Chapter 29#
Video#
“I was a high school classmate with your father. I dropped out of school at fifteen to be with him. I had many abortions for him, and my body was ruined.”
After Huang Yiyue spoke with difficulty, she slowly continued.
“I didn’t get pregnant for a year after marrying your father. Before I got pregnant with you, I had a serious illness. I was in a daze and couldn’t eat. I would vomit as soon as I ate. No matter how many injections or medicines I took at the hospital, it was useless. So your grandmother took me to the Yinshan Welfare Institute.”
“You probably don’t know, your grandmother was an orphan and grew up in a welfare institute.”
“Your grandmother took me to see a woman in a dark room. That woman was very tall and thin. Your grandmother begged that woman to save me. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“My condition improved after I went home, and a month later I found out I was pregnant with you.”
“I hated that good-for-nothing father of yours at that time and refused to give birth to you, but your grandmother said that my life was given by you…” Huang Yiyue almost bit her tongue when she said this, and quickly stopped. She felt that the more she said, the more unfavorable the truth was to her, so she could only change the subject and cry, “Sheng Sheng, you don’t know how much I suffered when I was pregnant with you. You were completely different from other children. When I was pregnant with you, it was like carrying a heavy block of ice. It was so cold, I felt like all my body heat was being absorbed by you.”
“You were so cold in my belly, but you were so hot when you were born. You were red all over and looked strange. Newborns usually need to be induced to cry, but no matter how the doctors and nurses stimulated you, you just wouldn’t cry. We were all so anxious, thinking you would suffocate from lack of oxygen, but you survived.”
“Sheng Sheng, it’s not that Mom didn’t love you before, it’s just that I didn’t know how to treat you. You were too fragile. From birth, you seemed to be racing against death every day. No one thought you would live to see tomorrow.”
The light green scale had completely melted, and the shell lock was slowly loosening as if its mouth had been pried open.
Ye Sheng sat in his seat. After hearing all this, his pale hand gently fiddled with the shell, and he asked Huang Yiyue in a tone devoid of any emotional fluctuation, “Are you my biological mother?”
Huang Yiyue was intimidated by his tone, shivered, and sniffed, “I have your birth certificate, and we have also done a paternity test. I am indeed your biological mother.”
Ye Sheng said, “Do you have no impression of what happened at the Yinshan Welfare Institute?”
Huang Yiyue cried and said, “No, I don’t remember anything.”
Ye Sheng said, “Okay.”
He knew he couldn’t get anything out of her. He hung up the phone and directly blocked Huang Yiyue. No matter how heartbreakingly she cried on the other end, it was useless.
If it were before, he wouldn’t have thought much about Huang Yiyue’s words, but now that he had come into contact with the fetus and the ghost children one after another, Ye Sheng no longer wanted to pursue whether Huang Yiyue was his biological mother. He now suspected… was he even human?
The pain and sharp, crazy hatred that had followed him since birth were completely beyond the scope of human research on infants.
After Ye Sheng exited the chat interface, his gaze fell on “search.”
This blood-red demon eye was also quietly looking at him.
Ye Sheng opened “search,” turned on the front camera, and took his first selfie in his life. Click, after the photo was uploaded, “search” began to spin slowly. This time it spun for a long, long time, and Ye Sheng’s phone screen suddenly began to lag.
The answer appeared on “search,” but it was a blank space—a blank space with a bloody tinge that had never been seen before.
The screen flickered crazily, like a hoarse warning! Ye Sheng felt his phone was getting hot.
But this warning disappeared very quickly. A moment later, the circle continued to spin, the刺目的 red light on the screen dissipated, and “search” changed from a distorted and chaotic state to a calm one. The search page changed again, becoming the “404 not found” that Ye Sheng usually got when he took pictures of everyday objects.
Ye Sheng stared at the English words, and his heart gradually sank. Although the final result given by “search” was normal, its previous crazy abnormality was very suspicious.
After this search, “search” seemed to have been greatly damaged. It hurriedly closed its eyes, and after the phone screen went black, the black crystal screen reflected Ye Sheng’s pale and cold face.
He put the phone aside and went to touch the shell lock on the box. This time, the lock opened with a touch and fell onto the table.
The faint golden morning light passed through the dormitory building, through the green shade of the trees, through the balcony full of clothes, and illuminated this place.
Dust seemed to be slowly floating in the light.
After Ye Sheng opened the box, he finally saw what his grandmother had left behind.
Not a letter, not a photo, not an heirloom, but… a gun.
A gun that was completely black and exquisitely made.
Ye Sheng was stunned, truly stunned.
He reached out to touch the gun. After picking it up, he confirmed that it was a handgun. Ye Sheng disassembled the gun, and there was not a single bullet in the chamber.
He was completely dumbfounded, not knowing why his grandmother would leave him a gun.
Guns are banned in China. Why would an old woman in a rural area of Yinshan have something that looked like a top-of-the-line military weapon?!
There was also a note in the box, pressed under the gun. Ye Sheng picked up the note, and the handwriting on it was his grandmother’s. She had a low level of education and didn’t use a pen often, so her writing was like a beginner’s, with each stroke being particularly serious.
“Sheng Sheng, if possible, I hope you never open this box, but you have the right to know the truth.”
Grandma said.
“The first time I saw you, you were wrapped in a bloody caul, only the size of a bead. The person who brought you asked me to raise you, saying that it would be best for you to be born, live, and die in Yinshan, and never go out. But I think your life should be in your own hands.”
“I’m sorry, although Grandma’s initial purpose in accepting you was to save your mother, after you were born, Grandma really wanted you to grow up happily and safely.”
“If you are very satisfied with your current life, then there is no need to turn this paper over. You were born in Yinshan Ren’ai Hospital, and this is a new beginning for your life. I watched you grow up, from toddling to babbling. Sheng Sheng, you can be like all ordinary people, have an excellent education, a stable job, a gentle wife, and a lovely child.”
“If you listen to Grandma, put things down, close the box, and then… throw it away.”
Ye Sheng looked at these words, his lips tightly pursed, his eyes lowered, and he didn’t speak for a long time.
An excellent education, a stable job, this coincided with his life plan after leaving Yinshan in a certain sense. He longed for stability, for normalcy. He copied the meaning of other people’s lives, as if he were a normal person himself.
But he knew he was not.
The first time he saw this box, he had an unprecedented desire and impulse to open it.
This desire was unprecedented and overwhelming, making him throw all his plans to the back of his mind and patiently deal with Huang Yiyue.
—Would he really be happy if he studied and grew up step by step like an ordinary person? What was happiness to him?
If it was a heartfelt joy, the only time he had experienced it in his seventeen years of life was on the night the train arrived at the station. That feeling of surviving a disaster, tired but wanting to laugh, he had it when he leaned against the wall with a mouthful of blood and met Ning Weichen’s eyes.
Ye Sheng sat on the chair in the university dormitory, holding the piece of paper in his hand, and was in a daze for a long time. He still didn’t want his life to derail. Derailment would make him feel irritable and uneasy. But holding this note, he also knew that he couldn’t ignore all the mysteries and start a “new life.”
Ye Sheng closed his eyes and opened them again, and turned the paper over.
Perhaps this was the front, and this paper originally only had this one line of words.
It was also a woman’s handwriting, extremely beautiful but also extremely cold, a line of English like a signature.
“mercy of god.”
*
Ye Sheng went into the bathroom and took a shower. After coming out, he changed into a simple and comfortable black T-shirt and long pants. His mind was in a mess, messed up by the gun and those words.
He felt that he was asking for trouble.
Grandma was right. He was born in Yinshan Ren’ai Hospital. His birth certificate was complete, and his social relations were complete. No one could find anything wrong with him!
Even if he wanted to investigate his own background, what could he find out from a single phrase “mercy of god”?
Mercy of god. The mercy of God? What did this woman want to say by leaving this sentence? To tell him that his “new life” was the mercy of God?
Ye Sheng took a deep breath, put the gun in the box, and then put the box in the cabinet.
Thud.
When he closed the cabinet door, Ye Sheng was suddenly stunned…
He thought of Ning Weichen. He thought of Ning Weichen’s non-existent “past and present lives.” Ning Weichen said he knew him.
Almost in an instant, Ye Sheng rushed out the door with his phone. He never expected that he would leave the Rose Empire Hotel early in the morning, and now he had to rush back in a hurry. But this time, Ye Sheng chose to take the bus.
He didn’t have enough money. A taxi ride cost him a day’s wages, which he couldn’t afford.
After Ye Sheng arrived at the Rose Empire Hotel, he directly reported Ning Weichen’s name to the front desk. Immediately, someone with a smiling face took him to the top floor. The door was opened by Butler Li. There seemed to be quite a few people inside. Ye Sheng was stunned, vaguely feeling that he had come at the wrong time.
But after a moment of surprise, Butler Li immediately showed a kind and decent smile, “Mr. Ye, please come in.”
Ye Sheng: “…”
When Ye Sheng went in, Ning Weichen was sitting at the long table enjoying breakfast.
Opposite him stood a group of people from the Non-Natural Bureau, all of whom Ye Sheng knew: Director Cheng, Xu Qing, Cheng Fa, and the baby-faced one.
On the long white table were freshly delivered roses still wet with dew.
Ning Weichen’s expression was cold. He slowly and elegantly cut the food on his plate with a knife. When he saw Ye Sheng walk in, he raised an eyebrow and immediately showed a brilliant smile.
“Why are you back? Have you had breakfast?”
Ye Sheng ignored the group of people from the Non-Natural Bureau, walked over quickly, pulled out a chair next to him, sat down, and said, “I came to ask you something.”
“Oh.” Ning Weichen put down his knife and fork, crossed his fingers, turned his head, his peach blossom eyes full of deep affection and tenderness, and said with a light laugh, “I also want to chat with you alone, but I may have something to deal with now.”
Ye Sheng: “It’s okay. You continue.”
“…” Cheng Ze and the others looked at Ye Sheng with extremely complicated expressions.
Ning Weichen interrupted her gaze at Ye Sheng, hooked his lips and said, “Director Cheng, continue.”
What Ning Weichen said at the Qin family yesterday, basically everyone in the Non-Natural Bureau knew overnight. Cheng Ze’s mood was indescribable now. She had a good impression of Ye Sheng. Thinking that such a fragile, tenacious, kind, and simple young man was now in Ning Weichen’s hands, she felt sad.
Ning Weichen would not stay in Huaicheng for too long. This was the attitude he had shown from the beginning. This young master probably just had a fleeting relationship with Ye Sheng and was just playing around.
She secretly hated that Ning Weichen had countless pursuers, why did he have to persecute an innocent person?
But in front of Ning Weichen, she couldn’t say these things to Ye Sheng.
Cheng Ze shook her head, quickly threw away her thoughts, and began to talk about yesterday’s events.
“After we received the news from Senior Brother Luo, we quickly rushed to the Qin family’s main residence and investigated that western-style building.”
“The ghost children in the western-style building have been dealt with. We completely destroyed that building and also rescued two men.”
“After questioning, the Taoist priest was indeed hired by Qin Wenrui himself, and the two deceased wives also died because he forced them to take medicine. Now we have handed over Qin Wenrui and the relevant personnel of the Qin family to the Huaicheng police.”
“As for the A-level anomaly that Senior Brother Luo found in the western-style building, the third wife who was tied to the bed, we have not tracked any news about her. Cheng’en Gynecological Hospital has been closed for many years, and a new shopping mall has been built on the original site and the surrounding area. We reported to the headquarters and asked Tianshu to conduct a detailed investigation in that area, but no spiritual value was found.”
“Qin Wenrui’s third wife died on the sickbed, and it is estimated that the A-level anomaly also died with her.”
Cheng Ze thought for a moment and continued, “The Taoist priest who proposed the chongxi to Qin Wenrui was a fraud, but the contact information of the person who fed his two wives medicine forty years ago is all gone. We only know that the person’s household registration is in the southwest. The southwest is remote and backward, and they believe in ghosts and gods. The General Bureau has already sent people to investigate.”
“That’s the case with the Qin family. Qin Wenrui was infertile but was anxious to have children. He resorted to superstitious practices and forced his wife to drink medicine she shouldn’t have, which not only led to the death of two wives on the operating table one after another, but also attracted a bunch of ghost children in the western-style building.”
Ning Weichen nodded and said with a smile, “Thank you for your hard work.”
Cheng Ze twitched the corner of her mouth and said with a forced smile, “Not at all, this is what we should do. I came to visit this time, besides telling you the results of the investigation of the Qin family yesterday, I also wanted to ask. Young Master Ning, if you and this little friend really have a child, what is the attitude of the Ning family?”
The “little friend” Ye Sheng who was mentioned: “…”
Ning Weichen smiled ambiguously when he heard this question, “Actually, my parents’ attitude is not important. What’s important is the attitude of this little friend.” He used Cheng Ze’s address to call Ye Sheng without any reservation, turned his head, and blinked his peach blossom eyes, “Little friend, what is your attitude towards our child?”
Ye Sheng was really disgusted by him, but all the eyes of the Non-Natural Bureau were on him.
Ye Sheng said coldly without thinking, “Get rid of it.”
Cheng Ze: “…”
The group from the Non-Natural Bureau: “…”
Ning Weichen sighed as expected, turned his head, and said with a helpless smile, “See, thank you for your concern about my private affairs. But I have already contacted Andrew, and he will come to Huaicheng soon to take care of the child before I leave.”
Cheng Ze was angry at his scumbag behavior but didn’t dare to say anything. But on second thought, it was best for Ye Sheng not to get involved with the Ning family.
At this time, Butler Li stood up appropriately and asked with a smile, “Director Cheng, have you finished speaking?”
He was already planning to see the guests off.
Cheng Ze didn’t want to stay here any longer, but just as she stood up, her phone suddenly rang.
Cheng Ze was stunned. The caller was her mentor.
“Sorry, I have to take this call.”
Cheng Ze stood up and walked far away from the crowd.
She answered the phone at the end of the corridor, and as soon as she answered, it was her mentor’s anxious voice.
“Quick! Cheng Ze! Let Yuan Chun receive the message!”
Yuan Chun was the baby-faced young man, the main person in the Huaicheng Non-Natural Bureau who dealt with network anomalies. Cheng Ze was stunned and immediately turned back, “Yuan Chun, turn on the computer! Connect to the General Bureau!”
Yuan Chun always carried a computer with him wherever he went. He was stunned when he heard the director’s words, “Yes.” He tapped on the keyboard, and the computer screen quickly turned black. A window popped up, and a video was sent from the General Bureau.
His computer had a screen projection function. Yuan Chun frowned and pressed the enter key.
Suddenly, everyone saw the content of the video.
Everyone looked up.
The video took place in the 1444 carriage of the Yinshan train.
Ye Sheng almost lost his composure when he saw it.
On the other hand, Ning Weichen raised an eyebrow with interest.
The picture was dark and strange, with blood and corpses on the ground and dark green moss growing. The train undulated through the mountains and fields, and the beast-like outline was looming. The moonlight shone coldly into the long-abandoned toilet.
In the video, Ning Weichen took a step forward, forcing Ye Sheng against the wall. His fingers hooked Ye Sheng’s tongue and slowly stirred in his mouth. He leaned down and said something, his posture ambiguous and dangerous. And Ye Sheng was pressed against the wall, panting slightly, his expression cold and his lips tightly pursed. His raised neck seemed so fragile that it would break with a single touch. No one could see his expression clearly in the changing light and shadow.
Finally, Ning Weichen curved his lips, and with no smile in his eyes, he said something in Ye Sheng’s ear and then mercilessly withdrew his hand.
The ten-second video came to an abrupt end.
Cheng Ze stared blankly at the video, and her mentor’s anxious roar came from her ear.
The mentor said.
“Xiao Ze, this is something Turing found when he infiltrated the monster forum not long ago.”
“A video from the forbidden zone of the gods! It spans seven sections! Now the two people in the video are wanted by the entire anomaly empire!”