“She must love you a lot, right?” Shao Lan asked the man. “She only had two sets of clothes in the wardrobe, and they were washed until they were faded with patches, while your clothes are all brand new and neat. It seems she usually economized on herself and spent the money on you.”
“If I’m not mistaken, she took those traditional Chinese medicines because of you too,” Shao Lan said. “If she didn’t love you to the extreme, I can’t think of any reason why she would want a child so badly.”
“Then… did she kill people because of you, too?”
Hearing Shao Lan’s final question, the man, who had been keeping his head down and looking like a corpse, suddenly shuddered.
Jiang Mingran instinctively tightened his grip, but the man didn’t struggle.
He only looked forward, gazing at the woman in the bathroom.
“Suxia,” he murmured softly.
The woman stood there, her grayish-white eyes blinking as her mouth produced a vague syllable: “Yuan.”
Shao Lan asked in a low voice, “You are husband and wife?”
The man closed his eyes and gave a hum of assent.
“This is your home?”
“Mm.”
The rain outside the window seemed to grow heavier, pattering continuously against the glass.
The man suddenly looked at Shao Lan. “You called the special investigation team, and the police have arrived. Everything will be over soon. Before that, can you grant me a request?”
Shao Lan replied, “Go ahead.”
Jiang Mingran became a bit anxious. “Brother Lan, don’t listen to him. He might be tricking us. This woman is a monster, and the police might not even work.”
Shao Lan lowered his eyelids. “The police will work.”
“How do you know…”
“Because this is the only solution currently provided by the [game]. If it doesn’t work, then this is an unsolvable game, and the four loops are completely meaningless—we’d have no other way out except waiting to die.”
Shao Lan looked at the man. “Of course, he might indeed be tricking me, but at least listening can’t hurt.”
The man kept staring off in the direction of the woman, lost in thought, until Shao Lan reminded him that he could speak. Only then did he lower his head and let out a faint, self-deprecating laugh.
“Can you let me hug her?” he said. “Ever since she became like this, I haven’t held her in a very, very long time.”
“No way!” Jiang Mingran blurted out. “You’re a hostage! There’s no way we’re letting you go before the police arrive!”
The man leaned down, and a pocket watch slipped out of his jacket pocket.
“I can give you this in exchange,” he looked at Shao Lan. “It’s the most valuable thing in my home, bought when Suxia and I got married.”
“I’m begging you.” The man closed his eyes. In the dim light, his expression was close to a sense of release. “I just want a farewell.”
Shao Lan picked up the pocket watch and opened it. Inside was a yellowed wedding photograph.
In the photo, the man was a few years younger than he was now, wearing glasses and looking cultured and refined.
The woman beside him had ordinary features, but her smile was shy and gentle—completely different from the monster standing not far away at this moment.
Inscribed on the pocket watch was a line of small characters: “Li Chengyuan, Wu Suxia, a hundred years of harmony.”
Shao Lan’s gaze drifted toward the floor beside the sofa.
There lay the final floor inscription, but unlike the previous long sentences, this time the rule consisted of only four characters:
“Rule: See Suxia again.”
Shao Lan steadied himself against the sofa, feeling torn in a way he never had before.
The wail of police sirens rang out—the police had arrived downstairs.
As long as they kept holding out like this until the police arrived, they would be safe.
At this point, there was no need to complicate things unnecessarily. He didn’t have a savior complex, and even if he did, he wouldn’t use it to fulfill a murderer’s wish.
However, his intuition told him—in this game, not a single rule was useless.
“Jiang Mingran,” Shao Lan opened his eyes. “Let him go.”
Jiang Mingran doubted he had heard right: “Brother, no! Absolutely not!”
No matter how expensive this pocket watch was, how much could it possibly be worth? Could it buy the lives of the three of them?
Shao Lan looked at the man.
“Go on, go hug her,” Shao Lan said. “You should know, there always comes a day in life when we have to say goodbye. It’s time to say [goodbye] to her.”
Shao Lan led Jiang Mingran and Uncle Bing back into the hallway, then told Jiang Mingran to release the man.
“Brother, we really can’t let him go…” Jiang Mingran said.
“There’s no time, Xiao Jiang, do as I say.”
Jiang Mingran gritted his teeth. He knew that he and Uncle Bing had survived this long entirely thanks to Shao Lan.
Putting strength into his hands, he gave the man a fierce shove: “I’m warning you, don’t try any tricks!”
The man staggered forward from Jiang Mingran’s push, tumbling back into the room.
He raised his head and, through the dim light, gazed at the woman standing before him.
“I gave the room number when I called the police; the police will be here soon,” Shao Lan said. “You probably have about a minute left.”
The man stood up, walked toward the monster standing in place, opened his arms, and softly called her name: “Suxia.”
“Suxia.”
“My Suxia…”
Following the man’s soft call, amid the monster’s unkempt hair, that unseen eye blinked, and her expression gradually grew gentle.
She stepped forward and bent down.
He embraced her, gently stroking her hair.
“Suxia,” the man whispered, “thank you. In this lifetime, you really had a hard life.”
Along with those words, a sharp blade plunged into the monster’s body, the tip piercing straight out through her back, covered in blood.
The man had actually hidden another knife inside his jacket.
[Suxia] let out a shrill cry, blood-stained tears streaming from her pale eyes, but she didn’t struggle.
As the blood poured out, that towering figure gradually shrank, finally transforming into an ordinary-featured, gentle, and quiet woman.
She slumped in the man’s arms, as light as a sheet of paper.
The man pulled out the knife and turned it back on himself, stabbing it into his own body.
“Wait, what are you doing?!”
Jiang Mingran roared, trying to rush forward.
Yet suddenly, the sound of rain outside stopped, and an intensely dazzling sunlight shot into the room, turning the entire interior into a blinding white.
Amidst the halo of light, everyone seemed to witness everything that had once happened in this room.