Un-edited so please don’t kill me if you find anything wrong, please gently commenting so I can fix it. Thank you.
“Isn’t this the key that Yang Song stole from Niu Xinyan?” Fang Daichuan asked.
“More than that,” Li Sinian casually turned the key and showed Fang Daichuan the red rope he was holding in his palm.
At the end of the red rope is a heavy brass key and the other end is a thin iron key. The iron key has a peculiar shape. It is an oval shaped with 凹凸 carved on it, like small shrunken hedgehog.
(T/N : Yeah I could translate the word but I figured leaving the original actually helps give better visual so yup the key have 凹凸 all over the oval shape)
“What is this?” Fang Daichuan held it in his hand and played with it curiously.
“That’s a long story.” Li Sinian said as he took out an ice bucket from the refrigerator in the corner of the room. After the entire villa was powered off, the solidified ice cubes had almost melted away, leaving only a few pieces of ice cube and little bit of ice water in the bucket. He took Fang Daichuan’s blistered right hand and immersed it in the ice water.
“Yang Song said that her father had a safe, which contained some documents from that year. Later, Du Chaosheng wanted to buy it but her mother kept the safe and only sold the key to him. However this safe somehow managed to get on this island. After her mother died, the boss bought the island and found the safe left by her father.”
“What’s this called?” Fang Daichuan said with a smile, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket?”
“Non-standard hedging risk.” Li Sinian also laughed.
Fang Daichuan took the key from his hand and gently rubbed the brass carving: “Then how did this key get to Niu Xinyan? If I remember correctly, didn’t Niu Xinyan’s husband and Yang Song’s father die together?”
Li Sinian said: “She didn’t go into details, but I guess, maybe Du Chaosheng went to the island with this key and wanted to find the safe on the island. Now, what method did Niu Xinyan use to steal it? In other words, does Niu Xinyan have anything to do with Du Chaosheng’s death? Yang Song herself didn’t know how the key got into Niu Xinyan’s hands. She went to give Niu Xinyan a candlestick at night. Seeing the key hanging on her coat, she stole it while she wasn’t paying attention. She wanted to ask me some questions and offered the key in exchange, she said I would be interested in what was inside the safe.”
No matter how, in the end this key ended up in Li Sinian’s hands, Fang Daichuan thought, maybe this is a blessing from a certain skeleton in the underwater cave.
“How’s your shoulder’s injury?” Li Sinian threw away the ice bucket because the water inside was no longer cold, thinking of the injury on his body, he is worried.
Fang Daichuan wiped the water off his hands, casually taking off his T-shirt. He tore off a spare bedsheet and used it as gauze, wrapping his shoulders and chest properly.
“I learned how to wrap wounds from my parents, I am professional,” he said, with a rather smug look on his face, “I used to be injured on the set and couldn’t leave, so I wrapped it myself. Not bragging, but I wrap better than emergency nurses, it is tight and it doesn’t interfere with daily activity.”
Hearing this, Li Sinian temporarily didn’t know what to do.
“You like filming that much?” A sentence escaped his mouth without thinking.
Fang Daichuan raised his head and thought for a moment: “I like it. If possible, I want to shoot for a lifetime.”
Li Sinian nodded: “I will help you.”
Fang Daichuan smiled awkwardly. However, at that time, he did not take this sentence to heart.
They opened the door, Li Sinian picked up the candlestick in the room and walked upstairs cautiously.
“Did Yang Song see what’s in the safe?” Fang Daichuan followed behind Li Sinian, the candle flickered. It seemed that it would soon go out in the night wind and it was difficult to illuminate even half metre around them.
Li Sinian held up the candlestick to look at the steps at the bottom of his feet and replied, “No, she said that she only opened the door on the third floor, but…” Li Sinian said, with an unbelievable expression on his face, “In the end, she said, she saw a ghost?”
Fang Daichuan’s face instantly turned pale.
Somewhere in the corridor, a window was not properly closed and a gust of wind blew in. Fang Daichuan’s left hand tightly clutching the corner of Li Sinian’s waist, and looked around with fear.
Seeing this, Li Sinian smiled and said, “Sister Chuan, you are too timid. Where was your courage when you threatened others with poison?”
(T/N : LMAO, so yeah, Sinian said [川妹] which is why next Chuan’er reply with [年哥]. Love their interaction. Also the poison act is on chapter 44 and 45)
“Brother Nian, do you have a cross or something?” Fang Daichuan begged for mercy with a wry smile. “I’ve never been afraid of fighting with people. I’m afraid of ghosts.”
Li Sinian shook his head: “Why should you be afraid of ghosts? They can’t kill us when they’re alive, but suddenly after death, they become better at it?”
While talking, the two had already walked up to the third floor.
On the first night, the two also went to the third floor to check the situation. There were four rooms on the third floor. The rooms also required a keycard to open however they didn’t know where the keycard was.
However, the strange thing is that when they went up from Li Sinian’s side this time, the third floor turned out to be a dead end. A carved wooden door with copper cladding stood in front of the two of them.
Fang Daichuan hugged Li Sinian’s waist tightly with one arm, the other hand held the empty wine bottle that he grabbed from the room, his voice trembling when he spoke: “Is… Is this the place? Did Yang Song see the ghost behind this door?”
Li Sinian patted his hand: “There are no ghosts, don’t be afraid.”
He inserted the brass key into the door hole and gently opened the door.
The old wooden door opened slowly with a squeak.
In the deserted island, stands an ancient villa, right now the power is out, the creaking wooden door and the unknown darkness behind the door are like the beginning of a horror movie. Fang Daichuan was nervous, his leg was shaking and his stomach was churning.
He couldn’t help recalling the thriller movies he had seen; Alfred Hitchcock, Sean Cunningham, Wen Ziren. The more he remembers the more he fears; the more he fears, the more he remembers.
The door was slowly opened, it was dark inside. The only light source was the candlestick in his hand. Fang Daichuan didn’t dare to go in, but eventually he followed Li Sinian’s footsteps. The two of them seemed to be outsiders who had breaking into the world of The Truman Show* and they held their breath as they observed the secret room.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show
There was nothing inside the room, only curtains tightly covering all sides, but. At the other end, there seems to be another door.
Li Sinian grabbed Fang Daichuan’s hand and pulled him into the door.
Fang Daichuan’s palms were wet, he was so nervous he was shaking. Li Sinian suddenly felt a little distressed. He turned his head and wanted to say, let’s go out and not look, but out of the corner of the eye, he caught a glimpse of a flashing sharp weapon coming towards his face!
“Watch out!” Without hesitation, Li Si Nian turned around and hugged the person behind him, covering the other person tightly with his own back.
“Bang!” Fang Daichuan shuddered as something hit the floor heavily. He quickly pushed Li Sinian’s body away and looked around warily.
It is a very tall candlestick.
Li Sinian’s heart was beating wildly in his chest, at that moment fear poured into his blood vessels like venom, quickly swept through his entire body before pouring into his heart. He calmed down and smiled helplessly: “It’s all your fault, the atmosphere is so good and it startled me.”
The two worked together to lift the heavy candlestick from the ground and Li Sinian used the small candlestick in his hand to light it.
The tall candlestick burned, the surroundings became much brighter.
The two looked at the room and felt a lot more relaxed. The room was very narrow and had no furniture. Li Sinian quickly walked across the room and observed the small secret door.
The door was closed and Li Sinian pushed it open.
It is also another narrow room, Li Sinian glanced at it and froze in place.
There are lights inside the room.
The light inside flickering unsettlingly, whoever inside the room must heard the movement at the door, but they didn’t move.
Li Sinian’s blood runs cold.
There was no shadow, the man had his back to the door and was covered in a black cloak. Li Sinian stopped Fang Daichuan behind him from approaching. He didn’t dare to breathe, staring intently at the man’s movements, breathing so fast that he could light a candle.
There was an ominous smell in the air, a rotten stench combined with ocean fishy smell, making Li Sinian’s feet sweat.
One person and one ghost, separated by a half-open door.