Chapter 141: Deep Coma

After hanging up the phone, I headed straight for the location Lu A’yao had given me. At the same time, a faint, ominous premonition stirred in my heart because the place he described was a major intersection.

By the time I arrived, the scene was already a chaotic mess. The sprawling lanes were almost entirely covered in splatters of blood. Aside from the blood and fragments of organs I couldn’t identify, there were fallen car panels. The brake marks from the dump truck stretched at least a dozen meters. The driver was crouching on the curb, clutching his head.

Lu A’yao was standing ahead of me in the middle of the road. My gaze slowly shifted downward, and I saw the “person” lying on the ground. Or rather, I didn’t know if I should call it a complete “person” anymore, because his lower body had been crushed to pieces.

Seeing me arrive, Lu A’yao took a step back, blocking my view of Liang Zicheng’s face on the ground.

My running footsteps came to a halt at that moment, and my brain simply shut down. I could no longer feel the pain in the back of my head. As I moved my stiff body forward, wanting to take a look, Lu A’yao pressed his hand directly onto my shoulder and showed me the ashes of some paper.

“I’ve already called the police. When I chased him here, I saw him get run over by the truck. He must have been dragged for a distance. He’s already stopped breathing. I searched around for the paper he was clutching, but these ashes are all that’s left.”

My brain was completely unable to process such an event. I tried to take another step forward, but Lu A’yao blocked me firmly. He pulled a tissue from his pocket, stuffed it into my hand, and looked at me. “Wipe the blood off your head. When the cops get here, they won’t be easy to fool. Think about what you’re going to say.”

I crumpled the tissue in my hand and looked at the driver responsible for the accident crouching on the opposite side of the road. This man’s state was very wrong. Usually, when someone hits a person, their subconscious reaction is panic, but I couldn’t see a trace of that emotion on his face. The driver just sat there in silence, clutching his head, not saying a word, seemingly just waiting for the police to arrive.

Moreover, this was clearly the city center. At this time of night, even if he hit someone and couldn’t brake in time, it shouldn’t have resulted in dragging the person dozens of meters forward. I didn’t know how to express what I was feeling. For a moment, my thoughts were so scattered that I couldn’t find a single point to latch onto.

Although I couldn’t find a particularly solid reason, I still stubbornly believed that Liang Zicheng’s death was no accident.

Lu A’yao probably noticed that my gaze wasn’t very friendly at that moment. He immediately interrupted my thoughts and urged me softly, “Gan Ji, you need to calm down. He’s definitely going to insist that your classmate suddenly rushed into the road and he didn’t see him. You have no evidence. Accusing him without cause will only make the police view you as a suspect. Listen to me.”

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to stay calm, and shook my head at him. “I understand. I won’t say that. But let me see the body. At least let me remember.”

Lu A’yao locked eyes with me for half a minute before finally stepping aside. It was perhaps the first time in my life I had seen a corpse so utterly mangled. Half of the face had been rubbed away while being dragged across the ground, making the features almost unrecognizable. All I could see was blood.

A few minutes later, the police arrived. They took photos of the scene and called us all to the station to give statements. Later, they tried to call Liang Zicheng’s parents, but the line remained busy.

The entire process took about five hours. Throughout it, I remained unnaturally calm. When the police asked what I was doing out so late, I said we had planned to explore a haunted house at night, but Liang Zicheng got scared halfway through and ran out alone. We went to chase him, but before we could catch up, he was hit by the truck.

The police then asked about my injury. I said I had been running too fast and hit my head against a wall.

The two officers questioning me clearly didn’t believe my story, so they started using different tactics to trip up Lu A’yao and me. However, my thinking remained extremely fluid throughout the process, and I didn’t fall for any of their traps. Not only was I able to make my story consistent, but I even managed to fire back a few remarks.

Lu A’yao was a master of lying. He only spoke the few lines he needed to, bypassing anything outside of that scope entirely. In the end, they had no choice but to let us leave.

When Lu A’yao followed me out of the police station doors, it was already past eight in the morning. The sun hung high in the sky. we hailed a taxi on the street to go home.

As I sat in the car, sensation slowly returned to my limbs. Only then did I feel that my body was ice-cold from head to toe. Yet, I couldn’t describe exactly what I was grieving for. My relationship with Liang Zicheng had always been poor; he hadn’t even forgotten to screw me over one last time before he died.

In this entire affair, for the first time, I felt a strange and profound agony. This pain far exceeded any physical hurt. Perhaps from the moment I saw the corpse, my heart had automatically added Liang Zicheng to the list of people who had died because of me.

Though I did not strike the blow, he died because of me. I suddenly understood what White Immortal had told me before: your fate is bad, so no matter who stays with you, they will end up either dead or crippled.

“I want to go back to Xinchang Bank,” I said.

Lu A’yao said to me, “You don’t look well. Go back and rest first. You said yesterday that you have classes this afternoon.”

I said stubbornly, “I’m going back.”

A person can be quite terrifying when they become stubborn. Lu A’yao couldn’t win against me and could only have the taxi change direction. We returned to the old site of the Xinchang Bank Vault, but this time I didn’t go to the second floor. I chose an unremarkable washroom directly beneath the archive room.

The location of this washroom was identical to the archive room, situated right below it. This place had originally been used to store banknotes. Judging by the previous list, the size of the vault in the courtyard wasn’t large enough to hold so many things. Therefore, I suspected there was another, even larger vault hidden here for storing important VIP items.

The washroom was very small, so narrow that only one person could pass through at a time. I leaned against the sink that stood out quite abruptly in the middle of the path and tried to give it a push. With that push, I heard a sudden, sharp click from the base.

Lu A’yao heard it too. He stepped over to help me push, and once the sink was moved aside, a wooden panel was revealed behind it. It was a hidden door.

Lu A’yao stepped forward and pushed the door open. I discovered a set of stone stairs extending downward behind it. He pulled out a flashlight, switched it on, and walked ahead to lead the way.

Looking down by the light, I realized the stone stairs weren’t actually that long, only about a dozen steps or so. At the bottom was a man-made cavity, and directly facing the stairs was a door with a very intricate design.

Calling it a door wasn’t quite accurate. Its appearance was more like a traditional bank vault, circular in shape with a lock core featuring a particularly complex pattern. It was built on a large scale, with the pattern being roughly the size of my hand. The engravings on the door were ancient and elegant; it was a purely handcrafted mechanical door.

Where could such professional craftsmanship have come from?

I reached out to touch the patterns on the door, finally letting my gaze rest on the lock core. “Without a key, this door won’t open, and we won’t be able to get inside,” I said.

If He Yu were here, he would certainly ask why we couldn’t just use explosives to force it open. However, he wasn’t here, and Lu A’yao and I shared a tacit understanding not to suggest that plan. We both knew one thing for certain: the foundation here was already quite unstable. If explosives were used underground, the building above would completely collapse, burying us along with this door.

“The booklet Liang Zicheng snatched from me at the end had my grandfather’s name on it,” I said.

Lu A’yao looked at me, and I continued, “The booklet records that my grandfather had been storing things here. I did a rough estimate, and he stored at least forty items, but I don’t know exactly what they are. We’ll only know once we open this door.”

Lu A’yao also stepped forward to touch the door, frowning. “This door is very thick.”

He looked at me then, shifting the flashlight’s beam slightly as he changed the subject. “Regardless, we should head back for now.”

The exhaustion from the entire night made it impossible for me to process Lu A’yao’s words for a moment. Before I could react, he had already firmly ushered me back up the stone stairs.

I walked in front, and as I bent down to crawl out of the ruins of Xinchang Bank, I was instantly met with the scorching sunlight. Suddenly, my footsteps began to feel incredibly unsteady. A large crowd of people abruptly swarmed in front of me, but their faces were already becoming a blur.

A second later, my foot caught on something and I tripped, sending me pitching toward the ground. At the same time, I noticed a very familiar figure running out from the crowd in my peripheral vision. He rushed forward to catch me.

In that instant, all sorts of voices and footsteps filled my ears, but I no longer had the consciousness to distinguish who they belonged to.