"So what was your brother's reaction after he heard that?"
A man driven mad by a ghost, already unstable to begin with, might very well resort to extreme measures when threatened. What
"My sister-in-law threatened to report him to the police if he didn't agree to divorce. Hearing that, my brother actually calmed down. He thought about it all afternoon and finally agreed to the divorce." Fan Yu's aunt's expression was complicated. "Looking back now, I think what my brother spent that afternoon deliberating over wasn't whether to divorce, but how to silence my sister-in-law."
"After that, everything unfolded according to my brother's plan. On the day it happened, a heavy rainstorm broke out. My brother locked Fan Yu in his office and went home alone. When we realized Fan Yu was missing, we assumed he'd wandered off and went out to search everywhere. My brother and sister-in-law went together to Muyang Middle School."
"I got home after nine and found they still hadn't returned. I figured something might have happened, so I went to Muyang Middle School to look for them."
"There's a dry well on the mountain behind the school. A few days before the incident, a rainstorm had triggered a landslide that buried the well's opening. When I arrived, I happened to catch my brother clearing the mud from around the well."
"At first, I didn't see my sister-in-law. I didn't think much of it then — I ran over and called out to my brother. Only when I got closer did I see that my sister-in-law's body was wedged in the mouth of the well."
"I never imagined my brother could do something like that. He'd always been so gentle and refined. And above all, he truly doted on my sister-in-law."
"My brother had gone completely mad. From the moment he brought that group photograph home and said he was haunted by a ghost, that something was out to get him — I could tell he'd lost his mind."
"After I stumbled on the murder, my brother gave me two choices: help him cover everything up, or he would kill me."
"To stay alive, I had no choice but to obey him. I did what he asked — inflicted wounds on my sister-in-law's body, then helped him dig open the dry well."
Fan Yu's aunt leaned against the wall, her face contorted in pain. "I became an accomplice. What was worse, I had no idea when my brother might decide to kill me. He definitely wouldn't let me go. Maybe the moment my sister-in-law was buried, he'd turn on me."
"So you struck first and killed your brother?" Chen Ge listened in silence to Fan Yu's aunt's account. This entire family, in his eyes, was far from normal. The husband was a lunatic with perverse habits; the wife, upon learning the truth, hadn't gone to the police — she'd tried to use it as leverage to force a divorce.
"If I didn't kill him, I might have died. If I killed him, I'd become Fan Yu's only family. No one else would compete with me for his love." It was only at this moment that Fan Yu's aunt finally revealed the truth.
"Fan Yu isn't your child to begin with. If anyone's competing, it's just you flattering yourself." Chen Ge only believed half of what Fan Yu's aunt said. The events of three years ago left no surviving witnesses — right and wrong were whatever she chose to make of them.
"You're wrong! My two dead children possess Fan Yu's body — that's how he knows all their habits! Fan Yu isn't just my brother and sister-in-law's child — he's also my child!" Blue veins bulged across Fan Yu's aunt's face, and she'd bitten her own lip until it bled.
Seeing her like this, Chen Ge decided not to push her further.
This woman claimed her brother had gone mad, but in Chen Ge's eyes, she herself was the patient. The accidental deaths of her husband and two children had shattered her. And because Fan Yu happened to be able to see the ghosts of her little brother and sister, she'd twisted her love and forced it onto him.
Looking at the woman collapsed on the ground in agony, Chen Ge suddenly recalled the black phone's initial prompt for this mission — Everyone has a bottomless well in their heart, and in it lies unspeakable, unbearable memory.
"Get up. Take me to where your brother hid the body."
"It can't be found anymore. After my brother stuffed my sister-in-law into the well, I pushed him in too. His body stayed with hers. He cursed and screamed inside the well, but the storm was too heavy — no one could hear him." Fan Yu's aunt reached up and grabbed her own hair, her arm trembling uncontrollably. "I filled the well with dirt and restored everything. Three years have passed — that well is long gone."
"You just need to give me a rough area," Chen Ge asked in a perfectly normal tone. But Fan Yu's aunt's reaction grew only more frantic.
"No one can find it!" Memories pierced Fan Yu's aunt's heart like knives. Her expression suddenly turned savage. "I will raise Fan Yu. I will give him all my love!"
"If you truly cared about Fan Yu, you wouldn't do this. Your love only moves yourself." Chen Ge had noticed it back at the haunted house — Fan Yu would rather speak to a stranger like him than pay any attention to his aunt. Their relationship was, to put it mildly, terrible.
"You said it yourself — when your husband and children died, when you were at your lowest, it was Fan Yu who drew pictures of your little brother and sister to cheer you up. He helped you from the bottom of his heart. And yet you killed his father." Chen Ge thought of those rooms full of red little figures. If he hadn't intervened, this whole affair might have spiraled into something far more cruel. "You should count yourself lucky that Fan Yu is just a child."
Facing legal punishment would be a good thing for both Fan Yu and his aunt. Fan Yu searching for heaven in the well meant he'd witnessed everything — he knew his aunt was the killer.
If he grew up a little more, there was no telling whether he might do to his aunt exactly what she had done to his uncle.
Once that happened, Fan Yu's life would be destroyed.
"Let this tragedy end here." Chen Ge ended the live stream and dialed the police. What kind of punishment Fan Yu's aunt would receive — that was not his call to make.
"Living with the person who killed your parents — no wonder Fan Yu developed bipolar disorder at such a young age. You're the root cause of his illness."
As Chen Ge called the police, Fan Yu's aunt shook her head desperately, mumbling something incomprehensible, and tried to bolt out of the bathroom.
"Stop struggling." Chen Ge followed behind her. He was afraid Fan Yu's aunt might do something reckless in a moment of impulse.
The two made it to the first floor. As they passed the last classroom, Fan Yu's aunt suddenly collapsed to the ground without any warning, and for a long while she couldn't get back up.
It looked as though someone had simply yanked her down — a deeply unsettling sight.
Chen Ge stopped several meters away and slowed his pace. Fan Yu's aunt had fallen right at the doorway of the last classroom — a room that made even Chen Ge uneasy.
He pressed himself against the opposite wall of the hallway and peered inside. It was past midnight, and the classroom that had been empty before was now inexplicably filled with students. And standing at the lectern was a short, stout old man.