Chapter 131: [Harboring a Ghostly Secret] Piecing Together the Threads
“The one who wants to kill us is the grandmother,” Bai Cha said, laying out the past event Ji Xiaolan had revealed to her, as well as the murder in the grandmother’s eyes outside.
She didn’t really hide any of it from them.
“So my line of reasoning is that Ji Xiaolan had no choice but to return to the countryside to teach because of what happened at school back then. Without a graduation certificate, she was essentially just a high school graduate. Other than serving as a teacher in a remote mountain village like this, she probably wouldn’t have been able to find employment anywhere else.”
The group agreed with this deduction.
“Oh! So after Ji Xiaolan met with disaster, her grandmother harbored immense fury toward us, believing she only died because we didn’t help her back then, causing her to fail to get her certificate!” Wang Jiangtao’s eyes lit up as he spoke.
That explained the grandmother’s murderous intent toward them. It made sense.
“Then what’s the deal with the wedding?”
Bai Cha remained silent.
Actually, she had noticed the date of the instance upon arrival.
September 1, 2022—even though that date hadn’t arrived yet.
The real-world date was still June 19, 2022.
Unlike previous instances that might have taken place in past timelines, this timeline was clearly in the future.
Of course, from a cosmic perspective, time didn’t exist; any stretch of time could be pulled out at will.
Yet within the dimension where humans lived, time only moved forward.
Did the current situation mean events hadn’t happened yet, or was there an issue with time itself?
The two possibilities carried vastly different implications.
If it was the former, there was no need to pay too much mind to time within this instance. What required deeper consideration was the relationship between the game and reality.
For the game to pull things from the future into the present, it was inevitably a higher-dimensional entity.
If it was the latter, then they had to explore why it was set at this specific point in time.
Actually, that wasn’t hard to figure out either.
Because September 1 was the start of the school year.
Ji Xiaolan had died in this village—the very place where she grew up. Before her death, she must have endured a great deal of suffering.
Therefore, the only time in her life that might have been relatively lighthearted and happy was her days at school.
So, this represented a beautiful wish.
However, this scenario also split into two possibilities: one was that it was Ji Xiaolan’s wish, and the other… that it was the grandmother’s.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t considered Shao Lei, but he could be ruled out.
Perhaps September 1 was the day he and Ji Xiaolan first met, and maybe they fell in love at first sight, making it a suitable anniversary.
Though Bai Cha had never been in a relationship herself, based on her roommates’ experiences, an anniversary was rarely the day two people first met, but rather the day they officially became a couple.
Because a first meeting was sometimes just one-sided interest; the other person might not even take it to heart.
Given that the core protagonist was Ji Xiaolan rather than Shao Lei, any commemorative date chosen by Shao Lei would have to be meaningful to both of them.
Although it couldn’t be ruled out that they might have gotten together on a second or third September 1, there was not only the date, but also the year—exactly ten years later.
September 1, 2012, and September 1, 2022—this could never be a mere coincidence.
And having just entered college on September 1, 2012, it was impossible for them to have gotten together right then.
So, Shao Lei was ruled out.
As for Ji Xiaolan, it tied back to the aforementioned beautiful wish.
Which left the grandmother… The secrets surrounding the grandmother were far more numerous.
With the plot progress currently at 50%, most of it revolved around Ji Xiaolan.
Ji Xiaolan’s storyline could already be mapped out quite clearly.
First, back at school, since they were all archaeology majors, historical artifacts might have gone missing during an internship.
Ji Xiaolan was likely treated as the primary suspect. However, since she was never arrested, it meant she was merely suspected without any concrete evidence against her.
Yet she mentioned that the media reported on the incident; back then, public opinion alone was enough to destroy someone.
The school might have withheld her graduation certificate just to avoid bad publicity, driving her to flee to the mountain region.
Perhaps even if she had received her degree, she still would have been willing to return, because she had also expressed a desire to help more girls receive an education.
There were indeed extraordinarily few females in this village.
Only among the elderly were there slightly more women; middle-aged women were already half the number of men, and among the youth, there was surprisingly only a single female figure—a girl around ten or so.
No young children had been spotted yet either.
Thus, for Ji Xiaolan, missing out on her graduation certificate was a regret, but school remained a fond memory.
She held no resentment toward anyone.
As for her former classmates, they likely hadn’t stepped forward when the media storm hit.
After all, graduation was at stake, and with malicious media twisting the narrative, anyone who spoke up would have been dragged through the mud.
Back then, the internet wasn’t as developed as it was now; a public relations war wasn’t an option.
Yet everyone had maintained decent relations back then. The class was small, and they had even taken a graduation photo together, proving Ji Xiaolan didn’t blame them at the time.
In fact, Ji Xiaolan might have actively stopped them from sticking their necks out—given her personality, that was entirely plausible.
So that was the storyline connecting the players to Ji Xiaolan.
Second, Ji Xiaolan was already dead. The heavy moisture clinging to her suggested she likely died in the water.
Even the temple had red lanterns hung up; it was possible she was sacrificed as a bride to the Water God or something similar, resulting in her being drowned alive.
In the timeline of her death, where was the grandmother?
The grandmother’s care for Ji Xiaolan was genuine; the true emotion she displayed when speaking of her couldn’t be faked—Bai Cha was skilled at telling real from fake.
So would the grandmother really stand by and watch her be sacrificed to the Water God?
First off, the grandmother was a spiritual medium. Logically, as someone holding such a role in a village, any sacrifice or ritual ought to go through her.
Therefore, elements related to the grandmother in the death storyline had yet to surface.
Third, Shao Lei’s storyline—how did Shao Lei die?
Accompanying Ji Xiaolan back to this village, he would inevitably face xenophobia as an outsider.
Staying together for so many years without marrying would also invite malicious gossip about Ji Xiaolan.
However…
Since Ji Xiaolan had been dead for a long time, Shao Lei was likely dead long ago as well.
Perhaps they met their ends shortly after returning to the village.
Regardless, with no marriageable women in this village, those men would have surely set their sights on Ji Xiaolan.
Was it possible that someone viewed Shao Lei as an obstacle—an impediment to taking a wife and continuing their line—and murdered him?
This again tied back to the grandmother.
Shao Lei had most likely turned into a ghost; otherwise, the groom from the dream wouldn’t exist.
Of course, a dream couldn’t be relied upon entirely as evidence.
It was just highly probable. And there was no way the grandmother wouldn’t know if Shao Lei had turned into a ghost.
She had explicitly stated earlier that the two of them were getting married.
This could be interpreted as the grandmother wanting to fulfill her granddaughter’s wish, allowing the two lovers to finally be together.
Which brought them to the fourth storyline.
Fourth, the villagers’ storyline.
This was a line that had barely surfaced so far.
Yet the third line had already touched upon it.
Assuming the third deduction was correct, who killed Shao Lei? And who killed Ji Xiaolan?
To kill her via sacrifice, someone must have held significant authority.
Furthermore, every single household had hung red lanterns to celebrate the long-deceased Ji Xiaolan marrying the long-deceased Shao Lei.
Why would these villagers agree to this?
Harboring a Ghostly Secret—beyond its literal meaning and the now-clear background of the players…
What about the villagers?
