Live Action Murder Mystery

Chapter 91.2

Xiao Wang, Xiao Dou, and Xiao Luo were orphans who were adopted by a Taoist Priest, and they practiced Taoism together at Baiyun Taoist Temple.

The three girls had a good relationship with each other, and they promised to be good friends for life.

Eighteen years ago. They were around the ages of eight and nine.

Once, a pair of husband and wife went to Baiyun Taoist Temple to kneel and worship various gods in the Taoist religion.

Between the marital couple, there were issues with the wife’s body and they could not have children, but both of them genuinely love children. Hence, they arrived at the Taoist Temple for the sake of asking for a child.

As the couple stayed in the Taoist Temple for a period of time, they heard that the Taoist Priest had adopted three young Taoist nuns, and all of them were orphans.

The couple had a brief discussion about adopting one of the Taoist nuns and raising her as their daughter.

After they chose Xiao Dou, they went to talk to the Taoist priest about this matter alone.

Taoist Priest Qian respected the girls’ opinions greatly. On that day, he went to Xiao Dou and told her that someone wanted to adopt her and asked if she was willing.

Since the three little Taoist nuns ate and stayed together, Xiao Dou told Xiao Luo and Xiao Wang about this incident that night.

Xiao Luo asked Xiao Dou: “What do you think about this?”

Xiao Dou said: “That pair of husband and wife appear to be quite well-off. The chocolates and sweets that gave us are things we have never eaten before. Honestly speaking, I am slightly tempted to go. And after I leave, I’ll come back frequently to see both of you and bring you sweets?”

Xiao Dou did not expect that Xiao Wang would start crying out loud once she heard of this matter.

Once Xiao Wang cried, Xiao Luo started crying too.

Xiao Wang hugged Xiao Dou as she sobbed incessantly: “Didn’t we promise that we, the three sisters, would stay together for the rest of our lives? You two are my only good friends, please don’t leave, alright?”

All things considered, Xiao Luo was quite calm but Xiao Wang could not bear to part with Xiao Dou, so she directly cried herself into a faint that night.

However, no one could have expected that a ghost would attack the Taoist temple on the second night.

— That night, accompanying the toll of bells, a female ghost in a red dress charged into the Taoist temple.

Bells were hung on both of her legs and navel, she possessed all kinds of amorous feelings.

Additionally, because she was wearing clothes that was exposing her navel, half of her tattoo on her lower back could be seen— It was a bird-like animal which looked extremely charming and it complimented the owner quite well.

That ghost barged into the three girls’ room, strangled Xiao Dou to death, and even took away her corpse. Before she left, she even uttered these words: “This girl looks rather tasty. She will be my dinner for tonight. An insignificant Baiyun Temple; how could you possibly withstand me?”

At this juncture, Gu Liang and Yang Ye were sitting on the sofa in the lobby as they listened to Xiao Luo &#k2014; who was also the present Girlfriend Jia &#k2014; recount her story.

Girlfriend Jia said: “Afterwards, our shifu, who is also Taoist Priest Qian, chose to send us to school. I didn’t attend the same university as Xiao Wang, and the frequency of our correspondence gradually lessened. It was mainly because our principles were slightly incompatible, and we didn’t work together.

“Owing to the incident that occurred in my childhood, I was terribly afraid of ghosts. I just wanted to be like a normal girl and blend into the city life, never returning to another Taoist Temple again, to say nothing of catching ghosts.

“But Xiao Dou started having persistent thoughts because of the same incident; she swore to become a powerful master in catching ghosts and she had to avenge Xiao Dou.

“On the other hand, I… slowly fell in love with the ostentatious life after my graduation. Because I knew how to divine fortunes, while being quite accurate at it too, I was well-received among numerous rich second-generations, and they would always consult me before they speculated in stocks. I went gambling with them too, but there was one instance where I calculated wrongly and lost the gamble, thus incurring a tremendous debt. And one of the debtors was Tourist Jia.

“Afterwards, it’s the story I share with Tourist Jia.

“He heard that I came out from Baiyun Taoist Temple and knew how to catch ghosts, so he asked me to follow him to Yellow Springs Inn.

“It was only after I arrived that I realised that the Proprietress Ling here, was the ghost who killed my sister Xiao Dou eighteen years ago.

“Furthermore, the Xiao Wang from that year, was actually here too, and she had changed her name to Recluse Wang.

“Recluse Wang and I didn’t agree to meet here; it was sheer coincidence that we bumped into each other here.”

Once Gu Liang heard that, he gazed at Recluse Wang, “But you’re no longer human, You’re a ghost too, right?”

Recluse Wang went silent for a long moment before she finally answered: “Yes, I’m a ghost as well. I’m already dead. By virtue of my lingering attachment, I wasn’t willing to enter the cycle of reincarnation so I became a wild ghost on the mortal realm. My lingering attachment is that I have to find the murderer who killed Xiao Dou, and avenge her.”

At this moment, Li Xiao Yu, who had been leaning against the nearby checkout counter as she was reading the “wishes”, walked over with the Proprietress Ling’s book in hand.

Naturally, she had overhead the entire conversation that ensued.

Currently, she had the book flipped to the third page and she allowed everyone to read the contents on the page.

“While I was wandering around Baiyun Mountain idly, I bumped into a little girl who looked extremely worried. I asked the little girl what she was worrying about, and she said that she wanted a rich couple to adopt her but she did not know how to bring up the matter to her fellow companions. Her little companions were too upset, which made her feel like making her choice was betraying their friendship.

“Although she could bear to part with her little companions, she had lived through too many austere days in the Taoist Temple. She wanted to eat chocolates everyday, and buy all sorts of pretty dresses.

“She said that she genuinely wanted to make a wish— Where she could be adopted without making it seem like she had betrayed their friendship.

“In response, I said that this is easy to accomplish; I just have to pretend to be a ghost and make her little companions assume that she was already dead.

“Haha, I am a ghost through and through, but I deceived the little girl by saying that I was a Taoist immortal.

“In the end, she still was a silly little girl with meagre cultivation and she was easily deceived, believing that I was truly a Taoist immortal.

“Alright, this can be considered as the third wish that I actualised for humans. I need to continue working hard!”

Furthermore, there was a note pasted on the side of this page. “Woah, after 12 long years, I actually heard a piece of news pertaining to Xiao Dou, that little Taoist nun. She followed her adopted parents overseas, and she is an incredibly famous pianist right now. Perhaps I will have a chance to listen to her playing the piano in the future.”

Once Li Xiao Yu spoke to this point, it was slightly difficult for the people listening to this story to not become speechless.

The player portraying Recluse Wang also remained dumbfounded for a long time. Evidently, in a game which was becoming increasingly immersive, she had sunk deeply into her act, which meant that she had connected with it emotionally.

She had been driven by the lingering notion that she had to avenge Xiao Dou for the past ten years. And even in her death, she did not abandon this thought; in spite of having turned into a ghost, she still wanted to kill the other ghost— Proprietress Ling.

But from beginning to end, Xiao Dou was never dead.

In these eighteen years, everything had been a sham.

However, who could she blame?

When Xiao Dou’s actions were carefully contemplated, it could not be denied that she was not at fault.

That rich couple could afford to give her a good education and raise her into a pianist, and perhaps those days of luxury were frankly better than having to live out her entire life in an austere Taoist temple.

Since that was the case, should she blame herself then?

Blame herself for being too dependent on her friend, such that her friend had to fabricate a reason and lie to her so that she could leave?

Could it be that having heartfelt emotions for a friend was wrong?

Recluse Wang felt exceedingly upset.

At the side, Li Xiao Yu’s eyes were slightly wet as well.

While the ladies were being upset, Gu Liang, who was focused on the case itself, looked towards Recluse Wang and questioned her apathetically: “I have a few questions I would like to ask. One, was your death related to Proprietress Ling?”

Recluse Wang remained despondent for a long while before she managed to extract herself from the story. She gazed at Gu Liang, replying: “No. Apart from attending university and working everyday, I would cultivate through the night. I overreached myself, harmed my body, and ended up dying in a hospital. I haven’t been dead for long, it’s only been a month or so.”

“Okay. Second question, why did you come to Yellow Springs Inn?” Gu Liang asked, “Or perhaps, how did you know that Proprietress Ling was here, and that you could attain your revenge here?”

“Before I died,” Recluse Wang stated, “I heard about the Yellow Springs Inn in the hospital. I went online to search for it, and found a picture of Proprietress Ling that a tourist secretly took. Honestly speaking, after an interval of 18 years, I couldn’t remember her face clearly anymore. However, I did remember that she wore bells on navel and ankles. Therefore, through that photograph, I learned that she was the proprietress of Yellow Springs Inn. After I turned into a ghost, I made some preparations and came here.”

Gu Liang continued to ask: “Third question, from what we can perceive now, Proprietress Ling’s cultivation is extremely high. After all, she could subdue a wandering mountain ghost like Chef Huang and she can casually take on the appearances of others and act as their person… Logically speaking, she should know that you’re a ghost. Have both of you talked about this?”

“She didn’t speak to me about it.” Recluse Wang shook her head. After a long moment, she added an afterthought, “But when I just arrived here and she was sending me upstairs to accommodate my stay, she gave me a meaningful look before she left.

“‘I roughly know who you are, and I’ll talk to you about this matter in two days. You have to wait for two days.’ She said that line to me.”

Gu Liang: “Therefore, she is cognizant of the fact that you’re a ghost, and she might have guessed that you’re Xiao Dou’s friend from the Taoist Temple.”

Recluse Wang replied: “Maybe. That should be the case. However, regardless of whether she guessed it out, the murderous intentions I had towards her were absurdly strong. In these 18 years, I lived for the sake of revenge.”

“Alright. Fourth question,” Gu Liang said, “That Taoist Priest Qian, the shifu who raised all three of you, he is also the Vagrant Qian that died on the opposite bank of the lake, right?”

Recluse Wang nodded. “Yes. However, both me and Xiao Luo, who is also Girlfriend Jia, didn’t expect that he would be here. We only realised that he was our shifu after we saw his corpse.”

“What about you then?” Gu Liang stared at Tourist Jia, “We should talk about you now. Since you invited a Taoist nun here, it suggests that you were aware of the fact that Proprietress Ling was a ghost. Why did you invite a Taoist nun here?”

Tourist Jia responded, “I invited her to conduct an investigation. I suspected that Proprietress Ling was pretending to be my older sister that year to get close to me, and I also suspected that she killed my sister but I wasn’t certain. Subsequently after, I snagged a piece of incense she would regularly use, and after she left, I looked for a person to appraise it and they said it was rhinoceros horn incense. Hence, I suspected that she might be a ghost.”

Girlfriend Jia chimed in from the side, “Yes, I can testify to that fact. For this instance, he invited me to conduct a specialised investigation, and he said that he would only take the next step after confirming if Proprietress Ling was a ghost. But after we arrived here, didn’t we encounter Recluse Wang?

“Recluse Wang said that Proprietress Ling was the murderer who killed Xiao Dou that year. However, before she could enter the cycle of reincarnation, she had to avenge Xiao Dou. While I’m a little heartless, I’m not completely without feeling when it comes to my childhood companions. It’s just that I’m genuinely afraid of ghosts and being poor, because I didn’t want to relive those old days again.

“But if there was a chance, I wanted to help Xiao Wang and Xiao Dou. Thus, I discussed the matter with Recluse Wang briefly about how we could take the opportunity to borrow Tourist Jia’s hands to kill Proprietress Ling. Consequently, when I met Tourist Jia at the dawn of this morning, I lied to him, saying that I had ascertained the fact that Proprietress Ling had killed his older sister.”

Once Tourist Jia heard that, he could not resist shooting her a sidelong glance. “I find that your ideas are incredibly childish and amusing. I’m an ordinary person. I called you here for the sake of helping me deal with Proprietress Ling, and yet you wanted me to deal with her?”

“I didn’t ask you to deal with her with your own hands. With how rich you are, it’s not like you couldn’t afford to hire a senior priest who had achieved Tao?” Girlfriend Jia shrugged her shoulders, “I didn’t expect that Proprietress Ling would actually die today.”

Tourist Jia rolled his eyes. “When you were freakin’ randomly duping my circle of rich second-generation friends, you were bragging about how powerful you were, and I even thought that you were particularly capable when it came to eliminating ghosts. Or else, I wouldn’t have invited you here either.”

Frowning, Gu Liang looked at Girlfriend Jia, “What you mean to say is, you and Recluse Wang did nothing?”

“Nothing at all.”

Girlfriend Jia answered extremely swiftly before she glanced at Tourist Jia. “What about you? You haven’t explained your story fully. I found a laboratory test report from your luggage, saying that you and your older sister weren’t biologically related. What was your relationship?”

“Before Tourist Jia answers that question, I have a question to ask—”

The person posing this question was Yang Ye.

Yang Ye pushed up his glasses by the metal bridge as he asked Tourist Jia: “When did you learn of the fact that Proprietress Ling was in Yellow Springs Inn, and then decide to come over?”

Tourist Jia said: “A month prior. I discovered that Proprietress Ling was here a month ago. The five rooms here need to be booked in advance. My booking was already made a month ago, and I was supposed to check out today.”

Gu Liang slanted his head, meeting Yang Ye’s gaze: “Therefore, all of us learned of Yellow Springs Inn a month ago, and proceeded to book our rooms.”