Chapter 35: Clues
Shoutout to nyanmaru for the commission!
<Previous Chapter<Table of Contents>Next Chapter>
“The system spirit is gone too!” Lin Lan exclaimed.
“Cousin… cousin! Is this… the ghost trick?!”
Chu Feng glanced around calmly. The system had been silently protecting him the whole time, but now there was no trace of it in the entire room.
At the door was a thick wall, leaving him and Lin Lan trapped inside.
Chu Feng calmly closed the door, reassuring his frightened cousin, “There are no ghosts. It might be a spatial fold caused by data anomalies.”
Lin Lan: “Huh? Cousin, could you say something I can understand?”
Chu Feng briefly explained that Dream City constructed this Room 404 based on his memories. However, he had visited Little Xie’s house more than once when he was young.
Each visit would have resulted in slightly different conditions inside the room. The furniture and items in the house would vary between summer and winter. While there was only one Room 404 where Little Xie lived in reality, Chu Feng’s memories contained several different versions of Room 404.
In a normal Dream City, it would automatically select the cleanest version of the room from his memories as the building to import into the city, allowing players to redecorate and modify it.
Now, due to viral interference, not only was the original decoration gone, but Dream City had overlaid all the different versions of Room 404 that it had read from his memories.
“I get it!” Lin Lan crawled up from the floor, feeling slightly less scared. “So, X must have gone to a different version of Room 404?”
“Most likely,” Chu Feng replied.
Chu Feng continued to explore along the walls of the living room. The data here had become abnormal. If all the rooms from his memories were manifesting, there must be a place in the overlaid space where they could pass through, otherwise X wouldn’t have disappeared for no reason.
As his fingertips roamed over the solid wall, Chu Feng observed the changes in the wall’s surface. This building had been infected; there must be a place where the data sequence was abnormal. He walked to the window, pulled back the curtain, and felt the wall behind it. Suddenly—
The air in front of him rippled transparently, like ripples spreading out on water. When his hand touched the wall, the entire surface suddenly softened like water, and half of his hand passed through.
Lin Lan was astonished. The next moment, he saw his cousin calmly passing through the wall—
Through it?!
It was pitch black on the other side.
Chu Feng walked over, hearing some rustling noises.
Swish—
The curtain was pulled open.
X stood in front of Chu Feng.
X had been searching in the living room, focusing on the area behind the curtain. After finishing his search, he realized that there seemed to be no activity or human presence in the entire house…
X returned to the living room, opened Little Xie’s room, which was empty. Then he returned to the living room and found no sign of Chu Feng anywhere. Suddenly, Chu Feng appeared under the curtain.
The air in front of them rippled again, and soon, another person appeared behind the curtain.
Seeing X, Lin Lan breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that his cousin’s theory about spatial folding was correct. The atmosphere in this building was too terrifying. Seeing the highest regulator made Lin Lan feel much more at ease. He was about to explain everything to Great God X—
X raised an eyebrow slightly.
“Spatial folding?” he asked.
Chu Feng: “Yes.”
Lin Lan: ??
Were these two’s thoughts connected?
Chu Feng: “Did you find anything?”
They had entered two different versions of Room 404, so they should have found different things.
X took out a black plastic bag.
Chu Feng frowned slightly. He had seen this black plastic bag before; Little Xie had brought it from the uncle at Room 304’s convenience store, saying it contained some snacks.
Little Chu Feng hadn’t asked much at the time, nor had he paid attention to what was inside.
“There’s also this.” X put the black plastic bag aside and gently pushed with one hand. The old sofa in the living room immediately moved aside, revealing what was underneath.
“Whoa! So many bags!” Lin Lan exclaimed in surprise.
Underneath the worn-out sofa in Little Xie’s house were many bags. Chu Feng recognized some brands, including several from Dior and Chanel. Lin Lan squatted down and casually opened one of the designer handbags, finding a wallet inside that had already been emptied of cash.
X said, “His mother, perhaps…”
—perhaps was a pickpocket. A habitual thief, stealing and snatching bags.
Chu Feng’s dark eyes blinked twice. Indeed, without money, what would Little Xie’s father use to buy drugs?
Chu Feng had never paid attention to this matter before. He thought Little Xie only had a father who wasn’t quite normal; his mother had died of stomach cancer when he was in high school. Chu Feng had seen her a few times; she was quite gentle, and Little Xie was closer to his mother, although he always seemed troubled. She had always been trying hard to move away, to get out of this environment, to create slightly better conditions for Little Xie.
But several divorces had failed. No matter where they moved, Little Xie’s father always found them. Because Little Xie’s mother could provide money, Little Xie’s father would cling to her like a blood-sucking leech.
The black plastic bag rustled. X opened it:
Inside the bag was all cash, packed in bundles of red banknotes.
“So…” Lin Lan began to piece things together, “Cousin, you’ve seen Brother Xie take out a black bag from Uncle at Room 304 before. Could it be that the uncle at the convenience store has some kind of connection that allows Little Xie’s mother to sell stolen goods? And then his father uses this money to buy drugs? And if she doesn’t give him money, he hits her?”
Although Little Xie’s mother was pitiful, Lin Lan thought, legally speaking, the father was a drug addict, the mother was a thief and pickpocket, and none of the neighbors were good people. Lin Lan found it hard to imagine how a child could grow up in such an environment.
Chu Feng realized that Little Xie’s father hadn’t started using drugs originally. In the early years, when the family was still somewhat affluent, he had been in business, and they could afford to send Little Xie to a decent kindergarten.
But then the business plummeted, and they went bankrupt. Little Xie’s father began to indulge in drugs. Since Little Xie couldn’t afford the sponsorship fees for kindergarten, he was forced to drop out, and the family moved to a place like this mess.
“That uncle at the convenience store seems very suspicious!” Lin Lan said, “Does he have some kind of backing? Like a big fence, or maybe even some criminal organization?”
X: “…Off-topic.”
Lin Lan: ??
Chu Feng understood what X meant. They had found quite a few clues here and there, but they were all too fragmented. It had been 22 years since the incident, and it was hard to say what had really happened. Their most crucial task was to crack the security question of 7-year-old Little Xie.
Returning to the question, it was quite straightforward: solve a murder case, identify the victim and the killer. While theft, selling stolen goods, or even robbery might be related, these were probably not the main clues. Extra clues could be explored a little, but they shouldn’t be distracted from the real information.
“Leverage,” Chu Feng suddenly said.
Lin Lan: ??
Between his cousin and Great God X, a few words suddenly popped out, and with no system spirit around, Lin Lan was completely unable to keep up with what they were thinking.
Chu Feng stared at the bag of stolen money in X’s hand, suddenly filled with ominous speculations. If the uncle at Room 304 helped Little Xie’s mother sell stolen goods, it also meant that he had leverage over Little Xie’s mother.
Had Room 304’s uncle forced Little Xie to do something? Considering what the question said, Room 304’s uncle had once peeped into Little Xie’s house through the peephole. Chu Feng suddenly came up with a very bad conjecture, making him shudder with horror.
“Can we get out of here?”
Chu Feng wanted to exit the game immediately and check in reality.
Returning the same way wasn’t possible; the system had disappeared too. They couldn’t navigate their way back through the chaotic overlaid space by themselves.
Lin Lan: “I can use the Dream City key to pop back.”
X: “Regulators have special channels.”
Chu Feng: …
He was the only one left here who couldn’t return.
Lin Lan was about to say that he could return to reality to help his cousin stop the game by pressing the “Force Quit” button. This time, if his cousin had the intention to leave the game, pressing the exit button himself, his cousin would wake up from reality.
The downside to this approach was that the next time they entered the game, the three of them would still end up in this chaotic overlaid space.
Lin Lan was about to speak when X inexplicably gave him a glance.
Lin Lan fell silent.
X said, “The regulator channel might be able to take one person.”
“Okay.” Chu Feng didn’t inquire further about how to bring someone along. He turned to Lin Lan and said, “You use the key to go back first.”
Lin Lan was still hesitating whether to mention his clever method, but he was suddenly looked at by X, the great god.
“Uh, then I’ll take off first, see you in real life later!”
Beep—
Lin Lan transformed into a blue data fragment, drifting in the air.
“Let’s go,” Chu Feng said to X.
He didn’t think much of it, assuming that X had regulatory authority and could create a special passage back to reality in the air.
X didn’t move. He stood in place, reaching to unbutton his coat.
Chu Feng: “…?”
X: “Sorry, the regulatory passage has specific recognition criteria. We need to make the system believe that we are one person.”
Chu Feng: “So?”
X opened his coat and smiled at him.
“So, welcome inside,” he said.
***
Chu Feng was enveloped in X’s coat.
X wrapped his arms around Chu Feng’s back, holding him tightly against his chest, snugly fitting together.
This embrace was so warm.
Chu Feng felt a bit uncomfortable in the warmth. Xie Shiyu used to hug him tightly like this, giving him a sense of security. With his height of 1.8 meters, it was difficult for anyone to fully embrace him.
If Chu Feng felt uncomfortable being hugged by X, he wouldn’t actually feel uncomfortable in his heart, but being hugged so tightly by someone he wasn’t very familiar with, he surprisingly didn’t feel any resistance in his body. This state made Chu Feng feel uneasy.
Chu Feng moved slightly, wanting to put some distance between him and X…
X instantly tightened his embrace.
Beep—beep—!
Sharp alarms sounded in the dazzling passage.
“Don’t move too far away from me.”
X pressed Chu Feng tightly against him, holding him.
Chu Feng buried himself in the warm embrace, unable to see anything. After a while, the sound of the alarm gradually faded. They were pressed closely enough together. The passage system recognized them as one person again.
The surroundings of the passage were rotating with brilliant colors.
Chu Feng felt everything around him fading away at the speed of light, until finally, his vision was filled with white light…
***
Drip—
The Dream City game headset disconnected.
Chu Feng woke up from the bed.
He got up and walked to the living room, just in time to see Lin Lan coming out of the guest room.
Lin Lan, quite tacitly, didn’t ask how X had brought Chu Feng out. He turned to the main topic:
“Cousin, do you have any leads? Since it’s a murder case, why don’t we check the records of this building to see if there have been any incidents? I happen to know a few classmates from the criminal investigation department.”
Chu Feng: “Alright, help me ask.”
Lin Lan pulled up his WeChat contacts and sat on the sofa to send messages. Chu Feng bent over and thought for a moment, then picked up his phone, dialed a number, and then hung up.
—His grandfather used to be the director of the city’s finance bureau, so there should be some interaction between him and the police.
Chu Feng pinched his brow. If his grandfather asked him why he wanted to investigate, Chu Feng wouldn’t have an answer. He couldn’t say he was addicted to the game…
“Cousin! There’s news!!”
Lin Lan’s classmate in the criminal investigation department happened to have a friend who is now the archivist for the area where Little Xie’s building was located. When Lin Lan leveraged his connections, he specifically mentioned Chu Feng’s grandfather: the director of the finance bureau, emphasizing Chu Feng’s grandfather’s relationship with the old director of the public security bureau.
“Hello.”
Chu Feng returned to the bedroom, took out paper and pen, and dialed the number provided by Lin Lan.
What he wanted to check wasn’t any particularly critical information: whether there had been any incidents at the old building at 158 West Street in the old city area.
“I haven’t found any incidents, but you said it was 22 years ago, so it might be very difficult to find. Back then, everything was recorded on paper. Even if something did happen, the records might have been lost long ago. And that area of the old city is quite chaotic. However…”
Chu Feng gripped the pen tightly in his hand.
“But I did find a record of a criminal. He used to live there before he was arrested.”
Chu Feng’s heart skipped a beat. He wanted to confirm his suspicion, yet he dreaded it becoming true. His hand holding the pen started to sweat slightly, and his voice was hoarse:
“What… what crime did he commit?”
“Um… Child molestation.”
Chu Feng’s hand paused, and the pen tip punctured a hole in the pristine white paper.
The criminal’s name was Sun XX, arrested 25 years ago for child molestation, sentenced to five years in prison. Due to good behavior, he received a reduced sentence, was released 22 years ago, and moved into the building at 158 West Street in the old city area, where Xie Shiyu’s family lived.
Chu Feng’s heart felt like it was submerged in ice.
“Five years ago, he committed another offense, this time molesting children in a public place. It was his second offense, and he was sentenced to eight years. He’s still in prison now. When he was arrested, he was still living in that building. Hello… Hello? Can you hear me?”
The steel pen had left black ink stains on the snow-white paper.
“I… can hear you.”
Chu Feng gripped the pen tip tightly, jotting down every piece of information like slashing with a knife:
“What room does this person live in?”
Junior Officer: “Uh, Room 104.”
***
The pen tip paused.
Chu Feng held the phone, “…Room 104? Are you sure?”
Junior Officer: “…Yes, is there… a problem?”
Chu Feng: “Is it possible that it’s… Room 304, a mistake in memory?”
“That’s not possible. If it were 22 years ago and recorded on paper, there might be a chance of a mistake, but the second time he was arrested was five years ago. Computers were already widespread by then, all data input was electronic, there couldn’t have been a mistake. There were even news reports at the time!”
Chu Feng: “Or… over the years, could he have changed apartment numbers?”
“That shouldn’t… be the case either. When he was arrested, neighbors on both sides confirmed that he had been living in Room 104 for over a decade. Every year he would say he was going to move out, but he never did.”
“…”
Chu Feng crossed out all the information he had recorded.
Room 104 belonged to someone other than the subject of his investigation. The person in Room 304, the elderly shopkeeper, wasn’t what he had imagined.
Chu Feng felt a slight relief, at least it wasn’t like that. But… who exactly was in Room 304? Was it possible… what if it was someone even more terrifying? Chu Feng remembered the bloodstains on the third floor, the evidence hidden in the red scarf by Little Shiyu, and the peeping tom outside the peephole.
What exactly happened 22 years ago?
Want to show your support? Come donate at Paypal or Ko-fi to show your appreciation! :)
<Previous Chapter<Table of Contents>Next Chapter>
