Chapter 70: Before Dawn (9)
“Miss! Miss Yu, look here! There are still people inside!” Qi Hui began pounding on the window, shouting frantically in anxiety. But no matter how loudly he called, the young girl in the red dress never once looked back at him.
Qi Hui yelled until his throat was dry and his hands hurt from pounding. He looked back—Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng were gone.
In that instant, his hair stood on end.
Qi Hui hurriedly went looking for them, shouting their names loudly. Just as he thought he had been abandoned, Tang Cuo poked his head out of the kitchen and looked at him expressionlessly.
Qi Hui instantly fell silent, and Tang Cuo turned back into the kitchen.
Taking a deep breath, Qi Hui composed himself and followed. But as soon as he caught up, Tang Cuo turned his head and said, “Keep shouting.”
Please, no, let me follow you, boss!
“Go.” The big boss had spoken; the lackey could only obey.
Trembling with fear, Qi Hui returned to the window, glancing back at Tang Cuo several times. His reluctance and longing made Jin Cheng, who had just come out of the butler’s room, click his tongue lightly.
“Tsk.” That soft sound terrified Qi Hui so much he practically plastered himself against the window, not daring to look back again. Weak, pitiful, and helpless, he could only continue shouting for Miss Yu outside.
“Miss! Miss, open the door!”
You have the guts to pour oil; you should have the guts to open the door!
Jin Cheng finally let him off the hook. Bumping into Tang Cuo as he emerged from the kitchen, he said, “Someone wrote something in chalk on the butler’s blackboard.”
Tang Cuo raised an eyebrow and immediately went with Jin Cheng to check. He found that the blackboard, which should have been covered in dust, had been haphazardly wiped down. It wasn’t very clean, but he could make out the freshly written words—
[1936.6.8 Everything will finally end]
June 8, 1936, was undoubtedly today’s date. Did “Everything will finally end” refer to the “attic occupant’s death and the burning of the Yu Residence”?
“The handwriting is somewhat delicate. It doesn’t look like the attic occupant’s; it looks more like the Miss outside.” Jin Cheng had seen the attic occupant’s handwriting. In 1926, there was fragmented sheet music written by him on the attic walls, and the way he wrote Arabic numerals was different.
“This proves the Miss also came inside.” Tang Cuo rubbed his chin, deep in thought.
Ten years after the massacre, the two survivors who had luckily escaped returned to the Yu Residence. One died peacefully, while the other wrote a final conclusion before running outside to commit arson.
The key point was that these two seemed to have returned together.
Jin Cheng crossed his arms and leaned against the relatively clean doorframe. “Who do you think raised the Miss all these years?”
The answer to this question was rather obvious, so Tang Cuo didn’t reply. Time was tight; they couldn’t afford to stop and leisurely deduce everything. “The doors to the Madam’s and Miss’s rooms still haven’t been opened. We know of four timelines so far. In every other timeline, we could find one or two keys, so there should be some here too.”
In 1924, Tang Cuo found the keys to the basement and Yu Wangyue’s room. In 1926, they found the keys to the study and the small door inside it.
What about 1936? According to the instance’s pattern, they should find something here as well.
Furthermore, in 1924, Tang Cuo obtained five keys from the butler’s keyring. Three were used for the attic lock, one for the basement—so where was the last one meant to be used?
“Is the butler’s keyring here?” Tang Cuo asked.
“It was taken.” Jin Cheng had already checked where the keyring used to hang. There was a spot devoid of dust, proving something had been hanging there but was recently removed.
Tang Cuo instantly thought of the keys hanging from the Miss’s waist.
But that wasn’t right.
The keys on the keyring in 1924 and 1926 were different because, during those two years, the butler was still alive. With the butler alive, it was entirely reasonable for the keys on his ring to change.
But the butler died in 1926. During the ten years it hung there, there shouldn’t have been any changes. In other words, the keyring the Miss obtained should be the exact same one Jin Cheng found in 1926.
Three keys for the attic lock, one for the small door in the study.
“To the study,” Tang Cuo decided decisively.
Jin Cheng shared his tacit understanding; the moment he said ‘study,’ Jin Cheng knew exactly what he meant. Following their previous method, Tang Cuo headed straight for the study while Jin Cheng took charge of distracting the ghosts.
Inside the study, aside from accumulating more dust, everything remained the same as in 1926.
Tang Cuo went straight behind the small door, circled the bed, and saw the maid’s skeleton, also unchanged. He scanned the room, attempting to find any trace the Miss might have left behind, but found nothing.
Did the Miss take the keyring simply to unlock the attic door for the occupant?
Tang Cuo didn’t believe it. He continued searching, and after a while, he finally realized what he had overlooked—Yu Wangnian’s diary!
Before her death, the maid had seen Yu Wangnian’s diary. Her blood had stained the book, leaving only a few legible pages. But where was the diary now?
Items from different timelines wouldn’t simply vanish in the next timeline just because a player took them in the previous one. If the diary was gone, it could only have been taken by an NPC.
But why would an NPC take a diary already ruined by blood? Did the unbloodied passages contain crucial information?
Just then, Qi Hui’s loud shout rang from outside: “She’s checking her watch again! I think she’s about to light the fire; what do we do?!”
Hearing this, Tang Cuo immediately darted out of the room and met Jin Cheng in the corridor.
The two locked eyes, and then ran toward the attic together. The Madam’s ghost chased closely behind. Perhaps enraged by Jin Cheng’s repeated provocations, she was even fiercer than before; her chilling ghostly breath practically brushed against the back of Tang Cuo’s neck.
“You first!” Jin Cheng shoved him forward, spun around, and tossed a handful of incense ash like a heavenly maiden scattering flowers.
But the incense ash only served as a deterrent. Against a malicious spirit like the Madam, it worked once; a second time wasn’t nearly as effective. Without Yu Wangyue on the second floor, the Madam seemed much more prone to going berserk. Her eyes were blood-red, her nails sharp, and her low growls pierced the eardrums.
By now, the two had reached the stairs leading to the attic. Tang Cuo charged forward without looking back. Jin Cheng kicked off the stair railing, executed a clean spin, and played a melodious note on his lap harp.
Bong—
A mental attack like a sonic wave was tangibly effective against a spiritual entity like a ghost. The Madam took a direct hit to the head, her entire body thrown back several meters, her expression twisted in pain and growing even more hysterical.
She charged again, but Tang Cuo had already opened the attic door. The moment it opened, he stepped sideways to let Jin Cheng in, then raised his hand and fired a small fireball straight at the Madam’s face.
“Ah!!” The Madam clutched her face, caught entirely off guard by the injury.
Meanwhile, Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng had slipped inside. Although a door couldn’t block a ghost, with Yu Wangyue and the attic occupant inside, they weren’t afraid of the Madam barging in.
Ignoring the ghosts in the room, the two quickly stepped to the window and looked down.
The Miss was still standing in the overgrown, spacious courtyard. An empty oil jug sat by her feet, and she clutched a pocket watch in her hand. Because she was too far away, they couldn’t clearly see her expression. They only saw her gazing hauntingly at the Yu Residence, standing completely alone.
Jin Cheng: “She’s hesitating.”
Tang Cuo: “She has lingering attachments.”
Jin Cheng: “Do you think she really can’t hear our voices?”
Tang Cuo: “Then let’s bluff her.”
No sooner said than done.
Jin Cheng smiled faintly, a wicked idea instantly forming in his mind. He knocked forcefully on the windowpane and shouted down: “Hey, beautiful Miss down there! The guy in the attic isn’t completely dead yet, he just came back to life! Do you want to come up and take a look?”
The Miss gave no response, let alone look up. But Tang Cuo, staring intently at her without blinking, caught a slight stiffening in her posture—she had heard him.
Jin Cheng continued: “It seems he’s destined to die with us. But—we’re all going to burn to death anyway; how can we let him die so easily? Great Detective, don’t you agree?”
Tang Cuo cooperated extremely reluctantly. “Mm.”
Jin Cheng immediately found it amusing. “Then what do you say we do?”
Tang Cuo: “Up to you.”
Hearing these words from Tang Cuo, Jin Cheng felt truly flattered, even knowing it was just to bluff someone.
“How about this,” Jin Cheng’s eyes darted, a plan forming. “Why don’t we kill him with Yu Wangnian’s gun? Doesn’t that gun still have bullets?”
As the Miss’s father, Yu Wangnian had forced his daughter to grow up in a suffocating cage. Did she hate him? Jin Cheng believed she did.
With the Madam bedridden year-round, the maternal love the Miss could receive was undoubtedly severely diminished, while her father was a man with extreme control issues.
She couldn’t freely learn the piano, couldn’t have a normal family, and had even witnessed a massacre.
She absolutely harbored hatred.
Then what kind of feelings did she hold for the attic occupant?
With too few clues, Jin Cheng couldn’t make an accurate judgment. But he would know the answer soon enough, because the Miss suddenly looked up at him.
There was anger in her eyes.
This corroborated Jin Cheng’s guess. Regardless of what kind of feelings she had for the attic occupant, or how complicated they were, the positive definitely outweighed the negative.
By grasping this, they might be able to restrain her.
However, a chilling ghostly aura abruptly erupted behind them. Without turning around, the howling wind told them—the ghost behind them had gone berserk because of their actions.
“Wow.” While exclaiming, Jin Cheng swiftly shielded Tang Cuo behind him. With no time to grab his lap harp, he bit the tip of his tongue, and an explosive syllable burst from it.
A powerful sonic wave expanded like ripples in water, halting the incoming ghost in the nick of time.
Tang Cuo saw it clearly: the one who had gone berserk was the attic occupant, and his attack power was even stronger than the Madam’s.
The two quickly retreated to the second floor, and Tang Cuo summoned his Sword of Judgment.
Although ghosts lacked a physical body and couldn’t be harmed by physical attacks, the Holy Radiance of Judgment had a suppressive effect on all evil entities. While not all ghosts were inherently evil, they certainly didn’t belong to the faction of light.
To make matters worse, though the Madam hadn’t chased them up to the attic, she had been roaming the second-floor corridor the entire time. And in the bathroom near the stairs at the end of the corridor, the dismembered ghost was also waiting.
If they went down now, they would literally be caught between a rock and a hard place, with nowhere to dodge.
With just one glance, Tang Cuo grasped the situation and asked urgently, “Can you draw them all together?”
Standing back-to-back, Jin Cheng replied, “Of course.”
The moment the words left his mouth, the two swiftly separated. One charged forward with wide strides, while the other lagged slightly behind. Just as the attic occupant was about to catch up, the latter suddenly stopped and doubled back.
The one turning back was naturally Tang Cuo. He deployed a skill rewarded by the system that he hadn’t used until now—Air Walk.
[Air Walk – Beginner] Category: Skill Quality: Common Description: Suspend in mid-air for 1 second. Cooldown: 1 minute.
Tang Cuo vaulted off the wall, using that one second of suspension to hang upside down at the corner where the ceiling met the wall. With a swing of his sword, he struck the attic occupant from behind, knocking him toward Jin Cheng.
A second later, he landed gracefully.
The attic occupant tried to turn around and attack him, but Jin Cheng’s assault arrived as well, drawing far more aggro.
Jin Cheng’s ability to draw aggro had always been unmatched in Yong Ye City. No matter the instance, there wasn’t a single bit of aggro he couldn’t pull. Right now, three ghosts were chasing him, each fiercer than the last. The attic occupant was practically boss-level, his body shrouded in dense ghostly energy that completely obscured their vision.
The entire corridor fell into a heart-palpitating, pitch-black darkness.
The wailing of ghosts accompanied by chilling winds made their hair stand on end.
Tang Cuo’s expression grew slightly serious, but he remained calm—because his partner was Jin Cheng. He only had to call Jin Cheng’s name, and he would know exactly what he was thinking.
“Jin Cheng!”
“Coming.”
In less than five seconds, that familiar voice charged out of the dense darkness with a sliding tackle.
Tang Cuo raised his sword and charged forward. The two crossed paths, one advancing while the other retreated, swapping positions in an instant. Then, Tang Cuo activated the Holy Light Shield. The transparent shield radiated intense holy light, instantly illuminating the corridor.
The blinding light made the ghosts instinctively raise their hands to block it, their eyes revealing a rare flash of panic.
It worked.
The shield lasted fifteen seconds; every second was precious. Tang Cuo decisively pushed forward, forcing the three ghosts to retreat continuously. Just as they backed past the staircase, Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng immediately pivoted—downstairs!
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, five seconds remained.
There were ghosts on the first floor too. Tang Cuo simply didn’t bother dodging, using the shield to bulldoze a path straight to the living room’s French window at breakneck speed, leaving Qi Hui staring with his mouth wide open.
Jin Cheng silently positioned himself between the two, casting a cold glance at Qi Hui that made him shrink back in fear.
“B-Big brother, outside…” Qi Hui felt deeply terrified.
“Relax, she won’t light the fire for now,” Jin Cheng said with certainty. He glanced out the window, locked eyes with the Miss, and then raised an eyebrow with a roguish smile, his face full of provocation.
To restrain the Miss, they needed to figure out a crucial setting in the instance—could living NPCs see ghosts?
If the Miss couldn’t see the ghost of the attic occupant, she naturally couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive. And based on all the evidence, such as the freshly lit incense in the basement, living NPCs couldn’t see ghosts.
Jin Cheng then looked at Tang Cuo. “What did you find in the study?”
Tang Cuo: “Yu Wangnian’s diary was taken.”
Jin Cheng: “Do you still remember what was written in it?”
Tang Cuo: “Of course.”
Jin Cheng: “Perfect.”
A photographic memory was the basic requirement for a detective, even a third-rate one.
