False evidence

Chapter 123 That's not me
The monkey looked into the yard and whispered to me, "Stinky Egg disappeared after we got here. What should we do?"

"Let's go upstairs and take a look first."

The three of them turned on their phone flashlights and went up the wooden stairs to the second floor.

Only then did I lower my voice and say to the monkey and the preserved egg:
“That Lu Zelin isn’t here to keep vigil. He definitely has another purpose. I think that’s why Chou Dan isn’t showing up, to keep an eye on him. Let’s take a quick look around this building first, and after we leave, we’ll call Gao He right away. Once he’s done that, we’ll come back.”

"You're quite the cunning one," the monkey grinned. "But how did you determine he had ulterior motives?"

I couldn't help but sneer: "What 'honor among thieves'? That's just self-aggrandizement. A thief is a thief; it's always about self-interest. Especially in the tomb raiding business, it's even more so. My grandfather told me that if two people team up to raid a tomb, it has to be a father and son, with the father guarding the tomb while the son goes down to retrieve the burial goods. This is to prevent the people inside from taking out the funerary objects and then, for profit, turning their backs on the thieves, sealing off the tunnel, and silencing their partner!"

Century Egg asked, "Why are they father and son?"

"That's why they call it a thief. If the father goes down there and gets something valuable, the son might even kill his own father. If you can't even rely on the father and son, then you can't trust anyone else."

I surveyed the furnishings on the second floor and continued, "That bald guy surnamed Lu is clearly not an old hand. Not only did he give his name, but he also explained his relationship with his clan so clearly. The head of the clan's funeral... that Kou Yun, I feel he's most likely in the same line of work as him."

I believe Lu Zelin truly knows his relatives, and is quite familiar with them; otherwise, he wouldn't have known it was a cat the moment he heard me say "stinky egg." But when a colleague dies, and the relatives aren't present, they're having a younger member of the colleague keep vigil. Do you think that's reasonable?

Before I could finish speaking, everything went blurry before my eyes.

His eyesight quickly returned, and the preserved egg and monkey beside him had disappeared.

I didn't look for the two people immediately because, besides being missing, I also lost my phone.

I knew in my heart that this was caused by the whispered conversation. At the same time, I found it strange that nothing unusual happened when I was facing Lu Zelin earlier, but now I was reacting.

Just as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I suddenly heard voices coming from a room.

The man's voice was low, but I immediately recognized that it was Lu Zelin.

“Master, I’ve been here for half a month. I’ve searched the entire courtyard, inside and outside the house, even the roof, but I haven’t found that thing. I heard his wife is in the hospital and won’t be out for a while. There’s no one else at his house. Is it still necessary for me to stay here?”

I couldn't hear what was being said on the phone, but suddenly I heard the sound of a door opening downstairs.

The people inside had obviously heard the commotion, hung up the phone, and quickly but quietly came out.

In the darkness, Lu Zelin appeared even uglier and more ferocious, with only his eyes shining unusually brightly. At first glance, he looked exactly like a little devil in front of the King of Hell in the underworld!
He walked to the top of the stairs, then suddenly lay face down on the ground, pressing one ear against the floor.

Just then, I heard a familiar voice downstairs say, "Are you coming in or not?"

"Since we're already here, let's bow to the deceased first!"

Hearing their conversation, I immediately felt an extremely strange feeling.

What I heard was the conversation between me and the monkey after the building door opened.

It turned out that Lu Zelin had already spotted us immediately and was secretly listening upstairs.

I couldn't help but wonder, if I went downstairs at this moment, would I see another version of myself?
The moment the thought crossed my mind, I suddenly felt dizzy and my head was throbbing. I couldn't even stand up straight, and in a very short time, I completely lost consciousness.

"Don't come here!"

Hearing that familiar voice, I snapped out of my daze and opened my eyes.

"He's awake!" the monkey exclaimed.

I was still on the ground, with Pidan holding my upper body in her arms. Following her gaze, I saw Lu Zelin standing at the door, looking like he was about to go inside.

Looking outside the door, I felt that something was wrong.

It wasn't until I sat up that I realized it was already broad daylight.

"Brother Monkey, did you carry me down?"

I remember losing consciousness on the second floor, but now I'm on the first floor, which is why I can see the scene in the courtyard.

I asked the question casually, but the monkey's reaction was very strange.

He first touched my forehead, then pulled open one of my eyelids to look into my eyes.

Then, he looked at the preserved egg with a strange expression.

I didn't feel unwell anywhere, so I stood up, pulled Pidan up, looked at her and the monkey, and asked, "What happened?"

The monkey retorted, "Don't you remember what just happened?"

I glanced outside the door and saw that Lu Zelin had already walked back to the flower bed.

"We were upstairs just now, so we must have entered the 'fifth dimension' again."

I recalled the previous situation again, "It's possible that I fainted because I violated some taboo."

This time, not only the monkey, but also the preserved egg's expression became strange.

"Brother Monkey, what happened to him? Did he hit his head and hurt himself when he fainted?"

The monkey said, "No, I caught him as soon as I noticed something was wrong. He didn't even hit his head."

"Then why would he do this?" Pidan asked, even more worried.

"What's wrong with me?"

I felt more and more that something was wrong.

The monkey seemed to hesitate for a moment before saying, "You did faint, but you were only unconscious for a maximum of two minutes. We didn't carry you down; you led us down from upstairs."

"What do you mean?" I really didn't understand.

The monkey took out his phone, swiped twice on the screen, and showed me. It turned out he had not only turned on the flashlight but also started recording.

The screen displayed the view when we went up to the second floor.

"Hey, you guys think the owner of this house was a tomb raider, so he must have been super rich?"

The monkey's question came through the speaker, and the phone screen simultaneously turned to me and Pidan.

"Xiao San... Sanqi?" Pidan called me twice.

"Don't touch him!" the monkey said. "He's daydreaming again."

The monkey and the preserved egg must have noticed that I was acting strangely. The monkey gestured for the preserved egg to come to the side with him and whispered to her:
"Last time at the bald man's house, you were all frozen inexplicably, just like him now. The fact that he's like this again probably means he's entered that... other dimension again."

He kept pointing his phone at my back as he spoke.

On screen, I was truly frozen in place, completely immobilized.

This situation didn't last long. Then my whole body trembled noticeably. Although I was still in the same place, I slowly turned my neck, as if looking around the room, and finally my gaze fell on the phone in my hand.

Seeing this, I already felt a strange sense of fear.

Based on the timeline, this should be around the time I lose consciousness.

However, that's not what was shown in the video.

The monkey and the preserved egg came back to my side. The monkey asked me, "Did you see something again? Tell me."

When he said that, the phone flash couldn't have been pointing directly at me, so I couldn't see my own face.

After he asked the question, there was at least a minute of silence.

After that, I never heard myself speak again.

The video shows that I stayed in the same spot for a while, then walked into the room Lu Zelin had come out of without saying a word.

The three of them did not stay in that room for long. They watched the video recorded by the monkey, took a quick look at the furnishings in the room, and then went into another room.

It's supposed to be a study, but it's rather incongruous.

There was no desk, only a tea table, on which, besides the purple clay teaware, were piled some books of different ages.

The monkey said, "It seems the owner of this house was a tomb raider in his lifetime. Look at all these books of his, they're all related to jade and antiques. Hey, there are so many odds and ends in this house, do you think there might be some antiques dug out of a tomb among them?"

After that, the monkey's mouth was almost never closed.

At this point, the fear I felt was beyond measure. I wondered what might have happened, so I could only force myself to focus on watching the video.

However, the three people in the video only looked at the two rooms upstairs, and even half of the storage room, with me as the center, and then went back downstairs.

At that moment, I actually picked up three incense sticks from the offering table, lit them with the flame of the candle, bowed to the photo, and then put the incense sticks into the incense burner.

The monkey was right behind me when I was offering incense.

So when the camera captured me turning around, I saw myself making a certain gesture.

The movement was so small that most people wouldn't notice it.

However, the moment I saw this detail, every hair on my body stood on end.

“It’s him!” I blurted out.

"what?"

"Who?"

The monkey and the preserved egg asked at the same time.

I shook my head, the shock I felt leaving me speechless.

The action I made when I turned around in the video seemed meaningless at first glance, but it made a completely different difference if I just changed my clothes.

If you were to swap modern clothes for a traditional Chinese long gown, you would immediately start shaking and adjusting the front and hem.

If I were to actually wear a long gown, as a modern person, I would only make such a gesture when I'm putting on an act.

However, in the video, it was clearly out of habit that he flicked his left hand downwards, but didn't touch what he intended, and then put his hand behind his back.

I couldn't concentrate on looking down anymore, so I rushed into the yard, ran to the pool next to Lu Zelin, turned on the tap, and stuck my head under it to rinse off.

At this time of year, the weather has already turned cool.

The icy water flowing down my hair and into my collar in the early morning couldn't calm me down.

That's because I was only conscious for the first five or six minutes of the time the monkey was filming the video.

She didn't regain consciousness until she woke up in Pidan's arms.

However, during those nearly two hours, I did not fall into a coma as I had imagined, but remained active.

That was definitely not sleepwalking, because after I went downstairs, the monkey patted my face several times, and we even had a brief eye contact.

But precisely because of this, I saw a stranger on my own face.

That was definitely not me; it was someone else controlling my body's actions.

The person who was used to wearing a long gown could only be—Lü Xin!
(End of this chapter)