The Mystery of the Inner Demon

Chapter 301 Menus and Notes

"Grilled squid, grilled chives, grilled oysters, grilled lamb skewers..." Wu Shanqiu stood next to Qi Fei and unconsciously started listing the dishes. "Brother Fei, did you have a late-night snack last night?"

Qi Fei's eyes were bloodshot, and it was unclear whether he had slept last night. However, he looked very excited and said, "This is not my late-night snack, it is Ma Ziqiang's late-night snack."

"Huh? No wonder it was handwritten. Did Xiao Tao give it to you? This was already analyzed during the autopsy. Why did you find it again, Fei-ge?"

"Take a look at this," Qi Fei said, handing the menu that Zhong Kui had left for him to Wu Shanqiu.

"Huh? What's this?" Wu Shanqiu glanced at it and her eyes widened in surprise.

“If something goes wrong here, then a lot of things can be explained,” Qi Fei said. “And we’ve been overlooking this person and his expertise.”

"Oh, what does his company do again?"

"They do production line planning for factories."

"My God! They actually used their expertise in this."

"Hmm, it seems we need to go through this process again, following his line of thinking."

Hearing this, Wu Shanqiu muttered thoughtfully, "Speaking of which, it reminds me of something. I didn't think much of it at first, but now it seems a bit strange."

"When I was browsing Lin Yu's Instagram account, I found that besides some design-related content, there was also some very abstract content, all posted late at night." As she spoke, she opened her phone, found Lin Yu's Instagram, and showed Qi Fei the content she had mentioned.

Qi Fei frowned slightly and read Lin Yu's message: "The lights are on, goodnight."

"You're here. Goodnight."

"You're here again. Goodnight."

"It's good that the lights are on."

The accompanying images for these posts are either his own coffee cup or a blurry window view, and they are all posted late at night, seemingly expressing his loneliness while working overtime late at night.

Qi Fei reread these seemingly casually taken photos and discovered that Lin Yu, as a designer, had actually put thought into the composition; the computer, coffee cup, and stationery were visually balanced.

This forced Qi Fei to carefully examine the contents of the picture. In the last photo Lin Yu posted before his accident, the notepad that often appeared in the photos was opened, and something was vaguely written on it.

“I saw this notepad when I was collecting evidence at the scene. I remember it was blank,” he muttered to himself.

At Wu Shanqiu's prompting, Qi Fei noticed one of the items, which made him frown even more. He couldn't help but look up at Wu Shanqiu standing to the side.

Wu Shanqiu winked at him: "These messages, which we don't know the meaning of, haven't been posted since that person who called himself 'Kong Xiaowen' added him as a friend. If Zhong Kui's guess is correct, this 'Kong Xiaowen' is Song Yun. Brother Fei, it seems we've found the reason he was killed."
-
At two in the morning, the night breeze blew in unhindered through the back window, and the light in Lin Yu's room, which had been off for several days, came on.

Coincidentally, the lights in Song Yun's house were still on.

Even though Ma Ziqiang is dead, she still seems unable to fall asleep. More than a decade of torment has made it impossible for her biological clock to recover.

The motion-sensor lights in the suspended corridor suddenly turned on, and Song Weiwei appeared. This woman, who maintained her exercise routine, looked almost exactly like a young girl from a distance.

Dressed in sportswear, it looks like she's planning a night run to relieve stress.

However, when she walked into the corridor, she stopped after taking only a few steps.

Dozens of meters away, the light that terrified her turned on. Under the light, there was a figure in the window, whose face was not clear, but who seemed to be looking at her.

She stumbled and almost fell, then fled home in a panic.

All the lights in Song Yun's house were turned off.

It was as if all those moments were just illusions from a dream, and no one but her would remember them.

"Ding-dong..." The doorbell rang in the darkness, the sound so jarring that it made her nerves tense to the point of almost snapping.

She covered her ears, pretending not to hear. The night was so quiet that after covering her ears for a while, she could hear the sound of her blood vessels beating with her heartbeat, thump thump thump, louder and faster.

Just like that day, the doorbell rang only once and then never rang again.

In her noisy home, she had longed for such a peaceful night, but now, this quiet had become a great torment.

Her in-laws were already fast asleep. She hesitated for a long time before finally deciding to confront her fears.

"If ghosts and gods really exist in this world, Ma Ziqiang should have died long ago." Song Yun muttered to herself, and these words seemed to give her courage as she got up to open the door.

As the door opened, the motion-sensor light turned on, and a cool autumn breeze swept across Song Yun's haggard face. The outside was empty; there was no one there.

This made Song Yun tremble with fear. She dared not look down. However, a gust of wind blew up and a piece of paper was swept up and rolled in front of her.

She reached out her trembling hand and grabbed the paper. When she saw the red and blue lines on the note, her face turned ashen. When she saw the words on it under the motion-sensor light, she screamed and dropped the paper.

"Kong Xiaowen, no one is waiting for you late at night anymore. Don't you feel lonely?" A man's voice came from one end of the dark corridor, startling Song Yun so much that she fell to the ground.

"I... I had no choice, please don't blame me. I've suffered so much, you wouldn't understand. We've planned for so long, we can't let it all go to waste because of you. Please forgive me, please forgive me." Song Yun was so frightened that she lost her mind and actually knelt on the ground, kowtowing and begging for mercy.

The sound of high heels came from behind her. Song Yun looked up and saw that it wasn't Lin Yu walking towards her, but the strange girl named Zhong Kui.

"It's you..." For some reason, the moment Song Yun saw Zhong Kui, her eyes were filled with despair. "What's your relationship with him?"

"Him?" Zhong Kui scrutinized Song Yun with an inhumanly sharp gaze.

“Yes, him. You look a lot like him. I felt that terrible feeling the first time I saw you.” Song Yun slumped to the ground, seemingly without the strength to stand up.

“Oh, him.” Zhong Kui raised the corner of her mouth and squatted down to look directly at Song Yun’s face. “We are different. He likes to turn the living into the dead, while I like to bring the dead back to this world. Recently, the young man who lives in the building opposite yours has been wanting to come back because he can’t understand why he died. He wants to find someone named Kong Xiaowen to ask her for an explanation.”