Chapter 282 - 123: One-Life Clear (Part 1)

Chapter 282: Chapter 123: One-Life Clear (Part 1)

This woman wasn’t the short-haired girl from the previous photos, either. She had long hair. Normally, Song wouldn’t put a photo of a random woman in his diary, but his note on it was:

"Who. Are. You?"

April 4th.

Zhang Shutong flipped forward anxiously. This time, there was no photo, just two sentences:

"I think I might be going crazy."

"But if I’m not crazy, then who in the world are you?"

Zhang Shutong opened his mouth, speechless.

He flipped back to the previous page and looked at the woman again. Only her profile was visible.

’A dead woman... had become someone else. They were the same person...’

He had no time to process it. Driven by instinct, he flipped to the next page, desperate to find out when Song had last seen his girlfriend. The new page, however, read:

"It’s been three years."

The entry was dated December 12, 2010.

Zhang Shutong was surprised. He’d assumed such a thick diary would proceed chronologically, but it had jumped straight to ’10. That meant for a year and a half, the man had discovered nothing.

’So what was the final outcome?’

He decided to skip the pages in between, his fingers flicking rapidly through the diary. He scanned as fast as he flipped, but aside from entries where the man vented his frustrations, he found nothing of consequence.

It seemed the mysterious woman had vanished without a trace.

He flipped all the way to the last few pages. The final entries were from November 2012—just one month ago.

Zhang Shutong closed the diary, processing the information. He thought of the long-haired woman who had fought Lu Qinglian, the footprints in the snow, and the villa—the one they had studied so many times, the one that was supposed to be impenetrable.

The villa was surrounded by a fence over two meters high, topped with an electric grid.

The main gate had a keypad, a fingerprint lock, and facial recognition.

Lu Qinglian had determined that, given the woman’s abilities, it would be nearly impossible for her to scale a two-meter fence directly.

He had found the number 2004 on a stone plaque outside the villa, meaning it had been built at least eight years ago.

The housekeeper, Aunt Wu, had said that only the faces of Gu Qiuyan’s family were registered in the gate’s system.

And yet, the killer had gotten inside without a sound. It’s not like she could fly or tunnel through the earth, nor did she possess some paranormal ability like contortionism.

He then recalled Gu Qiuyan’s bizarre disappearance.

He recalled...

The long-haired woman in the family portrait at the villa.

The woman was beautiful, perhaps in her thirties. Her eyes were just like Gu Qiuyan’s, though she had an oval-shaped face.

Gu Qiuyan’s mother had long hair and a gentle, sweet smile in the photo. She was the kind of person you liked instantly.

And the family portrait had been taken in—

2006.

Zhang Shutong had never seen the killer’s face. Only Lu Qinglian had. But by the time the family portrait was hung, she was already back on the sofa.

’Who did Song really see?’

’Was it...’

’really...’

’his ex-girlfriend?’

Today was December 8th. The day Song had his car accident.

And just yesterday, on December 7th, Song had seen that family portrait. He had sighed, patting his own shoulder with a sense of resignation. It seemed to be the first time he had ever laid eyes on Gu Qiuyan’s mother.

A chill ran down Zhang Shutong’s spine.

He suddenly understood everything.

He understood why Song had wanted him to get Gu Qiuyan out of the villa immediately. He understood why Song had been so evasive when talking to Du Kang. He even understood why Song had left the final choice in his hands.

Finally, he remembered the photo his senior had sent him from eight years in the future. A security camera had caught a long-haired woman. Due to the angle, it only captured her hair, not her face or clothes.

At the time, he hadn’t thought much of it. He had seen Lu Qinglian heading toward the villa and assumed it was her. But Zhang Shutong had never once considered that the long-haired woman in that pre-dawn photo—

Was Gu Qiuyan’s mother.

He also knew that Gu Qiuyan had hypoglycemia. That she never locked her door when she slept. That she always wore that red scarf, treasuring it as a memento from her mother—she had even cried when he accidentally stepped on it once.

Zhang Shutong finally understood what happened in the early hours of December 9th. He closed his eyes, able to reconstruct the cruel sequence of events. A girl, startled from her sleep, still groggy and confused. In the moonlit darkness, she sees a face she has yearned for in her dreams. Her eyes might have welled up with tears of joy or confusion as she rushed forward to embrace her, and then...

Zhang Shutong couldn’t bear to imagine the rest.

He only knew that the girl’s bright life came to an end. She saw the mother who had been gone for years, but she would never see another day.

Zhang Shutong glanced at the time again. It was now 11:40 PM on December 8th. The woman was on her way to the villa.

No wonder she was heading for the villa—it was the perfect place to strike. The defenses he had once seen as impenetrable were like paper to her. In the original timeline, the only people in the villa were Gu Qiuyan and the housekeeper, with just two bodyguards asleep on the job.

But now.

Thanks to his influence, the villa’s security had been beefed up. There were more bodyguards, all armed, standing watch in the living room around the clock.

Right. Lu Qinglian had said the woman would be no match for this many bodyguards, and Zhang Shutong trusted her judgment.

’Gu Qiuyan wouldn’t die.’

The problem was...

’But was this matter...’

’really...’

’really...’

’over?’

He had returned to this snowy night from eight years in the future, and now he could finally see the truth hidden behind this eight-year-long case.