Ex-Girlfriend – Chapter 52
by Little PandaVolume 3: Song of the Wanderer
Great Demon King 011
The Game of the Brave
Xin Lan picked up the violin leaning against the wall, without looking at the person collapsed on the ground, and walked to the living room.
Moli’s corpse had disappeared at some unknown time, with only traces of blood on the ground proving she had once existed.
Pi Tianzi had gone somewhere unknown, while Ren Difei, Ke Xuguang, and Sheng Lifan each occupied different positions, watching each other vigilantly.
Xin Lan walked out quietly and neatly, with nothing but a slight redness on one part of her face, and no other injuries.
“Are you okay?”
Ren Difei spoke up to ask. They had all been sitting here and heard the sounds of fighting from the stairway, but no one dared to go over.
Seeing this situation, it seemed Xin Lan had won.
Ren Difei wasn’t surprised at all, but Ke Xuguang and Sheng Lifan, sitting there, showed some astonishment when they saw Xin Lan walk out.
After all, Qi Haolin didn’t look weak, and the commotion over there had been quite loud. They hadn’t expected him to be beaten down by a woman.
However, when they thought of Pi Tianzi, who had killed someone in less than two minutes earlier, they trembled inside.
“What do you think?”
Xin Lan raised her eyebrow, the fact was obvious – she was perfectly fine.
There had been many people who wanted to kill her; Qi Haolin was nothing special [literally “which green onion”].
“Did you finish him off?”
Ke Xuguang asked after a moment of silence.
On the second floor, only five people could survive out of seven. Now that one person was dead, if another one died, the five of them could temporarily search for the key in peace.
“Don’t set your sights on him. His life belongs to me now. May the best person win [各凭本事, meaning: everyone rely on their own abilities].”
“Why? Didn’t you just fight with him?”
Sheng Lifan couldn’t understand why Xin Lan wanted to spare Qi Haolin’s life. It was clearly time to eliminate another person, and if Xin Lan protected him, one of them would have to die instead.
Wasn’t Qi Haolin, the driver, clearly the root of all evil?
“He should be the one eliminated, right? If he hadn’t posted about the tour group online, we wouldn’t have come to this place. If he hadn’t failed to reach the destination within a day, how could we have possibly ended up in this villa?”
Sheng Lifan pressed on.
“If you want to kill him, go ahead, but you’ll have to get through me first.”
Xin Lan didn’t argue. It was indeed Qi Haolin’s fault, as this was a trap he had designed.
But he wasn’t entirely responsible – nine parts lay with Qi Haolin, one part with themselves.
After all, essentially, this was voluntary on both sides, as Qi Haolin hadn’t forced them to come.
To these people, Qi Haolin deserved to die. Xin Lan thought he deserved to die even more, but it wasn’t time yet.
Sheng Lifan fell silent. Xin Lan had only come to notify them of this matter, to prevent anyone from laying hands on Qi Haolin before she took his dog life.
She returned to the right side, and footsteps sounded behind her.
“Um… I… can I follow you first? I can help you find clues about the key.”
Ren Difei asked softly. Even knowing only one person could leave in the end, he still wanted to try to live a bit longer.
The item he received wasn’t combat-oriented like the others, and he wasn’t good at fighting to begin with. Guangtou Qiang [meaning: Bald Strong] Ke Xuguang sitting in the living room was tall and sturdy; if he were to attack him, he would have no chance to fight back.
“Whatever.”
Xin Lan walked to the master bedroom and pushed open the door.
Ling Jiu: Pi Tianzi is in the little girl’s bedroom.
Xin Lan sat on the bedroom bed and had Ren Difei drag in the half-dead looking Qi Haolin from the doorway.
The strange smell was actually strongest in this room; the fire must have started here.
But was there anything in this room that could have caused a fire?
Xin Lan looked around; there weren’t any candles or similar things in the room, so it was very likely someone had deliberately set the fire.
She looked at the wedding photo where the faces had been painted over. In the previous mist, the man in this wedding photo and the man in the hidden group photo they found in the album were not the same person.
Could it be that the child’s mother had remarried with the child?
The hidden photo was actually of the original family of three, and then the mother remarried with her daughter. That would explain the issue with the photo album and wedding photo, and also explain the sudden mood changes in the little girl’s diary and sketchbook. But if that was the case, how could they explain the fast food on the dining table and the vegetables in the kitchen?
Ren Difei put on his prop glasses, and Xin Lan turned around just in time to catch him wearing the glasses and looking in her direction, causing her to freeze.
The reason was simple – on those glasses was a pair of blood-red eyeballs.
The visual effect was beyond words. Those eyeballs were fierce-looking, but Ren Difei had a somewhat gloomy face, making the combination look strange no matter how you looked at it.
“What’s wrong?”
Ren Difei watched Xin Lan staring at him and nervously asked.
“Can you touch your glasses frame?”
Ren Difei touched it without understanding why. To Xin Lan, it looked like self-inflicted eye gouging.
This kid probably didn’t know what effect wearing this thing would have, otherwise he wouldn’t look so confused.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, just that the visual effect is a bit peculiar.”
Xin Lan’s expression was also peculiar.
Ren Difei lowered his hand, feeling that asking more questions wouldn’t lead to anything good, so he simply stopped asking.
The world he saw through the glasses was very different from before.
This place was a burned-out ruins, and he could even feel the heat from the flames, with an unpleasant smell permeating the air.
He walked to the doorway, crouched down, and sniffed.
Xin Lan stood watching his movements. Qi Haolin on the ground seemed to have recovered, letting out a low moan.
Qi Haolin propped himself up to sit, his head still a bit dizzy.
When he saw Xin Lan standing before him with a half-smile, the wounds on his body hurt even more.
He moved his lips, wanting to call Xin Lan’s name, but was immediately stopped by her knife-like glare.
“You’re not going to kill me?”
His voice was hoarse, and his face, which usually showed arrogance, now carried some dejection.
Yu Wanyan and Green Hat Lady beside them also wanted to know the answer to Qi Haolin’s question.
“I can’t wait for the ghosts he summoned to turn against him. Doesn’t your pray hate him? Why isn’t she making a move, and instead announcing that she’ll protect him?”
Zhen Zhen had thought that at the bottom of the stairs earlier, her prey would have been eliminated. Unexpectedly, that person didn’t deliver the finishing blow, but instead went out to tell others she was protecting him. It was completely incomprehensible.
“How should I know.”
Yu Wanyan shrugged, as long as Xin Lan was happy.
“I won’t kill you.”
Qi Haolin was somewhat startled at these words.
“Not for now.”
Qi Haolin’s expression showed suppressed emotion as he quietly clenched his fist.
Xin Lan saw his reaction and sneered inwardly.
She wasn’t afraid of him causing trouble. He could try whatever he was capable of.
If he gave up without resistance just like this, then he wouldn’t be Qi Haolin.
Just as he had killed the original host through lingchi [meaning: death by a thousand cuts], she would crush his hope step by step.
Ren Difei stopped moving when he saw Qi Haolin was awake.
“Don’t mind him, continue.”
Xin Lan lifted her chin. Yu Wanyan had told her before about the function of Ren Difei’s glasses. This thing wasn’t good for fighting, but it should be quite useful for finding keys.
When Qi Haolin saw the red eyeballs displayed on Ren Difei’s glasses, his expression was also beyond words.
Those eyeballs didn’t align with Ren Difei’s eyes, but rather seemed stuck on the glasses. At first glance, you couldn’t see Ren Difei’s eyes, only that pair of red, rotating eyes that looked like evil spirits.
Ren Difei had already looked through this room and entered the secondary bedroom that had been converted into a closet.
“The burning was quite severe here too, all clothes.”
Ren Difei came out frowning, looking toward the window.
“The fire was very severe here too, the curtains were completely burned away.”
Ren Difei stood at the doorway looking out, then withdrew his gaze.
“This should be where the fire started. I just looked outside, it wasn’t very severe there, and didn’t spread to the dining room area at all.”
“So someone set a fire here, but there weren’t any flammable materials. I think we need to clarify something – was it only one little girl who died in this fire, or a family of three?”
Including the other man in the group photo.
“Earlier, didn’t you also see what the wedding photo looked like before the faces were painted over?”
Xin Lan nodded.
“I wonder if things might have happened like this: the little girl’s mother took her daughter and married another man, but still held thoughts [meaning: lingering attachment] for her ex-husband, which is why she hid a photo of the three of them in the living room album. The current husband rarely comes home, leaving only the child and her mother at home. We can see from that scene that the mother was dismissive toward the little girl, after all, when the little girl went to play with her mother, the mother was busy going out. Of course, we can’t rule out work reasons, but according to my intuition, it doesn’t seem like it.”
Ren Difei took off his glasses as he analyzed this.
As a minor entertainment reporter and paparazzi, he was very sensitive to certain situations. When someone dresses up flashily to go out, they’re either going on a date or shopping with girlfriends.
Ren Difei glanced at Xin Lan, and seeing she wasn’t contradicting him, continued.
“From the little girl’s reaction, we can tell this wasn’t the first time her mother left her home alone to go out. The little girl had already developed feelings of disgust or disappointment toward her mother, otherwise she wouldn’t have done things like throwing toys around. She must have also been very unhappy with the man in the wedding photo, which is why she went to the room to paint over the wedding photo.”
“Regarding the unfinished fast food on the dining table and vegetables in the kitchen, before leaving, the little girl’s mother told her she could order takeout if she got hungry. This shows the mother didn’t take responsibility for the child’s food when she went out to have fun. So the fast food was actually ordered and left over by the little girl herself. Those vegetables were probably bought by her mother, planning to cook a good meal in the evening, but she left after cutting the meat halfway.”
Ren Difei finished organizing the clues. This seemed to be the most logical inference, and looking at the current clues, there didn’t seem to be any flaws.
Xin Lan still felt something was wrong, but couldn’t put her finger on it.
“The little girl definitely died, but was she the only one who died?”
Xin Lan looked at the painted-over wedding photo and asked thoughtfully.
LP: Re-translated on January 17, 2025
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