If you don’t leave now, then just wait to meet your husband!”
No one outside the door replied, and once again silence fell.
Wen Zheliu took a few steps back with a tired heart, only to realize that tonight’s encounter was really informative.
The ghosts whose deaths are mysterious took turns fighting and stirring up discord with each other. There was no living person he met, and no one could be trusted.
“Regardless of whether the thing outside is gone or not, I have to think about the information I have now.” Wen Zheliu muttered to himself, “I can barely guess who the next ghost will be by relying on the hints from the newspaper, but regarding their relationship, I still…”
Wen Zheliu automatically listed a network of relationships in his mind: “Currently, there are four people known, including father, mother, sister, and younger brother. However, whether it is their respective complaints against each other or the reports in the newspaper, there are many contradictions.”
“First of all, the daughter is the murderer who killed a family of three, which proves that she killed at least three people: her parents and younger brother. But May just claimed that her father killed her mother. The younger brother, who is far away in the red-roofed house, fell down the stairs and died by breaking his neck. This is the first doubtful point.”
“Secondly, Leighton Owen once published a missing person notice in the newspaper looking for his wife. This missing person notice was not published until a week after the family murder. This is simply a huge bug. Since both he and his wife have already died in a murder case, why do newspapers continue to publish missing person notices? This is the second doubt.”
“Thirdly, all the events now have an indelible relationship with Mr. Owen, and the deceased Mrs. Owen seems to be quite afraid of her husband. Who is this Leighton Owen, and what role did he play in it? This is the third doubt.”
“In the end, the town newspaper didn’t mention all of this but published a missing person notice for Mrs. Owen. Does this mean that the newspaper in my pocket is actually mostly fabricated, with only this one bit being completely true? And what exactly was the cause of this family’s death, and why did they hate each other so much? This is doubt number four.”
Wen Zheliu counted out four doubtful points in detail and kept pacing back and forth in the room.
There is still too little information so far, but if he hadn’t had a flash of inspiration just now and suddenly verified May’s real identity, he might still be misled by the chaotic timeline description in the newspaper.
The door leading to the garden was tightly closed, and May hadn’t come back yet. In the whole living room, only the pendulum clock on the wall was making a ticking sound. In this quietness suitable for thinking, the door was knocked again.
Wen Zheliu’s movements of rubbing his palms stalled, and his heart pounded heavily against his chest.
The last one is finally here.
He stood up, walked to the door as before, and asked calmly and in a low voice, “Is that Mr. Owen?”
—
In the central urban area at this moment, He Qin’s situation is not much better than Wen Zheliu’s thrilling plot.
He only said a few words about exchanging coordinates with Wen Zheliu when he was teleported over. From the moment Wen Zheliu went to find the clues to the scene, he could no longer contact the other party. Because when he received Wen Zheliu’s coordinates and planned to find cars in a parking lot to drive to him, he was accidentally trapped among hundreds of tragically killed ghosts swarming in. Not only were all communication facilities affected and malfunctioning, but he himself was also a bit overwhelmed.
“Greetings, beautiful lady!” He Qin had a smile on his lips, his eyes were glazed with cold murderous intent, and he showed no trace of fear. He bypassed dozens of roaring ghosts, and the sword in his hand was like a thunderbolt, slashing down headfirst towards a female ghost that blocked in front of him, creating a piercing cold light in midair!
“—Goodbye, my fair lady.”
He turned over and landed on the ground. His figure was like a black panther that was extremely nimble. He quickly shuttled among the white shadows screaming at him and finally found a car with the key inserted in the underground parking lot. He smashed the glass window with a punch, got inside, and sat still.
“The outdated gasoline car…” He raised his eyebrows and said, “It’s a bit difficult to drive, but it’s not too difficult.”
The engine roared like an awakened beast in the midst of many pursuing fierce ghosts, blasting on the blinding headlights in front of the car. Before the ghosts could pounce on the car, he made a backward move and took off down another road in the parking lot.
He Qin drove the car and crushed the ghosts while looking at the gradually recovering communicator, waiting for the instant coordinates sent by Wen Zheliu to load.
In the night breeze that gradually shed its bloody aura, He Qin’s heart suddenly sank.
… His communicator was empty—not a single message.
Oh now, what happened with our babe?
Thank you for your translation 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍