novelnext Chapter 299 - 301: The Truth
Chapter 299 - 301: The Truth
The old man felt his hand tremble slightly as he held the bone.
His expression hardened in an instant. He turned to Qingya with a dark look.
"This is the master you invited?!"
But beneath his fierce expression, a hint of guilt could be seen.
The live comments exploded at that moment.
[Oh my god, you can tell that expression is fake.]
[Definitely. He’s totally guilty.]
[Don’t tell me he actually killed that person.]
[The streamer is never wrong!]
[God, that’s so evil.]
[So was the story Jing Ya told fake?]
Just then, his face grew even darker. He stared at the palm of his hand, which was trembling uncontrollably.
His voice became unsteady. He glared, scanning Su Nian up and down. After a long moment, he snapped coldly.
"What proof do you have! This is a cow bone I specifically kept as a memento. You’re just a little girl, so stop spouting nonsense!"
The old man’s aggressive, self-righteous tone made it seem as if Su Nian were the one falsely accusing him.
But Qingya looked from him to Su Nian in astonishment, speechless for a moment.
Su Nian’s gorgeous lips curved into a smile. Her eyes, tilted slightly upward at the corners, gleamed with an air of supreme confidence.
She glanced down condescendingly at the old man, who was collapsed on the bed as if terminally ill, and chuckled softly.
"Keeping a person’s bone can disrupt a soul’s perception, preventing the dead from coming back for revenge."
"I’m not wrong, am I?"
"What are you talking about?"
The old man, both shocked and furious, immediately retorted.
[So you’re saying the old man actually killed that person, and he kept the bone, pretending it was from a cow, because he was afraid of being found out?]
[Holy crap, no wonder I thought the old man was so fierce just now. There were signs all along!]
Qingya’s face turned pale. Seeing her grandfather about to faint from anger, her tone soured as she pulled Su Nian back.
"Stop talking. My grandfather is already in poor health."
But Su Nian just snorted coldly and stepped forward. "You’re not sick at all. This whole act is just a pretense. You pretend to be ill, to look like you don’t have long to live. By staying bedridden all year and never going out, it’s harder for the ghost to sense you. You really are clever!"
Hearing this, Qingya froze. She was about to argue when a strange thought suddenly occurred to her.
’My grandfather really is strange,’ she thought. ’He complains about being in pain all day, but he’s never gone to a hospital for a check-up. He just lies in bed.’ She looked at her grandfather’s ghastly expression.
She didn’t want to investigate whether Su Nian was wrong; she just urged her.
"Master, please leave for now!"
Her voice was full of embarrassment.
A half-smile played on Su Nian’s lips as she continued, "Do you really think you can get away with it like this?"
"What do you mean by that? I already told you, I didn’t do it! I kept it to remember my old ox. What right do you have to slander me?"
Su Nian looked as if she had just heard the funniest thing in the world. The corners of her eyes crinkled as she laughed freely.
"How ridiculous. A lifetime of cleverness, undone by a moment of folly. You always keep this bone by your side, never moving from this spot. Didn’t it ever occur to you that the ghost might just come to your door to take revenge?"
[So the bone in their house is actually a human bone?]
[So Grandpa is the murderer from the story who ate the ox and killed the person!?]
[Whoa, this is so intense!!]
"Stop spouting nonsense!"
The old man seemed to be overcome with rage, his face flushing deep red.
Qingya couldn’t bear to see her grandfather like this.
She hurriedly pushed Su Nian, trying to get her to leave.
Su Nian’s lips curved as she continued to speak with a smile.
"You swore off beef because you didn’t want to be reminded of hunting down your own friend, did you?"
"You’re talking absolute nonsense! I did not!"
The old man tried to appear calm, but his trembling fingers betrayed his inner turmoil.
But that wasn’t all. Su Nian walked right up to his bed and snatched the bone from his hand.
Su Nian was surprisingly strong. Before the old man could even react, she had the bone in her grasp.
"And you’re truly vicious. Besides using the bone to disrupt the soul’s perception, you also tampered with it to exploit his spirit and his descendants’ fortune."
"All to improve your own family’s fortune, to lift you all from being dirt poor to where you are today. But unfortunately for you, you forgot one thing: he can feel what you’ve done to him. And today, he’s coming to pay you a visit."
Su Nian toyed with the bone, not sparing the old man a single glance.
The old man’s face was filled with fury, but a closer look revealed an expression of panic.
Su Nian examined the bone and saw that it was covered in hairline fractures.
Su Nian guessed that he must have struck it too hard with a heavy object, causing the bone to fracture like this.
He was clearly guilt-ridden to the core, but also terrified of being discovered, so he kept this bone by his side day and night.
As if to deliberately show what a loyal and sentimental man he was.
It just goes to show that sometimes, the evil in the human heart is beyond imagination.
After hearing what Su Nian said, and seeing the expression on her grandfather’s face, Qingya already had her suspicions.
But she was unwilling to admit it. She moved to drive Su Nian away.
"Hurry up and leave, you’re not welcome here! I’ll send you the money."
What should have been a meeting with her idol had turned into a hostile confrontation, but the live comments weren’t paying them any attention.
Killer!
That single word appeared on the screen.
But the old man was still roaring, his tone nasty and even a bit vitriolic.
"You worthless girl, you’re just spouting nonsense! Why should I admit to something I never did?"
Though his words were defiant, his hands trembled uncontrollably from his guilty conscience.
Su Nian glanced at the bone, then casually stuffed it back into the old man’s hand.
"Good. I was worried you wouldn’t admit it. After all, he’s been by your side this whole time, just waiting for a chance to appear."
As she spoke, Su Nian slowly and deliberately took out a piece of talisman paper from her pocket.
As a longtime fan, Qingya knew exactly what this gesture from Su Nian meant.
She had seen it many times on the livestream; she knew the smoke from Su Nian’s talisman paper could summon ghosts.
Her heart leaped in panic as her mind immediately flashed to the bone in her grandfather’s hand.
Although she had her doubts about her grandfather, she could only feign composure at this moment.
She snapped harshly, "What do you think you’re doing?"
But before she could stop her, Su Nian had already lit the talisman paper.
Just as she’d seen on the livestream, smoke from the talisman paper slowly drifted into the air.
And soon, a figure appeared at the head of the bed, a person dressed in gray-blue clothes covered in tattered patches.
The person’s face was covered in frostbite sores of all sizes, so bad that their skin looked like it was rotting away.
Their hands were especially swollen, puffy like steamed buns.
He was expressionless, his entire being looking broken and fragmented as he stood by the bed.
The old man beside him was so frightened that the bone slipped from his grasp and went flying.
"You... you... you..."
Su Nian casually picked up the bone, crushed it lightly in her hand, and then scattered the fragments toward the ghost.
This old man was truly greedy. In order to increase his family’s wealth, he had deliberately tricked this man and lured him out.
He had planned to kill the man on the road that day, capture his soul, and use his bones to practice his own dark arts.
He hadn’t expected to run into an avalanche.
Out of greed, wanting to further improve his family’s fortune, he kept a few extra pieces of the man’s bones.
He even tampered with the bones, but this inadvertently gave the man’s soul a place to attach itself.
The man gradually drew closer, his cold, swollen hands reaching out slowly as if seeking warmth.