Chapter 78: Message Left Behind

Only then did Gu Xianwang suddenly understand the extra warmth in Auntie Jiang’s gaze during their meeting—it stemmed from knowing her identity as the adopted daughter.

She had no intention of clearing up the misunderstanding; let it be. To her, the woman lying here was no different from her birth mother. The grace of nurture outweighed that of blood anyway, especially since she had no memories of her biological parents whatsoever.

Gu Xianwang compared the lawyer’s number Auntie Jiang had given her and found a matching missed call. She dialed back, and after the other party repeatedly verified her identity, they arranged to meet at the nursing home.

Visiting the ICU was inconvenient regardless, and there was little point lingering there. Gu Xianwang called a cab, first dropping Auntie Jiang off at home and giving her half the day off. She then returned to the nursing home herself. Her mind was too restless for rest, so she decided to use the time before the meeting to tidy up the room.

She had just reached the gate when Uncle Jiang, having finished texting his wife, poked his head out from the guard booth and called to her. “Hey, Xiao Gu, perfect timing—there’s something here for you.”

“For me?” Gu Xianwang was baffled. She’d rushed to Suzhou on a flight—how could anything be addressed to her?

“You bet.” Uncle Jiang squinted as he rifled through a stack of mail, pulled out a manila envelope, and slid it through the glass window, tilting his chin toward it. “See? Your name’s right there.”

Sure enough, it was printed in neat block letters, so precise that without the faint pen marks, it could have come straight from a printer. But why would anyone address something to her and send it to the nursing home?

“When did this come in?”

“Hmm… this morning, I reckon. Pretty early.”

The timing was spot-on. Coincidence?

She pinched the envelope between two fingers. It felt mostly empty, save for a small square disk at the bottom—not quite a CD, a bit smaller. As she prodded it, she suddenly recalled the travel agency brochure that had arrived the same way before—except last time, it had been addressed to her mother, and this time, to her.

The work of the same person?

This envelope and handwriting differed from the previous one, leaving her unable to judge for the moment. She hurried back to room 306, shut the door, and tore open the packaging with eager impatience. Tipping it into her palm dropped out a light blue floppy disk.

Nothing else was in the paper pouch. She carefully peeled off the mailing label and scrutinized it. No matter how she looked, it was just an ordinary sticker, lacking only the sender’s information.

A floppy disk…

What a pain. These had gone obsolete back in the early 2000s, virtually impossible to find anymore. Gu Xianwang shook it gently—no odd rattles, so likely just a data storage device. Three clusters of numbers were scribbled on the white sticker; she had no clue what they signified.

Few computers on the market these days even had floppy drives, and she didn’t know anyone well enough in Suzhou to ask. After mulling it over, she decided to shelve the matter for now. Whether the brochure sender and this one were the same or not, she had no desire to wade into murky waters rashly at a time like this.

Curiosity and enigmas paled beside her need to focus on the crisis at hand.

With a sigh, she shoved the floppy disk back into the envelope and tossed it onto the table. She stood by the window, gazing at the greenery for a spell. The nursing home had been built here for its idyllic suburban setting—lake encircled, oxygen-rich air, verdant vistas everywhere. No matter how fraught with worry she was, a few minutes here always steadied her nerves somewhat.

Though no one had stayed in the room these past two days, the daily cleaning continued unchanged. Tables, chairs, beds, cabinets—all spotless at a glance, pillows and bedding neatly stacked, everything arranged to her mother’s old preferences. Gu Xianwang rubbed her brow, the knot of tension finally easing a little. But as her attention shifted back to her surroundings, her nostrils twitched, and abruptly, that thick, unnatural fragrance assailed her again.

She stiffened in disbelief, sniffing all around. The scent wasn’t persistently strong but flickered in and out, faint one moment and elusive the next—as if alive in the air itself, freely swelling, contracting, and drifting at will.

Yet the room had stood empty for two days. Even if it was a lingering trace from her mother, how could it overpower the vitality of her blood and breath?

Could it be… something in this room was producing it?

Gu Xianwang hurried over to the cabinet and used the spare key to unlock it. She opened the cabinet doors one by one. The top shelf held covers for her personal bedding and pillows, the middle one was a wardrobe for all four seasons, and the bottom contained her undergarments. Tucked away on the far side was an old-fashioned suitcase with a leather handle—an heirloom from her father’s side of the family, part of the dowry from years ago. Her mother had always used it to store her gold and silver jewelry along with her important documents.

The suitcase had its own lock, and Gu Xianwang kept the key in the third drawer of the bedside table, clipped inside the thick book she always read during her visits like a bookmark.

She had searched everywhere now—under the bed and around it, inside the cabinet and out—leaving only this suitcase unchecked.

Nothing seemed out of place. No new items had been added anywhere. It made sense; it had only been about a week since her mother woke up, and Gu Xianwang hadn’t told a soul. No one else would come to visit.

That left just this one spot.

Gu Xianwang fetched the key. Better safe than sorry, she thought.

Click. The old lock sprang open. The lid, which had always been stuffed to bursting before, lay flat this time. Curious, she lifted it—and the first thing that met her eyes was a slip of paper.

It had been torn from the nursing home’s official notepad, complete with the logo in the upper left corner. Centered on it was a single line of small, precise characters in standard printed script—identical to the handwriting in the mail she had just received. The tail of the final stroke dragged out deliberately, ending in a distinct dot like a personal signature.

The note read: The thing you’re looking for is in the mail.

In an instant, the hairs on Gu Xianwang’s neck stood on end. She whipped around, scanning the room. Sunshine blazed outside the window, but she felt as if she had been plunged into an icehouse. This was a secure nursing home; without a special access card and registration, no one could even get through the front door. Surveillance cameras lined every corridor, and anti-fall iron bars sealed off all the passages. Even if someone had somehow slipped in and gotten through this very door, how could they possibly know where she kept that key?

No one knew but her. Not even her mother. She had placed it there herself after her mother fell into her coma. Even if someone handling the cleaning bumped the hefty tome, merely shifting it wouldn’t dislodge the key. How had that person slipped this note into the suitcase without leaving a single trace?

What in the world was going on?

That person knew she was coming—knew exactly when. From the hospital to the nursing home, and now to this suitcase—every move predicted ahead of time.

Gu Xianwang pinched the note between her fingers, her breathing so shallow it was nearly silent. All at once, she realized she was under surveillance. Had it started when she stepped out of the Tianjin courtyard gate?

No—earlier than that. Before Guizhou? In the Capital City? Or even…

In that moment, she suddenly understood what Long Li must have felt: the suffocating terror of being ensnared in someone else’s web, powerless to break free, her every action dictated by another.

She dug her fingernail into the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, letting the sharp pang of pressure build until it steadied her nerves.

Calm down. She had known the risks when she made that post. Whoever lurked in the shadows and whatever their endgame, all this ghostly maneuvering was just bait to draw her deeper into the investigation.

But why her?

What made her so special?

Was it the Forbidden Witch Bone? Or her own identity?

Gu Xianwang walked slowly to the desk and sat down. She pulled a pencil from the holder and began to write:

Me — Forbidden Witch Bone (Witch Clan?) — Yang Family

Me — Chen Yi — Master — Rat-Walkers?

No. The package had come to the nursing home, but her mother was just an ordinary schoolteacher. What could anyone possibly want with her? Gu Xianwang crossed out the line next to Chen Yi.

Working from these two threads, she figured the most likely play was that the culprit meant to exploit her ignorance about the Forbidden Witch Bone, luring her into digging deeper—straight into danger. Then the Master would get involved, followed by the Rat-Walkers. Their ultimate aim was probably some deathtrap like the Witch Clan Altar, all for the riches and treasures buried there for generations.

Perilous place.

She scribbled the words on the paper and circled them heavily. The pencil’s sharpened tip stabbed at the page once, twice. Then, beside it, she abruptly added five more words: Long Family Human Skin Map.

The logic snapped into a perfect loop. With a clatter, she tossed the pencil back into the holder. If that was their final goal, she wasn’t worried. It was all too distant from her life, and the Master was a seasoned veteran—hardly the type to fall for cheap parlor tricks.

She checked the clock. The lawyer would arrive in an hour. Gu Xianwang relocked the suitcase and slipped the key back between the book’s pages. She picked up the floppy disk and headed out.

…

This was a cadre sanatorium. All equipment upgrades had to go through public funds, so replacements happened at a glacial pace. Plenty of outdated gear was still cluttering the storeroom, untouched. If she wanted to track down an old host machine right away, leaning on Master’s influence to bother the dean one more time was undoubtedly the quickest route.

Sure enough, after the dean placed a call from her office phone, someone promptly escorted her into the machine room. At the far end stood a hulking assembled computer draped in a white cloth, layered with a finger’s thickness of dust. The staffer was a middle-aged man with patchy bald spots. He yanked off the cover with a face like stone, sending dust billowing everywhere, then reconnected the power cord to the ancient machine.

The bulky monitor, with its narrow square screen, flickered to life with that classic Windows blue backdrop. It crawled through lines of code at an agonizing pace before finally loading the Windows 98 interface.

“That’s the floppy drive,” the man said, pointing to the slot on the host machine. He gave her a pointed once-over. “You do know how to use it, right?”

Gu Xianwang recoiled from his gaze on instinct, her expression icing over. “I know. I can handle it myself. If you don’t mind, please leave.”

He let out a derisive snort and shuffled toward the door. Pausing at the threshold, he shot her another glance, but she stared him down without mercy. Chastened, he shut the machine room door behind him.

Once she was certain he’d gone, Gu Xianwang poked around the excruciatingly laggy old computer for a bit. Then, with care, she slid the floppy disk into the drive. The host machine whirred to life with a sound like its dying gasps. After an eternity, a small folder window popped up in the bottom right corner.

She double-clicked into the disk’s lone folder—a measly 1.44MB in size. Inside lay a single video file: Forbidden Witch Bone Mutation Record 5.mpeg.

Gu Xianwang’s heart lurched. She drew a deep breath and clicked play. The computer seized up, unresponsive for what felt like forever, before the video window burst open. The footage was a murky black void, but faintly, a metal frame bed hugged the wall. The grayscale image suggested a window on the left admitting some light. Yet the clip had been compressed to hell—frames dropping, quality smeared beyond recognition. It hadn’t been shot on high-end gear to begin with, so now it was just ghostly outlines pieced together from the noise.

One small mercy: the computer had functional speakers.

She maxed out the volume and leaned in close. The camera appeared fixed by the door, its angle static. The opening seconds held only voices, muffled and indistinct—like two young men.

“Did you see anyone?” one asked.

“No… crap, I think I smell something fragrant!” the other replied.

A creak followed, sharpening the audio. The first voice cut in: “Tighten your mask. Don’t breathe in too much. It’s day fifteen—he should—”

A sudden thud. The camera toppled, the frame tilting wildly. Cement floor and bed leg dominated the view. Muffled screams filled the background. Then bare feet slammed into frame, followed by hands. The posture evoked a beast in a crouch. The image was too grainy for Gu Xianwang to make out any defining traits.

The progress bar zipped to the end. A hand palm covered the lens, as if retrieving the camera. And that was it—the video cut off.

Just… this? Gu Xianwang stared in confusion. She replayed it several times, but no fresh clues emerged from the haze.

Forbidden Witch Bone mutation record. Was that the person on all fours, the one infected?

Day fifteen of what?

Infection? Doubtful. Nearly twenty years had passed since she’d learned of her own Forbidden Witch Bone.

The fragrance matched, but it might not be the same scent she knew. From their talk, it sounded like the Cave Lord’s spores—potentially infectious. She wasn’t sure if she carried it. Her mother might have caught it from her, but Master, Senior Brother, and Nanny Chen had shown no signs. If it spread through blood, Long Li and Ye Chan seemed fine so far.

Or… did she truly not have the Forbidden Witch Bone at all? Had those people simply messed with her head back then, turning a case of hysteria into a perceived curse?

No. Gu Xianwang frowned and massaged her temples. Could her own senses lie to her? If she couldn’t trust herself, then what in the world could she believe?

She thought it over for a moment, then cranked the volume knob all the way up and hit play on the video again. It was only three minutes and fifty-one seconds long.

Static crackled from the speakers, the voices blasting out like fireworks exploding. Gu Xianwang endured the jarring bursts of noise, pouring all her focus into listening. Amid the thunderous crash of the camera hitting the floor, those panicked screams carried fragments of words.

“Watch out… the incense is in the blood. Whatever you do… don’t get it on you.”

“Get back! It’s mutating… nosebleed, skin… yellow blotches—”

This time, she finally heard every word.

Gu Xianwang slumped heavily back into her chair. Now she understood what those words meant.

The thing she was looking for was right here.