Nan Yue’s heart sank.
"It was raining hard, so I could only play in the hallway. I saw you carry the kitten back to your room."
"Later, Uncle Xiang threw the cat out."
"The cat ran away."
Nan Yue’s fingers tightened slightly. After a moment of silence, she asked, "What happened to the cat... after that?"
Xiao Tian looked up at her. "It died."
"I saw it in the trash can."
Nan Yue closed her eyes. She had gone behind the dormitory twice today and hadn't seen the cat.
The cat must have died long ago; its appearance that day was a warning.
After the warning, the timeline returned to normal.
"Do you remember... what the date was that day?"
Xiao Tian blinked, looking at the candy in Nan Yue’s hand.
Nan Yue gave it all to him. Xiao Tian looked at her and said, "I remember. You didn't go to the factory that day because you were sick. My mom told me to go find Granny Zhao."
"Seven days ago."
Xiao Tian ran away.
Nan Yue stood still. Today was the third day of the mission, April 5th. Seven days ago was March 30th.
Li Hui had drawn a blood-red X on the calendar.
The cat Nan Yue first saw had died in the past like this, in a place she could not interfere with.
She hated those who bullied the weak the most.
Xiang Guang used his connections and physical advantages to imprison Li Hui, trapping her physically and mentally until she was stifled.
Despite being in a factory where social relationships were very close, Li Hui had been forced into becoming a lone island.
Li Hui couldn't interact with others, and she couldn't be in the same office as other men.
She couldn't read books, couldn't dress up, and couldn't wear bright clothes.
She couldn't even... have a small pet of her own.
That cat—never mind not being allowed inside to escape the rain.
Because of Xiang Guang's morbid psychology, it wasn't even allowed to live.
Nan Yue sat coldly in a corner of the playground, but she was surprisingly furious inside.
She even wanted to kill Xiang Guang.
Unfortunately, he wasn't there.
The Nan Yue who had this thought paused slightly and quickly calmed down.
That's right. She was just someone who had been playing Li Hui for three days, yet she couldn't help but want Xiang Guang dead.
What about Li Hui?
No matter how gentle and kind a person was, after enduring all of this endlessly, would their only thought be to endure?
Li Hui loved reading and learning; she was someone who constantly broke through her own boundaries.
In this life, she had only made one mistake: being deceived by Xiang Guang and marrying him.
Would such a woman be content to just play the role of a gentle and virtuous wife in Xiang Guang's Mr. Nice Guy persona?
Would she just endure and scrape by like this?
Nan Yue thought of that blood-red X.
She didn't think so.
Was it possible she had been thinking about the cause and effect wrong all along?
It wasn't that Xiang Guang killed Li Hui, but...
Li Hui wanted to kill Xiang Guang.
Nan Yue lowered her eyes. If Li Hui had killed Xiang Guang and was then trapped by his vengeful spirit, unable to be reincarnated, frightened by the spirit over and over again, feeling her life slip away...
That made more sense.
It fit the logic of how a pollution world was formed.
A vengeful spirit wouldn't distinguish right from wrong; it wouldn't think it was its own fault for imprisoning Li Hui first that led to its death.
Moreover, a person like Xiang Guang, who was psychologically twisted and lacked humanity while alive, would be even worse after death.
If that was the case, the supernatural phenomena haunting the scavengers weren't caused by the person who killed the original host, but by the person the original host killed. If the logic chain was reversed, then Yang Xufen, who died yesterday, was killed by someone the original host had once harmed.
It wasn't necessarily that she killed someone; she might have just harmed someone. It might not have been fatal, but it left the other party with a grudge.
Unfortunately, the person was already dead, and their social network was unknown. It was unclear if any other scavengers were involved.
Nan Yue shared her thoughts with Zhu Xi Ning. Zhu Xi Ning pondered for a moment. "So the woman pretending to be a ghost isn't the killer who murdered Zhao Mingming, but someone Zhao Mingming harmed, and now she's come for her life."
Zhu Xi Ning sneered. "Could it be that Zhao Mingming scared that person to death by pretending to be a ghost back then?"
It was actually possible.
With Zhao Mingming's twisted psychology after her disfigurement, she really was capable of such a thing.
As for why...
Zhu Xi Ning glanced at Nan Yue. It was either to avenge her face or for Zhong Guochao.
This mission is getting more and more interesting.
"It wouldn't be to avenge her face. Zhao Mingming's mother said Zhao Mingming suspected Li Hui was the one who did it, but Li Hui didn't go to the movies that day. The person who pushed Zhao Mingming during the stampede wasn't Li Hui."
"So either Zhao Mingming had another suspect, or it was for Zhong Guochao."
After finishing, Zhu Xi Ning sighed to herself. Based on this analysis, every original host in this mission who was replaced by a scavenger had not only been killed but had also killed others.
Everything is linked; it really is karmic retribution.
In this mission world, the timelines and spatial lines are all a mess. Now, besides the original hosts they are portraying, the vengeful spirits of the original hosts are also acting independently.
Scavengers are being hunted by the people their original hosts harmed, manifesting as supernatural phenomena.
But the vengeful spirits of the original hosts are also hunting the people who harmed them.
To put it simply, the Zhao Mingming that Zhu Xi Ning is playing is being scared by a female ghost every night, and that female ghost is someone Zhao Mingming once harmed.
But Zhao Mingming's vengeful spirit is also scaring other scavengers, specifically the scavenger whose original host harmed Zhao Mingming.
My head hurts.
Nan Yue didn't know Zhao Mingming, so she could only help Zhu Xi Ning sort things out from the existing details.
"Besides the one already lying in the hospital, those who liked Zhong Guochao included Yang Xufen and Song Chunhua."
"Find an opportunity to check Yang Xufen's appearance and see if she could be that female ghost."
Even though the scavenger playing Yang Xufen is dead, Yang Xufen's vengeful spirit is still seeking the life of the person who killed her.
Zhu Xi Ning agreed, but she had no impression of the name Yang Xufen and shouldn't have seen her.
She always felt like she had seen the female ghost from last night somewhere.
How interesting—a female ghost pretending to be a person pretending to be a ghost to scare her.
The mission hint fits the theme in a bizarre way.
"If it's not Yang Xufen..."
Zhu Xi Ning understood what Nan Yue meant and added, "Then it might be Song Chunhua."
But there were too many people in the factory, and she couldn't match them up. She would have to go through the files anyway.
Now Nan Yue was basically certain. The "Secret" mentioned in the mission title wasn't just the secret of how the original hosts they portrayed died, but also the secret of whom they had harmed.
Cause and effect, a beginning and an end—both are indispensable.
As for what to do after finding the secret—apologize to the ghost chasing them?
Nan Yue curled her lip. Setting aside others, she would not apologize to Xiang Guang.
Others might have killed in a fit of rage and deserved to be haunted by vengeful spirits.
Li Hui was different.
Xiang Guang deserved to die.
Even as a vengeful spirit, he deserved to die.
Even if Nan Yue had to go head-to-head, she didn't want to apologize to someone like him.
Nan Yue's side had found Li Hui's "cause." What about the "effect"?
It was too obvious. Whoever encountered Li Hui in their nightly supernatural phenomena was the person who killed her.
Tsk tsk. Jiang Siyan—no, Tang Yu—is truly a freak.
How did Li Hui encounter two men who were both freaks?
Rate on N.U.
