165 Lantern [Second Update]
◎ is slowly flowing out ◎
Qi Qiuxue withdrew her gaze silently.
She returned the painting to Li Yichuan and expressed her admiration and praise again: "It's getting late, so I won't disturb you. We have other things to do, so we'll go ahead."
"Okay." Li Yichuan put away his work with a lingering feeling. After a pause, he added, "I've been feeling very inspired lately and have a strong desire to create. I'll probably be here painting intently for the next few days."
"If you have any further ideas for communication, feel free to come find me here. I'm always here."
“…”
It means staying in the yard all day.
"I will." Qi Qiuxue was speechless in her heart, but she didn't show it on her face. She nodded slightly, glanced sideways and winked at the two people beside her. Everyone said goodbye to Li Yichuan one after another and returned the same way.
On the way back, Mrs. Han's door was finally opened. The servants were coming in and out, very busy, as if they were helping her wash and dress.
"Do you want to go in?" Wu Shanyue opened her lips and asked softly.
"Not yet." Qi Qiuxue shook her head. "Going in at this time will easily arouse suspicion. Let's wait a little longer."
"Let's go back to the room first and see how Liu Ge and Su Wen are doing with their information."
Wu Shanyue nodded in response: "Okay."
"Did you notice the soil in the flower bed?" Bai Shien whispered softly. She had obviously noticed the anomaly as well. "There must be something buried underneath, but we don't have the right opportunity to explore right now."
Qi Qiuxue paused and said, "Let's wait until night."
"I'll make a special trip over there when the time comes."
-
When the three of them returned to the guest room, Liu Ge and Su Wen had already returned.
"What's the situation at the main entrance?" Qi Qiuxue closed the door casually and looked at the two people in the room.
Liu Ge quickly said, "The door was still closed, but it wasn't locked. I tried to push it, and as soon as I put my hand on it, the servants who were busy around me stopped working and all looked at me. Their eyes were straight and sinister, and it made me feel uncomfortable."
"At the same time, the system in my mind also jumped out and gave me instructions."
Qi Qiuxue: "What instructions?"
Liu Ge: "The system says: There is no need for you to go out right now."
There is no need to go out.
Qi Qiuxue chewed over this sentence in her heart. It was a very ambiguous answer. The system didn't explicitly tell the player that they couldn't go out, but simply said, "There's no need."
This means that if possible, the player can still walk out of this door.
——Perhaps the map of this copy is not as big as this house.
Qi Qiuxue couldn't help but recall the lame man's whispers in the morning. He was right. They really couldn't get out.
Qi Qiuxue believed that there must be some reason behind this. The servants' silence, their extreme reactions when being approached, their strange looks when Liu Ge tried to go out... You know, these people were employed by Madam Han and Master Li, so naturally they only obeyed the two of them. Everything they did was the result of discipline.
This includes not allowing a few people to go out, not talking to players easily, not revealing any information, and of course, not being tempted by money.
Through the previous analysis, Qi Qiuxue guessed that the Li family had only risen to prominence not long ago, and these servants should not have been employed for too long. In such a short period of time, being able to get along with each other was already quite effective. If they wanted more detailed discipline, it would definitely take longer time and more energy. It would be impossible to make everything perfect in such a short time.
Unless the Li family used some extraordinary means, or they held the most fatal handle on these servants.
“…”
During lunch, Li Yiqing hurried over and spent a short time with everyone.
She was busy all morning, making invitations, designing the menu, thinking about the layout of the venue, arranging singing and dancing performances, and preparing gifts for the guests...
The invitation list was compiled by Mr. Li. There were many people on it, including his friends, partners in official circles, some famous local families, relatives of Mrs. Han, former close friends, and some card-playing friends who often got together to play cards.
Li Yiqing took a quick look and found that a name on the list had been crossed out with a strong brushstroke. Judging from the color of the handwriting and the thickness of the lines, it seemed that the person who crossed out the name was Master Li himself.
Who is this person? What is the grudge between him and Mr. Li? Why would he write it and then erase it?
For fear of arousing unnecessary suspicion, Li Yiqing did not ask the servants, but silently kept this doubt in mind.
After lunch, Li Yiqing left first.
Qi Qiuxue and the others took a short rest before launching their second operation. When they went out, Master Li was still working in the study. When he woke up in the morning, the servants holding tea and snacks were still standing outside the door waiting as if they were frozen.
Mrs. Han was wearing an elegant cheongsam and had a beautiful and exquisite hairstyle. She was sitting in the room playing mahjong. Qi Qiuxue looked inside through the wide-open door. The people playing mahjong with her were not ladies of equal status, but the servants who helped her wash up in the morning.
Qi Qiuxue tried to enter the room, but was stopped by the servant waiting outside the door, who said that the lady was busy at the moment and if she wanted to visit, she could come back another day.
"Can I talk to you?" Su Wen asked with a forced smile.
The man looked away, as if he was afraid of something, and quickly shook his head: "Sorry, I don't know anything."
Qi Qiuxue raised her eyes at this moment and found that Mrs. Han in the room had also cast her eyes in their direction at some point. Their eyes overlapped at this moment. After a moment, Mrs. Han raised her lips and smiled, but did not invite them in. Instead, she lowered her eyes and continued playing cards.
It was as if nothing had happened just now.
"Let's go." Qi Qiuxue didn't stay long and went to the next place. Li Yichuan was still the same as before, sitting in the yard painting without sleep or food. In just a few hours, his new works had piled up very high.
Now is still not the best time to investigate, Qi Qiuxue changed direction again and headed to the next location. Because all the residents were female, the area inside the third courtyard was the most secretive and the most strictly managed. Qi Qiuxue and her companions were stopped as soon as they reached the gate, but when they looked into the courtyard through the gate, they saw that the door of the room where the third lady Li Zhinuo lived was always closed, as if the people in the house had never come out.
It was soon evening.
Li Yiqing returned to his room before dark. As time passed, the busy servants in the yard dispersed after nightfall. They seemed to have gone back to their rooms to rest, and there was no one guarding the room.
The night wind blew the lanterns hanging everywhere, and the crimson light was strange and bright, swaying in the wind in the dark night.
...Even though there might be dangers lurking everywhere after dark, there are many things they want to do that can only wait until now.
Qi Qiuxue decided to split the troops into three groups. Liu Ge and Su Wen would go to the gate to investigate the situation, Wu Shanyue and Bai Shien would stay in the room to deal with possible emergencies, and Qi Qiuxue and Li Yiqing would go to Li Yichuan's residence at night to investigate what was buried in the soil of the flower bed.
Everyone took action quickly.
Before leaving, Wu Shanyue gave Qi Qiuxue the prop he got from the previous copy that could hide his breathing and footsteps. It was a one-time prop with a short usage time of only fifteen minutes, but it could still play a big role at critical moments.
"Be careful, everyone." She reminded everyone worriedly.
Qi Qiuxue raised her lips and smiled: "Don't worry."
After she finished speaking, she opened the door and walked into the night with Li Yiqing.
——The distance was not very long, but they seemed to have walked for a long time.
I don't know when the fog started to rise in the courtyard. It wasn't too thick, but it still affected the movement to a certain extent. Looking around, only the deep red lanterns were particularly obvious.
The light projected from the lampshade seemed even more eerie.
Qi Qiuxue stared at them in the fog, inexplicably attracted by the strange red light. As she stared longer, she felt as if she was hallucinating.
There seemed to be something in those lanterns, one after another, human heads with unclear facial features, but compared to what Qi Qiuxue saw that night, they seemed to be clearer in some way.
——It’s the eyebrows and eyes.
——Those human heads had eyes very similar to Qi Qiuxue's. As the night wind blew, blood slowly flowed out from the broken ends of the heads.
【Author’s words】
The second update is here, dear everyone, there is a small red envelope in the comment section of this chapter, which will be sent before the next chapter is updated~
Thank you all for your overlord tickets and nutrient solution, thank you for leaving comments and reading ~ Bobobo!
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