Chapter 13: Searching For The Woman In White
Her willow brows furrowed tightly together, painful memories surging like waves one after another, battering Yu Lianyun’s aching conscience. She choked up for a long time before finally speaking, recounting the truth of that day in detail.
That day, she had indeed tripped due to an illusion into a sprouting flesh strip, and immediately afterward, countless flesh buds crawled all over Yu Lianyun’s legs, continuously extending upward in an attempt to cover her entire body.
Yu Lianyun’s father saw his beloved daughter in peril and naturally tried desperately to save her. Seeing those flesh buds drilling into Yu Lianyun’s body, Yu Lianyun’s father immediately guessed the female corpse’s intention. The being residing in the female corpse, or rather hidden behind the female corpse, wanted to devour a human’s spirit and soul, then take its place.
Faced with such a crisis, Yu Lianyun’s father made a major decision without the slightest hesitation: “You want a body, right? Fine, then I’ll kill her right now, so you won’t be able to occupy her body, huh? Heh, if you could occupy a dead person’s body, then the female corpse on the autopsy table shouldn’t be immobile!”
As he spoke, he flipped over and straddled Yu Lianyun’s slender waist. The hands that had once taught her to hold a pen and wield a scalpel were now tightly choking her throat. The pain of the dimensional power invasion combined with the agony of suffocation pushed Yu Lianyun’s fear to its peak.
Upon hearing her father’s decision while enduring immense pain, Yu Lianyun was stunned. She could not believe her father would strangle her to death with his own hands.
The desire for survival made her struggle fiercely. It seemed that this near-death experience made her already innately powerful inspiration even more sensitive. It was at this moment that memories from the female corpse Jinxiu’s life before death also flooded into her mind.
The despair and resentment from two souls made Yu Lianyun unable to distinguish who she really was. But no matter what, her instinct for survival was amplified countless times.
Sensing the fact that Yu Lianyun was dying, the dimensional life controlling the illusion and devouring her soul while modifying her body immediately turned its spearhead. The flesh buds and flesh strips all detached from Yu Lianyun’s body and instead wrapped around her father’s limbs and torso.
The intense pain made her father’s body stiffen and unable to exert force. Yu Lianyun seized this moment to catch her breath and kicked away the father who wanted to kill his own daughter.
Yu Lianyun fled the morgue, desperately trying to escape. Her father, covered all over with flesh buds like sea worms, stumbled after her relentlessly, muttering in his mouth, “Little Yun, don’t run! Let me kill you!”
Hearing this, Yu Lianyun’s grief and indignation were indescribable.
At that time, with her legs and feet weak and numb, Yu Lianyun couldn’t run fast either. Soon, she was wrestling with her monster-controlled father in the corridor.
During the struggle, Yu Lianyun grabbed a vase in the corridor and smashed it with all her strength onto her father’s head. Her father’s head tilted, and he tumbled down the stairs.
Seeing her father roll down the stairs, Yu Lianyun panicked and hurriedly crawled out to check, only to discover that the father she had once respected the most was now lying in a pool of blood on the ground floor.
The image of her father’s tragic death was too shocking. Yu Lianyun couldn’t bear it at the moment and fainted on the spot.
This was the bloody truth of that day!
Even for those who were not firsthand witnesses to the terrifying illusion that day, all bystanders could see that Yu Lianyun’s father did not die by accident. The illusion was fake, but their fight was real.
Therefore, when Yu Lianyun heard her mother say that her father died by accident and that she had fainted in the morgue, she knew her mother had concealed her crime of patricide.
Every time she recalled that day’s events afterward, Yu Lianyun was tormented. Regardless of whether her father had struck first and she had only instinctively fought back to survive, patricide was still an irrefutable fact.
At this moment, Yu Lianyun admitted her crime to Lin Ling face-to-face. Although she had killed her own father, she felt it was excusable and unavoidable.
After hearing the true story, Lin Ling did not maintain the rational and indifferent attitude of a listener as he had last time. Instead, he showed a thoughtful expression and sincerely sighed, “What a father who sacrificed himself for his daughter.”
Hearing Lin Ling’s words, Yu Lianyun trembled all over and looked at Lin Ling in disbelief. “What are you saying? He was trying to kill me!”
“If he really wanted to kill you, there were countless ways, but he chose the slowest one.” Lin Ling smiled. “There are so many tools in the morgue that could easily kill someone. As a doctor, especially a forensic doctor, you surely know that, right?”
Lin Ling’s words woke her up to this point, and Yu Lianyun immediately realized a possibility she had never considered. In an instant, it was like a thunderbolt striking her soul, her mind pierced by a sharp blade.
“Your father was a very wise man. In such a short time, he figured out the flaw in that dimensional life’s invasion behavior and made his own decision.” Lin Ling praised. “By acting to strangle you, he forced the dimensional life to shift its target, drawing the danger onto himself.”
“But if he did that, hadn’t he already succeeded? Then why… why did he chase me relentlessly afterward, shouting that he wanted to kill me?” Yu Lianyun’s voice trembled. Actually, she had thought of the reason too, but she hoped the answer would come from someone else pointing it out to her, so her pain might be lessened by blaming part of it on something called “foolishness.”
Lin Ling fulfilled her intention, petting a cat while casually explaining, “There might be a few reasons. One, he couldn’t bear that soul-devouring pain and sought death for relief; two, he was still gambling that his death could terminate the dimensional life’s invasion; three, he wanted the misunderstanding to continue, so his death wouldn’t burden you so much, making you feel his death was deserved punishment.”
“In fact, he had already succeeded. Hmm, I’m really sorry. The dead should be respected, and I shouldn’t go against the reasonable wishes of the deceased, yet I exposed him.” There was no regret on Lin Ling’s face. His eyes, devoid of any emotional fluctuation, stared at Yu Lianyun as he perfunctorily apologized.
Seeing the beautiful woman immersed in an even more collapsed mental world, Lin Ling maintained his most standard light smile, sizing her up as if wanting to record her expression.
After appreciating Yu Lianyun’s expression for a while, Lin Ling found it boring and said, “You actually do have a perfect solution. As long as the video tape’s blessing has blocked a dimensional life’s invasion for you once, you no longer need to worry about dimensional life invading your body again. Once bitten by a snake, you’re scared of ropes for ten years—those sordid guys skulking and growing in dimensional darkness are even more so.
Therefore, you just need to resolve the blessing on you. Go find that woman from the video tape. Resentment sometimes doesn’t need to be resolved, but vented and guided…”
Yu Lianyun didn’t know how she got back to the hotel afterward. She returned to the hotel in a daze, oblivious to day and night, sleeping heavily for two days before slowly emerging from the shadow of her father’s death truth.
After waking up, Yu Lianyun became much calmer and more rational. She couldn’t afford any other emotions; a clear mind was now most crucial for her.
Sleeping for two days meant she had less than three days left before the seven-day death curse.
After waking up and eating her fill, her first task was to seek help from He Jia’an and the Mysterious Group, saying, “I want you to help me find someone—a dead person.”
“Who?” He Jia’an didn’t refuse immediately but asked.
Yu Lianyun answered straightforwardly, “The woman in white who died in the video tape.”
“What do you want with her?” He Jia’an frowned. Actively seeking an anomaly was not something a rational person would do.
“I’ve thought of a way to resolve the blessing on me.” Yu Lianyun recalled Lin Ling’s final words that day, a trace of guilt surging in her heart. “Only by finding the woman in white can I solve my problem.”
Hearing Yu Lianyun’s words, He Jia’an and Li Yingqi both turned their gazes to Wei Jiang, who had the ability to discern truth from lies. Wei Jiang shook his head at both, indicating Yu Lianyun was not lying.
Yu Lianyun was naturally not lying; she was just holding back on the full truth.
“Just let me go alone. No matter if this journey leads me to death or a way out, I’m prepared.” Yu Lianyun said seriously.
He Jia’an pondered briefly and gave his reply: “We can help you, but we won’t let you go alone.”
Yu Lianyun was silent for a moment, then finally nodded and softly said, “Thank you.”
……
He Jia’an reported Yu Lianyun’s request to the Mysterious Group. The Mysterious Group quickly accepted the issue and provided a result that very afternoon.
Based on the images recorded in the video tape and the architectural style of the building where the woman in white and the pervert father and son once lived, the Mysterious Group quickly found matching locations in the organization’s vast database. There were three similar places currently identifiable, and luckily, none were far from Laitai City.
The group prepared to pull all-nighters and drove overnight out of Laitai City, heading straight for those three locations.
At the first stop city, Yu Lianyun didn’t even get out of the car after arriving. She just glanced at the two bungalows outside and immediately shook her head. “Not here. The trees planted in this city are wrong. The place I’m going should have lots of maple trees.”
Yu Lianyun recalled the nightmare scenes she had these past few days. That stone well should be in a maple woods, and she suddenly remembered this feature.
Hearing this, He Jia’an in the car crossed off the top-priority location, pondered for a moment, then immediately eliminated another one. He tapped the last location—Xinlong City—with his pen and said, “I’ve been on a mission in this city before and have some impression of it. If I remember correctly, this city’s city tree is the maple, and it was once a city built in the woods.”
“Then let’s go straight here!” Yu Lianyun said. She now had only two days left. If she continued investigating per the original plan, she might run out of time, so she might as well gamble and take Xinlong City as her final destination.
The era of the woman in white should be from the 1960s or 1970s of the last century. Decades could change many things, especially in the Shenzhou Region where development was rapid, with every city changing daily. Xinlong City was once one of the cities the World Government focused on developing, so its changes must be huge. She might not find the woods where the woman in white died quickly, or even that stone well.
The fact was just as such. When Yu Lianyun and the others arrived in Xinlong City half a day later, they were stunned comparing the hand-drawn sketch of the woman in white’s former residence from the video tape with the skyscraper now before them. Yu Lianyun and the others couldn’t help but marvel at how rapidly the times had changed.
Next, they needed to find the stone well’s location. He Jia’an used the Mysterious Group’s connections to search the maple woods where the stone well was located, ultimately locking their gaze on an abandoned amusement park.
This amusement park wasn’t established long ago—only about a dozen years of history—and its operating lifespan was pitifully short, barely two years.
There were various rumors about why the amusement park closed. Some said the boss mismanaged it, others that the boss owed a ton of debt outside. The most eerie saying was that strange things kept happening since the amusement park was built, and people even died. Unable to bear such eerie facts, the amusement park shut down.
Because many feng shui masters said the site’s feng shui was bad, plus the location wasn’t great and investment costs were high, no one wanted to take over the amusement park, so it lay abandoned.
Yu Lianyun felt she might have come to the right place. Upon entering the abandoned amusement park, she had a sense of familiarity, like guidance from her soul. She, who had briefly resonated in memory with the woman in white, made her way through the carousel, rapids ride, and roller coaster, finally arriving before a haunted house with peeling wall paint.
The haunted house’s entrance was a clown’s human head; one entered through the clown’s mouth. From outside, the clown’s ferocious and eerie expression gave everyone a chill and unease.
“I feel like it’s inside here.” Yu Lianyun said to everyone. She found an unattended haunted house guide pamphlet outside, which clearly listed the haunted house’s attractions. One altar with an inverted cross caught her attention. She pointed at it and said, “Good, it can’t be wrong. It’s just like this. The stone well in my memory is like that. Under that altar must be where the woman in white’s bones were soaked.”
Received the signing station message, should finalize in a few days. I’ll also get a nice-looking cover, seeking collection recommendations and such.
