Chapter 71: Before Dawn (10)
There were five relatively legible pages in Yu Wangnian’s diary, each recording events from different time periods. However, these five pages were also stained with a few drops of blood, obscuring some fragmented information.
[Oct **,191*: I have never seen a girl as much like a lilac as she. She must have stolen my heart; otherwise, how could I toss and turn so restlessly?]
[*** 10, 19**: Joy of today, tying the knot, overjoyed beyond words.]
[Feb 06, 1920: Our two-year-old Nannan can call me Papa now. I prepared the best gift for her and deposited it in a private safe at Jincheng Bank, to be taken out when she turns eighteen.]
[** **, 1922: Wangyue is returning from Great Britain. Much joy; the day of reunion is anticipated.]
[June 24, 1924: I hate her, but I still love her. I know her heart might not be with me, but she will certainly be buried in the same place as me.]
Yu Wangnian’s journaling style was also very brief; he didn’t write often, and each entry only contained a sentence or two. Of these five entries, aside from the last one which Tang Cuo had determined to be the timeline he originally spawned in, the other four could not be pinpointed.
However, Tang Cuo had an intuition that the remaining unknown timeline was hidden within these diary entries.
“The 1936 diary was taken, so Rong Yi hasn’t seen it here,” Jin Cheng said.
“Right,” Tang Cuo nodded. For Rong Yi to see the diary, he would either have to replicate Tang Cuo’s path or know the intel before entering the instance. But if he knew early on, there would have been no need to make a deal with Jin Cheng; with all timelines unlocked, his advantage would be far too great.
He continued, “1922, Yu Wangyue returns. Early 1923, the family of four takes a portrait. The timeline matches. We now have three points in time: their first meeting, their wedding, and his return. Which one do you think is the key?”
As for the 1920 entry, the time was given too precisely, prompting Tang Cuo to exclude it.
Jin Cheng thought for a moment. “Working backward from 1920, Yu Wangnian and Lin Wan’s wedding date should be before 1918. 1916 or 1917 are the most likely.”
Hearing this, Tang Cuo’s eyes lit up slightly. “In 1920, the Miss was two years old. Yu Wangnian prepared a gift for her, placed it in the bank, and intended for her to retrieve it at eighteen. It is currently 1936; she is exactly eighteen. The intel Lin Yandong gave us—062—could it be the safe number or the password?”
Jin Cheng rubbed his chin, deep in thought. “In that case, the Miss searching specifically for the diary might be to find this gift. We have to get to it before Rong Yi does.”
Overhearing them, Qi Hui finally couldn’t help but ask softly, “But the gift is in the bank, how are we supposed to get it? Could it be that the Miss has already taken it out?”
“We can make a phone call.” Tang Cuo’s thought process was extremely clear at this moment. “The diary mentioned Jincheng Bank, one of the famous private banks during the Republic of China era. The bank’s number should be in the phonebook. If we call, we might find out something.”
But the problem now was: could the phone dial out? Even if it could, probably only the phone in 1926 would work, and that’s where the phonebook was.
It was an hour and a half away from midnight.
Without Rong Yi’s cheat ability, the three could only wait. During this waiting period, Jin Cheng was tasked with stalling the Miss to prevent her from setting the fire, while Tang Cuo and Qi Hui continued searching for clues.
The ghosts on the second floor were ferocious, making it somewhat difficult for just the two of them, so they started from the first floor, searching room by room all over again.
The overall structure of the Yu Residence wouldn’t change much between the 1926 and 1936 timelines. Because the Yu household was wiped out, the only ones capable of altering the space were the two NPCs: the Miss and the attic occupant.
Therefore, their objective was clear: spot the differences.
The kitchen had no obvious changes. A few more incense sticks had been added to the burner in the basement. The blackboard in the butler’s room had changed. There were no obvious changes in the middle-aged maid’s and young maid’s rooms.
After making a full round, Tang Cuo returned to the living room. Meeting Jin Cheng’s inquiring gaze, he shook his head.
Outside the house, the Miss was nearly out of patience. She already harbored doubts about Jin Cheng’s words, and the longer it dragged on, the heavier her suspicion grew. She gazed distantly toward the attic again; judging by her look, she knew the attic occupant had died there.
Suddenly, she smiled, casting a cold and somewhat angry look at Jin Cheng through the French window.
This was slightly bad.
No matter how many tricks Jin Cheng had up his sleeve, faced with this situation, he was also somewhat helpless. Tang Cuo didn’t have any good ideas either, so he straightforwardly tossed the problem to Jin Cheng, turned around, and began searching the living room.
So when Jin Cheng helplessly turned back to look at his great detective, he was greeted with the sight of Tang Cuo holding a broken table leg, sticking his butt out as he poked around in the ashes of the fireplace.
It was a tiny bit cute.
“Miss Yu.” Crossing his arms, Jin Cheng leaned against the glass window. While admiring Tang Cuo’s heroic ash-poking posture out of the corner of his eye, he called out to the Miss outside. “I know you want to burn this place down and end it all, but are you certain that after you burn it, the story really ends?”
The Miss didn’t answer.
Jin Cheng continued, “It won’t end. Many years from now, it will be impossible for you to forget tonight’s fire. It will be the beginning of another kind of pain, won’t it?”
“Everyone is dead—whether passively or voluntarily—leaving only you. You alone must bear all this. If you burn this place down, there will never be anyone else who can know this story or understand you.”
“You will be lonely.”
“Lonely for a lifetime, suffering until you die.”
Rather than dissuading her, Jin Cheng’s words sounded more like a curse. Even Qi Hui felt the urge to punch him.
As expected, the Miss’s expression darkened. She stared at Jin Cheng, her beautiful eyes filled with a profound, impenetrable darkness. She finally spoke her first words: “What do you know?”
It was a declarative sentence.
Jin Cheng shrugged. “I don’t know much, but am I wrong?”
The Miss didn’t want to waste words with him. The more her heart wavered, the more she wanted to end everything quickly, denying herself the chance to waver. She swiftly pulled out a box of matches, ignoring Jin Cheng, and proceeded to strike a match.
Right at this moment, Tang Cuo poked something out from the thick ashes in the fireplace. It was a small golden pair of scissors, the kind a woman might use for needlework. Weighing it in his hand, it was quite heavy; judging by the quality, it seemed to be made of pure gold.
What was noteworthy was the blood on the scissors. The blood had dried completely and wasn’t sticky with ash, meaning the scissors were thrown in after the blood had dried.
In the previous two timelines, Tang Cuo had checked the fireplace but hadn’t seen these scissors.
“Jin Cheng.” Tang Cuo called out to him. As soon as Jin Cheng turned around, Tang Cuo tossed the scissors over, stating bluntly: “Murder weapon.”
Catching it, Jin Cheng raised an eyebrow. “To kill who?”
Tang Cuo: “The Madam.”
Jin Cheng: “Are you sure?”
Tang Cuo blinked.
Jin Cheng understood. All is fair in war.
Holding the scissors, Jin Cheng continued speaking to the Miss. “Do you still remember these scissors?”
The Miss’s expression changed drastically. The match in her hand dropped to the ground, quickly extinguishing in the grass.
Seeing that it worked, Jin Cheng also understood a bit more of the truth. He smiled. “You see, you haven’t let go of anything at all. You killed her, didn’t you? You plunged these scissors into her heart, and from that moment on, you couldn’t let it go—regardless of whether the Yu Residence still exists.”
“Shut up!” The Miss screamed, covering her ears. In that moment, her facade of indifference cracked, exposing the festering ulcer hidden beneath her skin.
Jin Cheng’s words were like needles, piercing mercilessly until the ulcer began to ooze pus.
“What do you know? You’re just a thief breaking into an empty house! People like you will never understand anything.”
Hearing this, Jin Cheng finally realized the players’ designated role in this instance: thieves. A fucking thief. I don’t even want to be this thief.
“Even thieves have their code, Miss. If you let us out, we won’t speak of what we found here. But if you insist on setting this fire, you can burn us to death, but can you burn away these scissors? My companions will definitely come looking for us, and the truth will come to light one day.”
The Miss gritted her teeth and sneered. “But by that day, you’ll have long since turned to dry bones.”
“A mutual destruction is indeed an option, but—” Jin Cheng asked again, “Do you really not want to see her again? She is right here in this house. You killed her once, and now you are going to kill her a second time. Can you really bring yourself to do it?”
“What did you say?” The Miss couldn’t believe it.
“I said she is right here, watching you. And you, her dear daughter, are going to kill her a second time.”
“That’s impossible!”
“She has beautiful almond eyes, just like yours, doesn’t she? She’s dead, and her door is locked; I couldn’t possibly have seen her. You might say I saw her photo, but the photo wouldn’t tell me she died wearing white clothes, with blood on her chest.”
“Shut up, shut up!” The Miss was going crazy. How could she believe ghosts existed in this world? Yet, when she couldn’t help but look toward the second-floor window, it was as if she truly saw a ghost standing there.
She knew it was her imagination, that it was fake, but her brain couldn’t control her panicked heart. A scene from many years ago replayed repeatedly before her eyes.
Blood.
Blood was everywhere on her hands—blood she couldn’t wipe off no matter how hard she tried. The golden scissors fell to the floor with a clatter. The woman on the bed groaned in agony, gradually losing her breath.
The memories tortured her, a dull ache throbbing in her nerves, driving her to madness. “She never deserved to be my mother! If it weren’t for her, none of this would have happened!”
Jin Cheng’s expression grew even colder, like an indifferent bystander. “Oh, but she gave birth to you. She is your mother.”
“But her heart only held her love! She wanted love, Father wanted love; they all wanted love, yet they only refused to love me!” As she spoke, she looked up at the heavy, dark sky and the increasingly pale moon. Her madness gradually turned into murmurs. “They didn’t choose me in the end either.”
Foolish men and resentful women, living for love and dying for love, yet mostly leaving their pain for others to bear.
Watching her fragile state, Jin Cheng couldn’t help but glance at Tang Cuo out of the corner of his eye. Honestly, in his short thirty-odd years of life, he had never felt that love was something “great.”
Since it was a private emotion, it couldn’t be called “great.” The joy and pain belonged to oneself, serving only oneself, and had nothing to do with others. But beauty was beauty, and pain could sometimes be beautiful too, just like a shattered heart scattered across the floor.
At this thought, Jin Cheng suddenly realized that lately, no matter what happened, his thoughts always drifted back to Tang Cuo. Was this love syndrome?
But he hadn’t even started dating yet.
What exactly was love?
How could its influence be this massive?
“Ahem.” Being stared at was making Tang Cuo slightly uncomfortable. He simply walked to the window to break his gaze. Outside, the Miss remained frozen in her previous posture. Tang Cuo had no interest in discussing love and asked directly, “Who did Lin Wan actually love? Did she love Yu Wangyue?”
The Miss finally looked at him, tilted her head, and gave a mocking smile. “Yes. Of all the people she could love, she just had to love him. Unable to attain what she sought, she sought to destroy him instead.”
“Little Uncle was a very good person.”
She paused, then added, “Over the years, I lived in the places he stayed during his time abroad and met his attending physician. The doctor told me that if he hadn’t insisted on returning to China, he could have lived another ten years.”
As she spoke these words, although the Miss was looking at them, her gaze was unfocused, sounding more like she was muttering to herself.
“He was a radio expert.”
As her voice faded, the Miss fell into a long silence. From the second floor of the Yu Residence came the shrill and mournful wailing of a woman. The regret, pain, and despair woven into the cries were like a thousand needles pricking the heart, dense and unyielding.
Taking a deep breath, Tang Cuo stared at the Miss and asked, “What about the one in the attic? What role did he play?”
“I don’t know.”
“I really don’t know.”
The Miss crouched down in agony, hugging her head, finally crying with vulnerability and helplessness. Perhaps she really did know but was unwilling to say; perhaps she truly didn’t know and was unwilling to dig further.
Everyone was dead, and she was the only one left. What was the point of digging further?
Inside and outside the Yu Residence, only the cries of the living and the dead remained, echoing each other across the boundary of Yin and Yang.
Qi Hui couldn’t digest the sliver of truth the Miss had revealed for a moment, and Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng were still thinking. But one thing was certain: at least the Miss wouldn’t be in a rush to set the fire right now.
With this crisis averted, they only had to wait for midnight to return to 1926 and make the phone call.
There were exactly forty-three minutes left until midnight.
Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng returned to the second floor, planning to search it once more. Thanks to the Miss, the Madam might have been triggered and hidden away somewhere; she didn’t appear again.
The dismembered ghost was still there, but as long as they didn’t enter his territory, he wouldn’t attack unprovoked either.
“The keys to the Miss’s and Madam’s rooms still haven’t been found, and the piano room hasn’t been opened yet,” Jin Cheng said as they walked.
“I’m pondering a question right now. Since Yu Wangyue was a good person, why did he stay in this house after his death, playing a bizarre melody every night?” Tang Cuo mused.
“Do you think he has a specific intention?”
“Maybe.”
The two completed a circuit of the second floor and arrived at the staircase leading to the attic but didn’t go up. Jin Cheng crossed his arms, staring at the half-open attic door, and said slowly, “I just thought of a way. We might be able to get the key hanging from the Miss’s waist.”
Tang Cuo asked, “What is it?”
Jin Cheng, however, kept him in suspense, smiling. “You’ll know in a minute.”
About ten minutes later, Jin Cheng and Tang Cuo returned to the living room. Qi Hui was still holding down the fort. Seeing them approach, he quickly stepped aside from the French window.
Jin Cheng pulled a crumpled, dust-covered letter from his pocket, waved it at the Miss outside, and said, “We went back up and searched again. We found a letter left by your uncle. Do you want to see it?”
The Miss looked up abruptly.
Jin Cheng continued, “Whether you read it is up to you. But considering you just tried to burn us to death, you’ll have to exchange something for it. How about the key hanging from your waist?”
Hearing this, the Miss subconsciously gripped the key. “Do you think this is the key to the front door?”
Jin Cheng spread his hands. “It’s a gamble. Will you trade?”
“How do I know you’re not tricking me?”
“I already said it’s a gamble. But if you want to verify it, I can let you take a closer look.”
Jin Cheng acted so magnanimous and forthright that the Miss was momentarily unsure. After a long while, she finally stepped closer and saw the letter Jin Cheng held.
The moonlight was hazy, and the indoor lighting was dim, so she couldn’t see the contents clearly. But the handwriting indeed looked very much like her little uncle’s.
Jin Cheng quickly pulled the letter back and asked, “Will you trade? If not, I’ll burn it. I don’t know any Yu Wangyue anyway, so keeping it is useless to me.”
The Miss hesitated, gripping the key tightly, unable to make a decision.
Tang Cuo waited quietly, glancing at the clock on the living room wall out of the corner of his eye. Time ticked by; only nineteen minutes remained until midnight.
“I’ll trade.” The heavenly sound finally rang out.
Jin Cheng, however, changed his mind at the last second. “Too late. Unless you answer one more question for me.”
Since the Miss had already agreed, it was impossible for her to give up now. She gritted her teeth. “What question?”
Jin Cheng: “What year did your parents get married?”
The Miss: “Ah?”
What kind of bizarre question is that?
