Chapter Eighty-Five: The Haunted House, Part Eighteen

“Are you insane?” Qingnian’s eyes flew wide as he blurted out the curse by reflex, only to receive an even fiercer slap in return.

At last he learned to obey. “I understand. I understand. It’s not on fire!”

The moment the words left him, Jinghua stopped and departed, satisfied.

Su Man took it all in. Jinghua really did seem to be mentally unwell.

She glanced once more at Qingnian. She had no time for him now. The charred corpse of the beloved princess had vanished again, and Su Man found a deserted corner to open the sealed packet she had taken from the kitchen.

Inside was a sheet of paper, as though torn from some notebook. There was not much writing on it, only a single formation.

“Soul Rebirth...”

She studied it back and forth several times. The rough meaning of this Soul Rebirth formation was that it could exchange the souls of two people whose bond was very deep. Beyond that, there was no further explanation.

“The secret of Qian Ji...” she murmured, half closing her eyes. Looking again at the pattern on the page, she seemed to understand something.

The live comments in the stream began to flood the screen again.

“Turns out that the soul that suddenly appeared over that child’s corpse last time was real.”

“That’s right, I saw it too. It was just like a soul leaving the body. I thought I had seen wrong.”

“I saw it too.”

The comments reminded Su Man that last night she had seen that very scene as well, a soul slipping free from the body.

Everything snapped together in that instant. If that was true, then she could also understand Hu Nian’s sudden betrayal.

She hurried toward the room where Chen Meng and Hu Chai were.

By the time she arrived, Qian Ji was already there.

He stood before Hu Chai’s corpse with his head lowered, and no one knew what he was thinking.

Hearing the movement, he turned and saw her. A flicker of panic crossed his face, but it was quickly hidden.

He seemed ready to leave, but Su Man spoke first. “You played your part very well, Hu Chai.”

“And your scheme was good too. If Chen Meng hadn’t stumbled onto the truth by chance, you might really have gotten away with it.”

Su Man’s tone was utterly unceremonious. She looked at the twisted corpse and asked, “How does it feel, seeing your former self turned into this? Any thoughts?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am Qian Ji,” Qian Ji said hoarsely, now visibly angry. “Did Chen Meng tell you something? She’s dead. You actually believe what she said?”

“She told me nothing. The evidence said it all.” Su Man shook the sheet of paper before Qian Ji’s eyes. “What else do you have to say? The Qian Ji who died in the storage room yesterday was killed by you in advance, wasn’t he? It was preparation for your rebirth. You were foolish too, laying out your own body here in the shape of that formation.”

“You found this? Was it Chen Meng who gave it to you? That woman truly cannot be trusted!” Qian Ji did not deny that he was Hu Chai now. He only regretted killing Chen Meng too early; otherwise she could have been brought out now to deny everything.

“She said nothing. It was actually you who led me to this,” Su Man said, taking back the paper as she looked at his shocked expression.

“You deliberately fell out with Chen Meng, didn’t you? You wanted to get this from her hands. You knew that once she stopped trusting you, she would take this clue and look for someone more suitable to work with. You just didn’t expect that Chen Meng’s thoughts would differ from yours. She didn’t take the evidence straight to me. Instead, she stuffed me with an irrelevant note.”

Qian Ji’s face darkened further. He had to admit that everything Su Man said was right.

“Chen Meng is just a greedy, stupid woman! I originally intended to spare her. It was her, always using this to threaten me!”

No one would want their leverage forever in another person’s hands.

“She may not be clever, but you’re probably not as kind as you claim either. The moment you had Hu Nian deceive me, you had already decided to kill Chen Meng. No matter what the outcome was, you would have killed her, because you didn’t want your leverage to fall into my hands.”

Su Man exposed him, then after a beat added, “By the way, Hu Nian is dead. I killed him. You should know that by now.”

“Shut up. Shut up!!”

At the sound of that, Qian Ji suddenly erupted. The surroundings plunged into darkness at once. Su Man felt her breath seize as a hand clamped around her throat. She showed no panic at all and, as if expecting it, drew her dagger.

A mere apparition like Qian Ji was still within her power to handle.

“Ahhh!”

Qian Ji screamed as the dagger pinned him to the wall behind him. The surroundings brightened once more.

Since the real Qian Ji was already dead, that proved this was not Qian Ji’s domain of obsession. Of course, there remained a slight possibility, but it was so slim as to be almost negligible.

“I thought you’d been using him all along. Looks like you did have some feeling for him after all,” Su Man said coldly.

“You know nothing!” Qian Ji snarled at her.

“I may know nothing, but I do know this: a person who has already gained a new identity and a new life would never return to a place this painful. I also know you used Hu Nian’s life to gamble on my kindness.”

“If you truly treated Hu Nian as family, you would never have let him take such a risk.”

“And I also know that someone as selfish as you would never come here because you wanted to save Hu Nian.”

Every word Su Man spoke struck Qian Ji’s heart like a heavy blow. Unable to break free of the dagger, he grew even more enraged.

“Was I wrong? Was I wrong for wanting a better life?”

“You make it sound noble, but do you know what I went through?”

“This was supposed to be my home, but suddenly a stepmother moved in, and some country bumpkin sister I had never even seen before!”

“I always thought Father loved Mother and me, but then I found out he already had a daughter, and she was that old! His love was no longer mine alone!”

“They took over my home!”

“I hated them. I hated them all!”

“Was I wrong? What did I do wrong? That crazy woman even wanted to kill me—where was I wrong?”

His eyes were bloodshot, his fury unmistakable.

Su Man interrupted him calmly. “Wanting a good life is not wrong. What is wrong is that you became the villain, yet still insisted on wearing the mask of a good man.”

“If you thought your father had wronged you, then you should have spoken to him directly. You should have told him how unhappy you were.”

Hearing this, Qian Ji suddenly broke into a grin.

“You think I didn’t? I killed him! Who told him to betray us? He betrayed me and Mother!”