After Mo Cheng finished speaking, the living room fell silent for a long time.
Then he looked at the man before him, whose tense expression somehow made people uneasy, and his dark eyes curved slightly with a faint smile.
“I often think perhaps this is another kind of compensation. Because the explosion never happened, there was no kidnapping, Jiang Yan did not die, and instead gained a nearly perfect life and a handsome, outstanding husband who loves him.”
“I thought everything was over. Xie Zhe survived, Jiang Yan lived safely and peacefully. I thought that was the period the game had drawn for me until just now when I drove from the police station after picking you up and returned home.”
A familiar voice rang in my ears.
Mo Cheng did not continue. The rest, they all knew.
“Sorry, I did not mean to. I never intended to take your friend’s place,” Jiang Yan said. His familiar eyelashes trembled lightly, as if exposed and vulnerable, so beautiful that one could not look away.
“This is not your fault,” Mo Cheng said.
Perhaps it was because compared to the other Jiang Yan, he did have a closer bond with the man before him with the blue eyes. Perhaps in his world, the other Jiang Yan’s life had indeed ended in that vicious kidnapping incident.
He did not think the Jiang Yan before him needed to apologize for this.
Although to him, those memories were disordered timelines forcibly imposed by the game.
But he understood that for the Jiang Yan and Jian Hou standing before him, they had truly lived through those twenty-five years.
“You did not replace my friend,” Mo Cheng comforted. “You are another friend of mine.”
Jiang Yan’s lips pressed together slightly.
“Do you have anything you want to say or ask to me?” Mo Cheng asked. “About the game.”
Jiang Yan and Jian Hou exchanged a glance.
Then Jiang Yan said, “Yes, but you will need to be mentally prepared.”
Mo Cheng raised an eyebrow. He was a veteran player who had lost the game. What more mental preparation could he need?
“First, I am not human. Apparently, I am a…” Jiang Yan looked at Jian Hou. “What was it again?”
“A wish value,” Jian Hou replied. “Yan Yan actually came out of the game, the wish value accumulated by the main system from players like you.”
Mo Cheng: "....."
Jiang Yan nodded, then continued. “Second, Yu Xiu is not human either.”
Mo Cheng: "....."
“He…” Jiang Yan had not finished speaking.
The black tentacle resting against his leg suddenly extended outward. The flower-like tip of the tentacle screamed toward Mo Cheng. He turned into a strange shadow on the ground. From his neck extended a black tentacle like a chain, connected to Jiang Yan’s abdomen.
Jiang Yan said, “Yu Xiu is not human either.”
Mo Cheng: "......."
Afterward, Mo Cheng logged into the long-forgotten game interface. He spent two hours learning the current basic information about the game, half an hour being shocked by popular forum posts about Jiang Yan and the videos of him in dungeons, then muttered “you have got to be kidding me” for a long time before smiling bitterly.
“I always thought that since the explosion never happened and Jiang Yan did not die, it meant the game had completely detached from my life.”
He looked at the Jiang Yan before him, whose blue eyes were calm and clear, and at the indistinctly human-shaped Yu Xiu beside him.
Fine.
It turned out the game had sent something even more extraordinary to his side.
Whatever.
Mo Cheng’s eyes darkened slightly.
As long as Xie Zhe had survived, he was willing to fall into the abyss forever.
“So, in your memory, what was the reason behind the original explosion?” Jiang Yan asked.
In his own memory and timeline, everyone in his mother’s family avoided mentioning the explosion. He could only vaguely sense that it might have something to do with his grandmother.
Mo Cheng replied, “Because of your grandmother.”
Then Mo Cheng began recounting the origin of the explosion that should have happened forty years later in his timeline.
“From what I know, it seems that your grandfather’s ceramics factory business was declining. Your grandfather was getting old, and since your mother had already grown up and started her own family, your family was doing quite well financially, no longer depending on the factory’s income.”
“So your grandfather had no plans to expand the factory’s business. He only focused on his craft and even considered closing it down and retiring.”
“However, there were more than a hundred workers in the factory who relied on it to make a living. The factory shutting down might have been retirement for your grandfather, but for them, it meant losing the job they had depended on for decades. Naturally, they refused to accept it, so the workers began to look for ways to save the factory.”
“At that time, your grandfather no longer managed anything, and all matters of the factory were handled by your grandmother.”
“And your grandmother said she would borrow some kind of money. Later, through connections from her believer friends, she got into the incense business. But during production, an accident occurred, causing an explosion.”
“Incense?” Jiang Yan frowned.
“Yes, incense,” Mo Cheng said. “The kind burned in temples.”
“Ceramics and incense are completely unrelated. How could the production lines overlap?” Jian Hou questioned. “And why would an incense factory explode? If you said it produced chemical products or explosives, sure, but incense? What was the source of the explosion?”
“Dust,” Mo Cheng said. “The investigation concluded it was a dust explosion. As for what kind of dust could cause such a severe blast and casualties, I do not know.”
Then he looked at Jiang Yan. “But what can be confirmed is that in my timeline, this incident had everything to do with your grandmother.”
Jiang Yan furrowed his brow tightly.
Grandmother. Again.
He tried to recall, but the memories of his grandmother were still like an old DVD skipping and glitching, fragmented and blurry.
“Perhaps we should go visit her?” Jian Hou suggested.
Yu Xiu’s shadow quietly gave a thumbs-up.
Just as Jiang Yan nodded, his phone rang.
[Mom]
Jiang Yan answered and heard his mother’s anxious voice on the other end.
“Yan Yan, because of our family situation lately, your grandmother cannot stay at the nursing home anymore. She needs to live with you.”
“Grandmother is going to live with me?”
In the living room, the remaining two people and one shadow instantly became serious. Jiang Yan silently turned on the speakerphone.
On the other end, his mother sounded troubled.
“The people at the nursing home have been treating her poorly, and the other residents avoid her because of what they saw on the news. She needs to come home now.”
Mo Cheng, Jian Hou, and Yu Xiu all nodded at once.
Jiang Yan replied, “Do not worry, Mom, I will take good care of her.”
Hearing that, his mother let out a sigh of relief. “I was worried you would feel uncomfortable living with someone unfamiliar.”
“Mom, what are you saying?” Jiang Yan said. “She is my grandmother.”
His mother paused, her tone suddenly cautious. “If she says anything strange again or does anything weird, you move in with Jian Hou, all right? Stay far away from her.”
Jiang Yan froze. “She has done something strange to me before?”
“You… forgot?”
As soon as his mother said that, the skipping, stuttering memories in Jiang Yan’s mind suddenly became clear.
Gray hair, a face full of wrinkles, tall yet gaunt, her body like a withered branch standing in the backdrop of spring.
Jiang Yan remembered now. His mother had once told him that his grandmother was a priestess of some unspeakable private religion, something like a witch or shaman.
His mother’s earliest memory of the world was the ever-burning incense altar and the constant flow of worshippers.
But his mother and grandfather were nonbelievers, even strongly opposed to his grandmother’s faith, which often led to conflict.
Jiang Yan’s grandfather tolerated it, turning a blind eye to the religious items and rituals that crept into their lives.
But after nine years of scientific education, Jiang Yan’s mother developed a strong resistance to such superstitions invading her life.
To his devout grandmother, this was incomprehensible, and thus their mother-daughter conflict only grew worse.
In the end, everything boiled over when Jiang Yan’s mother became pregnant.
After marrying Jiang Yan’s father, she had rarely returned to her mother’s home due to their strained relationship.
Not only because of conflict, but also because his grandmother disliked Jiang Yan’s father, insisting her daughter should have married one of her believers instead.
She never approved of their marriage, believing her daughter’s actions were akin to elopement.
To avoid more fights, Jiang Yan’s mother stopped visiting home. But when she became pregnant, because Jiang Yan’s grandfather missed her, she stayed there briefly.
That short stay ended in disaster.
For some unknown reason, his grandmother suddenly claimed that his mother was to give birth to a divine being, a holy mother, and tried to force her into a bizarre religious ritual.
Naturally, his mother refused, leading to the most violent argument they ever had, so intense it turned physical. In the end, Jiang Yan’s father had to drag his hysterical wife away, putting an end to the farce.
From then on, Jiang Yan’s parents almost completely severed contact with his grandmother.
Only when Jiang Yan was little, because his parents were busy, he was sent to stay at his grandparents’ house for short periods during school holidays.
“And then?” Mo Cheng frowned. “Can you remember what your grandmother was like during those times?”
Jiang Yan closed his eyes and shook his head. “I can only recall a dimly lit room with an old, indistinct altar and endless burning incense.”
Ding
【Welcome players to Dungeon — “The Stained Murderer’s Lover.”】
【Dungeon Level: S | Progress: 25%】
【Players: Several | Real NPCs: Several】
【System NPCs: Several】
【Location: S City, Country C】
【Mission: Capture the real culprit behind the serial murder case】
【Main System Notice: Due to maintenance downtime, this dungeon has been randomly activated in the real world. Everyone is both a player and a real NPC. Wish you all an enjoyable game!】