Volume 3 Chapter 5

Volume 3 Chapter 5

Translated by: TaffyGirl13

Chapter Five

It was nearly 3 AM.

Yu Yin sat down in the living room with his head tilted in thought.

He had a question.

By the time they had returned home, it was already very late at night. As soon as Xiao Yu had walked into the house, he had turned to the kitchen to prepare some midnight snacks. Soon after, he walked out carrying two servings of snacks.

“After all this time, I still cannot figure out where that lottery ticket disappeared to.”

Yu Yin eyed the plate of snacks as he stabbed a few with a fork. “It’s not in his home nor his bank account. It wasn’t found on his body either. He can’t have lost it, right?”

Yu stared at him for a while before writing down something in his notebook and pa.s.sing it over. “Do you remember which lottery ticket seller he bought from?”

Lottery ticket seller?

“I should know the general location.” Although he wasn’t sure of the exact place he had been that night, he could guess from the general location, since there was a seller right next to that area.

Yu Yin raised his head to meet the violet-eyed gaze, immediately knowing where to go ask.

“I don’t have cla.s.s tomorrow morning, do you want to go?” As he asked, he was pretty confident for some reason that the other person would agree to come along. However, Yu shook his head, leaving Yu Yin puzzled.

Yu buried his head in the notebook again to write something before pushing it over. The simple words written said: “I have plans to study with someone at the library to take part in a ranking exam.”

“Oh, you’ve decided to start studying?” Yu Yin was shocked for a moment. No wonder he hadn’t seen Yu at home recently. In that instant, Yu Yin was somewhat unhappy, as n.o.body had told him of this at all.

The person sitting across from him nodded.

When Yu Yin thought about the topic of an exam, he suddenly had a foreboding feeling. “Who are you studying with?” From his knowledge, there weren’t many people that Yu knew around here.

Yu flipped out a name card from his notebook to pa.s.s over as he swallowed down the last snack on the plate.

Seeing the name on the card instantly gave Yu Yin a headache.

“You actually asked Yan Si to teach you...” What’s scarier is the fact that the guy is actually doing it.

Yu, who didn’t see what the problem was, simply shrugged. He stood up to carry the plate back into the kitchen before returning to his own room to grab some clothes and prepare for bed.

Yu Yin put the name card away and refocused his thoughts on the lottery ticket seller.

If he wanted to know exactly how much the prize was worth, it would be best to ask the store’s owner if they had any impressions of that person. If he wasn’t wrong, the alleyway that person had rushed out of that night hadn’t been near his home nor his part-time job.

Suddenly racing out in excitement and shouting that he had won the prize...had he perhaps seen the announcement at a cla.s.smate’s home television? But if that were the case, the bunch of people that had gone to light incense would have known too. In that case, Yu Yin suspected that Chen Yong Hao had for some reason left the store after watching the prize announcement.

This was possible, since most lottery ticket sellers broadcasted the prize announcements on televisions for their customers partic.i.p.ating.

The other possibility was that he watched it from some other unknown place.

But that would make finding it more troublesome. After thinking it over for a while, Yu Yin decided to first pay a visit to a shop nearby the area from that night that broadcasted the prize announcements.

But would the shop obediently tell him...?

Forget it, thinking about it too much won’t help. Some things just won’t be known until you try it.

***

The first thing Yu Yin did the next morning after quickly gulping down his breakfast was head over to where he had first met Chen Yong Hao.

The area had quite a few nightclubs, but most only opened in the evenings. As a result, it was pretty quiet in the daytime, aside from some cars and people going back and forth around the nearby business buildings. It was nowhere near as busy as it had been that night.

“Should be around here...”

He checked off the places he had pa.s.sed by a few nights ago. Before heading out, he had done a quick scan on the internet of nearby shops. It just so happened that this area had two such shops, while the end of the alley where he had b.u.mped into that person met with one of the stores.

It wasn’t yet 9 AM. As he walked to the end of the alley, he coincidentally saw the said lottery ticket seller pulling open the metal door to begin moving out tables and chairs.

The person tidying up outside was a middle-aged wife, with another middle-aged man sitting in a wheelchair was working at the register.

Yu Yin checked his watch briefly before stepping straight into the store.

“Morning,” the woman politely nodded at him.

Yu Yin walked up to the counter, and after looking around a bit, noticed the large television monitor set up on the side. “Huh, you even have a TV in this shop, Boss?”

“Yep. Business isn’t very good right now, so doesn’t make much of a difference if we put a TV here to let the customers watch the prize announcements,” the boss behind the counter replied with a smile.

“Is that so? Do you normally always turn it on for the prize announcements then?”

The boss nodded. “We typically keep it on until nine. Since there are more people here at night, it can help earn a bit more money.”

Yu Yin agreed. There were office buildings nearby, and plenty of shops open past the alley at night, so he could understand. Because there was also a slight risk, there was also a patrol tracking sheet outside the shop.

“Could I ask if a tall male student around my age was here two nights ago during that time, waiting here for the prize announcement?” Yu Yin gave a rough description of Chen Yong Hao’s appearance to the owner, and the woman that had finished cleaning up inside also came in to join them.

“I think there was, right?” The owner and his wife exchanged glances before the boss nodded, “There was a male like that two nights ago when the prizes were announced. But he wasn’t a regular customer; he pa.s.sed by around 7-8 PM and my wife a.s.sumed he wanted to buy a lottery ticket since he stood at the door for a long time. In the end, it turns out it was a misunderstanding."

The wife chuckled and continued, “The student was on the phone. I thought he wanted to make a purchase, so I ran over to tell him there were only two minutes left before I found out he hadn’t come to buy a ticket at all. However, he seemed a bit embarra.s.sed, so he walked in to buy a computer-generated number. He then said he didn’t know how to play, so my husband treated him to some snacks while waiting for the prize announcement.”

“Huh? You treated him?”

“There are a lot of frequent customers around here that often come to watch the announcement, so we always prepare some snacks.” The wife seemed to notice she had spoken too much and suddenly frowned. “Sorry, can I ask what your relationship with that student is?”

Yu Yin paused for a moment. Just as he was about to blurt out a random excuse, an extremely familiar voice came from behind him—

“Sorry for any inconvenience. We are part of the police. Because there are some problems, could we request for you to provide some more details?” Yu Tong had walked in at some point. He flashed his police badge and shot Yu Yin a glance as he came up to stop at the counter.

Seemingly a bit intimidated, the wife hurriedly apologised. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you two were policemen. Please, take a seat.” As she said this, she pulled two chairs over. “You two are really young too. Thank you for all your work.”

“Thank you for the compliment.” Yu Tong pushed his gla.s.ses up as he smiled warmly. “Could I ask for you two to describe everything regarding the student that night?”

The couple exchanged a glance before the wife awkwardly replied, “Telling you is fine, but Mister Policeman, please don’t spread the information anywhere, or else he will say we harmed him.” This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com

Harmed him?

Yu Yin furrowed his brows in confusion, and he suddenly felt his eyelids twitch with a foreboding feeling.

“We remember it very clearly. The student that night was here the whole time waiting for the announcement...because there weren’t any customers that night, he was the only one in the shop. As soon as the announcement went on, he immediately jumped up from his chair.” As if recalling what had happened that night, the boss laughed. “He then kept exclaiming that he had won, and had even hugged my wife while shouting out. If I hadn’t known that prize-winners were always extremely happy, I would have called him out for s.e.xual hara.s.sment.”

Yu Yin very much acknowledged this fact, since he had also thought Chen Yong Hao had gone crazy that night.

“In the end, the student went to nearby market and bought a huge pile of candy to bring over. It’s those ones that we have been treating to customers on that table there.” The boss pointed out at the ingot-shaped candy box filled with quite a few bags of expensive candies and other goodies that probably costed a few hundred yuan per bag.

From Yu Tong’s knowledge, a typical shop like this wouldn’t give out candy that expensive unless a customer that won presented it as a gift.

“He was very happy, truly ecstatic. The next morning, he even called over to inform us that he had made a red banner and would come by to deliver it. He also hung a string of firecrackers at the door, which we set off that day.” The wife informed them, “We were all infected by his happiness. But he said he would deliver the red banner two days ago, and we haven’t seen him since. It’s probably better to not come anyways, since a lot of the regular customers have been asking, and it’s very possible that someone would unexpectedly decide they want to harm that student somehow.”

Unexpectedly decide...

...To harm him?

Yu Tong suddenly felt that a very th.o.r.n.y matter was about to arise.

“Then, do you two know how much money he won? What prize?” Yu Yin asked the people at the counter.

The husband and wife looked at each other with large smiles on their faces.

“That’s...”

Just as they were about to continue, a large commercial company truck abruptly stopped at the door. Its loud noise immediately caused the four of them to stop talking and turn around to look over.

A worker got off the truck, and after looking around, walked in with a bill in his hand. “Boss! Someone wanted me to deliver this banner over to you guys. You’ll really enjoy good fortune! While I’m here, I want to buy five hundred tickets to test my luck as well!”

The worker pa.s.sed over some money with a big grin on his face.

“Red banner?” Yu Yin remembered what the couple had just said regarding the red banner.

“That’s right, if you guys want to buy some too, you should buy them quickly. It’s easier to catch onto the luck when it first arrives.” The worker accepted the bag of tickets and after stuffing them into his pocket, returned to his truck to drag out a large bundle of things. He scanned the entryway before shouting back inside, “Boss! I’ll also help you hang this up while I’m here, where do you want it?”

"Wasn’t it closed? Wu Tong examined it." Yan Si had a vague memory of the case. He yawned as he blurrily scanned the materials. "The inspection concluded that the deceased jumped from the building. There were no traces of resistance, with nothing found on the fingernails either."

"That’s right, the case was originally supposed to be closed as a suicide case."

"Is it not anymore?" Yan Si pa.s.sed the materials back with a raised brow.

"Mm, after some more searching around, there were some suspicious points, so I wanted to re-examine it." Yan Tong paused. He could automatically feel his head start to hurt when he thought back to what they had found out this morning.

Yan Si stared at the other for a while before opening the canned drink. "Alright, I’ll suffer through helping you re-examine it. Don’t forget to treat me later." With that, Yan Si began to walk to the resting area as he yawned once more, "I’m going to sleep a bit. When you send it over, contact me."

"Thank you."

After settling this, Yu Tong didn’t move from his spot, instead whipping out his phone to call the Chen family. He was sure that they would be very willing to agree with handing over the corpse for a new examination...

A few minutes later, he very quickly received their cooperation.

Just as he was about to turn around to go back and finish up some other matters, the cell phone he had just stuffed in his bag rang out again. This time it wasn’t a call, but a text message.

Without thinking, he flipped his phone open to read the message, and he slightly frowned at its contents.

The words in the text were extremely familiar, pretty much identical to the ones he had received before. As he closed his phone, he began to walk up the stairs. Just a few minutes later, he heard the sound of a text again. It was still the same sentence.

"Help me look for my possession."

Yu Tong scratched his head when he saw the repeated sentence.

Aren’t I already helping you look for it...alright, I know that losing over twenty million is an urgent matter, but more is required to find it.

When he turned to the next flight of steps, the text came again.

Yu Tong took out his phone and stared at the persistent text in exasperation. But just then, he thought of something.

That day, Chen Yong Hao had been on the phone in front of the lottery ticket shop...and then an entire night pa.s.sed as well. Would we be able to find anything from his phone?

When he thought of this, Yu Tong immediately dialed another number.

A few short seconds later, the other end picked up. There was a bunch of busy noises in the background as well.

"Jiu Shen? Could I ask you to help me with something?"

The other person agreed.

"Help me check that haunted cell phone — don’t shout — help me check the call logs. I want to reinspect this case." Yu Tong ignored the anguished wails on the other end and after saying his request, quickly hung up.

If they could really find something in the call logs, it would all be fine.

Yu Tong truly believed this.

***

At 8:30 PM, Yu Yin arrived at the building near Chen Yong Hao’s home, as agreed.

Before he had even walked in, he just happened to see Chu Jin He hurriedly heading inside. When the other person saw him, he also stopped in his tracks for a moment before grabbing Yu Yin’s arm to quickly drag Yu Yin into the building’s elevator without saying a word.

The old building had a guard inside, who probably a.s.sumed they were residents and didn’t question them much, instead just watching them as they entered the elevator and its doors closed.

"Why did you suddenly come looking for me?" Yu Yin stared at the other person in the elevator.

Chu Jin He’s expression was very off. It looked much worse than it had been yesterday, seemingly pale and frantic, having likely encountered something after yesterday.

"Um...actually, after you guys left yesterday, I stayed until past 3 AM to redo the coin summoning," Chu Jin He said with clenched fists.

Yu Yin knit his brows together. "You played it alone?" Does that work still?

"Mm, and I immediately invited it." As if recalling what had happened, Chu Jin He hurriedly continued, "But the thing I invited gave me a weird feeling. It wanted me to search for something, and then it just returned to its original place."

Search for something?

Yu Yin suddenly recalled Chen Yong Hao’s horrid pile of texts.

"Then did you end up finding anything?" Judging from his expression, it didn’t seem that was the case.

"I can’t say I found anything, but I feel like I heard something I wasn’t supposed to." Chu Jin He rubbed his face before noticing that he had forgotten to press the b.u.t.ton in the elevator. He reached out to push the b.u.t.ton for the top level. "When I followed its direction, I ended up in the alley behind his home...I heard some noises from the other side of another house’s walls. Two or three people were in a discussion while digging something. As they were digging, they were saying something like wanting to get the money first before getting rid of the person, but now that’s it ended up like this, they had to wait until the cops stopped their pursuit before finishing things."

Pursuit?

"Did you see the people inside?" For some reason, Yu Yin felt like there was something fishy about the situation.

"No. I originally wanted to look, but then the people noticed me outside and began to chase after me. I just barely managed to shake them off and go home." As if reliving the panic from the early morning, Chu Jin He’s forehead was covered in cold sweat. "I was too scared at the time to take a look. Anyways, they definitely weren’t up to any good."

Yu Yin was silent for a moment, his brows furrowed in thought. "Do you still remember where this was?"

"I remember." Chu Jin He nodded and answered, "It was just behind Yong Hao’s home. As soon as you turn the corner, you see a residence filled with trees, and a k.u.mquat tree outside the gate."

It doesn’t seem like it would be hard to find.

As Yu Yin was planning how to do this, he raised his head to ask, "I’m very curious, why did you come find me?"

He didn’t think Chu Jin He regarded him as a close friend, or a friend at all.

"...Yong Hao told me. I received a text this morning...you might not believe it, but it was from Yong Hao’s cell phone. He said I had to come find you."

The elevator suddenly came to an abrupt halt. Chu Jin He waited for the doors to open before stepping out. Yu Yin naturally followed closely behind.

Since it was past 8 PM, there wasn’t anyone on the roof. In fact, there weren’t even lights on.

As if very familiar with this place, Chu Jin He smoothly turned on a light and led the way to the porch area.

Looking down, one could see the landscape exceptionally clearly. However, because it was late at night, the line of sign was limited. Chu Jin He stopped against the railing and looked down at the thousands of lit houses. "I used to often come here with Yong Hao. Because of some issues, I received a lot of help from him for a while, and afterwards, we would always come here to enjoy the night view in our spare time. Yong Hao said that no matter whether he was happy or upset, coming here and seeing all the lights would always calm him down."

Yu Yin looked down to see the warm lights that filled the street. Indeed, the scene was quite nice.

"Hmph, his son died, yet there isn’t any trace of his dad to be seen." Chu Jin He narrowed his eyes, his expression suddenly twisting with disdain. "His family’s debt was all from that guy, yet he fled and has been missing for nearly half a year now with neither hide nor tail of hi. His son died, yet outsiders are helping instead. I really can’t understand the point of having that kind of dad."

"You’ve met Yong Hao’s dad before?" Yu Yin’s eyelid twitched as he looked over at Chu Jin He’s profile with a feeling that something had happened before.

"I’ve seen him two or three times, all of which were him running from the gangs at the money farms. Even after Teng-Dàgē settled his family’s debts, he probably still owed some money outside, and although the gangsters didn’t go after his home, they went after his dad. I heard that it’s been a long time since he was home. It’s better for that kind of person to not return anyways. Otherwise, who knows what would happen to his mom and sister that are still left."

Yu Yin listened to this as he looked around the area. He noticed a few empty drink cans next to where they stood.

Chu Jin He followed his gaze and instantly grinned. "Chu Jin He probably came here before he died. He loved drinking those disgustingly sweet drinks. They don’t even sell those at convenience stores anymore; it seems like only the grocery store outside his home still has them."

Yu Yin’s eyes remained fixed on those cans. He suddenly felt like he could find something.

Just as he was pondering this, Chu Jin He abruptly inhaled sharply, immediately dragging him back a few steps.

"What’s wrong?" Yu Yin hurriedly asked, noticing that his face had turned ashen.

"Those people found this place." Chu Jin He pointed below them before quickly retreating backwards.

Yu Yin gutsily peeked over the edge and indeed saw four people walking back and forth outside the building. Their expressions were filled with ill intent as they seemed to be looking for something. It just so happened that those four people were actually very familiar faces to him...the people that had been trying to cause trouble with him at the noodles stand yesterday night.

"Are you sure it’s them?" Since the people below didn’t notice them on the rooftop, Yu Yin calmly turned to leave the railing.

"Mhm. Although I didn’t see them clearly, I distinctly remember their voices and clothing. It’s definitely those people."

If they’re chasing him down relentlessly to this extent...

Yu Yin instantly felt like there was something wrong with these people.

"I think it would be best if you stayed at my place for the next two days." As soon as he said this, he noticed Chu Jin He looking at him with an astonished expression. Yu Yin simply smiled and shrugged. "Don’t worry, they definitely wouldn’t dare to enter my home."

Unless they’re seeking death.

Because there are people even scarier than divine gate protectors in my home.

"Is that really okay?" Chu Jin He let out his bated breath as he quickly asked, clearly very afraid of these people.

"Don’t worry, it’s not a problem." Yu Yin smiled as he patted the other’s shoulder. "As long as you don’t raise suspicions from my dad and uncle, you’ll be fine."

"Huh?"