Lakeside Ghost Story 11

With a dull thud, the woman's questioning came to an abrupt stop.

Liu Jingyun, who had climbed in through the window, had knocked her unconscious in one blow with a table lamp. The girl looked a little dazed after bashing someone over the head, and sheepishly lowered her weapon.

"Sorry. It was just instinct..." Liu Jingyun scratched her head. "I didn't think she'd go down that easily."

Zhuo Yu: ...

"It's fine. You did well."

Zhuo Yu could not help but marvel at what a good call it had been to take her on as a teammate.

Liu Jingyun cautiously patted the woman's cheek. Once she was sure the woman really was unconscious, she boldly locked the bedroom door and began looking around.

Only after entering did she realize how large the bedroom was. Compared with the guest room, this one was clearly more like the master bedroom, complete with a vanity and a desk. The woman was no longer young, about the mayor's age. She was most likely the mayor's wife.

Where had the mayor gone in the middle of the night instead of sleeping? Could he be dealing with the aftermath of the fire? But when they had arrived near the villa, not a single light had been on.

Following Zhuo Yu's lead, Liu Jingyun began to think it through as well. Hesitantly, she said, "I think there's something wrong with the mayor."

Zhuo Yu gave her an approving look and waited for her to continue.

Encouraged, Liu Jingyun's uncertain tone became firm. "As mayor, he must know Golden Lake is dangerous. Even if he doesn't think it's supernatural, he wouldn't let his daughter go to a place where so many people have died."

"Exactly. That's why I came here." Zhuo Yu thought back. "On the way to Golden Lake, the other actors told me the mayor had said the scary stories about the lake were just meant to frighten children. But those characters are at precisely the age when curiosity and rebelliousness run highest. Do you see what I mean?"

"He pretended to discourage them, but he was actually egging them on!" Liu Jingyun's eyes widened. "The mayor was encouraging them to go to Golden Lake."

"That's right." Zhuo Yu looked pleased with her progress. "The mayor must know something. So now I'm going to give you a task."

Liu Jingyun brightened. "Tell me. I promise I'll get it done, as long as you don't make me fight the boss!"

Zhuo Yu smiled and pointed at the desk. "Moving is difficult for me, so take every document out of his desk. We'll go through them one by one. We'll find a clue."

Liu Jingyun moved quickly and immediately began searching. Sitting silently in the corner, Zhuo Yu observed the newcomer.

She was bold, meticulous, ruthless when she struck, and possessed extraordinary willpower and a strong desire to survive. Most important of all, she listened.

Zhou Wu, Zhou Wu. Did you know that the little girl you looked down on might be the most promising actor among this batch of newcomers? A fool who judged people solely by their size and strength would probably die in the Studios soon enough.

Zhuo Yu had no intention of wasting talent like that.

Before long, Liu Jingyun had carried all the papers over to Zhuo Yu. After skimming them, he found that they were all town development plans, home expansion plans, and applications for resource extraction and surveying. Judging from these documents alone, Nina's father, "Marcus," really was a conscientious mayor.

"The bottom drawer is locked. I can't open it." Liu Jingyun looked troubled.

Zhuo Yu took out a hairpin and showed Liu Jingyun how to use it, along with a few tricks. She fumbled with it for a while, then after ten-odd minutes, found the knack. With a click, the drawer sprang open.

"I did it! I really did it!" Liu Jingyun felt a pure, heartfelt joy. Ever since following Zhuo Yu, she had been learning new skills: driving, picking locks... Most importantly, she had seen hope in him.

The hope of escaping this horror movie.

"Nicely done." Zhuo Yu praised Liu Jingyun like a mentor.

He took the documents and found that their contents were indeed different.

"This..." Liu Jingyun, peering over his shoulder, was utterly shocked. "What is he doing? This is a cult, isn't it?"

These papers were different from the earlier ones. They were covered in dense, bizarre sigils that, taken together, looked like the face of a monster. Several families were clearly listed within.

Bills, Rockfina, Yeck. The surnames were far too familiar. Zhuo Yu took the school records from his inventory and confirmed that they belonged to the four students' families.

But the list went far beyond them. It contained a long string of surnames, each followed by a record of what that family had contributed. Some had given money to sustain the secret organization, such as Zhou Wu's family. Some had brought in social connections to build its network, like Li Mingfeng's family. Fang Hao's Yeck family had contributed the least and owned few assets, placing them at the bottom of the list.

The most outrageous entry was a monthly contribution of five thousand milliliters of human blood.

What exactly were they plotting? Was it connected to Golden Lake?!

Zhuo Yu kept turning the pages. What he found was almost too horrifying to believe. They had kept detailed records on every town resident who had drowned in Golden Lake. The earliest case dated back fifty years!

The mayor should only have been a few years old then. Could this be a family-run cult?

Zhuo Yu even spotted a familiar face in one of the record photographs: the drowned revenant he had encountered.

Though it had swollen into a grotesque waterlogged corpse, Zhuo Yu had spent an entire night dissecting it. He had formed a basic impression of its face, enough to recognize it.

Before his death, this man had been the mayor's business partner. He had paid several million dollars to the mayor for the right to "immortality"...

That cult was doing something so monstrous. Did they know that drowning in Golden Lake would not grant immortality, but turn them into monsters?

The mayor seemed to be building a pyramid scheme, making prospective members pay money and contribute labor, then recruit more people below them and lure even more victims in. He used that bloodstained money to pay dividends to the founding shareholder families.

And families like Zhou Wu's Bills family did not lack money. Zhuo Yu believed the mayor had to have some other inducement.

Once a person had wealth and power, they would cherish their life all the more. Like the billionaires in the real world, who spared no expense on life-extending injections or went to Switzerland for longevity treatments.

What people like that wanted most was immortality.

Zhuo Yu's fingers tightened around the papers. Could Golden Lake really grant ordinary people immortality?

Right. If Golden Lake held nothing but danger, why would they send their own children there to die?

The mayor had to be holding a trump card Zhuo Yu did not know about.

"This is getting more and more interesting."

Zhuo Yu recalled the boss's pursuit of the four students, and suddenly understood.

"I get it. Perhaps Tales by the Lake is a horror movie from the student actors' perspective, and that crocodile boss is the film's great villain. But once you've gathered enough clues and look at it from another angle, the boss is merely Golden Lake's guardian. He's stopping these greedy humans from exploiting Golden Lake's resources. He is Golden Lake's means of self-preservation, including the seven-day curse."

"That's incredible, Boss!" Liu Jingyun looked at him with undisguised admiration. "And then? Then what?!"

"Then, as long as we avoid the curse and the boss's pursuit, we need to find out what the mayor's cult is plotting, why it came into being, and what exactly happened between the boss and my character. Once we understand those things, we may learn this scenario's clearance requirements!"

Zhuo Yu smiled with absolute confidence. "The truth is getting closer and closer."

The audience members beyond the screen seemed to catch his excitement as well. Comments rolled by without pause.

[Damn, that really is impressive. I wasted fifty Flame Points betting on the wrong guy. I should've picked Zhuo Yu!]

[No wonder he's a genius writer. The plot is moving so fast!]

[It's not just fast. This guy's smart, and he's ruthless as hell, too!]

[I'm the one who's watched this movie six times. This run has pushed the story farther than any other. It feels like we're finally seeing a glimmer of hope.]

[Yeah, the last run got wiped out on the second day.]

[If Zhuo Yu survives, I'm buying his complete collection!]

[Zhuo Yu is disabled, too. If he could use his legs, he'd probably do even better.]

The audience members were gradually drawn into the story of Tales by the Lake. The cold-blooded revelry from the beginning of the film seemed to have vanished. Their tune had changed: they no longer wanted Zhuo Yu to die. This movie was rare, and they wanted to see its true ending.

Zhuo Yu glanced out the window. Dawn was almost here.

After the bumpy journey, the fire at the school, and following the mayor, very little of the night remained.

He hurried through the remaining documents until he reached the final page: the Golden Lake Land Transfer Declaration.

Zhuo Yu's breath caught. A sharp pain suddenly lanced through his heart, another effect brought on by his character. His fingers trembled, as if the deed in his hands were not a flimsy sheet of paper, but an unbearable memory weighing a thousand pounds.

"A transfer declaration? People don't usually transfer land like that. Selling it would make more money, especially an entire mountainside." Liu Jingyun was baffled by its contents, until she saw the signature.

Zhuo Yu.

Zhuo Yu again.

There was not only a signature, but a bright-red fingerprint. The declaration's corners were damaged, as if it had suffered terribly, and it was spattered with small bloodstains.

Zhuo Yu could not stop himself from gasping. His legs hurt so badly, but it was not physical pain. He had heard that amputees who lost limbs in car accidents could still feel the missing parts, tormented by phantom pain that no amount of painkillers could erase.

Liu Jingyun noticed something was wrong and supported Zhuo Yu anxiously. "Are you okay? What happened?"

Zhuo Yu only frowned. He bit open his thumb, blood running through his fingers, then pressed his fingerprint onto the back of Asha's file and compared it with the one on the transfer declaration.

They were identical.

Zhuo Yu did not believe his character would give up land passed down through generations. Besides, that was where he and Asha had lived.

He covered his forehead and let out a low laugh. "Ha... Hahaha... Traveler, I know what your wish is."

The moment Zhuo Yu said those words, the phantom pain from having his legs broken abruptly vanished. Everything settled into calm, as if the thick hatred that had just churned within him had never existed. It lay dormant in silence, as though awaiting the moment Zhuo Yu had spoken of.

Not far away, the crocodile-headed man standing amid the ashes finally relaxed the taut cord in his heart.

He had not found Zhuo Yu's corpse, which meant Zhuo Yu was still alive somewhere.

The boss hid in the shadows, away from the crowds. Like a seasoned hunter, he began tracking Zhuo Yu's trail. The little pests no longer mattered. He set Golden Lake's task aside. His task now was to follow his heart.

And so, beneath the shadow of the treetops outside the window, Zhuo Yu saw the man.

And the boss was watching him too.