[Audience Expectation +20]
The remnants of the snowman melted in the dead silence. After the candles were extinguished, Chen Ling's face turned as pale as paper.
"I..."
Chen Ling stammered, "I was talking to my brother..."
"Where is your brother?" Wu Youdong looked at the empty seat beside him. "Isn't it just the two of us in the house?"
Chen Ling turned to look at the seat across from him. At some point, it had become completely empty... In a daze, the lingering image of a boy's smile faded from his memory.
Beads of sweat dripped from Chen Ling's forehead, soaking his back. His eyes, filled with confusion and emptiness, trembled incessantly, like someone who had just woken from a nightmare.
"No, that's impossible..."
Chen Ling suddenly stood up, the legs of the chair scraping against the floor with a piercing screech.
He frantically took off his cotton coat and pointed at the perfectly mended spot. "Look! This is A-Yan's work! I don't even know how to sew!"
"And these wooden boards on the wall, he fixed all of them!"
"There's also a doctor from Aurora City staying with us. He's seen A-Yan too. If you don't believe me, you can ask him!"
"I... I see." Wu Youdong seemed frightened by Chen Ling's outburst. He stammered, "I was just... asking... because I saw you talking to yourself just now... It was kind of scary."
"I wasn't talking to myself!!"
Chen Ling pointed at the empty space across from him, his bloodshot eyes fixed on Wu Youdong.
"My brother was sitting right there. You must have seen him when you came in, right??"
"I... I really didn't see anyone."
Wu Youdong looked aggrieved. He stared at Chen Ling, who was acting strangely, and after a long hesitation, tentatively asked, "Chen Ling... have you recently encountered a calamity?"
Chen Ling froze.
[So, you merged with a calamity too?]
[...I don't know. When I woke up, I was already there.]
[Did you lose a chunk of your memory too?]
[Yeah.]
[But the Gray Realm convergence happened at the back mountain. You should have been in surgery at the time... How were you affected?]
[I don't know... I just remember the doctor giving me anesthesia, and when I woke up, I was...]
Familiar dialogue echoed in Chen Ling's ears. He seemed to grasp something, and his pupils contracted slightly.
"No..." Chen Ling muttered to himself. "No... This isn't right..."
"Chen Ling, are you okay?"
"...The back mountain?!"
Chen Ling suddenly looked up in a certain direction and rushed out of the house like a madman. He didn't even grab the cotton coat he had just taken off. Wearing only a thin shirt, he charged into the heavy snowfall.
Just as his figure disappeared at the end of the street, Chu Muyun, dressed in a wool coat, arrived at the doorstep.
He glanced in surprise at the direction Chen Ling had gone and was about to enter the house when he saw Wu Youdong standing alone in the living room. His brows immediately furrowed.
"Who are you?"
"I... I'm Chen Ling's friend."
Behind the silver-rimmed glasses, Chu Muyun's eyes narrowed, exuding a dangerous aura...
"What did you just say to him?"
"I didn't say much... I just... I just thought it was strange that he was talking to himself, so I asked who he was talking to... And then..."
Chu Muyun's expression changed drastically!
He looked again in the direction Chen Ling had gone.
"Do you know... what you've done?" Chu Muyun's voice seemed to come from the underworld.
"I..."
The moment Wu Youdong met Chu Muyun's gaze, his heart skipped a beat. He had never seen such a cold, insane look before.
Wu Youdong was terrified. He took a trembling step back, tripped over a chair, and fell to the ground with a thud.
Chu Muyun took a deep breath, stepped into the house, and gently closed the door.
The drafty door blocked out the light and snow from outside, plunging the living room into darkness. The figure in the wool coat slowly approached Wu Youdong.
He adjusted his glasses, and beneath his refined exterior, a ruthless ferocity was revealed without restraint. It was as if a ferocious beast, trapped in a human shell, had shed its disguise and bared its bloody fangs.
"Do you know how rare it is to find a Fusionist who maintains such a delicate balance between madness and sanity?"
"Do you know how much effort I've put into acting alongside him to keep him from realizing his own abnormality?"
"Do you know... what kind of monster you might have unleashed?"
Wu Youdong was petrified. With his legs already broken, he couldn't escape even if he wanted to. He could only drag himself backward bit by bit...
"I didn't know, I really didn't know," he pleaded in a trembling voice.
"I've been guarding this place for three days, making sure no one got close to Chen Ling or this house... And you, you just had to barge in."
"...Why???"
Chu Muyun suddenly grabbed a chair and swung it at Wu Youdong's head!
Bang—!!!
A dull thud echoed through the house, and Wu Youdong was knocked unconscious on the spot.
A large gash opened on his forehead, and blood gushed out, quickly forming a pool on the floor.
Chu Muyun showed no signs of stopping. He stared at the lifeless body on the ground and swung the chair again and again, smashing it into Wu Youdong's body!
"Why?!"
"Why?!!"
"Why?!!!!"
Hot blood splattered onto the wool coat, and a streak of crimson stained the lenses of the silver-rimmed glasses.
Chu Muyun no longer had the refined demeanor from before. Instead, he looked like a deranged executioner, venting his rage in the darkness where no one could see. With each blow of the chair, Wu Youdong's breathing grew fainter until it finally stopped.
Bang—
With the final strike, the chair finally shattered.
Chu Muyun wiped the sweat from his brow, his chest heaving. His bloodstained fingers adjusted his glasses, and his deep blue eyes stared at the bloody mess on the floor.
After an unknown amount of time, the madness in his eyes gradually faded, and a sharp scalpel appeared in his hand...
---
At the same time.
A figure stumbled through the snow, arriving at the back mountain.
His thin shirt was soaked with sweat, and the heat and cold clashed on his body. He crossed the unmanned yellow police line and passed through snow-covered mounds marked with wooden signs, as if searching for something.
This was the starting point of everything... the place where the truth was buried.
The mass grave.