The Trial Game of Life

“What did you find?”

“Yu Wangnian poisoned his wife.”

It was Jin Cheng who called and his voice sounded a little distorted on the phone. He was panting slightly, showing that it was quite a fierce fight just now.

“I can responsibly tell you that Yu Wangnian is the master of the mansion.” he said.

Tang Cuo asked: “How is your place?”

Jin Cheng: “The ghost can’t be killed, maybe it needs to be exorcised, but my Requiem doesn’t work here. The second floor is all black, and I can’t see anything or any ghosts at all. Probably there’s an angry ghost厉鬼 [li gui] refers to the ghost of someone who committed suicide or died a violent, unjust death.. It’s possible if that lady was really poisoned by her husband.”

“Is there a way to go up?”

“You’re asking me a difficult question.”

Jin Cheng had never seen such a f**ked-up dungeon. All of the game bosses were gathering in his dimension with only him here. There was no room to even negotiate a way out.

“Pop!” The chandelier above his head finally gave in and exploded. The living room that was already dim now became even gloomier. The wuthering wind blew through the window, sounding both like a ghost’s whispers and someone’s weeping at the same time.

No, there was really a ghost weeping around here.

It came from the direction of the second floor.

Jin Cheng raised his eyebrows, but he still played around: “Do you know what my dungeon should be called? It should be called [Haunted House Panic].

Tang Cuo could only say: “Congratulations.”

“Is the piano room also on the second floor?”

“Basically confirmed.”

Jin Cheng knew that he had to go up. Luckily it’s me getting thrown here okay, otherwise, this dungeon is as good as Game Over. He calmed down and glanced at the half-closed kitchen door to find a ghost standing there.

The female ghost whom he beat up just now was still around. She retreated into the bathroom on the first floor and disappeared. There was also a middle-aged male ghost in a suit wandering in the corridor. Looking at his age and clothes, he should be the mansion’s butler.

The sizzling electric noise came again, signalling that the call might be cut off at any time. But what Jin Cheng was most concerned about was that the game had started for an hour, yet there were only three of them from the beginning to the end. What about the other three?

Tang Cuo was also thinking of the same issue, but neither of them mentioned it on the phone. After exchanging some other information, the interference surged and the phone was hung up.

Qi Hui hurriedly walked over to ask what went wrong. Tang Cuo didn’t explain much and headed straight to the second floor.

On the second floor, all the doors were locked except for the common bathroom’s at the end of the corridor. Since only one of the locked rooms was open, of course, it immediately attracted everyone’s attention.

Qi Hui had searched it before but found nothing. Tang Cuo searched again, and this time, he spotted some clues.

There was some sort of minced meat in the bathtub’s drain.

The meat was raw and could be considered fresh, but the blood had been lightly washed away by the water. He had to get very close to the drain to pick up the smell of blood. What kind of meat would appear here?

Answer: It was a corpse’s left-over flesh.

The windows of the whole house were closed, and only the window of this bathroom stayed open, likely for the purpose of ventilation.

Who was this dead person?

Wait.

There were ghosts in this dungeon, which meant people would become ghosts after death. If someone’s corpse had really been destroyed here, this person must harbour a huge grudge when he died and definitely turn into a ghost.

But where was the ghost?

Tang Cuo suddenly raised his head and, just like what they always did in countless horror movies, he looked into the mirror.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” Qi Hui, who decided that the first thing he should do was to scream, raised his hand and shot at the mirror. The bullet seemed to almost scratch Tang Cuo’s head, and “crack”, the mirror shattered.

In the broken mirror, the ghost that seemed to be patched together with innumerable pieces of bloody flesh split into countless shards. Its face was half blue and half white, its eyes entirely red. Because its face was also pieced together, and the patchwork was rather incomplete, it wasn’t easy to tell whether the ghost was a man or a woman.

“F**k.” Qi Hui’s hand that held the gun quivered, then he quickly fired a few more shots. At the same time, he looked around at his peak concentration, for fear that another ghost would suddenly appear.

Tang Cuo watched quietly and suddenly thought of something. He bent over to search the bathroom.

By this point, the mirror had completely burst into pieces and the ghost had disappeared. Qi Hui wiped off his cold sweat and subconsciously moved closer to Tang Cuo to gain a feeble sense of security: “Tang ge, are you not scared? What are you still looking for?”

Tang Cuo: “A secret.”

Qi Hui: “We’re already like this and you still want to keep a secret. Tang ge, I’m on your side…”

Tang Cuo couldn’t be bothered to explain.

He said “A secret” not to mean that he wanted to keep a secret from Qi Hui, but to find the secret hidden in this bathroom. Someone was dismembered in this place. Was it because he discovered something here?

There was a record on the butler’s small blackboard:

[9:30 AM: Reception of guests]

Judging from the freshness of the flesh and the lingering smell of blood in the bathroom, the murder didn’t take place very early or very late. Some time around 9 or 10 AM in the morning seemed about just right.

Although the ghost’s current look was terrifying and made it difficult to guess its original appearance, with Tang Cuo’s careful observation, it was still possible to distinguish whether it was a man or a woman.

It was a man with yellowish, straight hair. He should be somewhere between early 20s and middle age.

Among the known men in the mansion, only Yu Wangnian, the butler and the person inside the attic were men. The person in the attic had curly hair, then according to Jin Cheng’s description, the butler’s ghost wandering in the corridor had black hair. Since both of them were out, there was only Yu Wangnian left.

Assuming that there were no other men in this mansion and that Yu Wangnian received his guests at 9:30 AM, he remained as the biggest possibility.

But Yu Wangnian was the owner of Yu mansion. If he was murdered, it wouldn’t be possible to just cover up the crime by dismembering his corpse. Tang Cuo’s instinct told him that it was a hapless guest who died here.

Within a few minutes, Tang Cuo found half of a paper slip among the shattered mirror shards. This paper was specifically torn, its corner pierced by a small nail that protruded behind the mirror. It looked like someone had accidentally left this part of the paper when trying to pull it from the mirror.

There were words on it.

[— can leave. Isn’t the time now? Your Wanwan.]

The text prior to this was gone, in fact, only half of the word ‘can’ still remained, but Tang Cuo could roughly tell what the word was. Looking at the meaning of these words, it seemed that this ‘Wanwan’ wanted to elope with someone.

Why was a note on eloping hidden behind the mirror of the common bathroom on the second floor? Who was Wanwan?

Tang Cuo put away the note, walked out of the bathroom and stood in the corridor looking around. This was the end of the corridor, with a wall on the right side and a path leading to the attic on the left side.

There was no bathroom in the attic, only a simple toilet covered by a curtain. The person was kept in it for half a year, and it was impossible not to take a bath, so the most likely place for him to take a bath was here ― this Wanwan must have waited for such occasions.

“Who is Wanwan? Is she going to elope with someone? Hiss —” Qi Hui gasped: “Isn’t that adultery? Was this adulterer found out by the master and got killed?”

The deduction sounded reasonable, but it must be on the premise that this person wasn’t the person kept in the attic. If another adulterer popped up, this story seemed too complicated.

Moreover, for some indescribable reason, Tang Cuo felt that the words on this note were odd.

Qi Hui said again: “Will the ghost come out again? What if physical attack is useless? I can’t perform any spiritual attack!”

This reminded Tang Cuo that if even Jin Cheng couldn’t kill the ghosts, they wouldn’t either. There were forty minutes before the clock hit 12 AM, and they still didn’t know where the piano room was.

What was the most important goal of this mission? The [Twelve Movements].

“If you’re scared of ghosts, use fire.” Tang Cuo said as he quickly walked downstairs.

“Use fire? How to use it?” Qi Hui chased behind him.

“Don’t you have a lighter?”

“Is the lighter meant to be used here???”

Tang Cuo was only making a wild guess. One wouldn’t die from guessing anyway.

Qi Hui kept on weighing his choices and decided to believe what the big boss had said, but how much fire could a lighter produce? He took a broom from the kitchen, wrapped a cloth around the stick, poured oil over it and made a simple torch.

He didn’t have any mind to care whether this trick would work. At least it could mentally comfort him.

Looking at his posture, Tang Cuo felt that he might burn down the whole house. He gave Qi Hui a cold glance: “Go find more clues.”

Qi Hui: The big boss is horrifying.

While the two were looking for clues, Tang Cuo passed by the living room more than once and always subconsciously glanced at the phone from the corner of his eye, but the phone never rang. After several times, he suddenly realised that recently, he had been relying on Jin Cheng a bit too much.

Shaking his head, he turned around and went into the maid’s room.

The room was too clean. He didn’t say it was clean because the room had been meticulously swept and dusted, rather, it was clean because there weren’t any clues at all.

Tang Cuo had searched the place twice and not found anything of use, but he chose to not believe that this was all there was, so he turned around and came back, staring at the mess he made after rummaging the room earlier. He folded his arms and fell into deep thoughts.

What role would a young 20-something maid play in this story about the mansion?

What clues would she present to him?

In the end, Tang Cuo turned his attention to the pile of clothes. These clothes were her own, and the materials and styles were obviously of lesser quality. There were also some clothes belonging to the master and the lady, which had loose buttons or minor damage and were put here so that the maid could amend them.

Tang Cuo picked up a shirt and a cheongsam, then compared them carefully. There was no blood or stain on the clothes and nothing slipped inside. The only thing that attracted his attention was the stitches.

Both of them were amended by the maid. The male white shirt’s stitches were very careful, yet the female cheongsam’s stitches were slightly sloppy. What would this show?

Judging from the TV dramas and the tales that Tang Cuo had watched or heard of before, would this mean that the maid had a thing for the master?

Tang Cuo had never understood the relationship between men and women. Back when he was a detective, if anything related to ‘relationship’ ever got to him, it was either someone was cheating or someone was snatching someone else’s partner. It was basically nothing too happy.

For now, let’s not discuss whether the maid really fell in love with the master and wanted to climb high. Tang Cuo didn’t believe that there were no other clues in this room, so he simply pulled out his sword and dismantled the bedboard and the wardrobe.

As Qi Hui passed by the living room, he was shocked to hear a commotion coming from the maid’s room, thinking that the ghost had run out to fight with Tang Cuo. Just as he was about to step forward to help, the phone rang.

“Why are you two doing this at the same time?!” Qi Hui rushed over to quickly answer the phone.

“Hello? Jin ge!”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Tang ge’s partner! But let’s not worry about this first, Tang ge is fighting a ghost! I can’t talk to you now, I have to help —” Qi Hui almost put down the phone and turned his head to find himself facing Tang Cuo’s expressionless face.

“F**k.” Qi Hui’s heart almost burst.

“Give it to me.” Tang Cuo stretched out his hand.

Qi Hui tremblingly handed the phone to Tang Cuo, casting a glance behind Tang Cuo’s back: “The ghost, where’s the ghost? Did you chase it away?”

On the phone.

Jin Cheng heard the commotion from the other side and asked: “Is everything okay?”

Tang Cuo: “It’s okay.”

Jin Cheng: “When did you change your partner?”

Tang Cuo: “?”

Not hearing Tang Cuo’s answer, Jin Cheng knew that Tang Cuo was trying to communicate with him using brain waves again. He couldn’t help but laugh: “I can’t see your expression, perhaps you can describe it to me?”

Tang Cuo: “…”

After a few seconds of silence, he replied: “I didn’t.”

Jin Cheng raised his eyebrows: “If you didn’t change your partner, why did he claim to be your partner? Isn’t your partner me?”

Tang Cuo: “Because you’re not here.”

Jin Cheng: “Oh.”

Suddenly there was nothing to say.

So the two entered the main business.

Jin Cheng said: “I went to see the second floor. Most of the rooms are locked. I entered those that aren’t locked but couldn’t find the piano room. The butler’s key can indeed open the attic, and I spotted something on the attic’s wall. Some fragments of a movement written in blood.”

“The [Twelve Movements]?”

“Yes.”

The [Twelve Movements] recorded the score of the [Song of God, Lambs, and Crows] without the lyrics. But even without the lyrics, it was strange that this melody appeared inside a horror story.

“Are there 正 characters under the bed?”

“Yes. The ghosts on the second floor are too strong so I didn’t have the time to count them, but at a glance, there are probably around 150.”

More than 150 characters were roughly equivalent to two years. From here, it could be determined that the person kept in the attic had always been the same person, and he had been keeping track of the time he spent there.

When Tang Cuo saw the 正 characters, there were already more than 30 of them. By Jin Cheng’s year 1926, there were around 150 characters, so Tang Cuo’s time should be 1924.

This was consistent with what he initially deduced.

“Something is weird.” Jin Cheng’s tone revealed a rarely-heard hint of seriousness: “I only encountered two ghosts on the second floor. One is a male ghost made up of many pieces, and the other is a female ghost.

“I also met the male ghost. I suspected that he was a guest visiting the mansion and discovered the secret of the mansion, so he was killed in the common bathroom at the end of the corridor on the second floor.”

Jin Cheng bumped into ghosts throughout his entire time on the second floor, so every second was spent dealing with them rather than searching for clues. He hadn’t stepped into the bathroom that Tang Cuo mentioned, because the male ghost was in the bathroom.

The two ghosts each occupied one end of the second floor, and it seemed that their relationship wasn’t very good. Jin Cheng simply used himself as bait to lure the female ghost to the male ghost’s territory and let them fight with each other. Then, he took the opportunity to run to the attic and had a chance to look for clues.

“Based on what you said, if the male ghost is a guest, what about the person in the attic, Yu Wangnian and the lady in this house? Ghosts can pass through walls, unless they are trapped in a certain place with some evil formation. It won’t be locked inside a room by a mere lock on the door.” Jin Cheng said.

“Maybe the person isn’t dead and has escaped, or maybe there’s a dimension that we haven’t found yet.” Tang Cuo replied.

“This is also possible, but one thing is certain: the person in the attic is called Yu Wangyue.”

“Wangyue?”

Tang Cuo suddenly thought of the pocket watch he found in the maid’s room, with the initials ‘WY’ on the back of the watch. Wangyue, wasn’t it WY?

Jin Cheng then described in detail what he found in the attic ―

The person in the attic must be going crazy after being locked up for more than two years. Whether it was the jumbled movement written in blood on the wall or the dense 正 characters under the bed, this exposed the person’s increasingly unstable mental state.

The entire attic was in a mess, with books scattered all over the floor and the only mirror smashed on the ground.

Jin Cheng was sure that it was intentionally smashed, because the bookend that was used to break the mirror lay on one side, with tiny shards still sticking on it. Beside the broken mirror, Jin Cheng also picked up some medium-length curly hair.

Although other things in the room were scattered around, they remained undamaged. Only the mirror was broken. Why? Did that man see himself in the mirror and couldn’t accept reality, so he broke it?

“What about the name Yu Wangyue? How do you know?” Tang Cuo asked.

“There’s a piece of paper on the ground, a letter from a person named Lin Wan, saying that she would set him free.” When Jin Cheng picked up the torn paper, he couldn’t put together the full text, but the recipient and the signature could be seen clearly.

And when he heard Tang Cuo talk about the dismembered corpse in the bathroom, everything seemed to match.

The question was ― what was the relationship between Yu Wangyue and Yu Wangnian?

Tang Cuo pulled out an old fountain pen that he eventually managed to dig out from the maid’s room and said: “From the names, they seem to be brothers.”

Jin Cheng understood: “Sister-in-law and younger brother?”

As the two of them talked, the sizzling sound came again, which meant that the call would soon be cut off. Jin Cheng knew that a ghost had appeared on his side and was about to rush a few last words when suddenly, a third person’s voice came through the phone.

“Hello? Anyone?! Help!!!”