Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Ning Shuo didn’t even look up. “Just a friend.”

Ning Wang asked, “Someone like Liu Zi?”

“No, more like Master.”

Ning Wang fell silent instantly. Ning Shuo finished tying the bandage and said, “You dreamed of Master, didn’t you?”

He offered a sincere compliment. “You’re impressive. If it were me seeing Master in a dream, I might not have been able to pull myself out.”

Ning Wang’s lips curled into a wry smile. “You’ve certainly gotten comfortable referring to yourself as ‘you’ and ‘me’ separately.”

Ning Shuo looked at him and suddenly laughed. “True.”

He patted Ning Wang on the shoulder, sighing with emotion. “In this world, there is probably no one more intimate with me than you.”

After acting off all night, Ning Wang finally showed a flash of his familiar, playful banter. “You sound so certain, Brother. What will you do when you have a lover in the future?”

Ning Shuo looked surprised. “Don’t you know your own nature? A selfish person like Xie Ning obviously loves himself most of all.”

Seeing him bring up that name again, Ning Wang raised an eyebrow. “I thought you wouldn’t mention that name anymore.”

Ning Shuo smiled. “I moved on a long time ago. Xie Ning.”

He gazed at Ning Wang, though it felt as if he were speaking to himself. “Don’t let yourself be trapped by the past, or by who you were.”

“I know what you’re thinking. We will always be the people who understand each other best in this world.”

Ning Wang looked into his eyes, which were filled with sincerity, and was the first to look away. “Let’s go examine the corpse.”

…

Ning Wang’s own story was actually quite melodramatic-so much so that in the modern era, it would have been enough to fill a novel.

He was originally a young master of the Xie Manor, the household of the wealthiest merchant in the capital.

A child of wealth, he spent his days amusing himself with pets, composing poetry, and painting. He was composed, leisurely, and never let anything weigh on his heart.

However, he wasn’t the true young master of the Xie Manor.

Unlike those stories about swapped children, he had been adopted by the Xie Family.

Later, when the family’s biological son was found, Xie Ning requested to leave the manor of his own accord to ensure there would be no resentment. He even gave up the Xie surname.

As luck would have been, the Xie Family had a friend in the Jianghu named Ning. This friend had been very fond of Xie Ning since he was a child and took the opportunity to take him in. He renamed the boy Ning Wang.

Ning Wang followed his master through the Jianghu for several years. When he was nearly fifteen, he received devastating news: two months prior, the entire Xie Manor had been executed by imperial decree.

His years in the Jianghu had not dulled his feelings for the Xie Family. On the contrary, when he heard they had been wiped out, Ning Wang wanted nothing more than to take his sword and storm the Imperial Palace to demand why the Emperor had slaughtered them all.

His master immediately gave him a sharp rap on the head. “Storming, always storming! You might be able to fly over the Palace Wall, but can you fly out of the Jinyiwei’s inescapable net?!”

His master was also troubled. Using the knowledge he had gathered in the Jianghu and a fair amount of genuine talent, he entered the palace to serve as a Priest.

Ning Wang was his personal disciple.

However, the more they investigated within the palace, the colder their hearts became.

All signs pointed to the fact that the Emperor had simply set his sights on the Xie Family’s treasury and fabricated a pretext to seize it.

This wasn’t the first time the Dog Emperor had done such a thing, but the Xie Family was the first major merchant family to suffer for it.

Ning Wang was furious, but before he could seek out the Emperor with his sword, the Jinyiwei found him first.

His past identity as the adopted son of the Xie Family had been exposed.

To save him, his master sacrificed his life to smuggle him out of the palace. Ning Wang fled, training bitterly for years before finally returning to the capital.

Then, just as he finally felt confident enough to kill the Emperor and take his revenge, he was pulled into a mysterious place.

His memories within the System were a tangled mess. He only remembered that in his desperation to return for his revenge, he had accumulated many scars.

The point where his memory became clear was after his return.

He woke up to find that the entire world had become a Script.

This included the residence where Ning Wang had previously lived. The female ghost had originally been nothing more than a legend, but in the Script, she had been manifested into reality.

Ning Wang had killed the NPCs many times, but whenever the world reset, they would always come back to life.

This was the reason that female ghost hated Ning Wang so much.
Ning Wang did the math; it seemed he had killed her over a thousand times.

In the dream the Dreamweaver had used to hypnotize him, he had returned to the past, back to when his master was about to take him into the Imperial Palace to uncover the truth.

Having recovered part of his memories, Ning Wang had originally wanted to stop him, but then he saw his own sword.

The hilt was covered in nicks and scars-marks left by the Xiuchun Dao commonly used by the Jinyiwei.

And he hadn’t encountered the Jinyiwei until after his master had died and they were hunting him down.

In other words, his master was actually long dead.

Ning Wang was not the type of person to indulge in delusions; if he were, he wouldn’t have been so focused on escaping that Script in the first place.

However, as he allowed the Script’s progress to move forward and saw his master praying for rain, he suddenly thought of his future self.

That person who called himself Ning Shuo, code-named Ning Banxian.

It had been a very long time since Ning Wang had seen his master.

So long, in fact, that he had never understood where that sense of familiarity came from when he saw Ning Shuo praying for rain.

Not until he saw that Lord Chuunibyou again-the man who always had a teasing look on his face and spoke with inherent exaggeration.

During the years he spent with his master, Ning Wang had successfully been infected by that chuunibyou behavior. After his master died, he had been trapped by an overwhelming sense of powerlessness, and his words had become much fewer.

Now, back in the dream, the boy with the shrunken stature suddenly really wanted to see Ning Shuo.

He wanted to see that future self who bore the likeness of an old friend.

…

The Dreamweaver’s corpse was very strange.

His expression was peaceful, as if he were merely asleep.

When the white cloth was pulled back, however, his body was revealed to be hollowed out. There was a hole the size of a washbasin in his upper torso, and his internal organs were gone.

Ying Jian frowned. “We can’t find the cause of death like this.”

Sui Chunsheng said nonchalantly, “Since we have to make an Accusation to the Clown, the NPC we identify should have a name, right?”

Shen Xiao added, “I just chatted with Xiao Zheng. Regarding the other NPCs, he only refers to them as ‘that granny’ or ‘this uncle’ and the like.”

Looking at it this way, the suspicion seemed to be locked onto those few NPCs who actually had names.

An Sheng made the final call. “I’ll go back to that NPC’s house to chat some more.”

Ning Shuo interrupted, “Wait.”

He pointed at Ning Wang. “Let him go with you, door to door.”

Ning Wang cocked an eyebrow. “Running away if the timing isn’t right?”

Ning Shuo replied, “It’s just taking one person along. Surely you can handle that?”

Once the five of them left, Ning Shuo turned and entered the inner room where the hypnosis had taken place.

He looked around and found a half-burnt stick of incense on the altar.

Ning Shuo remembered that this incense had been burning throughout the hypnosis, and he hadn’t extinguished it when he left.

Did it go out on its own?

He tried to put the incense into his Backpack and found that he could.

Furthermore, it didn’t take up a storage slot. A clue notification popped up in the top right corner: 1(?)/?.

In other words, items within the Script could be collected into the Backpack and would be placed under [Clues].

Though whether it actually was a clue remained to be seen.

Just as Ning Shuo was preparing to head out, he suddenly felt a sensation of being watched.

[Friendly Reminder: While the Player is investigating the case, please also beware of the mobs hiding in the shadows.]

Ning Shuo calmly played his role as an introverted writer who hadn’t interacted with outsiders for a long time.

Suddenly, his foot felt heavy.

The Meat Blob that had previously been sprawling on the fan was now clinging to Ning Shuo’s foot.

Ning Shuo shouted toward the outside, “Wanzi!”

It was strange. When Ning Shuo had come in just now, Wanzi was sitting by the door.

Ning Shuo realized he was trapped in this room alone.

The Meat Blob gradually crawled up Ning Shuo’s body. As it moved, Ning Shuo felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

He immediately untied that red hair ribbon and tied it around the Meat Blob.

The Meat Blob’s movements visibly faltered.

In an instant, Ning Shuo realized something and said hesitantly, “…Wanzi?”