Chapter 324: Gunshot Suicide

Second floor of the Saint Gloria Opera House.

The chaotic voices behind him grew ever more distant; a sliver of bright, warm light streamed through the curtain’s gap, and the ordinary sunlight, at this moment, seemed to Banning utterly beautiful.

“It’s the exit!” Banning cried out, his steps accelerating in excitement, sprinting at a hundred-meter dash pace past row after row of pitch-black windows until he reached the lone windowsill bathed in sunlight.

“It’s the exit.”

A calm voice interrupted Banning’s surging joy—a soft, soothing feminine voice murmured Chinese he couldn’t understand. A pale, exquisite noblewoman stepped gracefully to the windowsill, her voluptuous, elegantly curved body bathed in warm sunlight, yet from her feet stretched a vast, monstrous shadow, hideous as a demon.

“Here it is.” Ning Zhe pulled back the curtain; blinding sunlight flooded the dark corridor. Orange blossoms and green leaves came into view—golden marigolds planted on the windowsill. Beyond the sill, a massive swimsuit advertisement towered atop the wall of the Vivian Harbor Supermarket.

Too stunned to notice the woman’s bizarre feet, Banning, overwhelmed by the long-absent sight of the human world, burst into tears, hot streams rolling down his cheeks as he trembled: “It’s the exit—thank God, it’s the exit…”

He had finally found the exit. After wandering this hellish place for so long, he had searched every entrance, side door, back door, and emergency escape route of the Saint Gloria Opera House—each time opening a door with hope, each time having that hope shattered by the solid, pitch-black void beyond.

Every door here was sealed; every window was black, as if an invisible god had uprooted the entire opera house like a potted flower and sealed it inside a closed black box—and now, after searching endlessly, he had finally found a crack in that box.

“Sorry to interrupt your moment, but you’ve seen the auntie’s face.” Ning Zhe smiled, speaking in the common European tongue: “Take one last look at the sun. You won’t get another chance.”

Thud. Banning’s corpse collapsed onto the corridor floor.

Ning Zhe stepped out onto the windowsill, the deep purple fitted dress seamlessly shifting into a brown-black male hunting outfit. This man named Banning was the third person in the opera house to find the exit. The fleeting shadows that appeared and vanished as the first two survivors passed through the windowsill had drawn Ning Zhe’s attention—this was the only gap left by Fosolos when he used his ink compass to draw the opera house as a prison.

“Unless something went wrong, Fosolos should have already left the opera house… Why hasn’t he sealed this gap yet? Is he waiting for me?”

Ning Zhe braced himself against the windowsill with Fan Daike’s hands, leaning down to gaze at the street below—empty roads, only a newly laid bright yellow police tape and barricades, a few patrol cars parked at the intersection.

Suddenly, as if noticing something, Ning Zhe stepped back and silently vanished into the darkness behind the curtain.

“Tsk.”

In a hotel across from the opera house, the man standing by the window let out a tsk, then reached behind his waist and pulled out a pistol.

“Uh, what’s going on, Mr. Milicato?” Several officers seated nearby were startled, springing up from the sofa.

“Nothing.” Fosolos chuckled, pulling a pill from his pocket with his left hand, swallowing it with red wine, then shoving the barrel of the pistol into his own mouth with his right hand.

Bang—

Before the eyes of the stunned officers, Fosolos’s body collapsed heavily; crimson blood rolled like red pearls across the waxed floor. After a moment of shock, they rushed forward in panic, carefully lifting his body. “No hope—he shot himself. The bullet shattered his brainstem…”

The reeking bloodstain made the officers exchange uneasy glances. They couldn’t fathom why Mr. Milicato, a man of wealth and power, would suddenly kill himself—but beyond confusion, they feared the fallout. The opera house had only just been sealed; now one of the few survivors, Mr. Milicato, had committed suicide. Would anyone believe it was suicide? How would they explain this to their superiors?

Amid the chaos, no one noticed a sparrow silently flying past the window.

Ning Zhe spread his wings, flying over the blocked streets, landing in the open courtyard of a residential building. In a hidden corner, he resumed his human form, pulling out his notebook to contact Xia Yubing while organizing the information in his mind.

“Fosolos was definitely hiding something—he took poison before shooting himself, clearly to prevent me from reviving him with a soul-price. He wanted to bury secrets I couldn’t learn.”

“...Secrets too dangerous for Fan Daike to know—or secrets too dangerous for ‘Ning Zhe’ to know?”

Ning Zhe opened the notebook, his thoughts racing. The answer to this question directly determined whether the events in Vivian Harbor targeted Fan Daike—or him, Ning Zhe.

Alright, alright. First, sort out what we know.

First, who is Fosolos Milicato?

He is a European noble, the young master of the Milicato family, and Fan Daike’s close friend.

“After I stole Fan Daike’s identity and left Jiuzhou for Europe, the first person to greet me upon arrival was Fosolos. The private jet he lent me to fly to Vanessa Castle? Fosolos. The invitation to attend the auction at Saint Gloria Opera House? Also Fosolos.”

“So far, every strange event I’ve encountered since leaving Jiuzhou has been tied to Fosolos, deeply or shallowly.”

!

“But Fosolos and Fan Daike have known each other for at least twenty years—they were close friends back when they were exploiting black slaves in Africa, long before I was born.”

Ning Zhe shook his head slightly—he wouldn’t turn eighteen until next month.

“Could Fosolos have seen through my identity? Could he have realized I’m not the real Fan Daike, and kept orchestrating events to uncover the truth behind his friend’s impersonation? No—that doesn’t make sense… He just killed himself right in front of me. Dead for certain.”

“Could this be like the situation in Chenyugu Prison? Could Fenwu have tracked me overseas and brainwashed Fosolos the same way he brainwashed the guard Yan Yukuan?”

“No… that doesn’t make sense either…”

One possibility after another flashed through Ning Zhe’s mind, only to be swiftly discarded—contradictory clues tangled together, impossible to untangle.

Then, four words slowly appeared on the notebook in his hand:

【I Won the Bet】

(End of Chapter)