Chapter 161: 158. The Truth Behind Zheng Yu

158. The Truth Behind Zheng Yu's Madness (Combined)

Before Chen Xiaolin could even reflect on whether she had been improper toward Lin Laoban, she had already been led out of the shop by Li Duojin, her consciousness returning to reality.

Her situation in reality remained exceptionally dire; her body was still drifting uncontrollably in the turbulent current, her eyes struggling to open. Due to oxygen deprivation, her brain was muddled and finding it hard to think, but what she could clearly feel was that her hand was tightly gripping a flexible straw.

Regardless of what it was, or whether it was truly as miraculous as Lin Laoban had claimed, her intense desire to survive kept her from overthinking; she only wanted to use all her strength to hold onto everything.

Only those in the same situation as her would know that people in a true desperate plight do not care about right or wrong; as long as they can live, people will stop at nothing.

Where there is a thought, there will be an echo.

When Chen Xiaolin woke up again, she found herself lying in a hospital bed at the Second Hospital of Magic City. Outside the window, the sun was bright, and the sunlight spilled onto her quilt and the skin of her arms, dispelling the extreme cold brought by the nightmare from the outside in.

"My head hurts so much." Chen Xiaolin rubbed her swollen temples. There was still a sense of blockage in her nasal cavity from choking on water, and she couldn't help but cover her mouth and cough a few times. Feeling some foreign objects coughed up from her throat, she moved her hand away to check, only to discover they were some unknown water weeds and fine shards of ice, and she instantly stiffened.

Thinking of the bizarre and terrifying truth discovered while exploring Jinma Mountain, Chen Xiaolin felt that chilling horror once again, like swarms of botfly larvae parasitizing her entire body—not painful, but you could perceive them infiltrating everywhere, burrowing deeper and deeper into your body, devouring your sanity and your fragile life.

She hugged herself in fear, able only to use instinctive self-protective movements to comfort herself; the deep, bone-chilling cold within her heart that even the sunlight could not take away was a nightmare she would never forget for the rest of her life.

At this moment, Chen Xiaolin felt something strange about her left hand. It was only when she used her left hand that she felt a sharp, aching soreness; her five fingers were clenched into a tight fist, her nails digging into her flesh, and her knuckles were showing signs of cracking. It seemed she had tried her absolute best to grasp something while she was unconscious.

Chen Xiaolin looked at her left hand and finally noticed a curled straw being tightly gripped in her palm. Someone had treated it like a knot-tying object, helping her weave it into a ring and placing it on her hand. This was the very thing she had refused to let go of even while unconscious.

Using all her strength, she pried open her left fingers, which felt as if she were forcibly prying open her own teeth. A sharp pain and soreness flooded her brain, almost causing Chen Xiaolin to pass out again.

She had not forgotten her experience in the Forest Cabin. Chen Xiaolin looked at the straw in her hand, believing that Lin Laoban's "Life-Saving Straw" had taken effect, allowing her to survive after falling into the abyss and being swept away by the underground river.

"By the way, where is Li Duojin?" Chen Xiaolin thought of the young master who had accompanied her. The other party had been quite attentive to her along the way, so she naturally felt grateful and had developed a good impression of him. She could not bear for Li Duojin to meet with an accident and hoped that the Life-Saving Straw could work for him too.

Consequently, Chen Xiaolin called out to the nurse outside the ward and pressed the help button installed on the headboard.

However, to Chen Xiaolin's surprise, she did not wait for a nurse in white clothes and socks, but instead waited for a group of people dressed in black. They pushed open her ward door, but in the end, only a short-haired woman who appeared to be the leader walked into the room.

Upon first seeing the short-haired woman, Chen Xiaolin was initially startled by the huge, ugly scar on her face, then deeply amazed by her uninjured, pretty profile, followed by an endless sense of pity for this incomplete beauty.

Chen Xiaolin's gaze caught the text and symbols on the uniforms of the group of black-clad people, guessing that the woman before her came from the Xuanmi Group of the Shenzhou Region.

Since the Night of Calamity in Cuizhu City two years ago, the Xuanmi Group no longer existed merely as urban legends circulating in limited discussion spaces. They had truly appeared in the public eye and were genuinely engaged in handling those terrifying, abnormal supernatural events—and those abnormal events were often even more terrifying and bizarre than people imagined.

"We are all very happy to see you wake up safely, Ms. Chen." Yu Lianyun walked in front of Chen Xiaolin, sat down on the chair in front of the hospital bed, reached out a hand toward her, and smiled, "I hope my face didn't scare you. My name is Yu Lianyun, from the Xuanmi Group."

"Hello, Ms. Yu." Chen Xiaolin did not doubt her. After seeing Yu Lianyun and her group appear, she no longer felt any confusion or surprise about why she was able to stay in a luxurious single ward, or why there were numerous undisguised surveillance facilities inside the room.

Subsequently, without any hesitation, Chen Xiaolin honestly confessed everything she and Li Duojin had encountered while exploring Jinma Mountain.

Yu Lianyun listened patiently to Chen Xiaolin's account, then smiled and took a sealed small plastic bag from her pocket. Inside was a Data Storage Card that made Chen Xiaolin's pupils shrink. She said, "Thank you for your support and cooperation, but actually, you didn't need to report these to me. We have already recorded everything regarding your and Investigator Li's experiences on Jinma Mountain through the hidden camera you kept in your backpack."

"Ms. Chen is indeed a rising star among journalists in Magic City, with great potential and ability."

Chen Xiaolin was dumbfounded and stammered, "You flatter me." Internally, however, she felt bitter; her appearance and attire were actually very deceptive compared to other journalists.

As a journalist, she almost never carried a shoulder bag, but a backpack. As everyone knew, shoulder bags were easy for storing cameras, but her backpack was almost comparable to the high-tech spy equipment in movies. The buttons on the straps of her backpack were actually the lenses of hidden cameras. She could lower the interviewee's guard through her simple appearance, making it easier to obtain information that was difficult to get through interviews.

The reason the news section she was responsible for had so much material was often because she had "plucked" it using such clever tricks.

This high-tech backpack was custom-made by someone she had specifically sought out, costing her quite a bit of money, and clearly, she had already successfully recouped her investment.

It was just that Chen Xiaolin hadn't expected that a tool that had always been successful would still show flaws in front of professionals.

Helpless, Chen Xiaolin could only concede and laugh dryly, "Since you already knew, Ms. Yu, why did you still come to see me?"

"Regarding the matters of Jinma Mountain, we have already sent people to conduct further investigation and handling, but I still want to know some other things from you—some secrets you didn't mention to Li Duojin." Yu Lianyun put the evidence back into the inner pocket of her clothes as she spoke.

Hearing Yu Lianyun's words, Chen Xiaolin realized that the people from the Xuanmi Group had already "interrogated" Li Duojin. Fortunately, Li Duojin was fine, but she felt a sudden, uncomfortable sensation of being backstabbed by him.

Chen Xiaolin curled her lips and smiled with a bit of self-mockery, saying, "What other secrets could I possibly have?"

"Then I will be direct. I think you should know the true cause of Zheng Yu's wife's death, right?" Yu Lianyun asked seriously.

"…Does knowing this have any meaning?"

"It does. At least it allows me to understand a catalyst for Zheng Yu's madness. On the contrary, for you, at this point, hiding it further has no meaning." Yu Lianyun's attitude was very firm, and her earnest gaze made Chen Xiaolin unable to help but back down, not daring to look her in the eye, as if she could feel a form of invisible, judgmental power.

Chen Xiaolin pursed her lips, and the memories in her mind began to unfold…

"Dad must feel very guilty about Mom's situation."

On that day, when discussing the topic of Zheng Yu's life with Zheng Xiaopeng, just when Yu Lianyun thought the topic should end there, Zheng Xiaopeng suddenly said sadly.

"Guilty?" Chen Xiaolin was a journalist and was always unusually sensitive to certain information. Precisely because she had seen too much of the warmth and coldness of the world and the various dark sides of society like "fatherly kindness and filial piety," she immediately formed a subtle imagination about what might have happened between Zheng Yu and his wife.

And Zheng Xiaopeng did not disappoint Chen Xiaolin's conjecture. She only heard Zheng Xiaopeng say dejectedly, "Mom had a very serious illness before she died. The doctor said to let Mom avoid contact with sunlight as much as possible, so Dad moved Mom's bedroom to the attic at home. It was dark there, and even during the day, no light could penetrate it."

"Mom struggled hard against the illness every day, and Dad had to take care of Mom and Xiaopeng while working, which was also very hard. To keep Dad and Mom from worrying, Xiaopeng studied very hard every day and tried very hard to make herself happy."

"But that day, Mom still died. But I know, you know. It was because Mom suddenly had an attack that day, and the medicine placed in the attic just happened to run out, so the weak Mom fell on the floor while trying to go downstairs to get medicine. And Dad was standing outside the door with Mom's medicine at that time. He didn't go in; he waited until long after there was no sound from Mom in the room before he pushed the door open."

"Dad thought I didn't know, but actually, I got home from school very early that day because it was Dad's birthday. I had bought a birthday present for Dad and wanted to celebrate with Mom for Dad early… Ever since Mom died, Dad has been very self-blaming and sad every day. The articles he writes unconsciously use the experiences he had with Mom, and he has nightmares every day, dreaming of Mom from time to time."

"Dad is so pitiful. Dad doesn't know that Mom has actually always been in the attic, watching him through the chiseled cracks, whether she was alive or after she went to Heaven…"

As she spoke, Zheng Xiaopeng turned her sad eyes toward Chen Xiaolin. Looking directly into the little girl's eyes, she noticed the deep darkness and distortion hidden beneath the girl's sadness.

"Hey, Big Sister Xiaolin, is it a very great thing to let the people you like die when they are in great pain?" Zheng Xiaopeng opened those watery eyes, her black pupils like black swamps, with only one hand of her soul exposed above that swamp.

After hearing that heavy truth, Chen Xiaolin's mind was in chaos. She didn't know how to answer for a moment, and in the end, she could only say weakly: "I… I think it's wrong…"

…

"So that's how it is. What a sad story. In that case, we can almost fully understand the truth behind Zheng Yu's madness." Yu Lianyun sighed softly, her eyes quickly returning to rationality. "Now, let's re-examine our investigation results on Zheng Yu."

"Zheng Yu, in order not to let his cancer-stricken wife continue to suffer, used an extreme method to end her life, but he had been suffering under the shadow and pain ever since. So he began to conduct some unrealistic research. He studied the darkness hidden on the back of historical texts, searching for a 'Resurrection Method' from those dark, blasphemous knowledge."

"However, this was not an easy task. Until one day, he suddenly received a mysterious email. That email contained no text, only an attached image, which was exactly the remaining part of the tattered Ye Gong Poetry Painting that he had framed and hung on the stairwell wall."

"After completing the content of the poetry painting, Zheng Yu was pleasantly surprised to find that the information contained in the poetry painting was exactly what he had been desperately searching for."

"I saw the full poem under the sinkhole on Jinma Mountain, but I really don't know what the story behind it is," Chen Xiaolin asked curiously.

"Our Xuanmi Group has collected a large number of forbidden books from the Shenzhou Region, and naturally, there are many of Ye Gong's books. From the works left behind by Ye Gong, we discovered another experience of an abnormal event involving him. During his travels after being demoted, he had been to the ancient Magic City region. At that time, this place was just a small village, and it happened to be winter when he arrived."

"One night, snow fell continuously, and several children in the village had gone to play on the nearby mountain when the sun was bright during the day, but the children who went out to play did not return. So the people in the village organized an emergency search, and Ye Gong was also pulled along to go up the mountain to look for people."

"As a result, they discovered that among the adults who went out to search, some did not return after going up the mountain. The villagers were quite familiar with this mountain; they could walk out of it with their eyes closed. For such a situation to occur was extremely bizarre. So, after several days of searching, they finally found a cave on the mountain. After going down and searching, they really managed to find the missing people."

"It was just a pity that those missing persons were all dead. Their corpses lay before a skeleton that was completely empty but possessed magical power. Afterward, those who came down into the cave to search for the missing persons began to contend with that skeleton. Many terrible things happened during the process, and the final situation was tragic. Only a few, including Ye Gong, returned to the village."

"To warn future generations not to step into this place easily, Ye Gong erected a stone tablet on his way back, and he intended to write a poem and paint a picture after returning. But just as he finished the poetry painting, Ye Gong realized that he seemed to have been induced and bewitched. In fact, this kind of thing should not have been spread at all, so he sealed the cave on that mountain and tore up the painting and threw it away."

It is a pity that Ye Gong did not expect that his paintings should actually have been burned, but instead, they were pieced together by us, his descendants. What he expected even less was that, due to the influence of the incident at Liuhua Port two months ago, crustal movements were triggered in the East Sea area of the Shenzhou Region, causing the cave entrance that Ye Gong had sealed off back then to open again, and allowing his descendants to find it.