Chapter 123: Blurry Past
Lu Jinzhao’s words were becoming bolder and bolder.
“It shouldn’t have started from when we made the transaction, right?”
She said, “From the first time you spoke to me—no, from the moment you came into my possession, you actually never had a second choice.”
“You didn’t suddenly become a supernatural prop. You’ve always been one.”
Lu Jinzhao’s words seemed to hit something, and the parchment suddenly fell silent.
“If we view you through the idea that you’ve always been a supernatural item, we’ll discover a problem.”
“You’re very powerful. You shouldn’t waste time on me, someone who was an ordinary person for so many years in the past.”
If the parchment wanted to find a sucker to devour a soul, did it really have no way?
No.
If it really wanted to, it could find many people easier to kill than Lu Jinzhao.
“If you were free and wanted a human soul, after the first transaction with me failed, you should have known I’m a tough nut to crack. You should have gone to find someone else.”
In Summon Ghosts, the parchment had plenty of opportunities to find someone else to complete a transaction, but it didn’t do that at all.
At that time, they hadn’t started the transaction yet, so logically speaking, they weren’t bound together.
But the parchment still stuck closely to her, trying to transact with her.
Even after being rejected multiple times, it didn’t switch people.
“You can’t switch to someone else for a transaction at all, can you?” Lu Jinzhao confirmed.
The parchment’s brain, so small it might not even be as big as a pinky finger, was still resisting.
[These are all your guesses, your self-righteousness.]
“Then say it—say I’m wrong, and you’ll immediately go find the next person for a transaction.”
[I’ve already started the transaction with you.]
Lu Jinzhao looked at this sentence and couldn’t help but laugh: “Is that so? Is it really because of that?”
She didn’t expect to get a definite answer from the parchment’s mouth. She saw the parchment’s rejection and even detected a bit of disgust toward her from it.
“That’s really strange.”
“Did my parents bring you out from the platform?”
She recalled the past. Her parents said it was an amulet made from skin stripped from a young sheep, but she herself hadn’t seen the stripping and crafting process.
How could an ordinary sheep be made into such a powerful supernatural item?
But was it really just an ordinary sheep?
Lu Jinzhao suddenly couldn’t be sure, but in her memory, that sheep was indeed nothing unusual—it ate when hungry, slept when tired, got sick, didn’t understand human speech, grew slowly, and then died of illness one day.
But her parents, who seemed ordinary except for being busy with work, weren’t what she thought they were either, were they?
Her childhood—perhaps many things weren’t as they appeared on the surface.
What happened back then?
“You and the thing in this iron box are both supernatural items left to me by my parents?” Lu Jinzhao asked affirmatively.
She originally thought the parchment wouldn’t answer, or would change the subject, but unexpectedly, the other party replied definitively in the next second:
[No.]
“Huh?”
Now it was Lu Jinzhao’s turn to be surprised.
She had been about seventy percent sure when she asked, after all, the parchment was indeed handed to her by her parents personally, to be carried as an amulet at all times, saying it would protect her.
But the parchment actually refuted her.
[Heh heh.]
The parchment sneered coldly without any explanation.
“That’s strange then.” Lu Jinzhao frowned. She thought she’d pierced through the outer layer of the fog, but unexpectedly, things weren’t entirely as she thought.
So what kind of existence was the parchment exactly?
Calling it an amulet wasn’t accurate. Clearly, this thing wanted her life, and a large part of her nine deaths, one life encounters after becoming a passenger was because the parchment increased the mission difficulty.
It even wanted to devour her soul.
No matter how you looked at it, it was a ghost thing with ill intentions toward her.
But it was indeed powerful—powerful enough that it wasn’t a supernatural item a newcomer like her should have. Even more, the train didn’t react as it should have to her possessing the parchment. When the parchment wasn’t causing trouble, her platform proceeded normally.
Was there some loophole in this?
Lu Jinzhao couldn’t figure it out. She felt like she had understood some things, yet had fallen back into the fog.
“Did my parents really die in an accident?” she asked.
The parchment didn’t speak.
“My parents were passengers too.” This time, Lu Jinzhao no longer asked, but stated it affirmatively.
She opened the forum and searched for information about her parents’ names, but found nothing.
Though that made sense—computers weren’t widespread in her parents’ generation. Maybe that’s why they left no names on the forum?
When did they become passengers?
Before or after giving birth to her?
“Relatives, friends—none.” She hadn’t cared about these things before, but thinking back now, she detected something off.
Her parents seemed like “hermits from the mundane world.” Apart from the neighbors and friends from the town where she lived as a child, she knew nothing about her parents’ past.
It was as if… a kind of ignoring that she herself couldn’t control.
Lu Jinzhao’s mind shook. She realized she had overlooked many things. If she didn’t actively explore them, she wouldn’t think of them at all. Even normally, it was as if they were separated by a barrier, and she hardly realized there was anything wrong.
“That’s why our home was so clean.”
After the two passed away, they left almost no traces.
It was deliberate.
“My parents didn’t want me to investigate those things?”
Then why leave the parchment?
She took out her mobile phone and sent a message to the Divine Calculator.
“Senior, if I may ask boldly, does our platform have any seniors who’ve survived a very long time, at least twenty years?”
The Divine Calculator’s reply wasn’t quick, probably on the road. It took a while before Lu Jinzhao saw the response.
“No, at least I haven’t heard of anyone like that.”
Is that so.
“Thanks, sorry for the trouble.”
This path was a dead end. How should she pursue the traces of her parents’ past?
“…Other platforms—do they have any?” She remembered seeing on the forum that, in terms of scale, Yuncheng Station was just a small platform.
Not enough people, no surviving passengers like that old senior. But what about larger platforms?
For example, Capital Station?
Perhaps, after Lin Lin came out, she needed to meet her.
“Since I can’t get answers for now, let’s set these things aside.”
Lu Jinzhao stopped dwelling on it and decisively put the parchment into her pocket too—out of sight, out of mind.
She simply sorted out what to do next: first, find materials for the shadow puppet; second, find a method to open the iron box.
While doing these, she could also gather information on her parents and her deceased roommate.
