Chapter 161: The Truth Of Zheng Yu’s Madness
Chen Xiaolin didn’t even have time to carefully think back and recall if she had been disrespectful to Boss Lin just now; she was already brought out of the store by Li Duojin, and her consciousness returned to reality.
The real situation was still extremely bad; her body was still uncontrollably drifting with the turbulent water flow, her eyes hard to open, her brain groggy and difficult to think due to lack of oxygen, but what she could clearly feel was that her hand was tightly grasping a flexible straw.
Regardless of what it was, whether it was truly as mystical as Boss Lin said, her strong will to survive made her not think too much; she just wanted to grasp everything with all her strength.
Only those in the same desperate situation as her would know that people truly in desperation wouldn’t care about good and evil; as long as they could stay alive, people could do anything.
If the heart desires something, there will be a response.
When Chen Xiaolin awoke again, she found herself lying on a hospital bed in Magic City No. 2 Hospital, with bright sunshine outside the window, sunlight sprinkling on her quilt and the skin of her arms, dispelling from outside to inside the extreme cold brought by the nightmare.
“My head hurts so much.” Chen Xiaolin rubbed her swollen temple, there was still a congested feeling in her nasal cavity from choking on water, she couldn’t help but cover her mouth and cough a few times, feeling some foreign object coughed out from her throat; she moved her hand away to check, but found it was some unknown water algae and tiny ice shards, instantly making her whole body stiffen.
Thinking of the bizarre and terrifying truth discovered while exploring Jinma Mountain, Chen Xiaolin felt that chilling horror again like swarms of maggot larvae parasitizing her entire body—not painful, but she could perceive them infiltrating everywhere, constantly burrowing deeper into her body, devouring her reason and fragile life.
She fearfully hugged herself, only able to comfort herself with instinctive self-protection actions; the deep chill in her heart that even the sunlight couldn’t take away was a nightmare she would never forget in her lifetime.
At this moment, Chen Xiaolin felt something strange about her left hand, and only when using her left hand did she feel how painfully sore it was, her five fingers tense in a fist, nails digging into the flesh, knuckles showing cracking symptoms; it seemed during her coma she had gripped something with all her strength.
Chen Xiaolin looked at her left hand and only then noticed a curled straw tightly gripped in her hand; someone had woven it into a loop like a knotted rope and put it on her hand—this was exactly the thing she refused to let go of even in her coma.
With all her strength, she pried open her left hand’s five fingers, as if forcibly prying open her own teeth; intense pain and soreness surged into her brain, nearly making Chen Xiaolin pass out again.
She hadn’t forgotten her experience in the forest cabin; Chen Xiaolin looked at the straw in her hand, believing it was Boss Lin’s “life-saving straw” that had taken effect, allowing her to survive after falling into the abyss and being swept away by the dark river.
“Right, what about Li Duojin?” Chen Xiaolin remembered the young master who had accompanied her, who had taken good care of her along the way, naturally feeling grateful and developing goodwill; she couldn’t bear for Li Duojin to have an accident and hoped that life-saving straw could play its role.
So, Chen Xiaolin called out to the nurse outside the hospital room and pressed the help bell installed on the wall.
But what Chen Xiaolin didn’t expect was that instead of waiting for a nurse in white clothes and socks, a group of people in black clothes arrived; they pushed open her hospital room door, but in the end only a short-haired woman as the leader walked into the hospital room.
Upon first seeing the short-haired woman, Chen Xiaolin was first startled by the huge ugly scar on her face, then deeply amazed by her uninjured handsome side profile, and then felt endless pity for this flawed beauty.
Chen Xiaolin’s gaze caught the text symbols on the uniforms of the group of men in black just now, guessing that the woman in front of her was from Shenzhou’s Mysterious Group.
Since the night of disaster in Cuizhu City two years ago, the Mysterious Group no longer existed only in the form of urban legends spread through limited word-of-mouth discussions; they had truly appeared in the public eye and were really handling those terrifying anomalous supernatural events, and those anomaly events were often even more terrifying and bizarre than people imagined.
“Seeing you awake and safe makes us all very happy, Miss Chen.” Yu Lianyun walked in front of Chen Xiaolin, sat down on the chair by her hospital bed, extended her hand to her, and smiled, “I hope my face didn’t scare you. My name is Yu Lianyun, from the Mysterious Group.”
“Hello, Miss Yu.” Chen Xiaolin had no doubts; after seeing Yu Lianyun and the others appear, she no longer felt any confusion or surprise about being in a luxurious single hospital room and seeing a large number of undisguised surveillance facilities in the hospital room, etc.
Then, Chen Xiaolin didn’t hesitate at all and honestly confessed everything she and Li Duojin had encountered while exploring Jinma Mountain.
Yu Lianyun patiently listened to Chen Xiaolin’s narration, then smilingly took out a sealed small plastic bag from her pocket, containing a data storage card that made Chen Xiaolin’s pupils shrink, and said: “Thank you very much for your support and cooperation, but actually you didn’t need to report these to me. We have recorded all about your and Investigator Li’s experiences on Jinma Mountain through the hidden camera in your backpack.”
“Miss Chen truly lives up to being Magic City’s rising reporter star; she has great potential and ability.”
Chen Xiaolin was speechless, stammering: “You’re too kind.” But inwardly she felt bitter; her appearance and attire were actually very deceptive compared to other reporters.
As a reporter, she almost never carried a single-shoulder bag but a backpack; as everyone knew, single-shoulder bags easily hold cameras, but her backpack was almost like black technology spy equipment from movies; the strap buttons on her backpack were actually the cameras of the hidden camera, and she could lower the interviewee’s vigilance through her simple attire, thereby more easily obtaining information hard to get from interviews.
The reason her news section had so much material was often thanks to these little tricks of hers.
This black technology backpack was custom-made for her by someone special, costing her quite a bit of money, but obviously she had already recouped a lot.
However, Chen Xiaolin didn’t expect that her usually infallible prop would still reveal its flaw in front of professionals.
Helplessly, Chen Xiaolin could only concede, dryly laughing: “Since you already know everything, Miss Yu, why did you still come to see me?”
“Regarding the matter on Jinma Mountain, we have already sent people to investigate and handle it separately, but I still want to know some other things from you, some secrets you didn’t mention to Li Duojin.” Yu Lianyun put the displayed evidence back into the inner pocket of her clothes while saying so.
Hearing Yu Lianyun’s words, Chen Xiaolin realized that their Mysterious Group people had already “interrogated” Li Duojin; fortunately Li Duojin was fine, but she instantly felt a pang of betrayal by Li Duojin.
Chen Xiaolin curled her lips, smiling somewhat self-mockingly: “What secrets could I possibly have.”
“Then I’ll be direct: I think you should know the true cause of Zheng Yu’s wife’s death, right?” Yu Lianyun asked seriously.
“……Does knowing that matter?”
“It does; at least it lets me understand one trigger for Zheng Yu’s madness. As for you, at this point, hiding it further has no meaning.” Yu Lianyun’s attitude was firm; that serious gaze made Chen Xiaolin involuntarily yield, not daring to meet her eyes directly, as if feeling an invisible force of judgment.
Chen Xiaolin pursed her lips, and the memories in her mind flowed forth……
“Father must feel very guilty about Mother’s matter.”
That day, when talking with Zheng Xiaopeng about topics from Zheng Yu’s lifetime, just when Yu Lianyun thought the topic should end there, Zheng Xiaopeng suddenly said sadly.
“Guilt?” Chen Xiaolin, as a reporter, was always unusually sensitive to information; having seen too much warmth and coldness of the human world and various dark sides of society like “filial piety,” she immediately had subtle imaginings about certain things that might have happened between Zheng Yu and his wife.
And Zheng Xiaopeng didn’t disappoint Chen Xiaolin’s conjecture; she heard Zheng Xiaopeng say dejectedly: “Mother got very seriously ill before she died; the doctor said to keep Mother away from sunlight as much as possible, so Father moved Mother’s bedroom to the attic at home, which was dark, with no light coming in even during the day.
Mother struggled daily with her illness very hard, and Father had to take care of both Mother and Xiao Peng while working, which was also very hard. Xiao Peng studied hard every day to not worry Father and Mother, and tried hard to make herself happy.
But that day, Mother still died, but I know. Mother suddenly had an attack that day, and the medicine placed in the attic happened to be gone, so the weak Mother collapsed on the ground while trying to go downstairs for medicine, and Father was standing outside the door holding Mother’s medicine; he didn’t go in, and only after the sounds from inside the room stopped for a long time did he push the door open.
Father thought I didn’t know, but actually I got out of school very early that day because it was Father’s birthday; I bought a birthday gift for Father and wanted to celebrate with Mother early for Father…… After Mother died, Father blamed himself and was sad every day; the articles he wrote would unconsciously include experiences from when he was with Mother, and he had nightmares every day, sometimes dreaming of Mother.
Father is so pitiful; Father doesn’t know that Mother has always been in the attic, watching him through the chiseled gaps, whether when she was alive or after going to heaven……”
As she spoke, Zheng Xiaopeng turned her sad eyes to Chen Xiaolin; looking straight into the girl’s eyes, she only then noticed the deep darkness and distortion hidden beneath the girl’s sadness.
“Hey, Xiaolin sister, isn’t it a very great thing to let the person you like die when they are in great pain?” Zheng Xiaopeng widened her watery eyes, her black pupils like a black muddy swamp, her soul with only one hand emerging from that swamp.
After hearing that heavy truth, Chen Xiaolin’s mind was in chaos; for a moment she didn’t know how to respond, and could only pale say one sentence: “I…… I think it’s wrong……”
……
“I see, what a sad story; this way, we can almost completely understand the truth of Zheng Yu’s madness.” Yu Lianyun sighed lightly, rationality quickly returning to her eyes, “Now let’s reorganize our investigation results on Zheng Yu.
To spare his cancer-stricken wife further suffering, Zheng Yu ended his wife’s life in an extreme way, but afterward he was always shrouded in shadows and pain. So he began some unrealistic research, studying the darkness hidden behind the main text of history, seeking a ‘method of resurrection’ from those dark, blasphemous knowledge.
However, this was not an easy thing. Until one day, he suddenly received a mysterious email with no text content, just attached a picture—the remaining part of the damaged Ye Gong poem and painting framed and hung on his stairwell wall.
After completing the content of that poem and painting, Zheng Yu joyfully discovered that the hidden information in the poem and painting was exactly what he had been desperately seeking.”
“I saw the full text of this poem under the sinkhole on Jinma Mountain, but I really don’t know the story behind it.” Chen Xiaolin asked curiously.
“Our Mysterious Group internally collects a large number of taboo books from the Shenzhou Region; Ye Gong’s books are naturally many too. From Ye Gong’s surviving works, we discovered another of Ye Gong’s anomaly event experiences. During his exile wandering everywhere, he once came to the ancient Magic City area, which was just a small village back then, and it was winter when he arrived.
One night there was continuous heavy snow, and several children from the village had gone to play on the nearby mountain during the bright sunny day, but the children who went out to play didn’t return, so the villagers urgently organized, and Ye Gong was also pulled along to search on the mountain.
In the end, they discovered that among the adults who went out to search, some also didn’t return after going up the mountain; this mountain was quite familiar to the villagers, familiar enough to walk out with eyes closed, so the current situation was very eerie. After several days of searching, they finally found a cave on the mountain; after going down, they searched and actually found the missing people.
But regrettably, all the missing people were dead; their corpses lay in front of a corpse that was empty but possessed magical power, and then those who came down the cave to search fought with that corpse, during which many terrifying things happened, and the final situation was tragic, with only a few including Ye Gong returning to the village.
To warn later generations not to easily enter that place, Ye Gong erected a stone tablet on the way back, and planned to make a poem and painting after returning, but just as he completed the poem and painting, Ye Gong realized he seemed to have been induced and bewitched; such a thing shouldn’t be spread at all, so he sealed the cave of that mountain and tore up and threw away that painting.
Unfortunately, Ye Gong didn’t expect that his painting, which should have been burned, was pieced together by us later generations. Even more unexpectedly, due to the crustal movement in the eastern Shenzhou Region sea area triggered by the Liuhua Port incident two months ago, the cave entrance sealed by Ye Gong back then opened again and was found by later generations.”
Too late
