1TWITF[C Chapter 93

Chapter 93

The other old people looked unfriendly and slowly surrounded them.

“You people, are you ever going to stop? Always talking about disappearances, who disappeared? Show us the evidence!”

“If you don’t have evidence, you’re just slandering us!”

Simon Yuan’s heart jumped, and he quickly corrected himself, “No, I meant my friend disappeared somewhere else, not here.”

Judging by the attitude of these old people and yesterday’s tour guide, no one would believe there’s nothing strange about this town.

They must be hiding something, and this matter… might be related to the task.

What exactly is it that’s worth so many people hiding?

He couldn’t help but feel troubled. If they didn’t take some special measures, they wouldn’t be able to find out any information about the missing people.

It seemed he could only start from another angle.

The old people still looked displeased, clearly not believing what he said.

Simon Yuan dodged, not daring to fight back. The old man was exhausted after a couple of swings and leaned on his cane to catch his breath.

“No, no, we just want to find our friend.”

Simon Yuan calmly said, “His name is Lu Yanli.”

“He likes to travel and has been to many places. He mentioned to me that he’d been to Spirit Medium Town.”

On the other side of the town, Yi Zhenzhen was walking slowly with the others.

Because she suddenly received the “hint” of the task, in short, she was currently the “only” one who knew what Lu Yanli looked like. Shen Zhu had issued a strict order to protect her.

Of course, everyone knew that once Lu Yanli appeared, Yi Zhenzhen’s uniqueness would no longer be valuable.

Lin Chu followed closely near Yi Zhenzhen.

She had a cute baby face, and because they were both new, Yi Zhenzhen wasn’t wary of her, thinking that Lin Chu was particularly kind. The two quickly became acquainted.

“Did you really see Lu Yanli?” Lin Chu asked with concern.

Yi Zhenzhen nodded, “I saw him, I’m sure that was him.”

Her eyes were filled with hatred, “He killed my mother, I will never let him go.”

Yi Zhenzhen had been asked this repeatedly, but facing Lin Chu’s well-meaning inquiry, she still obediently answered.

Lin Chu pondered in her heart, but didn’t show it on her face.

Ancient tomb, murals, dark shadows…

Wait, since in the image she saw, Lu Yanli had become a terrifying ghost with severe facial corrosion, why was she so sure she could recognize him?

Yi Zhenzhen shook her head, “I don’t know, but I just know I can recognize him, I’d recognize him even if he turned into ashes!”

Her eyes were filled with deep hatred.

At this moment, they arrived at the amusement park in the front of the town.

The inflatable castle was large, with the main body being a little girl in a red dress with a very white face, two round red cheeks painted on, her hands outstretched and a wide smile on her face. Her open mouth extended into a slide to the second level. Many children liked to slide down from that mouth, laughing as they went.

Yi Zhenzhen was a little envious.

She was still in high school and couldn’t resist these kinds of things for kids. But she also knew that now wasn’t the time to play around, so she only glanced at it wistfully before turning her head away.

Lin Chu casually bought a bottle of drink for a child. Seeing his face was flushed, she even smiled and wiped his sweat.

“Where are your family?”

The child wasn’t wary, “They went shopping.”

“Then you have to be careful, don’t run off with strangers, your family will be worried if you go missing.”

The little boy looked at her, “My family also told me not to drink strangers’ water.”

Lin Chu said, “I’m not a bad person, if I was a bad person, I wouldn’t remind you.”

The little boy drank more than half of it, took off a sweater and put it next to his shoes, and placed the drink bottle together before running off to the toilet.

Because of her action of buying a drink, several children gathered around, staring at Lin Chu expectantly.

The children looked at each other, tempted. With the first one taking the lead, the others grabbed the edge and jumped down.

The edge wasn’t high, and the children’s bones were soft, so they were fine when they jumped down. Lin Chu didn’t pay attention and turned to cross the road to find the drink vendor who was guarding there.

Therefore, she didn’t see that when one of the children jumped down, he accidentally kicked over the little boy’s drink bottle on the ground.

The drink bottle wasn’t tightly closed. It fell over, rolled a few times, and stopped next to the power strip. The liquid gurgled out, and a few drops splashed into the power strip.

The inflatable castle relied on these power strips for power. When water got in, faint smoke started rising.

No one noticed.

The children re-entered the castle, grabbed the walls, and looked out, waiting for Lin Chu to return.

Crack… crack…

Everything happened too quickly, no one noticed.

The children were still happily yelling and jumping, sliding down the slide from the open mouth.

Lin Chu bought the drinks and turned around, only to find that something was wrong with the inflatable castle on the opposite side.

The little girl’s slide, which was several people tall, seemed to have shrunk a little, and the outstretched arms were slowly drooping.

Leaking air?

“Ah—”

The screams became louder. Several lighter children were thrown high into the air and landed on the hard cement ground.

“Quick, save her! She’s important!” Shen Zhu’s expression changed drastically, and she hurriedly ran towards this side, but had to stop.

Too strange…

They hadn’t even had time to do anything.

Could it be that it was because Yi Zhenzhen knew Lu Yanli’s appearance?

The screams rose and fell, and many parents who had gone shopping heard about the accident and the crowd kept surging in. The sound of sirens could also be heard in the distance.

Lin Chu gritted her teeth, ran forward with all her strength, climbed over the cars blocking her way, and forced her way through the crowd.

The wind was still strong, but the completely deflated inflatable castle was no longer rolling, leaking air little by little on the ground. Even after it stopped, there were still several children who had been thrown into the air falling, breaking limbs, and blood soaking a large piece of fabric.

Lin Chu squeezed to the front row, and she immediately saw the hand of a girl, a size larger than the other hands.

“Zhenzhen? Yi Zhenzhen?” Lin Chu grabbed her hand, trying to pull her out.

It was like something inside was attracting her, and even with Lin Chu’s strength, she couldn’t pull her out even an inch. She tried to lift the fabric, but the thick fabric seemed to be stuck to the ground, no matter how hard she tried.

Now, Lin Chu could be sure that Yi Zhenzhen was going to die.

No, she couldn’t completely relax yet.

Amid the noise, the sound of sirens grew closer and closer.

Lin Chu could see that the body wrapped in the fabric was still rising and falling slightly.

She reached over, groping, and placed one hand on the other’s neck through a layer of thick fabric, her fingertips slowly applying force.

I didn’t want to kill you. But, who told you to know what Lu Yanli looks like?

To make the task willing to invest so many people to hunt down, Lu Yanli must have discovered a secret that could threaten the existence behind him.

So, he couldn’t die.

At the very least, she had to let him live a little longer.

Anyway, this task wasn’t timed. As long as Lu Yanli was alive, she could stay here until she found a clue.

She put her other hand on the other person’s pulse, and after confirming that it had stopped beating, Lin Chu maintained an anxious and distressed expression, turned her head, and shouted loudly for others to come and help.

With everyone’s efforts, the collapsed inflatable castle was finally cleared away. Most of the people had already died, either from being thrown out during the rolling, or from having their necks broken, and some were suffocated to death in the airtight fabric.

Shen Zhu was too late.

She stood beside the corpse of Yi Zhenzhen, who had finally been dug out, her face pale.

Another task-taker, Xu Bai, was also held back by various strange events. After arriving hastily, his expression was equally ugly.

“What do we do? Sister Shen?” Now that Yi Zhenzhen was dead, it was conceivable that it would be very difficult for them to find Lu Yanli again.

Lin Chu also looked anxious, “Yeah, what do we do?”

Shen Zhu’s gaze lingered on Yi Zhenzhen’s neck for a moment, until the latter was put into a body bag and carried away.

“Let’s go somewhere else first.” Shen Zhu could only say that.

She saw a bit of bruising on Yi Zhenzhen’s neck—Yi Zhenzhen wasn’t suffocated to death at all, someone had strangled her.

Who?

When Shen Zhu arrived, besides a circle of town residents anxiously helping, the closest person was Lin Chu.

If it wasn’t a person… could it be possible that it was a ghost?

Shen Zhu restrained her thoughts and said nothing, but there was a bit more scrutiny in the way she looked at Lin Chu.

Lin Chu said nothing, and like the others, looked anxious and panicked, perfectly fitting the appearance of a newbie.

*

It was dawn.

The sunlight dispelled the cold and eerie atmosphere unique to the night, and Lu Yanli could finally rest quietly for a while.

He had been hiding all night, and even an iron man couldn’t withstand it. Lu Yanli sat on the side of the road, his eyes open and alert.

Only now did he have time to think.

In the spacetime he was currently in, there was his own corpse, and two versions of himself from an unknown time in the future that he had called.

Four in total.

Could the same person really appear in the same spacetime?

The jade pendant was still in his pocket, carefully wrapped in cloth. Lu Yanli didn’t touch it, but instead pulled open his collar and glanced at the mark that was still engraved under his collarbone.

Did the other versions of himself die?

After catching his breath, Lu Yanli slowly got up.

He recalled the actions of the version of himself from the future when he met yesterday, and suddenly came back to his senses. Immediately afterward, he immediately ran back.

Yesterday… yesterday…

The version of himself from the future had used hypnotism on him, using lip movements to hint at a sentence, and then immediately made him forget that sentence, letting him remember it only when he felt safe.

The version of himself from the future said: Go to Spirit Medium Town, then go to the ancient tomb.

The town… what was in that town?

What had the version of himself from the future discovered? What clues had he left behind?

The quiet city slowly awakened from its slumber, gradually filled with human voices.

Gradually, pedestrians appeared on the street. A few people curiously looked at the disheveled man covered in blood, whispering to each other, not daring to approach.

Lu Yanli ignored the gazes of others.

He knew that he seemed to be temporarily safe. The sense of crisis that had been surrounding him since last night had finally receded a lot.

But he didn’t relax. Lu Yanli felt that the master behind the scenes seemed to want to trick him into going to Spirit Medium Town.

What exactly was in that town?

He was the only person on the bus. Lu Yanli habitually sat in a window seat near the door, pulled open the curtains, and watched the scenery outside the window.

“Yeah, a busload of people, all going to Spirit Medium Town. I don’t know what they’re running off to do. Aren’t they afraid of disappearing like the people who went there before?”

Lu Yanli sat up straight, “Disappeared? What happened?”

The driver began to tell the story in detail.

As he spoke, the bus got closer and closer to Spirit Medium Town.

*

“…Lost civilization? Recently, the archaeological team made a major discovery in the newly excavated ancient tomb…”

Chu Xiu was browsing website news. A TV was playing the news to the side. He glanced at it, didn’t pay attention, and continued to busy himself.

Speaking of which, this website was also magical. Hadn’t the officials discovered it yet?

As soon as Chu Xiu had this thought, it was quickly erased little by little, gradually fading. He frowned, noted the matter, and hesitated. He put the website’s information on a popular public forum.

The result showed that the sending failed.

Whether he used screenshots, text, or even called the police, as long as he had the thought of making this matter public, he couldn’t succeed. After repeated attempts, even his account was banned. Chu Xiu had to give up.

The TV station was still broadcasting the news.

“…Experts are trying their best to decipher the new type of writing and murals in the ancient tomb. We believe that this discovery will surely become one of the major discoveries in the archaeological world…”

Just then, An Ru called.

He finally knew the source of the bizarre cases he had been handling, but he wished he didn’t.

Did ghosts really exist in this world? And outside this world, there was another world. This undoubtedly overturned his long-held belief in science.

Chu Xiu said, “I don’t need to lie to you.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Then, An Ru said, “I also received a task.”

Chu Xiu was surprised, “How could that be? What task did you receive?”

He wasn’t surprised in his heart. After Lin Chu told him about the opportunity to enter the task, he understood that she was hinting to him how to treat An Ru.

Since he wanted to know about his son, then let him go find out himself.

Chu Xiu guessed Lin Chu’s thoughts and was amazed by her ruthlessness. But as a deal, he couldn’t say much and had to hide it.

Only in this way could he pull An Ru into the water.