323 Failed Products

 

The baby’s bones were buried in the middle of the balcony. It was wrapped in talismans. The owner of the house saw this small creature as some kind of monster, the source of all the tragedy and thus had contained it with layers of talismans.

“Why would someone treat a baby like this? Based on the size, it should be only several weeks old.” Li Xue had her colleagues take the bones back for analysis while she took out her phone to report the findings to her superior.

Walking back into the living room, Han Fei glanced into the narrow storage room and all the info started to link in his mind. ‘The Exorcist locked Zhuang Wen up at home for a whole year to ‘cure’ her. But why must her movements be limited? What happened to Zhuang Wen in that year? Was the baby under the brick her child?’ The baby inside the balcony was the source of her hatred. It was because of the baby that the jumper woman possessed enough hatred to break through the limits of a lingering spirit!

Even if her memory was spliced, she could overpower the red dress. Hatred was the source of her power, her everything. The hatred had grown beyond the jumper woman’s control and she became the janitor at Building 1, cleaning up all the living creatures that she saw. She would appear half an hour after an outsider entered the building. From these observations, it was clear that Ziggurat’s manager had greatly manipulated the jumper woman, or rather, the jumper woman became the thing that she was, due to the deliberate planning of the manager. The jumper woman was one of Butterfly’s creations.

Taking in the smelly mattress, and the shackle, Han Fei was chilled to his core. Being in this house, the line between the cryptic world and the real world blurred. The house radiated an oppressive feeling. Han Fei couldn’t imagine how Zhuang Wen managed to spend a whole year inside that suffocating storage room. ‘The cryptic world is the reflection of the real world. How horrid it is here is how terrifying it will be there.’

Han Fei and the rest waited for an hour before Li Xue’s colleagues came back with the news. After analysis and comparison, the baby’s mother was Zhuang Wen and the father was the Exorcist’s son. As they investigated deeper, something surprising popped up. The Exorcist’s son had crossed paths with the killer of the human jigsaw case 14 years ago! No one expected these 2 completely different men to have known each other!

With the citizenry database as well as the photon computer, as long as it had been recorded, such information could be found easily by law enforcement. 14 years ago, before the Exorcist’s family died, Exorcist’s son often visited and donated to the orphanage run by Weep’s father. Around the same time, the young Meng Changan often frequented that orphanage as well. This might be a coincidence but when dealing with the Butterfly, there were no coincidences. The police immediately launched an investigation into the private orphanage, the goal was to check who was there 14 years ago. When Meng Changan and the Exorcist’s son appeared there, who else was there as well.

Meng Changan was moulded by the Butterfly, it was probably the same case with the Exorcist’s son. While the police exchanged information, Han Fei felt his limbs go numb. If the Exorcist’s son was Butterfly’s follower, then many things could be explained. With Butterfly’s cruelty, it would have done anything to achieve its goal.

Han Fei had played the Ziggurat game and had seen what was inside Room 1244. The Exorcist’s family of 3 were all detained and trapped, they were punished the same way Zhuang Wen was. They most likely had done something incredibly horrible to Zhuang Wen.

“The ‘exorcism’ on Zhuang Wen was just a manifestation of human sin. Based on the baby and Zhuang Wen’s time of death, Zhuang Wen was pregnant about a year before she died. She was trapped inside the storage room after her baby bulge couldn’t be covered up anymore, that was the real reason behind the ‘exorcism’.” Li Xue concluded.

“Their sins might be deeper than you dare to imagine.” Han Fei said under his breath. He knew the female livesteamer and Zhuang Wen died on the same day, April 4th wasn’t a coincidence, the Butterfly had arranged this. But how to make 2 victims choose to commit suicide on the same day?

Han Fei didn’t know much about the female livestreamer but he had a guess about Zhuang Wen’s situation. Based on Zhuang Wen’s circumstances, it was not hard to imagine that the poor girl would have sought death as an escape so why did she wait until April 4th? Perhaps the Exorcist used the baby to keep her alive. He probably told her that she would be able to see her child once the ghost was chased out of her. Since Zhuang Wen was young, all she had was her sickly mother, she didn’t have a good childhood. Understandably, she wouldn’t want the same to happen to her child so she held onto hope for her baby. But on April 4th, the Exorcist’s family told Zhuang Wen the truth. Her baby had been killed a long time ago because it was the source of all tragedy. A ritual had been performed on it and it was buried for everyone’s safety.

After finding that out, Zhuang Wen’s lingering hope turned into hatred. Now that she had lost everything, she chose death. The world lost that poor girl and the cryptic world gained a new Lingering Hatred—the jumper woman.

Considering the Butterfly’s involvement, Han Fei believed this was the truth. “However even after everything she had been put through, she ended up as a failed product. All of her pain and torment were for nothing, even her despair was just a tool.” To the Butterfly, the jumper woman was a failure, or else it wouldn’t have progressed to the creation of Little Eight. Han Fei’s fists closed as his hatred towards Butterfly intensified. ‘If the Butterfly is not apprehended, more tragedies like the one that happened to the jumper woman would continue. The creature that condescended on humanity would do anything.’

After knowing everything that happened to the jumper woman, Han Fei parted from the police. He returned to Pear Blossom Neighbourhood to try to complete the game while he still had the time. But just as he reached the Ziggurat map again, Huang Yin’s call came. “Han Fei! Feng Ziyu has gone missing!”

“Missing? Have you contacted the police?” Han Fei was definitely not expecting that.

“I have. They’re investigating it.” Huang Yin said in a worried tone, “I have a very bad feeling about this, I believe the Butterfly might have Ziyu. On the night before he disappeared, he sent me some messages about this repeating dream he had been having. He felt there was something beside his bed and he reminded me to be careful of my own safety.”

“Forward all the messages that he has sent you to me. Do not miss out on anything!” Feng Ziyu was close to the tester who went insane, he was also the only surviving human being who had been to the surface world’s Ziggurat. He knew how to protect himself, he had been keeping a low profile and very few people knew about him.

Huang Yin sent the messages to Han Fei, when the latter saw the first message, he sucked in a cold breath.

“I have been having this repeated nightmare recently. I dreamt that I was walking out from darkness, a voice told me that the exit was not far ahead.

“I couldn’t wake up, I could only keep on walking. Eventually I did see a door in the darkness.

“The door was connected to an apartment building. All the room numbers in this building start with 4 and the room that I just walked out of was Room 4444.”