The Yu Brothers’ Case Book - Chapter 7

S1: Book 1: Chapter 7

Yu Yin believed he now knew what that cat wanted.

“After getting accidentally run over by the cement truck, Zhu Yi died instantly.”

Yan Si was holding the report detailing the death as he informed Yu Tong, Yu Yin, and Yu, the other three people in the hospital conference room. “By the time the rescue personnel arrived, he already showed no signs of life. Simply put, the rapid rate of blood loss and the complete destruction of his lower body were both fatal injuries leading to his death.”

Yu Yin’s spirits dropped as he listened.

An actual, living human being had died right in front of his eyes, just like that. They had even been arguing just a second before that – and now they could not do anything at all.

“The cause of death was an accidental collision with the vehicle. The cement truck in question has already clarified the source of the incident as primarily being due to the driver’s carelessness leading to the skidding. The brakes also seemed to have some issues. We have already notified the victim’s relatives to come discuss compensation and funeral arrangements.” Yu Tong organised all the information and let out a sigh. “Incidents have been occurring non-stop these past few days.”

“By the way, Dad, what were the analytical results of the blood traces in the taxi last time?” Yu Yin’s mind suddenly recalled another related event.

“That…”

“Student that was ganged up on, that isn’t a matter that we can simply tell you about.” Yan Si interrupted Yu Tong’s reply with a smile. “Especially when we currently do not yet have proof to confirm the source of those bloodstains.”

Yu Tong glanced at Yan Si without saying a word.

“If you’re looking for the source of the bloodstains, why don’t you guys try checking into a person called Lin Xiu Jing?” Yu Yin stood up and used a pen to write down the name for them.

“Lin Xiu Jing?” Yu Tong brows knit together. “Ah Yin, what did you do this time?”

“I’m just guessing. A quick look is all you need.” He was simply hypothesising the relationship between Wang Hong’s group and Lin Xiu Jing.

The two adults in front of him exchange a look, each deep in their own thoughts.

“Lin Xiu Jing….” Yan Si opened his laptop to access a black webpage. After inputting a password, a list of names instantly appeared on the screen. “…There really is a child named Lin Xiu Jing on the list of missing persons in Taichung and nearby counties. The person was reported to be missing half a year ago.”

“Missing persons?” Yu Yin had a sinking premonition. “Is she a girl around my age? And has long, black hair?”

“Wait…” Yan Si knocked at the keyboard with furrowed brows, unfamiliar with using this portal.

“Ah Si, let me borrow the laptop; it’ll be faster.” Yu Tong took the laptop and changed to another website. After a few identity verifications, another list of information and names appeared. A separate window with several photos was then opened, with the subject of all the photos being a single person.

A girl with long, black hair. She had a delicate, pure, and pretty appearance.

“That’s her.” Yu Yin instantly recognised the girl on the screen as the person that had grinned at him from behind the crowd. Although they were slightly different, the overall sense was the same.

“Lin Xiu Jing. Originally resided at Taichung City’s Lin Yuan Apartments. Her family reported her disappearance half a year ago. At the time of the report, the reason was eloping with her boyfriend, whom they did not know the identity of. The parents had absolutely no clues, and even angrily argued that they did not know she had a boyfriend. After sensing something was amiss, the police checked her diary, her computer records, and interrogated some of the daughter’s closest friends to reach this conclusion.” Yu Tong summarised the information as he studied the screen and continued, “She was attending the private Li Dong Science & Technology University at the time of her disappearance…”

He paused and glanced at Yu Yin.

“My school?”

Yu Yin frowned as he began to feel like everything was starting to connect.

Lin Xiu Jing studied at his school. The injured Ah Guan also went to his school. Her boyfriend worked at the same place as Ah Guan. Aside from Ah Guan, that same arcade centre also had Zhu Yi, He Mu Yan, and Wang Hong all working there.

What does it all signify?

“Alright, we’ll first retrieve Lin Xiu Jing’s data and compare her blood.” Yan Si nodded after scanning through the data and seeing the father-and-son pair’s reactions. “The blood needs to be compared with various sources individually anyways, so adding one person’s won’t hurt.”

“Thanks, Ah Si.”

Yan Si nodded.

“Oh, right. Dad, could you also help me watch over Lin Yu Da? I heard he’s been very depressed recently, so…” Yu Yin paused. He honestly believed that Lin Yu Da did not have any relation to Lin Xiu Jing’s case, especially with how truly good of a person the older man was.

Yu Tong gave him a look. “Okay, I’ll ask my colleague on that side to keep an eye out.”

After their discussions ended, they finally noticed that the sky had at some point already turned dark. When they looked up at the clock, they realised it was already 1 AM.

“Ah Yin, you go home with Yu first. I’ll transfer Lin Xiu Jing’s information to the other people in my group.” Yu Tong gathered his things and stood up.

“Ok.” Yu Yin nodded. With all that had happened today, he was quite exhausted.

“Student that was ganged up on, don’t forget to take the anti-inflammatory and pain-relief medications on time, or else you’ll wake up in the middle of the night with insufferable pain,” Yan Si reminded with what was likely good intentions.

“I know!”

By the time they had safely arrived home without incident, it was already 1:30 AM.

Yu, who was leaning against him, walked into the living room half-asleep. The moment he saw the sofa, he drifted towards it.

“Yu, if you’re going to sleep, go sleep in the bedroom. The living room’s cold.” Yu Yin dragged him up to the bedroom and tossed him onto the bed. When he retired to his own room to rest, his sleepiness suddenly vanished completely.

Zhu Yi’s dying face constantly played through his mind. That bloody expression of horror was hard to dispel.

Now, the number of people that had died had increased by one, while there were still two heavily injured. He thought back to his last conversation with Zhu Yi. There was also the person named Li Yu that had already been missing for several days. At the moment, Wang Hong and Zhao Yong Heng were the only ones still unscathed.

Exactly what relationship did these people all share?

After the chain of seemingly unlinked events, Yu YIn could no longer persuade himself that these were simply coincidences.

He took out his notebook and wrote down the people’s names and situations. After some thought, he also wrote down what they had said.

Ah Guan’s “Jing, I’m sorry”, He Mu Yan’s “Let me go”, and Zhu Yi’s “I didn’t kill her” from today.

From the looks of it, that Lin Xiu Jing girl might actually already be…

He drew an X over each of the deceased’s names.

Wait…of all these victims, only Lin Yu Da didn’t say anything. Plus his injuries were lightest, comparatively speaking.

Does that mean Lin Yu Da isn’t that deeply involved?

As Yu Yin’s suspicions grew, the lights in the house suddenly flickered off, as if the bulbs had burnt out.

“No way! At this time?” Yu Yin let out a wail of despair. He had no idea if there would be any 24hr convenience stores that sold bulbs to replace these burned out ones.

The lights continued to flash, hurting his eyes.

Yu Yin glanced at the clock. He really did not want to go out so late at night, since he had always encountered “friends from the other side” much more easily outside during late hours. As a result, he tried to avoid it as much as possible. He eyed the night lamp next to him, and decided he would just turn off the day lights for now and change them tomorrow.

As he put his notebook down, he froze.

The pages that originally had not contained many words had crimson letters slowly materialising on them—

Do not

Get in

My way.

The red words multiplied, spreading across the page as if under a printer that had lost control.

The second the words touched him, Yu Yin sharply threw the notebook down onto the ground. The back of the book had at some point become covered in dirt that now scattered across the floor. The room was suddenly filled with a heavy stench of rotting flesh, as if something was decaying. It was nauseatingly horrendous.

Yu Yin leapt off the bed and held his nose as he coughed heavily.

He felt intense pain shoot through the leg that had been bitten by the cat.

The bedroom lights extinguished themselves completed with a pop. Yu Yin sensed the reek grow stronger amidst the darkness as the sound of something being dragged gradually neared him.

He felt breathing on his neck.

Its height was about half a head shorter than him.

Yu Yin frantically backpedalled and randomly grabbed any ornament next to him, swinging it down towards that thing’s direction. After a few empty swishes, a resounding thud rang out, and he heard something break with a bizarre noise. Following it was an odd squeaking sound, as if a balloon was being squeezed.

He could smell the blood and rotting flesh.

He saw a humanoid silhouette sway in the darkness, and after staggering a bit, start to approach him once more.

Just then, a loud knocking came from outside the door.

Knock, knock, knock. It was fast and intense.

In a mere second, the silhouette, stench, and everything else instantly disappeared. The bedroom lights popped back on, brightly illuminating the bedroom. There were no traces of the bulb being burned out.

Yu Yin wiped his forehead and discovered that his face was covered in cold sweat.

The knocking continued.

“Coming.” Yu Yin scanned the room. After confirming that there really was nothing there, he sighed in relief and went to open the door.

When he did, he saw Yu carrying a pillow standing outside the room, eyes still red and cloudy, as if only half-awake.

“What are you doing awake so late?” Yu Yin asked with a frown as he saw that Yu had not even changed his clothes.

Without any intention of replying, Yu stumbled into the bedroom with the pillow and fell onto the bed with a thump. Five seconds later, he fell into a deep sleep.

“Oi…oi!”

He really fell asleep!

Yu Yin shook him twice. Yu was already completely out, and did not respond at all.

Oh well, with whatever bizarre thing that just happened, I’m a bit scared anyways. I’ll just split the bed with him tonight.

After receiving a fright, Yu Yin was slightly tired too. He lay down onto the space in the bed.

Yu, who had originally already gone to sleep, suddenly opened his eyes. His brows knit together and he pinched his nose while looking at Yu Yin.

“The hell, what kind of reaction is that!” Yu Yin subconsciously pulled up his collar to sniff at it. The odour of rotting flesh wafted up, nearly making him vomit. “Ok, ok, I’ll go shower.” He shot a glare at the brat occupying his bed, then flipped off to grab some clothes and walk into the bathroom.

After finishing a quick shower, he found Yu had already fallen deep into the world of sleep.

As Yu Yin stepped inside the bedroom, he spotted the notebook he had thrown onto the ground earlier. It still had dirt of unknown origins stuck on it.

He did not dare to flip it over and write anything inside.

After tossing it straight into the trash can, he lay down on the bed.

He seemed to be dreaming..

A dream that even he could not explain. The dream was filled with the unusual cries of a cat, as well as several blurry shadows.

What does it mean?

Everything was dark. His feet were stepping on cold, damp dirt.

As the black space pressing down on him gave him the urge to flee, he heard a strange sound underneath him. Something rubbed against his legs.

He automatically glanced down and noticed a small hole next to his feet that someone had dug up.

Down in the hole, a single, white eye looked up at him.

“Ah—!”

Yu Yin was frightened awake, his face covered with cold sweat.

It was quiet, just like it had been before he had gone to sleep. It was his bedroom.

“What kind of bizarre dream…” Yu Yin wiped away his sweat as he felt some fear linger. He flipped over to check the clock.

It was six in the morning. The faint rays of the sun were shining through the window.

When he woke up, he noticed that the person that had originally been sleeping next to him had run off somewhere. He changed his clothes and went down to the living room. Then, he heard the noise of cooking from the kitchen.

“Dad?”

When he entered the kitchen, he saw Yu standing in the spot that his father usually took, preparing breakfast with practiced movements. “Why are you making things? Where’s Dad?”

Yu stopped to pass a piece of paper over.

The paper had a string of numbers written on it. It was a foreign phone number.

“Whose phone number is this?” Yu Yin was puzzled as he strode out with the paper to sit down in the living room and dial the number. A few seconds after dialling, the line connected. “Hello? This is Yu Yin, is someone looking for me?”

There was a pause on the other end, then the sound of speaking, and finally someone else coming to the phone.

“Hello? Student that was ganged up on?”

“Boss Yan?” Yu Yin hadn’t imagined that he would connect straight to Yan Si. “You were looking for me?”

“That’s right. When I called you earlier, there was no response after the line connected, so I figured it was your younger brother. I told him to write down the phone number and to have you call me later.” The other end of the line was quite noisy, with several people talking simultaneously once in a while, forcing Yan Si to raise his voice slightly. “I just wanted to let you know that we stayed up last night to compare that Lin Xiu Jing girl’s data. The initial test results all matched perfectly. We’ve already notified her family to come in for further verification.”

“Matched perfectly?” Yu Yin felt the skin on his scalp crawl. “Then how long will the verification take?”

“Sigh…depends on how cooperative her family is. If the samples are collected today, the report should be out soon after.”

There was a pause, and Yu Yin could hear the sound of a laptop keyboard; the other person was evidently very busy. “Oh, right, your dad and uncle also said to tell you that they’re going to investigate another case today, and won’t be back tonight. Is your cellphone off? My calls wouldn’t go through.”

“Oh, my cellphone is broken. Thanks for making the effort to let me know.” Yu Yin glanced over at the trashed cellphone he had tossed on the table. He figured he should probably go get it fixed today.

“I’ll hang up then, since I’m still busy right now. Bye-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

After hanging up, Yu just happened to have finished his work in the kitchen and walked out carrying a plate of food. Yu Yin glanced at the boy, then down at the two servings of breakfast placed on the table.

“Wow…you’re quite good at cooking.” Yu Yin instantly fell to his knees in reverence at the heavenly aroma coming from the large bowl of savoury congee.

He hadn’t imagined the little demon to be so good at housework. Their entire family relied on his dad to cook, since both he and his uncle were the typical examples of idiots in the kitchen. Aside from a simple fried egg and instant noodles, his greatest specialty was his ability to set the kitchen on fire. As a result, they would always eat out when his dad was not home. There was no other way to describe the situation aside from the word “tragic”.

The corners of Yu’s lips twitched upwards, although it was not a smile. He sat down opposite from the armchair and quietly began to eat his own breakfast.

As Yu Yin ate the steaming bowl of congee, he contemplated over last night’s events.

Why did that thing tell me not to get in the way? Will she really not be satisfied until she kills off everyone? In that case, who’s next?

As he was concentrating hard on figuring out the list of possible people, an object was pushed towards him.

He raised his head to see the notebook he had supposedly tossed into the trash can. It had at some point been removed again, and was now tidy and clean without a trace of dirt. “What did you pick this up for?” Yu Yin suspiciously looked at the person sitting across from him that had pushed the notebook over.

He flipped through the notebook to see the red words still written inside, the ones that had appeared last night.

When Yu Yin saw this, he felt shivers run down his spine.

As expected, it had not been a dream. And here he had thought that nothing would be there after waking up this morning. Reality truly wasn’t something that one could deceive themselves from through hypnosis.

Yu reached out to flip to the next page and gestured at it.

It was a new page. Instead of being blank as it should have been, it was now filled with unfamiliar, neat words. Yu Yin glanced up; the handwriting was Yu’s.

The contents contained all the names of the people related to the incident, organising all the things Yu Yin had randomly written earlier, including the times and locations of the events, and the final words.

“You woke up early this morning just to clean this stuff up?” Yu Yin was somewhat astonished. He had not imagined Yu would be so concerned about it.

He re-evaluated the information, his gaze falling onto the name “Li Yu”, whose whereabouts remained unknown.

Currently, all the people that had been killed were Wang Hong’s group. Yu Yin began to worry whether or not this person would be the next target.

As he spaced out, Yu suddenly swiped his hand across to grab a pen, writing down a few words in large script: “The route from the arcade centre to the hospital?”

“Route…” Yu Yin abruptly stood up as he realised something. “That’s right! The arcade centre is only five minutes away from the hospital! And Lin Yu Da was a taxi stationed at the hospital!” He knew that these kinds of stationed taxis almost always waited for passengers at set times.

Waited…

If that’s the case…

A chilling hypothesis floated to his mind.

“Yu, once we finish eating, we’re going to pay a visit to Lin Yu Da.”

At nine, after dropping his cellphone off for repairs, Yu Yin steered his motorbike to the address the young taxi driver had given him to a hospital in a different area.

It was a small hospital primarily focused on hospitalised patients, with outpatient service only as a secondary focus.

“The special ward on the sixth floor…” Yu Yin referred to the ward number on the paper and found the elevator to go directly to the sixth level.

Lin Yu Da…

If he wasn’t mistaken, this person was likely a very closely related subject.

After stopping before ward #608, Yu Yin took in a deep breath before reaching out to knock the door. A voice from inside invited them in, and he pushed the door open to enter.

It was a double room. However, one of the beds was empty, while the other bed had a person sitting on it.

“You’re…”

The person’s torso and head were tightly wrapped in bandages and artificial skin. His voice was weak, giving the impression that he had not yet recovered. Next to him was a bag of compression clothing. There were also fruits and cookies placed in the room, as if someone periodically visited.

“Hello, Dàshū.” Yu Yin put the fruit basket he had bought on the nearby nightstand. “Do you still remember us? The ones who bought a bucket of fried chicken in the middle of the night.” He pushed Yu forwards a bit as he spoke.

“Oho, the pair of brothers.” Lin Yu Da stood up and stumbled a bit. Yu Yin quickly hurried to help hold him. “How did you guys know I had been transferred to this hospital?”

Yu Yin made sure the man stood stably as he smiled faintly, “I bumped into the mister that ended up bringing us home that time, and asked him. Since we were really worried about Dàshū’s injuries, we’ve wanted to come visit you for a while. But we didn’t know which hospital you had changed to so…”

“You two are truly considerate.” Lin Yu Da grinned widely. “Just coming is good enough, yet you even brought fruit.”

“That’s a must, of course.”

Yu Yin automatically sat down on the empty bed and surveyed the room. It felt pretty nice, very peaceful. “Dàshū, your driving company isn’t bad if they helped you find such a nice place.”

“Sigh…it’s just temporary for now. I still have no idea how I’ll live going forwards…” Lin Yu Da shook his head in low spirits as he sighed and sat down on his sick bed. “Now that I’ve become like this, who wouldn’t be afraid to ride with me?”

Yu took a seat next to Yu Yin and swung his feet, having no intentions of joining in on the conversation.

“Dàshū, you shouldn’t feel too depressed about it. The heavens will always leave a path for us to continue walking down. There’s a few foundations that you can try checking out; they can support you as you return to your job post. So there’s no need to feel discouraged so quickly,” Yu Yin encouraged. He then walked over to pat the man on the shoulder. “Plus, Dàshū is such a great person that I doubt you would ever be turned away no matter where you go.”

Lin Yu Da shook his head and did not say anything further.

After all, the burns would leave scars that would never completely heal. There were many that would lose heart from frustration after such an experience. Returning to one’s previous lifestyle was a very long, slow, and arduous journey.

Yu Yin did not want to pressure the other to accept his suggestions either, so he did not continue. At this point, Lin Yu Da mostly needed time to adjust.

After a moment, Lin Yu Da finally broke the silence. “Oh, right, would you two like to eat some candy or cookies? I have so many here, you can go ahead and grab some if you’d like.” As he said this, he warmly moved a bunch of sweets out and piled them up into a tall mound.

“Mister is really such a kind person. When I was asking the other mister [about you], he had also mentioned that you had previously been generous enough to treat them all to a late-night meal.”

Yu Yin grabbed a bag of chocolate bags and ripped it open, splitting them up among the three of them to enjoy together.

“Ah, yes, it had been after a rare occasion of someone paying to reserve the taxi for a one or two hour long journey. They gave nearly ten thousand for the late-night round trip, which made them one of the bigger clients.” Lin Yu Da was quite happy as he talked about this topic, his mood improving significantly. “It was nearly three or four in the morning by the time I got back, so in the end I treated everyone to shaobing and soymilk for what was basically breakfast rather than a late-night meal.”

“Oh? There are people that book car service so late at night?” Yu Yin asked curiously. “And here I thought nobody liked to spend so much money on taxis.”

“Haha, I thought that too.” Lin Yu Da chewed on a chocolate ball as he nodded in agreement. “But they had specially come to the hospital to find a car, saying that there were no taxis to be found at that late hour, and then gave some extra money. Otherwise, I wouldn’t choose to go drive up the mountains past midnight either; it feels too creepy.”

“They went to the hospital just to grab a taxi?”

“Yeah, they probably lived in the area. They had one of those huge, black garbage bags with what looked like chicken too, saying that they were going to deliver it to some relatives in the mountains.” Lin Yu Da poured the remaining chocolates into Yu’s hands as he casually continued, “I think because it had just been freshly slaughtered. They said that their relatives would come down from the mountains at six in the morning, so they needed to rush over before the night ended. Apparently it was for some kind of banquet celebration that needed a ton of chicken for stews and stir-fries and all that. There was even blood oozing out of the bag. I told them to wrap it in many more layers, but the car trunk still ended up covered in blood in the end. If it weren’t for the large sum of money, I would’ve made them pay an additional cleaning fee too!”

Lin Yu Da snorted as he recalled the incident and did not notice Yu Yin’s drastic change in expression.

“How-how did you know it was chicken?” Yu Yin felt goosebumps form on his body as a chilling wind blew past his legs.

“Oh, because I asked them what it was. One of the youths even pulled out one bag of the chicken meat to show me, and asked if I wanted to bring some back with me too since they had slaughtered a ton.”

With a faint thunk, the chocolate balls in Yu Yin’s hands fell.

He understood now…

He understood now…

“Does Dàshū still remember…the people that requested the service?” He just barely remembered to ask amidst his shock.

“I do, of course I do. The two were still youths; one had dyed green hair and the other had dyed red hair. It was obvious from the first glance that they were no-good children.”

Lin Yu Da’s voice was too far away.

Yu Yin could only hear the thundering and buzzing in his brain.

“Dàshū, I suddenly remembered that we still have something to do, so we’ll have to leave for now. We’ll come back to visit tomorrow!”

As soon as he blurted this, he grabbed Yu, who was currently crouched on the ground picking up the chocolate balls. Without any time to exchange any proper words of parting, they immediately dashed out.

He knew now!

That bag had not contained anything like chicken meat at all!

He glanced around and ran to the public phone with Yu in tow. After inserting coins, he frantically dialled his uncle’s mobile number.

Unable to wait for the other to answer, Yu Yin immediately shouted at the receiver, “Uncle! Hurry up and send someone over to this hospital to prepare a record! I found out that…”

Suddenly, he felt his scalp tingle.

There was no sound coming from the other end of the phone, just a faint moan.

The voice was very low and shallow as it slowly spat out the words: Do not — get in — my way — do not — get in — my way —

The voice repeated over and over.

Yu Yin took in a sharp breath as he tightly gripped the phone. Before he could think too deeply about it, he automatically shouted into the receiver, “I don’t care if you think I’m getting in someone’s way! Dàshū and Ah Guan are innocent!”

With a click, the other end of the line was cut.

An endless beeping echoed back.

He shook the phone, cutting off the sound.

The thing that Lin Yu Da had delivered that night had definitely been a corpse.

Yu Yin heavily slammed the public phone back into place and forcefully gritted his teeth together.

Exactly how far did “she” plan on going before giving up?

Were there really that many people involved?

For a moment, numerous faces flashed through his mind, yet he could not think of their names.

After taking a few deep breaths, Yu Yin lifted his head to look at the public phone with the feeling that he should do something to stop it all.

“Yu, let’s go…” But when he turned around, he abruptly discovered that Yu was no longer next to him, and was nowhere to be seen. “Yu?”

The only thing in the long corridor was his own shadow elongated by the sunlight. His surroundings were empty, deserted.

“Yu!”

Yu Yin instantly felt his entire body turn cold.

Was the hospital’s hallway always this empty? Without even a single ray of sunlight?

He seemed to hear the beeping from the public phone again.

The entire space was abnormally white, even void of the shadows from the trees outside.

Quiet footsteps sounded from the opposite end of the corridor.

Yu Yin spun around and finally saw Yu, who had disappeared off somewhere unknown and had magically appeared behind him, blinking in his direction. “Where did you run off to?!” He couldn’t help but let out a relieved sigh when Yu reappeared. The suffocating air instantly vanished as well.

Behind Yu were several nurses chatting and walking over in pairs, not even glancing in Yu Yin’s direction as they passed by.

Yu wrote a few words in his notebook.

Yu Yin squinted at the words. “City outskirts?” He looked at Yu, who nodded. “That’s…”

Yu retracted the notebook to write some more. “The destination Dàshū was asked to go to that night. But he stopped at the bottom of the mountain since he did not know where those ‘relatives’ lived.” Yu had simply circled back to ask some more questions.

Yu Yin couldn’t help but chuckle at the location written down. A hand shot out to ruffle Yu’s hair. “What a smart kid!” Having a location made things much easier. Since he wanted to know what exactly had happened to Lin Xiu Jing, the fastest way would be to go find her directly. “Come on, we’ll head over now.”

Yu Yin swiftly jumped into action and ran to the parking lot with Yu behind him.

Heh, it’s a good thing I brought my motorbike here. I can go anywhere now!

The jotted down destination was a roughly two hour drive away from the hospital, in the mountain area right outside Taichung city. Yu Yin had gone to hang out there at night with his friends before, so he remembered the location.

There were not many people there, and it was filled with mosquitoes and other insects. The group that had gone out that night had all protested and nearly dragged out the person who had suggested the place to beat them up.

Wait…who was it that had suggested going there that night?

Why could he not recall it at all?

From what he could remember, everyone had wanted to find a place to grill meat together overnight after hanging out, so they had said they wanted to find a place with good scenery and no other people around. In the end, someone had suggested the city outskirts.

Who had it been?

Exactly how many people went out that night?

Yu Yin was just about to pull out his cellphone to ask others about it when he realised that he had already sent his phone out for repairs and it was no longer with him. Thus, he could only dispel the notion.

Whatever, I just can’t remember who came up with the idea at the time. It’s got nothing to do with this matter anyways. I can just go ask at school later.

Yu Yin pulled his motorbike out and decided to first finish the task in his mind before thinking too much about anything else. He tossed a helmet to Yu and started his beloved ride.

He would definitely stop “her” from killing anyone else.

After tightly turning the handles, the whirring of the acceleration pierced the hospital’s silence as they whizzed out.

As soon as the bike left the hospital, two people walked out from the area without Yu Yin and Yu noticing.

“That brat moves crazy fast. He even found Lin Yu Da right before we did,” one of the people said with a smirk as he watched the smoke rolling out into the distance.

“Do we need to keep a watch on him?”

“Don’t bother. We need to focus on other matters right now.”

“Got it.”

In Yu Yin’s memory, the mountain path was actually very steep.

Although the visibility that night had not been the best, everyone had stopped at the base of the mountain.

The journey came to an end, the two of them stopping at their destination in the outskirts.

It was a small, undeveloped mountain.

Any further was difficult enough for the motorbike to climb, let alone a taxi.

It looked like Lin Yu Da had definitely been here.

Yu Yin turned his engine off. Weeds nearly waist-high filled their surroundings, Most were the type of wild grasses sharp enough to give painful cuts in the skin. The wind blew ripples through, a chilling and sinister effect. It was not a place anyone would particularly want to explore.

They had also stopped around this area last time they had come out at night. However, because many days had passed since then, there were unsurprisingly no signs [of their trip] remaining.

After stopping the bike, the two of them jumped off. Yu glanced around, then patted Yu YIn’s shoulder and pointed off to one side. When Yu Yin followed the direction of the finger, he saw that a section of the grass had been pressed down to the point of being almost entirely flat. Only some of the grass still sprang up. The area just happened to be about the size of a car, and it did not stretch far. It was clear to see that the taxi driver had stayed in the car while the other two people had walked away.

As they followed the traces of the car further in, they really did spot traces left behind of people walking around.

“Yu, do you want to wait over here? I’m afraid there will be snakes or other things further in,” Yu Yin asked the person accompanying him. He only planned on checking to see if there was anything ahead. Seeing how desolate this place was, it was highly likely that there really were venomous snakes or bugs. He had spontaneously decided to come here, so he had not prepared anything to protect themselves from pests before ascending the mountain. Forget one person getting attacked; if both of us get hit, we’ll be screwed.

Yu shook his head and continued forwards by himself.

“Hey! If you get bitten by a snake later, I definitely won’t care!” Yu Yin watched the head charge forwards with the urge to go up and throw a punch at it first. With no other choice, he could only follow after.

Because it had been a last-minute decision to come, neither of them had the proper tools to climb a mountain. They could only use their hands to pull any weeds that they could along the way. It did not take long before their palms and arms were covered in cuts from the sharp weeds. The two of them were quite the miserable sight.

“Weird, the tracks pretty much end around here.” After trailing the trace of a path for a long while, the two of them stopped around the center of the mountain. The weeds were even taller higher up in the mountain, and now nearly passed shoulder height. Yu Yin frowned as he glanced at the piles of pulled out grass around. There was nothing suspicious to be seen. “There’s nothing else ahead.” The only thing he could see ahead of this point were identically tall weeds. It was clear to see that nobody else had proceeded forwards.

Amidst Yu Yin’s confusion, he suddenly felt goosebumps rise on his skin.

His many years of experience told him that it would be best not to continue forwards at the moment because there were too many unclean things ahead.

However, it looked like going further would be extremely difficult anyways because of how high the grasses were and how poor the visibility was. At the moment, even the walkable path could barely be seen. Going on would naturally be dangerous.

Yu stopped nearby, waiting for Yu Yin’s next action.

“I think we should just stop here for today. It’s not like we’ll find anything anyways. Plus the sky’s getting dark…” Yu Yin checked his watch, but then rubbed his eyes doubtfully and confirmed it again. “Weird, it’s only a bit past two. Why does it look like it’s so late already?” He lifted his head up to look at the dark, murky colour of the sky that had made him think it was already evening.

A breeze blew through the mountain, the chill passing straight into their bones.