Chapter 64: Before Dawn (2)
“What did you find?”
“Yu Wangnian is poisoning his wife.”
The caller was Jin Cheng again. His voice sounded somewhat distorted over the phone and slightly breathless, indicating he had just been through a fierce fight.
“I can tell you with absolute certainty that Yu Wangnian is the master of the Yu Residence,” he stated.
Tang Cuo asked, “How are things on your end?”
Jin Cheng: “The ghosts can’t be killed. Perhaps they need to be exorcised, but my Requiem isn’t very effective. The second floor is pitch black and brimming with ghostly energy; I can’t see a thing. There’s probably a malicious spirit. If that Madam was truly poisoned by her husband, it’s entirely possible it’s her.”
“Is there any way to go up?”
“You’re giving me a tough problem here.”
Jin Cheng had never encountered such a messed-up instance. It was as if all the bosses had congregated entirely on his side, completely uncompromising.
Pop! Unable to bear the load, another bulb in the chandelier above him burst. The already dim living room became even eerier. The wind howling past the window sounded like the whispers of evil spirits—or like weeping.
No, a ghost was actually weeping.
From the direction of the second floor.
Jin Cheng raised an eyebrow, though he kept joking, “Do you know what this instance should be called? Panic in the Haunted House.”
Tang Cuo could only say, “Congratulations.”
“Is the piano room on the second floor too?”
“Almost certain.”
Jin Cheng knew he had no choice but to go up. It was a good thing he was the one here; otherwise, this game would be over. He steadied himself and glanced at the half-open kitchen door. There was a ghost inside.
The female ghost he had fought off earlier was still around, retreating to the first-floor bathroom and vanishing. There was also a middle-aged male ghost in a suit wandering the corridor. Judging by his age and attire, he should be the butler of the Yu Residence.
The bzz-bzz of static crackled again; the call could drop at any moment. But what concerned Jin Cheng the most was that the game had been going on for an hour, yet from beginning to end, they had only seen three players. Where were the other three?
Tang Cuo was thinking about the same thing, but neither brought it up over the phone. After exchanging a few more pieces of information, the static interference intensified, and the call was forcibly disconnected.
Qi Hui hurried over to ask what happened. Tang Cuo didn’t explain much and went straight to the second floor.
All the doors on the second floor were locked, except for the public bathroom at the end of the corridor. Among a pile of locked rooms, this was the only one open, making it impossible to ignore.
Qi Hui had searched it once before but hadn’t found anything. When Tang Cuo looked, however, he spotted an anomaly.
In the bathtub’s drain, there was a tiny piece of minced meat.
The meat was raw and relatively fresh, but the blood had been washed very pale by water. You had to lean in very close to smell the faint tang of blood from the drain. What kind of meat would appear here?
Answer: Meat left behind from dismembering a corpse.
All the windows in the entire house were closed, yet only this bathroom window was open, perhaps for ventilation.
Who was the one who died?
Wait.
There were ghosts in this instance, and people turned into ghosts after death. If a dismemberment truly occurred here, the victim must have died with immense resentment and would absolutely become a ghost.
Where was the ghost?
Tang Cuo abruptly looked up—just like in countless horror movies—and stared into the mirror.
“AHHHHHH!” The first to scream was Qi Hui. He raised his gun at the mirror and fired a shot, the bullet nearly grazing the top of Tang Cuo’s head, shattering the mirror with a crack.
In the shattered mirror, a ghost—appearing to be patched together from countless bloody corpse fragments—fractured into countless reflections. Its face was half-blue and half-pale, its eyes bloodshot red. Because the face was also pieced together—and incompletely at that—it was almost impossible to even tell if it was male or female.
“Fuck.” The hand Qi Hui used to hold the gun was trembling. He rapidly fired a few more shots while scanning his surroundings on high alert, terrified the ghost might suddenly materialize.
Watching quietly, Tang Cuo suddenly thought of something and bent down to thoroughly search the bathroom.
By this time, the mirror was smashed to bits, and the ghost finally vanished. Qi Hui wiped his cold sweat, subconsciously inching closer to Tang Cuo for a frail sense of security. “Brother Tang, aren’t you afraid? What are you still looking for?”
Tang Cuo: “Secrets.”
Qi Hui: “Does this really need to be kept secret? Brother Tang, I’m your man now…”
Tang Cuo was in no mood to explain.
When he said “secrets,” he didn’t mean keeping a secret from Qi Hui, but that he was looking for the secrets hidden in this bathroom. Was the person dismembered here because they had discovered something?
The butler’s small blackboard had an entry: 9:30 AM: Receive guests
Judging by the freshness of the minced meat and the lingering scent of blood in the bathroom, the murder didn’t happen too early or too late. The timeframe around 9:00 or 10:00 AM fit perfectly.
Although the ghost was terrifyingly deformed, making it hard to discern its original appearance, after careful observation, Tang Cuo could still roughly tell its gender and age.
It was a man with yellowish, non-curly hair. His age fell somewhere between his twenties and middle age.
Among the known males in the Yu Residence, only Yu Wangnian, the butler, and the attic occupant were men. The attic occupant had curly hair, eliminating him. According to Jin Cheng’s description, the butler ghost wandering the corridor had black hair, eliminating him too. That left only Yu Wangnian.
Assuming there wasn’t another male character residing in the Yu Residence, Yu Wangnian and the 9:30 AM guest held the highest suspicion.
But Yu Wangnian was the master of the Yu Residence. If he was murdered, merely dismembering his corpse wouldn’t be enough to cover it up. Tang Cuo’s intuition told him that the person who died here was that unlucky guest.
Within minutes, Tang Cuo found half a slip of paper amidst the shattered mirror pieces. The paper was torn, its tail end caught on a small nail protruding from behind the mirror. It looked as though someone had tried to yank the paper out from behind the mirror but accidentally left a small piece snagged inside.
There was writing on the paper.
[—together, okay? Your Wanwan]
The words before “together” were missing, but the intent was clear. Based on the meaning of these few words, it looked like “Wanwan” was planning to elope with someone.
But why was a secret elopement note hidden behind the mirror of the second-floor public bathroom? And who was Wanwan?
Pinching the slip of paper, Tang Cuo walked out of the bathroom and stood in the corridor, looking left and right. This was the end of the corridor. To his right was a solid wall, and to his left was the path leading to the attic.
There was no bathroom in the attic, only a simple chamber pot hidden behind a curtain. The occupant had been locked inside for half a year; he couldn’t possibly have gone without bathing. Therefore, his most likely bathing location was right here—during scheduled supervised breaks.
“Who is Wanwan? She wants to elope with someone? Hiss—” Qi Hui drew a sharp breath. “Could that guy earlier be her adulterer? The master found out and killed him?”
The adulterer theory sounded reasonable. But given that this person was definitely not the attic occupant, introducing a random adulterer would make the story too needlessly complicated.
Furthermore, Tang Cuo felt the handwriting on the note was strange—an indescribable awkwardness.
Qi Hui spoke again, “That ghost won’t come back out, will it? What if physical attacks don’t work on him? I don’t know any mental attacks!”
This reminded Tang Cuo. Even Jin Cheng couldn’t kill the ghosts; they certainly wouldn’t be able to either. With only forty minutes left until midnight, they didn’t even know which direction the piano room’s door faced.
What was their primary objective here? The Twelve Movements.
“If you’re afraid of ghosts, use fire,” Tang Cuo said as he quickly descended the stairs.
“Use fire? How?” Qi Hui chased after him.
“Don’t you have a lighter?”
“Is this really the time and place to use a lighter???”
Tang Cuo was just guessing. It wasn’t like guessing would kill them anyway.
After weighing the pros and cons repeatedly, Qi Hui decided to trust the big boss. But how big of a fire could a lighter start? He ran to the kitchen, dismantled a broom, wrapped cloth around the handle, doused it in oil, and crafted a makeshift torch.
Whether it worked or not, it at least provided some psychological comfort.
Seeing his aggressive setup, Tang Cuo—afraid he might burn the whole house down—shot him a cold glare. “Go look for clues.”
Qi Hui: Big bosses are terrifying.
While searching for clues, Tang Cuo passed the living room several times, his peripheral vision subconsciously flicking toward the telephone, but it remained silent. After doing this a few times, he suddenly realized he was becoming a bit too reliant on Jin Cheng lately.
Shaking his head, he turned and entered the maid’s room.
This room was far too clean. Not “clean” as in tidy, but “clean” as in completely devoid of clues.
Tang Cuo had searched it twice inside out without finding anything valuable. Refusing to admit defeat, he returned, stared at the mess he had created, crossed his arms, and fell into deep thought.
What role would a young maid in her twenties play in the story of the Yu Residence?
How would her value manifest through clues?
Ultimately, Tang Cuo directed his gaze to the pile of clothes. Some belonged to her—the material and style clearly inferior. A few pieces belonged to the masters of the house, missing buttons or with small tears, left here for her to mend.
Tang Cuo picked up a men’s shirt and a qipao, comparing them carefully. There were no bloodstains, dirt, or hidden items. The only noticeable difference was the stitching.
Both were mended by the maid, but the stitches on the man’s white shirt were very tight and meticulous, while the qipao was slightly more careless. What did this imply?
Combining this with the TV dramas and various anecdotes Tang Cuo had seen before—did the maid have her eyes on the master?
Tang Cuo had never understood romantic entanglements between men and women. Back when he was a detective, any romance-related cases brought to him involved either cheating or two-timing; essentially, nothing good.
Whether the maid truly had eyes on the master and wanted to climb the social ladder was secondary for now. Tang Cuo simply refused to believe there were no other clues in this room. Decisively, he drew his sword and dismantled both the bedboards and the wardrobe.
Passing by the living room, Qi Hui heard the sound of demolition coming from inside and jumped in fright, assuming the ghost had come out and started fighting Tang Cuo. Just as he was about to rush in and help, the telephone rang urgently.
“Why does everything happen at once?!” Qi Hui dashed over and picked up the receiver.
“Hello? Brother Jin?!”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Brother Tang’s partner! Ah, never mind that, Brother Tang is fighting a ghost! I gotta go help him—” Qi Hui abruptly turned his head. Just as he was about to hang up the phone, he came face-to-face with Tang Cuo’s expressionless visage.
“Holy shit.” Qi Hui’s heart almost exploded.
“Give it to me.” Tang Cuo held out his hand.
Qi Hui tremblingly handed the phone over, his eyes continuously darting behind Tang Cuo. “W-Where’s the ghost? Did you beat it away?”
On the phone.
Hearing the commotion on their end, Jin Cheng asked, “How is it?”
Tang Cuo: “Fine.”
Jin Cheng: “When did you change partners?”
Tang Cuo: “?”
Hearing no reply, Jin Cheng knew Tang Cuo was trying to communicate via brainwaves again. Helpless but amused, he said, “I can’t see your expression. Maybe you could describe it for me?”
Tang Cuo: “…”
After a few seconds of silence, he replied, “I didn’t change partners.”
Jin Cheng raised an eyebrow. “If you didn’t change, why is he calling himself your partner? Aren’t I your partner?”
Tang Cuo: “Because you’re not here.”
Jin Cheng: “Oh.”
He suddenly found himself at a loss for words.
The two then got down to business.
Jin Cheng said, “I checked the second floor. Most of the rooms are locked. I went into the unlocked ones but didn’t find the piano room. The butler’s key does open the attic. I saw some fragmented sheet music written in blood on the attic walls.”
“The Twelve Movements?”
“Exactly.”
The Twelve Movements recorded the melody for “The Song of the God, Lambs, and the Crow,” without lyrics. Devoid of lyrics, that eerie melody wouldn’t be out of place in any horror story.
“Were there tally marks under the bed?”
“Yes. The ghost on the second floor is too fierce; I didn’t have time to count exactly, but a quick glance showed roughly over one hundred and fifty marks. Definitely no less than that.”
Over one hundred and fifty marks equated to roughly two years. From this, they could essentially determine that the person locked in the attic had always been the same individual, and he had been keeping track the entire time.
When Tang Cuo saw the tally marks, there were over thirty. By Jin Cheng’s 1926 timeline, there were nearly one hundred and fifty. That meant Tang Cuo’s current timeline was roughly around 1924.
This aligned with his initial deduction.
“There’s one thing that’s very strange.” A rare tone of gravity seeped into Jin Cheng’s voice. “I only encountered two ghosts on the second floor: one male ghost pieced together from messy corpse fragments, and one female ghost.”
“I encountered the male ghost too. I suspect he was a guest visiting the Yu Residence who stumbled upon the mansion’s secrets and was subsequently murdered in the public bathroom at the end of the second-floor corridor.”
Jin Cheng had fought ghosts non-stop along his path; every moment was a harrowing encounter with evil spirits, leaving him no time to search for clues. He hadn’t entered the bathroom Tang Cuo mentioned because the dismembered ghost was inside it.
The two ghosts each occupied opposite ends of the second floor, and they didn’t seem to get along. So, Jin Cheng simply used himself as bait, lured the female ghost into the male ghost’s territory, and let them fight it out. Only then did he seize the opportunity to run up to the attic and look for clues.
“According to what you said, if the male ghost was a guest, then what about the attic occupant, Yu Wangnian, and the Miss of the house? Ghosts can pass through walls. Unless they are trapped in a specific location by some sinister array, they wouldn’t be confined to a room by mere locks,” Jin Cheng reasoned.
“Perhaps someone didn’t die and managed to escape. Or perhaps there are spaces we haven’t discovered yet,” Tang Cuo replied.
“That’s possible too, but one thing is certain: the person locked in the attic is named Yu Wangyue.”
“Wangyue?”
Tang Cuo suddenly remembered the pocket watch he found in the maid’s room. Engraved on the back were the letters “wy.” Yu Wangyue, Wangyue—wasn’t that “wy”?
Jin Cheng then detailed what he had found in the attic—
After being locked up for over two years, the attic occupant was on the verge of madness. Whether it was the chaotic sheet music scrawled in blood on the walls or the increasingly heavy strokes of the tally marks under the bed, everything exposed the occupant’s deteriorating mental state.
The entire attic was a complete mess. Books were scattered all over the floor, and the only mirror had been shattered and tossed aside.
Jin Cheng could confirm it was deliberately smashed because the paperweight used to break it lay right next to it, still covered in glass shards. Beside the broken mirror, Jin Cheng also found a few medium-length curly hairs.
Though scattered, the other items in the room were relatively intact. Only the mirror had been shattered. Why? Did the man see himself in the mirror, find reality unacceptable, and shatter it?
“What about Yu Wangyue? How do you know his name is Wangyue?” Tang Cuo asked.
“There was a torn piece of paper on the floor. Someone named Lin Wan sent him a letter saying she would let him out.” By the time Jin Cheng found the torn paper, he couldn’t piece the full text together, but the recipient and the signature were clearly legible.
Combined with Tang Cuo’s account of the dismembered corpse in the bathroom, it all lined up.
The question was—what was the relationship between Yu Wangyue and Yu Wangnian?
Tang Cuo spun the old fountain pen he had eventually salvaged from the maid’s room. “Judging by the names, they’re brothers.”
Jin Cheng caught on. “Sister-in-law and brother-in-law?”
Just as they were speaking, the crackle of static returned; the connection was on the verge of cutting off. Knowing a ghost had appeared on Tang Cuo’s end too, Jin Cheng was about to quickly give a few last instructions when a third person’s voice suddenly burst over the line.
“Hello? Is anyone there?! Help me!!!”
