Regarding Lu Heng's death, no one rushed to report it to the authorities. Instead, they first checked Lu Heng's belongings.
Xi Shengnan's belongings contained jade jewelry, so it was hard to say what they might find in Lu Heng's.
The belongings mostly contained everyday items, but a strange, palm-sized ebony box caught everyone's attention.
Qin Ci, using a cloth as a pad, opened the strange ebony box. Inside were some small pill-like objects. Qin Ci sniffed them lightly: "They should be throat lozenges or something."
"So, there's no secret in Lu Heng's belongings?" Cao Youning's eyes flashed with panic. This was the second death he had experienced in this world, and both deaths involved very close friends.
"This box looks like a medicine box. I have two similar boxes in my medicine kit," Qin Ci said, shaking the ebony box near his ear. "It doesn't sound strange, but I feel like my medicine box is larger, even though they look about the same size."
Mu Yiran took the ebony box and carefully examined its sides and bottom. He quickly discovered a hidden drawer. Opening the mechanism inside, the drawer could be pulled out.
"This is too mysterious. I doubt even Lu Heng can open this drawer…" Cao Youning's words were cut short as he stared in disbelief as Mu Yiran took out a folded piece of paper from the drawer.
"Is this the prescription?" Mu Yiran showed the paper to Qin Ci.
Qin Ci wanted to nod in confirmation, but to be on the safe side, he took the medical book and placed the paper on the torn page. The tear marks overlapped perfectly.
Everyone was stunned, never expecting that Lu Heng had secretly torn out and hidden the "Poison Fragrance" prescription.
Qin Ci sniffed the small drawer inside the medicine box again, his expression darkening. He looked at Du Lingyu: "Xiao Du, does this smell...?"
Du Lingyu nodded with difficulty: "It's that smell. Sister Xi had that smell when she died, and now Lu Heng's body... also has that smell. The smell in this drawer is stronger, but because it's in an ebony box, the smell is cleverly masked by the fragrance of the ebony, making it hard to detect. —Just like when the poison was put in chili sauce, the smell was masked by the strong aroma of the chili sauce."
"I don't believe it. I don't believe Lu Heng would secretly keep these poisons. I don't believe Lu Heng would commit suicide by taking these poisons, and I especially don't believe Lu Heng would poison Sister Xi! Sister Xi was arguably the most important person to Lu Heng." Mai Peng said intermittently.
"Mai Peng, you don't look well," Du Lingyu said with some concern.
"My head just hurts terribly, it's been like this since I woke up," Mai Peng scratched her messy hair. "I still don't believe Lu Heng would hide poison from us! Maybe it's all done by someone we can't see, and in the end we'll all be poisoned by that person."
"No, there's probably only this much poison," Qin Ci replied to Mai Peng, his gaze slowly shifting from the formula to Mai Peng's face. "I already checked all our spices yesterday, and the total amount of these goods is less than the shipping list. And those missing spices are precisely the ingredients used in this poisonous incense formula."
"You mean…"
"The poison recipe doesn't need to be too complicated. The missing ingredients, if combined, would only fill this small drawer of the medicine box at most," Qin Ci said, looking at everyone. "In other words, the drawer contains all the poison. A small portion was put in the chili sauce that poisoned Xi Shengnan, and Lu Heng ate most of the rest last night."
Luo Cheng was clearly also confused by this sudden series of events: "Was this poison prepared by someone else, and then used by that person to kill Lu Heng and Xi Shengnan?"
"If that's the case, why not kill both of them at once instead of doing it in two separate incidents?" Wei Dong spoke. "The success rate would be higher if we poisoned both of them at once."
Zhu Haowen added, "And there's a prerequisite: this hypothetical killer needs to know all of our habits, at least our individual tastes, to accurately poison Xi Shengnan with chili sauce. Furthermore, this person needs to be able to make Lu Heng sit alone at the table late at night and calmly drink the poison."
Hearing the word "drink," Du Lingyu noticed a water glass next to the wooden table where Lu Heng's body lay slumped. It was a common water glass, simply assigned to its owner based on the patterns on it.
The door was gently pushed open, and a bright, warm light shone into the room. The lamplighter poked his head in: "Esteemed guests, is there anything I can help you with?"
Mu Yiran looked at the lamplighter: "We have a deceased person here who needs burial."
"Alright, I'll go get someone to help." The lamplighter politely left after saying this.
It was the time to light the lamps, the midnight Mu Yiran had assumed. Everywhere was filled with a bright, warm light, as if someone were quietly telling you, "Today is another brand new day."
Du Lingyu frowned, sniffing her sleeves and then her wrists, her eyes fixed on the bright corridor outside the door, an urge to escape rising within her.
She subconsciously searched for Ke Xun in the crowd; inexplicably, this person gave her the greatest sense of security.
Ke Xun seemed to be talking to Mai Peng about something, something like "supporting the coffin."
"Ke Xun," Du Lingyu called out to Ke Xun in the crowd.
Ke Xun looked up, and in Du Lingyu's eyes, it was as if light shone on his face.
Du Lingyu said, "I have some ideas, but I don't know if they'll be useful."
Ke Xun, tall and imposing
, stepped out from the crowd: "Xiao Du, what are you thinking about?" Du Lingyu walked out of the room, quickened her pace to look at the section of corridor to the left and the stairs at the end of it: "I just had another hallucination. Lu Heng died, lying face down on the table like this. There were only Xi Jie and me in the room at the time. I was terrified, so I ran out of the room and ran down the stairs along the left-hand corridor... I seemed to be going to ask someone for confirmation about something."
Ke Xun didn't know what to say for a moment, only finding Du Lingyu's hallucination particularly strange: "You seem to have memories of events from another timeline, but these memories are intermittent."
"You mean, my hallucination just now came from another timeline?" Du Lingyu propped her head up and looked down at the stairs from the corridor railing. "I think I was going to see a woman, but the rest of the memory is completely blurry... I'm sorry, that's all I can remember, and I don't know if it'll be useful."
"If I remember correctly, every time you hallucinated, it was right after the lights were turned on." Ke Xun's gaze fell on the vertical lines on the corridor wall. All seven lines remained unchanged, still deep and resolute. "Or perhaps, the deaths triggered some deep-seated memories in you. Think about it carefully, each death was discovered after everyone woke up—strangely, why don't the rest of us have the same hallucinations as you? Do you have some kind of psychic ability in the real world?"
"Shao Ling asked me that question too," Du Lingyu seemed not to have fully recovered from the tension. She stood with her back against the wall, a self-protective posture. "Unfortunately, I'm very ordinary in the real world. You could say I'm completely immune to those supernatural things."
"The hallucination you just mentioned, with Lu Heng's death and Xi Shengnan beside him, reminds me of that photo from last night," Ke Xun carefully recalled Mu Yiran's explanation of those photos. "It was that photo, taken 16 hours later. Yiran guessed it was around 6:30 PM. There was a man sitting alone on the bed, and Xi Shengnan was lying not far away."
"You mean, that man was Lu Heng?" Du Lingyu carefully recalled the contents of the photo. "Xi Shengnan was already at the bottom of the photo. If I were in the photo, the angle wouldn't have captured me."
Du Lingyu calmly made this bold deduction, making Ke Xun look at this seemingly weak girl with new respect.
"If that's really the case, I don't understand why there were only the three of us left in the room. It was nighttime, and there was no reason for the others to be outside…" Du Lingyu seemed to have thought of something, but she couldn't bring herself to say it. At this moment, her eyes suddenly fixed on Ke Xun: "I don't know why, Ke Xun, among all the members, I trust you the most, even more than my old friends in the photography circle."
Ke Xun saw complete sincerity in Du Lingyu's eyes, and a trace of… something like regret.
"Especially when I saw those seven lines, the feeling was particularly strong," Du Lingyu continued. "For some reason, I just felt that your decision was correct, and it was a relentless, unstoppable force, without a trace of compromise or hesitation."
Du Lingyu wiped her eyes. "I don't know why I had these strange feelings, and I even shared them with you. It's like I've wanted to tell you these things for a long time, but it also feels like I'll never have the chance to say them."
Ke Xun gleaned some clues from Du Lingyu's words, but her later inexplicably emotional language left him disoriented. Ke Xun slowly approached Du Lingyu and patted her on the shoulder. "When we go to Lu Heng's funeral later, do you still have the courage to go to that window?"
Du Lingyu nodded without hesitation. "I will definitely go. Although I'm a little scared, I want to find out what really happened. Even if I see something more terrifying there, I think that will bring me closer to the truth."
"Okay," Ke Xun was speechless in the face of the courageous Du Lingyu. "We will all be with you."
"That's it!" Du Lingyu suddenly exclaimed, lost in thought. "I remember you said the same thing: We'll all be with you! We'll all unite to take this step, even if it's a step backward, but this step backward is for a longer journey forward! Even if this step backward leads to an abyss, what we gain is eternal light!"
Du Lingyu spoke these words carefully, her eyes glistening with tears.
Ke Xun stared in disbelief for a long time: "I can tell you with certainty, I could never say those words..." Ke Xun scratched his head and asked again, "Are you sure it wasn't Shao Ling who said those words..."
"It was you who said it! I was crying then, a lot of people were crying." Du Lingyu couldn't help but tear up again, "I don't remember anything after that, but I always felt like I was a deserter..."
Perhaps because Du Lingyu's voice was a bit loud, some of her companions came to the door, even Mu Yiran came out, holding a piece of paper with circles of various sizes drawn on it, each circle divided by lines at various angles.
Mu Yiran looked at Ke Xun: "There may only ever be one timeline, but it's been segmented and misaligned. Perhaps there's no real distinction between going against the flow and going forward. It's like driving on a highway; when we encounter a vehicle traveling in the other lane, because of the different directions, we always assume the other vehicle is going the wrong way."
Ke Xun: "Can you guys say something I can understand today...?"
Mai Peng: "I'd like to make the same request..."
Mu Yiran said to Mai Peng: "Based on the severity of your cold, I believe it will soon be completely cured, as if it never happened. —If this really comes true, then it will indirectly confirm my idea."