Chapter 145: The Madman’s Home
Li Duojin could tell that the deceased Mr. Zheng Yu was a man of taste. Although he couldn’t fully identify the creators of the modern artworks in the house or note that their production methods weren’t entirely uniform, each one had a distinct style and unique temperament. Even someone like him, who hadn’t studied modern art much, could see at a glance that they were beautiful and excellent.
What truly convinced him of Mr. Zheng Yu’s taste were the antiques misplaced in cabinets between the corridors—probably clay figurines of dancing girls from the Han dynasty period, a tiger-head silver goblet from the Zhenli era, a palace incense burner from the Ming Yong dynasty… Every antique was authentic and immensely precious.
Of course, there was only one antique that Li Duojin couldn’t figure out.
It was an incomplete piece of calligraphy, and he had never seen similar poetry in the books he had read from childhood to now, but the style of the calligraphy felt vaguely familiar.
“Did Mr. Zheng also work in the field of culture and art?” Li Duojin asked.
Chen Xiaolin glanced at him and nodded, saying, “Yes, he was previously a well-known art editor and later switched careers to become a writer.”
She noticed Li Duojin looking at that piece of incomplete calligraphy that had been specially framed, and explained to him, “Brother Yu said before his death that this piece of calligraphy was likely a complete work of calligraphy and painting when intact, but it was torn apart. Looking at these violent and frantic tearing marks, one wonders how much hatred the person who tore it up must have felt. However, Brother Yu said that the person who tore up this calligraphy and painting was precisely its creator, the master.”
“Master?” Li Duojin was stunned. He looked at the only surviving couplet above the calligraphy and read, “North wind evening glow at Tianshan Cave, seeking the lonely bones of Jade Lang as if dead… Why tear it off?”
“I was just as puzzled as you at first, until Brother Yu told me its master was the madman scholar ‘Ye Gong.’ Then I wasn’t surprised anymore.” Chen Xiaolin shook her head with a sigh and said, “This person left behind few literary works. Most of his books were filled with intolerable darkness and taboos, so they were burned clean. Only a small portion was preserved. During my university days, with the help of a university professor I was close to, I accidentally read a small section of content from a forbidden book that had not been publicly released.
The content was indeed unbearable, recording various eerie customs that defied common sense and his personal insights that transcended ordinary morality and worldview. Even I, young at the time, had continuous nightmares for several days after reading it.”
After hearing who the master of the calligraphy was, Li Duojin suddenly understood: “So it was him.”
As he spoke, Li Duojin leaned closer to the damaged calligraphy, wanting to see the broken calligraphy and painting more clearly, and said, “No wonder the style of the poetry looks so familiar.”
While chatting, the two arrived at the top floor.
But this didn’t mean they had reached the attic. To get to the attic, they had to go to the study room on the top floor, where there was another ladder—the only way to the attic.
Led by Chen Xiaolin, Li Duojin arrived at the door to the attic, in front of a somewhat decayed metal iron door.
What made the two shudder was that this metal iron door was deformed outward, with the protruding part showing outlines that seemed like several human faces, as if countless lives in extreme terror had endlessly struggled inside the attic behind the iron door. Perhaps something terrifying had happened in the attic, causing these people to forget their pain and desperately ram the door to escape, but unfortunately, they failed.
Li Duojin: “Was it like this before?”
“Definitely not!” Chen Xiaolin immediately denied it, her eyes reflecting shock, uneasily saying, “Could this place also have been his crime scene?”
“If you hadn’t mentioned it, I almost forgot.” Li Duojin’s brow twitched after hearing Chen Xiaolin’s words. “Since Zheng Yu was the killer in the amusement park murder case, didn’t the law enforcement officers investigate his house? This place doesn’t look searched at all—it’s impeccably clean.”
Chen Xiaolin was stunned and carefully recalled their path, discovering it was indeed strangely so, because even the door of the house hadn’t had a warning line pulled across it, and the things inside the house were almost entirely untouched, not like law enforcement officers had come to collect evidence.
Her heartbeat began to quicken, and Chen Xiaolin said slightly flustered, “Is there something wrong with this?”
“Someone cleaned up afterward and tidied here.” Li Duojin guessed, touching the handrail of the ladder—it was spotless, not something that could be seen from everyday neglect of cleaning.
“Who would still…” Chen Xiaolin wanted to retort who could enter here nowadays, but she suddenly remembered what Zheng Yu’s daughter had said—that Zheng Yu’s “deceased wife” had appeared in the attic.
Zheng Yu’s deceased wife had been Zheng Yu’s virtuous helpmate. The wife herself had a cleanliness obsession and loved tidying up. Family affairs, great and small, had almost all been handled single-handedly by his wife. Everything inside and out had been organized meticulously by her alone, but unfortunately, she had passed away early from an incurable illness.
If Zheng Yu’s wife “hadn’t died,” or rather, she had died but survived in a way humans couldn’t comprehend, then suddenly, this house that had been searched by law enforcement officers being cleaned up had a suspect.
“No danger, right?” Chen Xiaolin saw Li Duojin about to open the iron door and immediately grabbed his arm as he opened it, saying seriously.
Li Duojin smiled and said, “If there was danger, my eyelids would already be twitching, but unfortunately, they’re not.”
Only then did Chen Xiaolin grit her teeth and let go of his hand, allowing Li Duojin to open the metal door to the attic.
As soon as the metal door opened, the dark, unlit environment inside the attic came into view. The light from outside spilled onto the floor, which was spotless, but countless nail scratch marks were clearly visible.
Chen Xiaolin tried to turn on the electric lamp in the attic but found no response, cold sweat on her forehead: “Huh, that’s strange. Why won’t the light turn on?”
While she was puzzled, Li Duojin had already turned on his mobile phone’s light and stepped into the attic area.
“Huh, just going in like that?” Chen Xiaolin quickly followed, imitating Li Duojin by turning on her mobile phone’s light, and together they explored the spacious attic.
Li Duojin’s gaze moved with the light. The attic was full of sundries—antiques, artworks, and discarded furniture, covered with cover cloths. On some discarded furniture, there were scratches similar to those on the floor, as well as marks from recent violent use. Combined with the difficult-to-clean and irreparable damage around the attic scene, it was clear that an intense fight had occurred here recently.
Li Duojin kept these discoveries to himself for now and continued exploring, eventually stopping with Chen Xiaolin in front of a dining table.
That dining table was covered with a white tablecloth, on which strange symbols were depicted with blood-colored paint, like a circuit board, ultimately leading to a blank area that seemed to have once held something else.
“Huh? This symbol.” Chen Xiaolin was also observing the symbols on the dining table, then let out a startled sound of surprise, grabbed the tablecloth, and then opened her mobile phone to pull up a close-up photo of Zheng Yu’s face after being shot dead. She was shocked to discover that the symbol Zheng Yu had carved on his own forehead belonged to the exact same system as the one written on this tablecloth.
Although the symptoms had lessened a lot, using one’s brain was still mentally exhausting.
