Three Questions
So with this set of rhetoric, Ruan Yunsheng took on the great task of transforming the underworld. By the way, he "incidentally" mentioned the outstanding abilities of the Ox-Head and Horse-Face in front of the King of Hell, and appointed him as the evil ghost training supervisor, successfully solving the problem of transfer.
Ruan Yunsheng clutched the hard-earned Soul Returning Pill and hurriedly pulled Song Tinghe out of the underworld. The moment they stepped out of the ghost gate, she couldn't wait to stuff the pill into his mouth: "Try it quickly, how does it feel?"
Before Song Tinghe could react, the pill turned into a warm current and slid into his throat. At first, it was just a slight heat, and then the warmth spread like a stream to his limbs and bones, nourishing his transparent soul.
He looked down at his hands. His originally translucent fingertips were gradually solidifying, the skin texture was clearly visible, and even his nails were a healthy light pink, no different from those of a living person.
"How is it?" Ruan Yunsheng came closer, his eyes sparkling.
Song Tinghe held his breath, carefully raised his hand, and gently touched her cheek.
It's warm.
A soft touch came from his fingertips. He touched her eyebrows and nose in disbelief, and finally stopped at the corner of her lips, his fingertips trembling slightly.
"Successfully..." His voice was choked with sobs, his eyes red, "I can touch you now!"
Before Ruan Yunsheng could react, he pulled her into his arms. The young man's strong arms tightly wrapped around her, his chin resting on the top of her head, breathing rapidly: "That's great... That's great..."
She was stunned for a moment, then smiled and hugged him back, her palms against his back. The only regret was that there was no real beating heart there.
When Song Tinghe calmed down, he realized that he had held the woman in his arms for a long time, and passers-by on the road were also looking at them.
His ears instantly turned red, but Ruan Yunsheng bent over with laughter, pulling his sleeve and running forward: "Let's go home!"
The setting sun stretched the shadows of the two people very long, overlapping and becoming indistinguishable from each other.
As soon as the two stepped into the gate of Ye Mansion, they saw a familiar figure leaning against the corridor pillar, tapping the vermilion railing impatiently with his fingers.
"Hey, isn't this Master Qi?" Ruan Yunsheng raised an eyebrow and said jokingly, "How come you have time to visit my humble abode?"
Qi Xiuming glanced at her and snorted coldly: "I'm here to answer questions. Hurry up, I have urgent matters." He sneaked out specifically when the old man was out.
Ah Luo rushed over after hearing the noise, holding a carved wooden box in her hands. She said with a smile, "Master Qi, all the questions for this game are in this box. Please draw three of them yourself. The difficulty depends entirely on your luck."
"Why go to such trouble?" Qi Xiuming said with disdain, but he honestly rolled up his sleeves, fumbled in the box for a moment, and pulled out three notes.
Qi Xiuming unfolded the first piece of paper, glanced at it, and immediately raised his lips in disdain: "How many wives does Ye Li have? What are their names?"
He scoffed and said loudly, "What's the difficulty? Ye Li only married Ye Qingwu officially. The Yao Niang he married later was just a concubine, not his legal wife."
He glanced at Ruan Yunsheng smugly and said sarcastically, "You're being so mysterious. I thought it was some kind of difficult problem, but this is it?"
Ruan Yunsheng smiled without saying anything, just let him continue.
Qi Xiuming proudly unfolded the second piece of paper: "What happened to Song Qingwu before he died?"
His expression froze for a moment, his brow furrowed. Was this question mentioned in the plot? Why didn't he have any recollection of it? Could it be more than just a simple death from illness?
"Master Qi, you've been thinking about this for a while." A'Luo stood aside, her smile sweet, yet inexplicably tinged with mischief. "Do you have a definite answer?"
Qi Xiuming's Adam's apple rolled, and a trace of cold sweat seeped out of his forehead. To maintain his composure, he feigned composure and coughed lightly, "This question is too simple. How about I answer the third one at once?"
After saying that, he pretended to be calm as he unfolded the third piece of paper. However, as soon as he saw the words on it clearly, his pupils suddenly shrank.
"Why do people in the Ye Mansion have no objection to Ye Li's remarriage?"
The air froze instantly.
Qi Xiuming's fingers holding the note trembled slightly, and his mind quickly recalled the details of the plot. He had wondered about this question before, but he had never come up with a reasonable answer.
"Because Ye Li likes Yao Niang very much, the people in the Ye Mansion... can't do anything?"
As soon as he said it, he felt it was far-fetched.
Ruan Yunsheng finally couldn't help laughing out loud, and A'Luo also smiled softly with her hands covering her lips, her eyes full of meaning.
Qi Xiuming's ears burned, and he finally lost his pride. He gritted his teeth and said, "...Okay, actually, we still need to get to know more." He took a deep breath and looked up at Luo. "I'm applying to return to the scene to verify the clues."
Ah Luo's smile deepened, but she didn't point it out. She just bowed slightly and said, "Master Qi, please follow me. I will explain the precautions to you."
Qi Xiuming kicked open Song Qingwu's door. The dust that flew in his face choked him and made him take three steps back. He covered his mouth and nose and squinted his eyes to look around the room.
The faded bed curtains drooped like spiderwebs, and the bed was covered only with a thin mattress, as thin as a cicada's wing. When he touched it, his fingertips were immediately covered with cold dampness. The bronze mirror on the dressing table was covered with thick dust, and it could only vaguely reflect his distorted image.
"How long has it been since this place was cleaned?" Qi Xiuming gritted his teeth and wiped the tabletop. His palm suddenly turned half black. "How disgusting!"
Qi Xiuming then walked around the house several times, searching through all the drawers and cabinets, but found nothing. He slumped down on the floor in frustration, muttering to himself, "Just like Zhang Dazhu said, there are no useful clues..."
However, just as he leaned his head back towards the floor, the back of his head suddenly touched a slightly loose wooden board.
"Um?"
He sat up suddenly, leaned over and knocked on the board.
Boom boom boom.
It's empty!
Qi Xiuming's eyes lit up and he immediately jumped up from the ground, picked up the candlestick beside him, and pried open the loose floor with force.
Click!
The moment the floor was lifted, a faint musty smell mixed with the scent of long-forgotten herbs hit the face.
He looked down and saw many children's things neatly arranged in the secret compartment, including small tiger-head shoes, a red bellyband embroidered with the word "Fu", a rattle, a cloth tiger... Each one was brand new, but had never been used.
Qi Xiuming was stunned for a moment, then reached out to pick up the pair of tiger-head shoes, and gently stroked the fine stitches with his fingertips. Suddenly, as if he thought of something, he suddenly stood up and rushed to the closet, took out a few of Song Qingwu's old clothes, and carefully compared the stitches.
It’s exactly the same!
"Could it be...Song Qingwu and Ye Li have another child?"
But looking around, the house was simply furnished, with no signs of a child having lived there. He squatted down and checked the baby clothes again, and found that although they were brand new, they had a faint smell of medicine, as if they had been carefully preserved but never actually worn.
"Maybe... this child was never born at all."
Qi Xiuming's heart trembled, and a terrible guess emerged in his mind -
Song Qingwu was once pregnant, but for some reason she was unable to give birth smoothly and even developed a chronic illness. After Ye Li fell in love with someone else, she was left unattended and eventually died of depression.
If that’s the case…
"What a scumbag!" Qi Xiuming angrily punched the floor and gritted his teeth, "Has Ye Li's conscience been eaten by a dog?"
Qi Xiuming couldn't help but secretly criticize his brother's gaze. Was someone like Ye Li really worth pitying? He shook his head, turned and left Song Qingwu's dilapidated hut, returning to the original fork in the road.
The two paths were completely different: one was brand new, its slabs smooth as mirrors; the other was covered with dead leaves, which rustled underfoot. Apparently, Zhang Dazhu had been deliberately led by the people in the haunted house to take the dilapidated path.
"What will happen on the other path?"
He stepped onto the clean road without hesitation. Not long after, an exquisite pavilion appeared before his eyes. The vermilion-painted carved railings and glazed tiles shone coldly in the sun, forming a sharp contrast with Song Qingwu's dilapidated house.
This must be Yao Niang's residence.
Qi Xiuming pushed the door open and was greeted by a strange smell. He frowned. The smell was hard to describe, like a rotten sweetness mixed with a hint of fishy smell, which was nauseating.
The room was luxuriously furnished. The rosewood dressing table was filled with jewels, gauze curtains embroidered with gold thread hung beside the bed, and even the carpet under his feet was made of snow fox fur. But strangely, despite the exquisite furnishings everywhere, he felt a chill to the bone, as if countless pairs of eyes were staring at him in the dark.
Facts proved that his feeling was not wrong. Qi Xiuming touched the carvings on the dressing table with trembling fingertips. The winding patterns looked like complicated totems from a distance, but when he looked closely, they were half-open evil eyes.
“Crack.”
Suddenly, there was a crisp sound under his feet. He looked down and found that a floor tile had been dented by his step. A secret door was opened and a sticky, fishy smell immediately hit him.
He followed the smell to the dark room, and the scene before him horrified him.
The walls, beams, and even the bed curtains of the entire bedroom were covered with dark red runes. The lines extended from all directions like living things, and finally all converged on the ebony box in the center of the bed. A huge vertical pupil was carved in the middle of the box lid.
Qi Xiuming didn't dare to bet on the function of these runes, so he could only carefully wrap his hands with his sleeves to reach the wooden box, and it took a lot of effort to get it.
But no matter how hard he tried, the lid of the box didn't move at all, until he accidentally touched the "eyeball".
“Click.”
The gem's pupils suddenly sank, and the sound of a mechanism turning came from the box. The box lid popped open and a foul smell hit his face!
"squeak--!"
The strange insect, as big as a fist, suddenly arched its back, and the densely packed compound eyes on its shell opened at the same time, making a shrill scream. The sound waves made Qi Xiuming's ears and nose bleed. He instinctively slammed the lid of the box shut and locked the monster back.
As the piercing sound faded, Qi Xiuming finally breathed a sigh of relief. "What the hell, what kind of bug is this?" He threw it aside in disgust, slamming it hard on the ground. He wondered where the owner of this haunted house had found it.
Qi Xiuming suppressed his dizziness and continued searching the house for clues. Finally, he found a thin booklet at the bottom of the dressing table. It was densely written with the following information:
"On the seventh day of the third month, the Hehuan wine was ready, and Ye Lang drank the mother poison."
"On the fifth day of the fifth month, I will use Ye Lang's hand to distribute the Zi Gu to everyone in the Ye Mansion."
He closed the booklet with trembling fingertips, and finally understood everything.
"No wonder no one in the Ye Mansion objects to Ye Li remarrying... No wonder the mistress behaves so strangely..." He muttered to himself, "It turns out that everyone is controlled by this evil creature!"
But why did Yao Niang do this? Did she have a grudge against the Ye family?
Full of questions, he hurried to find Ruan Yunsheng and told him all his findings.
"I see." Ruan Yunsheng smiled faintly after hearing this. "It seems Master Qi has solved the three questions."
"But who is Yao Niang? Why did she do this?" Qi Xiuming asked anxiously.
Ruan Yunsheng smiled but said nothing.
"You already knew the truth, didn't you?" He narrowed his eyes.
"Who knows?" She chuckled, supporting her chin. "Perhaps once you experience all the plots, everything will be revealed."
After Qi Xiuming's back disappeared around the corner, Ah Luo twisted her handkerchief with a worried look on her face: "But even we haven't figured out the truth of this case yet..."
"Who says we have to act as it is?" Ruan Yunsheng flicked her brow with his fingers. "This case isn't simple. If we reveal everything, we'll definitely be targeted. We're powerless and no match for them. So... modifying the storyline appropriately is also a way to protect ourselves."
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