Chapter 11: The Ridiculous Truth

As soon as he finished speaking, he was wracked by another violent coughing fit. This exhausted man seemed to have a serious lung disease. When he coughed, it was so exaggerated it was as if he were trying to expel his entire lungs, each hack full of fatigue and agony, loud as a broken air blower.

Trembling, he reached out and pounded his chest, as if that could suppress the urge to cough. When he finally managed to calm down, he weakly rinsed his mouth with water, his forehead covered in cold sweat.

Qi Ran keenly noticed that what he spat out was not red, but black.

In the background, the man sitting not far away seemed to ask him if he was okay. He didn’t answer, just made a “don’t worry” gesture with his hand and continued speaking into the camera. “Apart from the necessity of being watched by a teammate, we haven’t discovered any other points of caution…”

At this point, the video feed suddenly went black. Qi Ran’s first thought was that the phone had died. She looked up at Jiang Zhique beside her.

“It’s still playing. Wait a bit,” Jiang Zhique said, lifting her chin. “This part of the video was cut out by someone. Anyway, it’s not important for you right now. Keep watching. The best part is coming up.”

Qi Ran looked back at the video, and sure enough, the image reappeared.

“In summary, this is everything we’ve found on this expedition,” the weary man said, taking another sip of water.

Watching this, Qi Ran felt frustrated. It was like watching a suspense film, only for the power to go out right when the mystery was being revealed, and when the power came back, it had skipped straight to the credits.

Just then, in the video, the door of the room slowly began to open. Everyone’s movements seemed to freeze solid, utterly still. The cameraperson seemed terrified; the camera angle shook almost violently, making it impossible to see anything clearly. Just as Qi Ran thought the video would just keep shaking like this, the perspective suddenly tumbled, finally settling on the cobweb-covered, dilapidated ceiling.

“Can you rewind it to the moment the door opened and pause it there?” she asked Jiang Zhique.

Jiang Zhique shook her head. “Watching it again won’t help. The camera couldn’t capture anything at all.”

Despite her words, she still reached out and scrolled the progress bar back a bit. Qi Ran was momentarily stunned. The girl used her left hand to control the video. Because she was so close, Qi Ran clearly saw the tattoo’s design—located on her slender index and middle fingers were indeed two snakes formed by deep black lines. Beneath them, on the back of her hand and palm, were many more snakes, seemingly vying and competing to catch the tails of those two. It was practically a swarm of snakes. The tattoo artist’s skill was clearly excellent. Even to Qi Ran, who knew absolutely nothing about tattoos, a chill-inducing and maddening beauty emanated from the chaotic, dense black lines.

Is she left-handed? But when she took off the hood and offered the cigarettes, she clearly used her right hand. Qi Ran discreetly glanced and noticed the girl was staring intently at the phone screen, her thin lower lip pressed tightly together. Qi Ran quickly understood—she was masking her nervousness. She had deliberately revealed this tattoo for Qi Ran to see clearly.

But why? Qi Ran’s mind raced. The only possibility she could think of was that this girl’s tattoo might be a code, perhaps holding some special significance, and she believed Qi Ran could understand this code or hint. That’s why she risked exposure to show it to her now. Obviously, she didn’t trust Li Siwen.

As for why she trusted Qi Ran, it was probably because, according to the middle-aged driver, her father, Qi Jianguo, had some connection to that so-called “Xie Family”.

Thinking this, Qi Ran could only apologize inwardly. The girl was bound for disappointment. Qi Ran was currently struggling to save her own skin, an ordinary person inexplicably dragged into this mess, knowing nothing about any Xie Family.

The girl’s action hadn’t lasted long. After rewinding the video, she withdrew her hand. She seemed extremely wary of Li Siwen, a look of poorly concealed disappointment on her face.

The video jumped back to the moment the door opened. Qi Ran refocused her entire attention and indeed saw clearly: at the instant the door opened, there was nothing there. The speed wasn’t fast, as if just a gust of wind had blown it open. But the panicked expressions of everyone in the background indicated that it was not the wind that pushed the door.

After the shaking segment passed, Qi Ran patiently examined the entire frame again, finally spotting, in the lower-left corner, the right sleeve of the red outdoor jacket. The man seemed frozen, like a game of Red Light, Green Light, his arm held up, not daring to move.

For a moment, nothing but dead silence filled the room. Everyone held their breath. Qi Ran almost thought she could hear deafening heartbeats.

Suddenly, the camera perspective changed again, as if it had been picked up from the floor. Qi Ran thought the ghost had left and instinctively let out a sigh of relief. But a moment later, she felt a bone-chilling cold. The camera’s new angle was very low, like someone was squatting on the ground filming. In the shot, everyone was staring at the lens. There was the man in the red outdoor jacket, the two men and a woman who had been sitting by the plank bed, and on the far right, a man slumped on the ground, his expression terrified, trembling like a sieve, wearing a gray down jacket.

That face was not unfamiliar to her. It was a younger Qi Jianguo.

He was the one filming the video all along.

In an instant, a huge roar filled her ears, drowning out all other sounds. Even the terror that “the camera is now being held by a second ghost” dissipated completely.

She stared intensely at the phone screen, as if trying to find evidence that the face wasn’t Qi Jianguo’s. But the features, the build, even that gray down jacket—she remembered it. Qi Jianguo’s wardrobe only had that one down jacket.

A torrent of questions flooded her mind. That gambling-addicted, alcoholic Qi Jianguo, who would take his frustrations out on her when he lost money—why was he in this video? Did he truly possess abilities beyond the ordinary, as the middle-aged driver claimed? Then what was the point of playing the useless drunk for over a decade? Was it all an act? To make others think he was truly a worthless bum beyond redemption? But did he have to act so convincingly? Had he been under constant surveillance? Her laughable, tragic childhood… was it all just a meticulously staged play to hide his true strength? Had she been deceived like a fool all these years? Even her own anger, was it just part of the act to support Qi Jianguo’s charade?

She suddenly paused, calculating the years in her mind. 2006. She would have been around six years old then, Qi Xin eight. That was also the year Qi Jianguo began living separately from Li Wanying. Li Wanying took Qi Xin, and she, Qi Ran, was left at home to live with Qi Jianguo.

She had no memories at all from before she was six. She had no idea what Qi Jianguo was like before 2006.

Perhaps Qi Xin knows, she thought.

Qi Ran leaned back into the cheap car seat. Too much information was flooding her brain at once, giving her a dull, throbbing pain.

She had thought she was already accustomed to this absurdity, but in this moment, an unprecedented, towering fury ignited in her heart. It was like a clown, painted in full color, suddenly realizing that the entire tragedy of his life was just a pre-arranged reality show.

And the star of this reality show was her, not Qi Xin. Was it because she, Qi Ran, was better suited to play the clown?

She suddenly felt like laughing, but couldn’t. Like a deflated balloon, she just felt empty.

The video continued playing. She watched numbly.

The camera angle swayed left and right. The second ghost seemed to be pondering which target to choose.

Finally, the man who had been sitting on the bed smoking could no longer endure the immense, maddening fear. He pulled a deep black object from his coat. It looked something like a notebook. But before he could open it, the camera’s view locked onto his despair-filled face. The perspective plummeted rapidly, as if dropped to the floor. Then, only darkness.

The video ended there.