Chapter 354: Black Crack

Lv Dandan stared blankly at Zhong Kui and muttered: "You are the result predicted by that dream. You are Zhong Xiaoyu fallen into darkness."

"Heh." Zhong Kui sneered. "Since you know, then I might as well tell you: I don't like others resisting my will." As she spoke, she slowed her tone, enunciating every word: "I, want, you, to answer me honestly. What information did you deliberately hide regarding Zhong Xiaoyu?"

Lv Dandan was stunned by this aura: "You're right, I've always known." When she said this, she trembled involuntarily, as if she had broken through an invisible wall in her heart. "Professor Zhong once said he embarked on the path of psychological research because both his parents were mentally ill. From a young age, he was determined to rewrite his fate through his own struggles and took curing human mental illness as his duty. You and I both know that mental illness is hereditary. And I heard a little bit that Professor Zhong's father brutally murdered his mother during a psychotic episode. He once said this caused an incurable wound in his life. It's just that Xiaoyu was too perfect; I couldn't imagine this nightmare would continue with her."

"But you saw the signs." Zhong Kui had no intention of letting her off.

"Yes, the best proof is the book she insisted on writing. Her obsession and paranoia regarding her studies had reached a pathological degree. Actually, I warned Professor Zhong, but I don't understand—someone as professional as him ignored my concerns entirely. I think it was perhaps his love for Xiaoyu that made him unable to face this cruel fact." Lv Dandan said, "Xiaoyu was his pride."

Hearing this, Qi Fei couldn't help but have that photo from the crime scene flash through his mind again. Zhong Xiaoyu's gaze was impossible to shake—brutal, cold-blooded; it wasn't an expression a human of flesh and blood should have.

A cold wind blew, and the frost-covered wild grass swayed heavily, emitting a sound similar to the waves on the Yuanxi coast.

"Truly wonderful. A demon disguised as an angel, fooling you all." Zhong Kui suddenly laughed, her voice echoing in Yueya Mountain, sounding particularly ghastly amidst the cold rustling of the grass and trees. "You all know that personalities only ever split and merge; there is no such thing as creating them out of thin air. Zhong Xiaoyu is only human, not God. If I am darkness, if I am evil, then that was something that had always been in her."

Her laughter was too sharp, startling the birds and beasts wintering nearby, and several crows flapped their wings and flew up.

Suddenly, Wu Shanqiu screamed from the side.

Everyone looked toward the sound and saw a snake slithering past her feet, followed by several more, as if they had also been startled and awakened from hibernation. They were crawling out of a fist-sized hole in the ground, which appeared to be a leftover water pipe drain from the original house, now a habitat for hibernating snakes.

It was nearing noon, and the dark clouds in the sky gradually dissipated. Sunlight shone on the ruins, and the mouth of the water pipe from which the snakes crawled out faintly reflected light.

Wu Shanqiu, who was closest, curiously went to look and suddenly said: "There's something here!" As she spoke, she put on gloves and reached in to fish it out. When she brought it out, everyone except Lv Dandan was shocked—it was a glass marble.

Perhaps because the snake had been hibernating in the pipe, the surface of the marble had been polished smooth, which was why it reflected the sunlight.

In the sunlight, Wu Shanqiu held up the glass marble with her white-gloved hand. A black crack on it, like a scar from years past, silently told of the past that had sunk into the abyss.

"In the end, we still can't avoid Xi He." Qi Fei stared at the glass marble and said.

And the moment she saw the glass marble, Zhong Kui suddenly clutched her head in pain.

It was as if the marble were a spark, detonating a bomb in her brain.

"So much blood, so much blood..." she repeated like a delirious person, tears streaming down. For a moment, it was impossible to tell if she was Zhong Kui or Zhong Xiaoyu.

She suddenly rushed up and snatched the glass marble from Wu Shanqiu's hand, holding it in her palm like a shaman holding a crystal ball, sobbing uncontrollably: "Mom, Dad, sisters, I'm sorry, it was all my willfulness that harmed you! I don't deserve to live, I don't..."

"Zhong Xiaoyu, calm down!" she shouted, the voice being Zhong Kui's. "Tell me what happened, let the guilty be punished."

The chaotic emotions from just a moment ago gradually subsided, and Zhong Kui stood there with her eyes half-open, as if possessed by a shaman.

Seeing this sudden change in emotion, Lv Dandan tried to intervene but was stopped by Jiang Tianyi, who whispered in her ear: "Trust her."

Before long, Zhong Kui began to talk to herself: "Let us return to this place ten years ago. The collapsed walls stand up again, the wild grass recedes, the garden is full of flowers, and the family has returned. You have returned to that day. Tell me what happened..."

"That was the day our whole family reunited. My sisters were on winter break, and Mom said we should all have a good meal. But I wasn't happy. Because the love I hadn't yet announced had come to a dead end. Originally, I had made all the preparations, wanting to tell them I was in love. That person was my patient, who had now become my student. I cured him, taught him, and also fell in love with him. I wanted to tell them I had found my soulmate; it was a passionate love I hadn't dared to yearn for.

However, this love was too intense—so intense it scorched the self, wanting to melt us together.

He said he wanted to possess me completely and wouldn't allow anyone to share my love.

He said he wanted me to leave Baicheng with him, to go to a place where there was no one else, to live in a place where there were only the two of us.

I couldn't do it, because my family was still here—my dad, my mom, and my sisters.

I couldn't abandon them, I couldn't watch them be sad.

I could see the disappointment in his eyes. That disappointment was like a stone thrown into a lake, sinking to the bottom instantly, leaving only ripples of sorrow.

He hid it too well. The so-called treatment had never had any effect. On the contrary, it taught him how to use deeper disguises to fool me, packaging himself as a normal person.

That day was the day I reunited with my family. My dad, my mom, and my sisters were in this sun-drenched house, laughing and talking. In the garden, the gardener was working diligently.

What an ordinary day it was.

Mom said she didn't know when the gardener had snuck into our house. The small door in the kitchen was left ajar.

This was a very safe residential district; no one cared that this gardener was different from the previous one.

He was younger, quieter, and more dangerous. He was my patient, my student, my lost lover. His name was Xi He.

He said: 'My Dr. Zhong, I have prepared a feast for you, and it is about to begin...'" ===== CHAPTER 355 =====