Цветок весенней реки, лунная ночь

Глава 21

"Do you want to know everything that happened here?" Lin Wei suddenly said quietly, his eyes still wandering around.

"Are you... going to tell me?" she asked, glancing around at her surroundings, ready to escape at the first opportunity.

"This residence was the residence of a princess more than 500 years ago! Oh! No! It should be a tomb!" Lin Wei looked around.

"Princess Tianfeng?" Ningxia said coldly.

"You know?" Lin Wei was surprised by Ningxia's calmness.

Ningxia surveyed this hellish place: "So, Princess Tianfeng and her husband are buried somewhere here?"

Lin Wei nodded, then shook his head: "According to our family genealogy, a member of the imperial family during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty was indeed buried here, and our ancestor was the keeper of this couple's tomb!"

Ningxia stared at Lin Wei in disbelief; this fact was too unexpected!

Lin Wei continued, "Our ancestors, following the Yongle Emperor's decree, disposed of everything Princess Tianfeng liked during her lifetime, including this house, as a burial site. However, fearing that digging deep into the ground and constructing a grand mausoleum would provoke resentment from border tribes who harbored resistance against the Ming Dynasty, they hid her remains somewhere within this house and then openly built a residence on top of it, resembling a human dwelling. Thus, this became one of the most peculiar tombs in history."

Lin Wei suddenly turned his head, looking at Ningxia with a complicated expression: "But centuries later, no one in this house ever discovered the remains of that couple!"

Ningxia was quite surprised and remained stunned for a while: "So, the 'Qilin Pavilion' in Black Town was also once the residence of this Princess Tianfeng?"

"Yes! ...That's where the couple died suddenly!" Lin Wei's voice wasn't loud, but Ning Xia was utterly astonished.

Ningxia shook her head, trying to dispel these unbelievable thoughts: "So what you said about it being haunted before, was it true? Did Tianfeng's ghost appear here? That white lantern, the butterfly I found, and... that room on the first floor locked with an iron lock, the incredible thing Su Yun saw in that room..."

Lin Wei shook his head, his eyes filled with profound sorrow, and interrupted Ning Xia: "No! There are absolutely no ghosts or supernatural phenomena here! It's all man-made!"

"I do not understand!"

"It's my sister, Lin Qian!" Lin Wei's gaze drifted away. "It's all her illusion! She's fantasized since she was little that she's the Heavenly Phoenix Princess! Everything you see now, including everything Su Yun sees, comes from her extraordinary hallucinations!"

Ningxia shook her head abruptly: "Wait a minute! It's too chaotic! Too complicated! I don't understand!"

Lin Wei lowered his head and thought for a moment, then said, "I think we should start from over thirty years ago!"

Ningxia looked at him quietly without saying a word.

"That was in 1975. My parents returned to this ancestral home from Xinjiang. I had just been born then, and my older sister, Lin Qian, was only five years old. When my father brought the whole family back, my grandfather had already passed away for more than two months. Since my grandfather only had two sons and an uncle I had never met who supposedly disappeared during the turmoil of the 1960s, the only one who could inherit this ancestral home was my father."

Seeing his expression, Ningxia had a bad feeling, but she didn't interrupt him.

"I think the biggest regret of my father's life was making this decision! After arranging everything, my father went to teach in a town not far from here, returning once a week. Aunt Wu also left with him. Therefore, in this huge, dilapidated ancestral house, only my mother and us young children were left. Then one day, the nightmare began!" A strong sadness was evident in Lin Wei's eyes.

Ningxia gazed at him quietly.

"I was only two years old at the time and had no idea what happened. I only learned about it piecemeal from the villagers later!"

"What exactly... happened?" Ningxia asked cautiously.

"My mother moved into this house less than two months ago... one day... she..." Lin Wei's face was pale, clearly enduring immense pain.

"My mother... she actually hanged herself on the second-floor beam of the house for no reason!" Lin Wei blurted out, covering his face in anguish.

Ningxia gasped. What was going on? Could it be that the ghost of Tianfeng was really causing trouble?

"And then what happened?" Ningxia asked quietly.

Lin Wei sobbed for a while, then calmed down: "My father was almost driven mad. He frantically searched for everyone in the village, asking each household about my mother's cause of death, but because the village was so remote, no one knew what had happened! Finally, my father suddenly thought of someone—my sister, Lin Qian!"

A thought suddenly flashed through Ningxia's mind, but she immediately shook her head and denied it.

Lin Wei: "My sister was over five years old at the time, so she should remember what happened that night! But no matter how my father tried to coax her, she wouldn't say a word. She just stared at him with a strange look, motionless! My father was so angry that he almost raised his hand to strike her, and then a long string of strange and bizarre words suddenly came out of my sister's mouth, scaring everyone present, including some of the villagers who had volunteered to help!"

"What did she say? What could a five-year-old child say that would scare those adults?" Ningxia couldn't help but ask.

Lin Wei seemed hesitant: "She actually yelled at all the adults in the room: 'You audacious scoundrels! How dare you be so insolent! Watch your heads!'"

"What?"

"I can hardly imagine the reaction of the villagers, including my father! But my sister did say something inexplicable, then her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed to the ground. When she woke up, she remembered nothing!"

Ningxia exhaled a large breath of the pent-up air from his chest.

"So, later, everyone in the village believed that my sister was possessed by a ghost, and they were all so frightened that they moved far away to even more distant places. As a result, only this house remained! My father never dared to mention the cause of my mother's death again, so he took the two of us and moved to the city, never to return!"

Lin Wei continued, "But strangely, from then on, my sister began experiencing all sorts of hallucinations. She always believed she was Princess Tianfeng, and she acted in ways that were completely different from ordinary people. Fortunately, her condition was intermittent, and my father kept everything about her a secret from the outside world. Therefore, before the incident at the 'Qilin Pavilion' in Black Town, everyone thought my sister was a normal person!"

"Was it the tragedy that happened during the filming of 'The Legend of the Ancient Mirror'?"

Lin Wei nodded: "Yes! My sister had just graduated from opera school when the director selected her for that film crew. Everyone thought it was extremely lucky for her, a recent graduate. But no one expected the director to choose 'Qilin Pavilion' for filming, and even less did anyone expect that such tragedies would occur there one after another..."

"Liu Fang died suddenly, the male lead fell to his death, the female supporting actress suffered a mental breakdown, and the director has been missing ever since..." Ningxia recalled the reports on the website.

"My sister... she was that lucky supporting actress. She was just so frightened that she was in a daze... After my sister returned from Xi'an, it was already ten years later. My sister was like a different person. She made connections everywhere and, through the various connections of my father's students, she single-handedly founded this Gutan Club and developed it to its current scale. It was extremely difficult, and the hardships in between are unknown to outsiders..." Lin Wei sighed softly.

"That woman in red?"

"Yes! And even I didn't expect that my sister would actually bring Su Yun to the ancestral home!"

Ningxia exclaimed, "Yes! When Su Yun wrote about entering the ancestral home, she couldn't remember anything and even spat out a mouthful of blood! What did she see inside? The ghost of Tianfeng?"

Lin Wei said quietly, "No! What she saw was a corpse! She saw someone who had died more than ten years ago!"

"Who is it?" Ningxia asked in astonishment.

"That person had actually died over a decade ago. However, my sister's mental state had been poor, so she locked that person's—no, it should be said, that person's remains—in a room on the first floor. When Su Yun entered the ancestral home and saw that the skeleton was still living with her sister, she was so shocked that she temporarily lost her memory!"

"Whose skeleton is this?"

Lin Wei looked at Ning Xia's bewildered gaze, lowered his head, and sighed, "Forgive me, I don't want to say!"

"But..." Ningxia glanced at Li Wei, who had become so haggard in an instant, and swallowed the rest of her dissatisfied words.

Ningxia thought for a moment and then asked, "So, the skeleton that the forest police found that day was the one Su Yun saw?"

"yes!"

Ningxia felt nauseous. What kind of person was Lin Qian? How could she preserve the remains of a person who died ten years ago and live with them day and night? Thinking of that terrifying situation, Ningxia could easily recall Su Yun's reaction at the time.

"You must find this hard to believe, and I feel the same way, but my sister's condition fluctuates, and I simply can't persuade her to give up such a terrifying activity!"

"So, after I got Su Yun's diary, you wanted to have me run over? Just to keep me from finding out?" Ning Xia looked coldly at Lin Wei.

A hint of guilt flashed in Lin Wei's eyes: "I had no idea what was in Su Yun's diary, and I didn't want you to get hurt. All of this was caused by someone else's actions!"

"who?"

Lin Wei looked at her with almost pity, then uttered two words that sounded like bombs: "Ning Kang!"

She was stunned and speechless for a moment.

"Although Su Yun didn't continue writing about what she saw in the ancestral home in her diary, she told your brother Ning Kang about it after recalling it. And Ning Kang actually used this to blackmail me into giving up 30% of the club's shares! Think about it, our club's development to this day has been hard-won. If a lawyer like Ning Kang were to publicize that my sister was living with a corpse, you can imagine the blow our club would suffer. So..." Lin Wei didn't finish his sentence.

Ning Kang, how did he get in touch with Su Yun? Before she could think further, Ning Xia was enraged by Lin Wei's next words. She screamed almost frantically, and slapped Lin Wei across the face, leaving five finger marks instantly. "So you killed him! And threw him in the well!"

Lin Wei seemed oblivious, raising his head to look at Ningxia with a melancholy gaze: "I didn't know he was your brother! Forgive me!"

Ningxia sneered: "Forgive me? I'll forgive you if you atone with your death!"

"What does it have to do with him? Do you want him dead?" A very strange voice suddenly came from the side of the wall.

What terrified Ningxia was that the voice was high-pitched and thin, and it was actually a high-pitched singing style.

The singing echoed through the empty mountain forest, startling many small birds which fluttered about in all directions.

Ningxia and Lin Wei were both surprised to find a figure slowly emerging from the corner of the wall!

"You're Ningxia? The woman who made Xiaowei lose his mind?" The woman's blood-red lips uttered a sentence that made Ningxia tremble all over.

Lin Qian! Ningxia finally met this strange woman in red!

Just as Su Yun described in his diary, the woman's hair was styled in a strange bun, and she was dressed in an ancient costume that was only worn for theatrical performances. Her upper body was a bright red satin blouse embroidered with gold and colorful floral and bird patterns on a bright red satin background; over it was a red vest with silver fur trim; and her lower body was also a red pleated skirt, with many butterflies embroidered with gold and silver threads; and a long magenta palace sash was tied around her waist.

"Are you Xiaowei?" Lin Qian asked Lin Wei softly. "After what you did to me just now, are you still the Xiaowei I love?" Although her voice was gentle, Ning Xia found it extremely terrifying and grating.

Lin Wei frowned and said, "I knocked you out just now because I didn't want you to hurt Xia!"

Ningxia glanced at Lin Wei. The muffled thud she had just heard was the sound of Lin Qian falling to the ground.

"Hahaha!..." Lin Qian suddenly turned to Ning Xia, her gloomy eyes staring straight at her as if she wanted to swallow her whole. Suddenly, a sharp dagger that gleamed in the light appeared in her hand.

"Sister! Don't hurt her!" Lin Wei suddenly stepped in front of Ningxia.

"Get out of the way!" Lin Qian said coldly.

"No!" Lin Wei insisted, and he and Ningxia slowly retreated.

"Get out of the way!" Lin Qian screamed hysterically.

"No! Please!" Lin Wei looked at his only relative in front of him with almost despair, and then looked at Ningxia behind him, who was as helpless as a little bird. The two of them were equally important to him, and he did not want either of them to be hurt.

"You, was it you who killed my brother?" Ningxia was both shocked and furious.

"Hmph! Xiao Wei! Are you abandoning your sister for this brat?" Lin Qian slowly approached, her eyes revealing an extremely cold gaze, the dagger in her hand flashing with an eerie light.

"Sister! Listen to me, slowly put the knife down, I'll handle all of this..." Lin Wei suddenly released Ning Xia behind him and slowly walked towards Lin Qian.

"No! She has a knife!" Ningxia reached out to grab Lin Wei, but Lin Wei pushed her hard, causing her to stagger back a few steps and almost fall.

"You want to let this brat go!" Lin Qian realized Lin Wei's intention and suddenly pounced on Lin Wei from behind.

"don't want!"

"ah!"

"Lin Wei!" Ningxia cried out in terror. She heard the sound of a sharp object piercing flesh, followed by a spray of hot, bloody liquid onto her face. Then, with a "boom," she lost consciousness...

Fang Jian was panting as he ran up the mountain when he suddenly heard an extremely shrill scream. He paused for a moment, then immediately took off running towards the ancestral home.

Arriving at the ancestral home, that hellish place, Fang Jian shouted Ningxia's name, but all around was silent, nothing but thick darkness. Suddenly, he heard a faint sound, seemingly coming from the floor of a room. He quickly raised his flashlight and searched in the direction of the sound. Sure enough, there was something slowly wriggling on the floor. Fang Jian approached, shone the flashlight, and suddenly cried out in alarm, "Lin Wei!"

Lin Wei was lying face down on the ground, his waist stained crimson with blood. Something sharp was slowly moving along his waist as he crawled, and the ground was soaked with his blood. What puzzled Fang Jian most was that Lin Wei was bleeding profusely and in a semi-conscious state, yet he was still stubbornly moving towards the clubhouse, leaving a shocking trail of blood several meters long on the ground.

"Lin Wei...you..." Fang Jian looked at Lin Wei, who was covered in blood, and immediately took off his coat to stop the blood flowing from Lin Wei's waist.

"Quick! Xia..." Lin Wei saw Fang Jian, pointed in the direction of the club, and seemed to have exhausted his strength. Suddenly, his whole body went limp and he collapsed to the ground.

"Lin Wei! Lin Wei!" Fang Jian cried out in panic. He found that his body was getting colder and colder, and the blood hole in his hand could no longer be plugged. He touched his nose and found that there was no breath.

Fang Jian slumped to the side in fear, staring at Lin Wei's gradually stiffening body, and suddenly remembered the words he had spoken before he died.

"Ningxia!" Fang Jian immediately stood up and ran towards the clubhouse.

After the police received Fang Jian's call and surrounded the entire Gutan Club, Lin Wei had already bled to death on the spot.

"Damn it! Why didn't you explain it clearly over the phone!" Wu Linshan was furious with the disheveled Fang Jian.

"Judging from the situation, could it be that Ningxia killed Lin Wei?" Wu Linshan stared at the blood-stained dagger in the evidence bag.