Rules of the Strange: I Became a God in a Bizarre World Through Taoist Arts

Shen Xingzhu stared blankly at the word "diary," realizing that this must be the key clue to uncovering the whole truth.

She turned and left the greenhouse, stepping once again into the boundless night.

She would rather face the bloody and bizarre than this cruel truth.

Tongtong was temporarily placed in the new paper doll's body, and the blood-stained stone by the pond now turned as white as jade.

The flowers in the garden are the result of my brother's careful tending; please... absolutely do not pick them and put them on the stones.

This stone is actually a tombstone.

Placing flowers in front of a tombstone is a gesture of respect.

Therefore, Tongtong in red will be summoned.

If Tongtong's wish to "find her mother" is not fulfilled, it will definitely anger her, and then she will chase after him.

As for the pond next to the stone, the water is now still, quietly reflecting the moonlight.

But Shen Xingzhuo also noticed something was wrong.

There is no pond in the garden. If you see a pond, do not stare at the water, and do not put your hand in the pond!

Indeed, there is no pond in the garden now.

The pond had been drained and used as a cemetery for the dead.

Shen Xingzhuo naturally used her Qi Observation Technique and could tell that the tomb itself did not belong to Tongtong; Tongtong must have floated here on her own later.

However, Shen Xingzhuo still couldn't be sure whether the person buried here was her father or Tongtong's beloved mother.

She couldn't very well do something like digging up someone's grave.

Moreover, a long time has passed, and this is just a strange tale of rules.

There might be nothing in the grave she forcibly dug open; it was all just a futile, pointless effort.

So Shen Xingzhuo only glanced at it briefly before looking away.

The key is still the diary.

Who wrote the diary that records the truth?

The gardener did not provide any instructions.

First, we can rule out Tongtong. She's just a little kid, still at the age where her mother sings nursery rhymes, so she probably doesn't know many words and can't write a diary yet.

Did Dad write it?

Shen Xingzhuo thought it was impossible; she was certain that her father was the murderer of her mother.

However, he committed the murder on his daughter's birthday, and in his own room. Unless he is a complete psychopath, this murder should be considered a crime of passion.

Without any preparation, he lost his humanity and murdered his wife.

Such a person wouldn't have such delicate emotions as writing a diary.

Therefore, the possibilities fall on the remaining two people: the mother or the brother.

Both of them may have a habit of keeping a diary.

Is it Mom? But the ghost story emphasizes at the beginning that only the brother and sister are in the house, so it is very likely that Mom's room has been cleaned.

So, the most likely place... is the older brother's room.

This is a problem, because my brother rarely leaves his room unless there are special circumstances.

But Shen Xingzhuo had a gut feeling that she could see her brother's true colors in that diary.

Whether it's someone guarding a secret or another victim, it will all be revealed in the diary.

She had to find that diary.

Shen Xingzhuo had no intention of returning to her room.

She bypassed the main road, using the shadows of the trees and flowers to quietly move towards the side of the villa's main building. Based on her memories of the day and the paper figure's observations, her brother's room window should be on this side.

She found the window.

Just as she was about to sneak in quietly, she discovered that the entire window frame was crisscrossed with countless wooden strips.

The knocking sounds heard during the day were identified as coming from a carpenter sealing off the first-floor windows.

By the way, Shen Xingzhuo realized that she had never met this carpenter before.

What role is this person playing? Or... Shen Xingzhuo had a bold guess.

The fact that parts of Tongtong's body were replaced with wood must be related to this person.

And this carpenter, if called by another name, might be...

Wood! Puppet! Master!

Shen Xingzhuo's heart sank.

My brother's room was indeed a deliberately isolated "forbidden zone." Hidden within were probably more than just a diary; there were things far more unsettling.

Forcibly breaking the window? The noise would be too loud and immediately alert all the strange things in the mansion.

She stood still for a moment, then, without further hesitation, turned and retraced her steps. Since this path was blocked, she needed to find another way.

Perhaps when her brother receives treatment tomorrow, she can take the opportunity to shut down his five senses and find the diary.

Shen Xingzhuo gracefully swept across the garden again, returned to the base of the villa wall, and with a few light taps of her toes, skillfully climbed back to the second floor along the exterior wall decorations and drainage pipes, quietly landing on the windowsill of her room.

The window was ajar when she left.

Shen Xingzhuo silently pushed the door open, slid sideways into the room, and moved so smoothly that he didn't make a sound.

However, the moment her feet touched the indoor carpet, she saw a figure!

It's the butler in white.

He seemed completely unsurprised by Shen Xingzhuo's return from outside the window, bowed slightly, and said in his flat, emotionless voice, "Miss, it's late, you should rest."

"Furthermore," he looked up, his eyes revealing neither joy nor anger, "curiosity is a good thing, but some rooms aren't locked, not because you can go in, but because... what goes in can never come out again."

The air suddenly froze.

If you see a butler in white, you can ask them a question.

Shen Xingzhu ignored the warning in the butler's tone and instead looked at him gently.

She said sincerely, "Grandpa Butler, thank you... for always protecting Tongtong."

Shen Xingzhuo stepped forward and grasped the butler's withered hand, then gently placed a newly folded small gold ingot, which gleamed faintly with the light of his wish power, in his palm.

"Tongtong..."

"Run!"

Two lines of bloody tears streamed down the corners of the butler's wrinkled eyes, and his body almost instinctively pushed Shen Xingzhuo away.

Shen Xingzhuo felt reluctant, but still wanted to take this opportunity to ask the housekeeper a question.

"Grandpa Butler, please tell me, between Tongtong and her father, who passed away first?"

The butler opened his mouth and let out a "hoarse" sound.

"Yes... sir... it was your father who passed away..."

Before he could finish speaking, his entire eyeball rolled upwards, leaving only a horrifying white. Blood and foam continued to ooze from his mouth.

"My sister isn't dead. You...you..."

Shen Xingzhuo's heart skipped a beat!

The butler vomited a mouthful of black blood and staggered towards the door, eventually disappearing into the darkness of the corridor.

Tongtong and her younger sister are two different people!

Tongtong is the little girl in red we just saw, and her younger sister is her!

Shen Xingzhuo suddenly understood many details.

A bolt of lightning suddenly ripped across the sky, followed by a deafening clap of thunder, and the rain that had been brewing for so long finally began to fall.