The Trial Game of Life

There were five pages that could still be read from Yu Wangnian’s diary, which recorded events at different time periods. It was just that a few drops of blood had stained these five pages, blocking some parts of the information.     

[** October 191*

I’ve never seen a girl who looks so much like a lilac flower. She must have taken my mind away, otherwise, how could I be this sleepless?     

10th October 19**

We’ve tied the knot. The joy of today was overwhelming.

6th February 1920

My 2-year-old baby will soon learn to say “Daddy”.

I’ve prepared the best gift for her and kept it in a private safe at Jincheng Bank. I’ll take it out when she’s 18 years old.

1922

Wangyue is about to return from Great Britain. I’m very happy and I look forward to the day of reunion.    

24th June 1924

I hate her, but I still love her. I know her heart may not be mine, but she’ll be buried with me.]

Yu Wangnian’s diary-writing style was very simple. He didn’t write often, and when he did, there were only one or two sentences each time. Among these five entries, except for the last one that Tang Cuo judged to be the same dimension where he first entered the dungeon, the other four couldn’t be determined.

However, Tang Cuo had an intuition that the exact time of the last unknown dimension was hidden somewhere in these diary entries.

“In 1936, the diary is taken, so Rong Yi mustn’t have seen it here.” Jin Cheng said.

“Yes.” Tang Cuo nodded. If Rong Yi wanted to see the diary, he must either reproduce the path Tang Cuo had walked so far or know the information before entering this dungeon. But if he indeed had known beforehand, there would have been no need to make any deal with Jin Cheng. He could have unlocked all the dimensions by himself and held an advantage far greater than anyone else’s.

He continued: “In 1922, Yu Wangyue returned to China. At the beginning of 1923, the family of four took a photo together. The time is right. Now we have three time points: Their first meeting, their marriage and Yu Wangyue’s return to China. Which do you think is the key?”

As for the entry written on 6th Feb 1920, the time was too specific and Tang Cuo decided to exclude it.

Jin Cheng thought about it, “If we deduce backwards from 1920, Yu Wangnian and Lin Wan’s marriage should take place before 1918. 1916 is the most likely.”

Hearing this, Tang Cuo’s eyes lit up slightly: “The young miss was 2 years old in 1920. Yu Wangnian prepared a gift for her and placed it in the bank, then he took it out when she reached 18. Now is 1936, so she’s exactly 18. The information given by Lin Yandong, ‘062’, is it perhaps the safe box number or the password? “

Jin Cheng stroked his chin and thought of something: “If that’s the case, the young miss is looking for the diary especially because of this gift. We have to get it before Rong Yi.”

Qi Hui heard it and finally couldn’t help but ask softly: “But the gift is in the bank, how do we get it? Could it be that the young miss has already taken it out?”

“We can make a call.” At the moment, Tang Cuo’s line of thought is extremely smooth: “The diary says it’s placed at Jincheng Bank, one of the most famous private banks during Republican period. There should be the bank’s number in the phone book. Maybe we’ll know something by calling them.” 

But the question now was: Could the call even be made? Probably only the 1926 phone was useful, and the phone book could only be found there.

By this time, there was still an hour and a half before midnight.

The three of them didn’t have Rong Yi’s ability to manipulate time so they could only wait. While they waited, Jin Cheng was in charge of holding off the young miss to prevent her from igniting the fire. Tang Cuo and Qi Hui then continued to look for clues.

The ghosts on the second floor were too fierce, so it would be a waste of energy for just the two of them to fight against those. They decided to start from the first floor, searching room by room again.

In between 1926 and 1936, there was no major changes in Yu Mansion. Because the entire household had been killed, the only people that could make any changes here were the two NPCs: the young miss and the person in the attic.

So their goal was very clear ― finding the changes.

There was no obvious change in the kitchen.

A few more incense sticks were found in the burner inside the basement.

The content on the blackboard in the butler’s room had changed.

There was no obvious change in the young servant’s and the middle-aged maid’s rooms.

After one round, Tang Cuo returned to the living room and cast an inquiring gaze at Jin Cheng while shaking his head.

By this time, the young miss outside the house was about to lose patience. She already had doubts about Jin Cheng’s words in the first place. The longer the delay, the heavier the doubt. She gazed at the direction of the attic again, and looking at her eyes, she was indeed aware that the person in the attic had died there.

Suddenly, she smiled and looked at Jin Cheng through the floor-to-ceiling window, her eyes cold and angry.

This seemed ominous.

No matter how many wicked ideas Jin Cheng might have, he was a little helpless in such a situation. Because Tang Cuo couldn’t think of any good solution either, he simply threw the problem to Jin Cheng and turned around to search the living room.

So when Jin Cheng reluctantly looked back at his great detective, what he saw was Tang Cuo holding a broken table leg and bending down to stir the ash in the fireplace.

He looks kinda cute.

“Miss Yu.” Jin Cheng leaned on the glass window with his arms folded, admiring Tang Cuo’s ‘heroic’ posture of stirring the ash while shouting to the young miss outside: “I know you want to burn this place and end it all. But after everything is burnt down, will the story really be over?” 

The young miss didn’t answer.

Jin Cheng continued: “It won’t end. Many years later, you still won’t be able to forget the fire tonight. That will be another painful beginning, won’t it?”

“Everyone here has died, regardless whether they were willing to or not. Only you are left to bear whatever remains. If you burn down this place, it’s impossible for anyone to learn of this story and understand you.”

“You’ll be alone.”

“You’ll live a lonely life filled with pain till death.”

Jin Cheng’s persuasion sounded more like he was cursing her. Hearing this actually gave Qi Hui an urge to beat up someone.

But the young miss’s expression really sank. She stared intensely at Jin Cheng, her beautiful eyes full of deep, impenetrable darkness. She finally said the first sentence: “What do you know?”

This was a statement.

Jin Cheng shrugged: “Indeed I don’t understand, but is what I said wrong?” 

The young miss didn’t want to talk nonsense with him. The more her heart wavered, the more she wanted to end all this quickly and not give herself another chance to waver. She swiftly took out a matchbox. Turning away from Jin Cheng, she lit up one match.

Right this very moment, Tang Cuo dug out something from the thick ash in the fireplace. It was a pair of golden scissors, like those used by women for needlework. He tried to feel it and the weight was rather heavy, looking like it was made of pure gold.

The thing that was most noteworthy was that these scissors were stained with blood. The blood had dried up with no ash sticking on it. In other words, these scissors were thrown in here after the blood had dried.

In the first two dimensions, Tang Cuo didn’t check the fireplace, but he had never seen this pair of scissors anywhere.

“Jin Cheng.” Tang Cuo called out to Jin Cheng, and when Jin Cheng turned around, he threw the scissors over and said bluntly: “The murder weapon.”

Jin Cheng caught it and raised his eyebrows: “Who did this kill?”

Tang Cuo: “The lady.”

Jin Cheng: “Are you sure?”

Tang Cuo blinked a few times.

Jin Cheng understood at once. Even the most righteous soldiers might have to make use of cheap deceptive tactics during war.

So Jin Cheng took the scissors and continued to talk to the young miss: “Do you remember this pair of scissors?” 

All of a sudden, the young miss’ expression changed. The match in her hand fell to the ground and was  quickly extinguished in the weeds.

Jin Cheng saw a ray of hope, for he now understood a bit of the truth. He said with a smile: “Look, in the end you really couldn’t leave behind anything. You killed her, right? You used these scissors to pierce her heart. From that moment on, you can never let it go, regardless of whether the mansion gets burnt down or not.”

“Shut up!” The young miss yelled as she covered her ears. At this moment, her cold shell cracked open, revealing the wounds hidden under the facade.

Jin Cheng’s words were like needles that ruthlessly poked at the wounds, causing them to bleed.

“What do you know? You’re just a thief who breaks in. People like you don’t understand anything.”

Hearing her words, Jin Cheng understood the players’ role in this dungeon. So they turned out to be thieves. What thief, I’m not happily taking this role at all.

“Thieves also have our conscience, miss. If you let us out, we won’t say a word about what we found here. If you set off the fire, you may burn us to death, but will you be able to burn this pair of scissors? Our mates will come to find us and the truth will come to light one day.”

The young miss gritted her teeth and sneered: “But by that day, you’ll already have become dry bones.” 

“It’s true that we’re caught in a desperate situation here, but ―” Jin Cheng asked again: “Do you really not want to see her again? She’s in this house. You killed her, and now you want to kill her a second time, can you really do it?”

“What did you just say?” The young miss couldn’t believe it.

“I said she’s right here, looking at you, while you, her dear daughter, are going to kill her a second time.”

“It’s impossible!”

“She has beautiful amber eyes just like you, right? She’s dead and the door is locked, so I couldn’t possibly have seen her. You can also say that I have seen pictures of her, but pictures won’t be able to tell me that she’s wearing white clothes with blood on her chest when she died.”

“Shut up, you shut up! “The young miss was going crazy. How could she believe that there were ghosts in this world? But she couldn’t help looking at the window on the second floor, and in an instant, she thought she really saw ghosts standing there.

She knew it was her imagination and nothing was real, but her brain couldn’t control her flustered heart. A scene from many years ago replayed before her eyes.

Blood.

There was blood everywhere on her hands, blood that couldn’t be wiped off no matter what. The golden scissors fell on the ground with a “clang”, and the woman on the bed groaned in pain before gradually losing her breath.

The memories tormented her and a dull pain hit her nerves, making her go crazy: “She isn’t worthy of being my mother. Had it not been because of her, none of this would have happened!”

Jin Cheng folded his arms and his expression became colder, as if he was just a bystander: “Oh, but she gave birth to you. She’s your mother.”

“But in her heart, she only cares about her own love. She wants love and father wants love, they all demand love, but they don’t love me.” The young miss said, looking up at the dark sky and the increasingly bleak moon. Her madness gradually turned into a whisper: “They didn’t choose me in the end.” 

The torturous feeling called love. People were born with love and died with love, then they left, leaving only pain for the living.

As Jin Cheng looked at her fragile appearance, the corner of his eye couldn’t help but glance at Tang Cuo. In fact, in his short life of more than 30 years, he never felt that love was anything magnificent.

If it was just a personal relationship, it couldn’t be called magnificent. Happiness and pain were all one’s own, only for oneself and having nothing to do with others. But what was beautiful would always be beautiful. Pain could sometimes be beautiful, just like a broken heart.

Thinking of this, Jin Cheng suddenly discovered that no matter what happened, he could always think of Tang Cuo. Was he having love syndrome?

But he hadn’t even started dating yet.

What is love?

How could it impact him this much?

“Cough.” Tang Cuo was a little uncomfortable being stared at so intensely, so he walked to the window and interrupted Jin Cheng’s gaze. The young miss outside the house still kept to the same posture like just now, as if she had frozen. Tang Cuo wasn’t interested in discussing love with others and asked straight away: “In the end, who was Lin Wan in love with? Was it Yu Wangyue?” 

The young miss looked at him, tilted her head and smiled in sorrow: “Yes. Of all the people to fall in love with, she chose him. If she couldn’t get what she wants, she would destroy him.”

“My uncle is a very good person.”

She paused and said: “…All these years, I’ve been living in the place where he used to live when he went abroad. I met his doctor and got told that if he hadn’t insisted on returning home, he could have lived for 10 more years,”

As she said these words, although the young miss was looking at them, her eyes weren’t focusing at all. It was as though she was mumbling to herself.

“He’s an expert at radio technology.”

After saying those words, the young miss fell into a long silence. From the second floor came the sound of a woman’s sorrowful wailing. Her regret, her pain and her despair were like a thousand needles densely packed together, cruelly piercing people’ hearts.

Tang Cuo took a deep breath, stared at the young miss and and continued to ask: “Who is the man in the attic? What role does he play?”

“I don’t know.”

“I really don’t know.” 

The young miss started to sit down in utter dejection, clutching her head and weeping in helplessness. Perhaps she did know but she didn’t want to say, or perhaps she really didn’t know and she didn’t want to pursue it any more.

Everyone was dead and she was the only one left. What was the point of digging further?

Inside and outside the mansion, only the cries of a ghost and a human could be heard. They echoed each other, crossing the realms of the dead and the living.

For a moment, Qi Hui couldn’t digest this fraction of the truth that the young miss had revealed, Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng still had some deep thoughts about it, but one thing was certain ― at least the young miss wasn’t in a hurry to set this place on fire.

After they survived this ordeal, they only needed to wait for 12 o’clock and returned to 1926 to make the call.

There were still forty-three minutes left before midnight.

Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng returned to the second floor, planning to search the entire place again. The lady might have been triggered by the young miss, but no one knew where she was hiding. For now, she didn’t appear again.

The patched-up ghost was still there, but he wouldn’t attack if they didn’t get close to his area.

“The keys to the young miss’ and the lady’s room still haven’t been found. We also haven’t opened the piano room.” Jin Cheng said as he walked.

“I’m thinking of another problem now. If Yu Wangyue is a good person, why would he linger in this house after death and play an eerie piece of music every night?” Tang Cuo said.

“Do you think there’s a special meaning behind that?”

“Perhaps.” 

The two made one round on the second floor and reached the staircase leading to the attic but didn’t go up. Jin Cheng looked at the half-closed attic door with his arms folded and said slowly: “I suddenly thought of a way. Maybe I could get the key from the young miss’ waist.”

Tang Cuo asked: “How?”

Jumping at the chance to appear all mysterious, Jin Cheng smiled: “You’ll find out soon.”

About ten minutes later, Jin Cheng and Tang Cuo returned to the living room. Upon seeing the two, Qi Hui, who had been staying here, hurriedly gave up his position in front of the floor-to-ceiling window.

Jin Cheng took out a crumpled and dusty letter from his pocket, waved it at the young miss outside and said: “We went up to search again and found a letter left behind by your uncle. Do you want to have a look?”

The young miss immediately looked up.

Jin Cheng continued: “It’s up to you if you don’t want to look at it, but since you wanted to burn us to death earlier, we want to make an exchange. How about exchanging this letter with the key on your waist?”

Hearing this, the young miss subconsciously grasped the key: “Are you thinking that this is the key to the main door?”

Jin Cheng said: “I’m making a gamble. Now do you want to exchange?”

“How do I know if you’re not lying?”

“I said it’s a gamble, but If you want to check, I can also let you take a closer look.”

Looking at Jin Cheng’s forward and generous attitude, the young miss couldn’t make up her mind for a moment. After a while, she finally stepped closer to look at the letter in Jin Cheng’s hand.

Under the gloomy moon and the dim light of the mansion, she couldn’t read the content of the letter clearly, but the handwriting really looked like that of her uncle.

Jin Cheng quickly pulled back the letter and asked: “If you don’t want to exchange, I’ll burn it. I don’t know anything about Yu Wangyue. Keeping it is of no use to me.”

The young miss hesitated as she held the key tightly in her palm, pondering her decision for a while.

Tang Cuo waited quietly and glanced at the clock on the wall. The time ticked by slowly and there were still nineteen minutes until it hit 12 o’clock.

“I agree.” Her decision finally came.

But Jin Cheng made a slight change of mind: “It’s too late, unless you answer one more question.”

Since the young miss had already agreed, she wouldn’t give up at this point. She gritted her teeth and said: “What is the question?”

Jin Cheng: “What year did your parents get married?”

The young miss: “Huh?”

What kind of question was this?