Chapter 103: Art Film

Qi Fei looked at the suite and said: "If not, I'll just sleep outside."

Zhong Kui, however, smiled: "No need, come." As she said this, she signaled Qi Fei to walk into the room.

"Zhong Kui, I hope that when we work, we are just colleagues. I'm sorry, this is a principle I must insist on..." He kept his head down and talked there alone.

"What are you talking about?" Zhong Kui held a USB flash drive and looked at Qi Fei expressionlessly. "I'm letting you come in to watch the video material I found together to look for clues."

Qi Fei saw this posture and suddenly realized he had misunderstood, hurriedly stuttering: "Ah, that's what I meant too!"

Zhong Kui saw through him at a glance: "I have the level of a professional psychologist, don't try to lie in front of me."

"When Lan Die first found Zhong Xiaoyu, the dream she described was far more detailed than it is now. Although Zhong Xiaoyu guided her out of the psychological haze, psychological illnesses are like physical illnesses; they lurk, they recur, and some are terminal. The reason Zhong Xiaoyu would give those yellow iris origami to patients was mainly so that these patients she handled could find her when they recurred because of this mark."

"So Lan Die committed suicide, right?" Qi Fei asked. "However, I can't think of how she managed to appear in two places at the same time for the time being. After all, Lian Hu and the Yun Shen Secret Realm are too far apart; it's almost impossible for her to go back and forth in such a short time."

Zhong Kui poured a glass of red wine and handed it to Qi Fei: "No rush, watch the show first."

Qi Fei didn't know what medicine Zhong Kui was selling in her gourd. The screen lit up, and the dead Lan Die appeared vividly before his eyes.

This was a master tape of the sequel to *Divine Strategy of the Tang Dynasty*, the clip Lan Die filmed on the night Hong Mei died.

The more Qi Fei watched, the more his brows furrowed, muttering: "Could it be... is the so-called female ghost Lan Die?"

"And Hong Mei, they are the female ghosts of the villa, two female ghosts..." Zhong Kui looked at the time. "The long night is long, we have enough time to watch the movie. Let's do this, let's watch an art film." As she said this, Zhong Kui switched the video file. When the first frame of the movie appeared, Qi Fei couldn't help but make a sound immediately: "This is?!"

I saw the opening of the movie was a limited edition poster for the movie's release. On the poster, an actress's face was designed in a spiral shape, just like a peeled apple skin, just like Hong Mei's peeled-off face.

This made Qi Fei, who hadn't been interested at first, sit up straight immediately: "This is?!"

"The answer you want." Zhong Kui's voice was cold and direct, with that condescending sense of horror and the arrogance of mastering the truth. "I saw that scene. This grand sense of ritual, coupled with the fact that the deceased was an actress, is a typical mirror personality replacement mechanism. The murderer is not only eliminating Hong Mei's life but also using her death to complete their own ultimate interpretation of a certain bridge. If you want to seriously analyze the scene of Hong Mei's death, it's very complicated. I think those roses Huang Daqiu gave Hong Mei triggered the movie imagery in the murderer's mind, and what she was determined to execute was this movie, David Lynch's *Mulholland Drive*."

"Hm? Is that the foreign director who just passed away?" Qi Fei remembered. If it weren't for the news about this director's death he read recently, he, a police academy student, really wouldn't have had the time to watch art films.

"The movie is quite obscure, and everyone has their own interpretation. However, there is a relatively recognized interpretation. Through a hazy dream, this movie actually tells the story of an actress seeking dreams in Hollywood who kills another actress who betrayed her fame. Two actresses, one famous, one failed. The failed actress fantasizes in her dream that she has replaced the other's position.

Back then, when Lan Die found Zhong Xiaoyu, she repeatedly mentioned this movie. Zhong Xiaoyu believed that Lan Die, like the character in the movie, had developed a strong projection emotion because in the movie, the actress who was frustrated in reality created an idealized incarnation named Betty in her dream. She was innocent, talented, sought after, and had the highlight moments of her life through a perfect audition. Lan Die would repeatedly mention the bridge and lines in this movie during psychological counseling and only improved after a period of corrective therapy," Zhong Kui said.

"You didn't say this detail when we met Lan Die on set before." Qi Fei's attention fell on Zhong Kui. "You said you didn't remember the medical records of Zhong Xiaoyu's patients."

Zhong Kui didn't like Qi Fei's questioning and raised an eyebrow: "I naturally have my ways, you don't need to worry about it."

"You didn't just binge-watch when you went back to Zizai Shan, did you?"

Zhong Kui pointed to the clock on the wall: "We have plenty of time, but not that much. If you want to take a nap before dawn, I advise you to focus on the case first."

Qi Fei knew that Zhong Kui wouldn't say what she didn't want to say, even if a knife were held to her neck, so he had to give up.

"I know you learned from the producer Hua Deping about the vague sentence Lan Die sent him: 'I have an audition in this city, this might be my major breakthrough.'" Zhong Kui said, dragging the movie's progress bar.

As the play button was pressed, on the screen, the blonde girl named Betty, in the dreamy soft light, said this line full of expectation.

"According to the real timeline, when Lan Die sent this message, it wasn't a prophecy, but rather Hong Mei had already been killed by her. She had always known that Liu Yi wanted her to play Xian Yao. Once Hong Mei died, the emergency plan was only to change the plot and let her appear in the show as the reborn Xian Yao. The thing she had always longed for, the dream of becoming the lead, was finally about to be realized.

The black photos created by Hua Deping had helped her through countless nights. In the days without Zhong Xiaoyu's help, she survived in her own way, in a darker way, and finally walked toward destruction. Following the darkness is always much easier than walking toward the light. But the world is so fair that the power brought by darkness must come at the cost of burning everything down. Unfortunately, Lan Die didn't discover this earlier."

Accompanied by Zhong Kui's voice, Qi Fei looked at the residual snow appearing and disappearing outside the window, remembering the first time he came to this place, it was also such a cold and gloomy weather: "No wonder the indoor green plants I saw at that time were withered. As the Yun Shen Secret Realm that prides itself on professional service, there shouldn't be such a mistake..." ===== CHAPTER 104 =====