HHH Chapter 64

Dan Muhua simply stuffed the thermos into Ningma’s hands, then walked to the empty adjacent iron cabinet, which had a handle on top that could be pulled straight out along a track.

“Creak—” The low temperature and lack of lubrication, or possibly the weight of the contents, caused the guide rail to make a teeth-aching noise as the iron cabinet was pulled out, echoing in the empty frozen storage area.

Ningma’s eyes were fixed on the inside of the iron cabinet, but he also noticed that in addition to the label “Grade A Pork Tenderloin,” there was also a string of time stamps, “September 201X,” which was two years ago.

White mist swirled inside the iron cabinet, like slowly evaporating dry ice. When he could see clearly inside, despite having made the greatest possible mental preparations, it still sent a chill down his spine.

Inside was a white-skinned corpse, its eyelashes, eyebrows, and hair covered in frost. Its face was pale, with bluish-purple capillary infiltration. Its lips were especially dark purple, and its eyelids were not completely closed, leaving a gap through which the scattered pupils could be seen from a straight angle.

It was a male, around twenty years old, with non-Han features, a relatively rugged facial contour. He wore a necklace woven from turquoise, lapis lazuli, and amber around his neck. At first glance, he looked very much like Luo Kang, and upon closer inspection, some of their features were almost identical.

“His name is Tamu,” Dan Muhua said, looking at the corpse in the iron cabinet. “Did you see the top of his head?”

“The top of his head?” Ningma propped himself up in the iron box, which caused another sharp pain in his wound. Ignoring it for the moment, he gritted his teeth and leaned forward to look—he saw a concave area on the top of his head, like an inverted bowl. There was no blood on the surface, but some had oozed from his orifices.

“He is…” Although he guessed the answer was almost certain, he still turned his head and asked.

Dan Muhua looked at the frozen corpse outside the iron cabinet, with no hint of abnormality in her eyes, as if she were talking about something unrelated. “Didn’t I see his face at the time?”

Hearing this, Ningma was almost completely sure of his guess. “No, it was too dark in the room at the time, and there was no external diffused light. I could only tell that he was much taller than me and had very broad shoulders.”

“Then wasn’t there light coming in through the window when he fell? And didn’t you go upstairs to check?” Dan Muhua continued to ask.

Ningma glanced at the corpse again and slowly shook his head, saying, “He snatched the wooden box containing the ‘Heart Bead’ from my hands. When I woke up, I immediately wrestled with him. He broke free for a moment and tried to grab the rope outside the window. I didn’t have time to think about the next step at all. I threw whatever I had in my hand at him!”

Seeing Dan Muhua listening intently, Ningma continued to recall, “I don’t know if it was your luck or his bad luck, but the rope was knocked away. At that moment, he jumped to grab the rope, but he didn’t expect you to be pushing down at the same time. He wanted to grab the rope and kick you away, unconsciously drifting away from the window. And the push and pull when you snatched the wooden box was the last straw that caused him to lose his footing.”

Dan Muhua sighed softly, “He should have died anyway, he should have died two years ago.”

“What do you mean?” Ningma heard another layer of story in the man’s words. “Two years ago? Who exactly is he?”

Dan Muhua paused for two seconds before slowly saying, “He is Luo Kang’s cousin, a local, and the only storekeeper here. There were originally two, but he killed one, in the cabinet next to him. Do you want to see?”

Ningma frowned. “Are you saying that he eliminated his colleague in order to be more convenient here? The corpse?”

“You can understand it that way,” Dan Muhua said. To verify what he said, Dan Muhua opened the adjacent “Grade A Pork Shoulder” cabinet, but only opened it a hand’s width, which was enough for the person outside to see the situation inside—another frozen corpse.

“So,” Ningma deduced, “it was him,” pointing to the home invader with a collapsed forehead, “who picked up the delivery note from the Paris Auction House that I lost, knew that I was carrying a priceless jewel, and wanted to take it for himself, so he broke in to rob me?”

“It wasn’t him,” Dan Muhua corrected, “it was Luo Kang. That night, your luggage arrived at the hotel before you did. Luo Kang accidentally opened your suitcase while carrying it and saw the delivery note from the auction house you mentioned inside.”

“He didn’t have any intention at the time,” the man continued, “he was just curious about a priceless bead worth twenty million, wondering if you would be willing to lend it to him for a look, but—”

The woman changed the subject, “Luo Kang told Tamu about the priceless Gzi Bead, and Tamu had ideas after finding out the details, and encouraged Luo Kang to kill and steal the goods together!”

There were some deviations from his expectations. Ningma corrected, “I thought whoever picked up the delivery note was the one who did it, but I didn’t expect there to be such a twist. After he fell downstairs, he was lying on the cement floor, face up, and I didn’t turn him over to confirm.”

“Yes,” Dan Muhua admitted, “my husband accompanied you, and at first he just wanted to suppress the news of someone falling to their death in the hotel. If the negative news spread, it would be overwhelming, but when he heard the specific reason when he was looking for Luo Kang to identify the body, he immediately changed his mind.”

Ningma followed the man’s words and continued, “In order not to attract my attention, my old man, Huang (Night) Manager, used a business trip as an excuse to create an ‘absence’ alibi, but in reality, he was secretly designing everything?”

Seeing that Dan Muhua didn’t respond, Ningma had no choice but to speculate on his own, “In order to attribute my death to an ‘accident’, so that you can get the ‘Heart Bead’ and get away with it without being investigated, the ‘accident’ should appear as ‘accidental’ as possible.”

“So there was the swimming pool in the first scene, the glass plank road on the third floor of the rest area in the second scene, and the closed staircase in the commercial area in the third scene,” Ningma said, squinting his eyes, “any one of them is enough to kill you once!”

“No,” unexpectedly, Dan Muhua denied it in one breath, “it’s not what you think.”

“What isn’t!” Ningma raised the thermos in his hand. “Including these things, they were all arranged by you, the tight tea! My old man welcomed a bag every other day, there was some in the restaurant for dinner every night, as well as the perfume and big rough fish on my body that gave you the tight pills. Those things can excite the central nervous system, and the things you do don’t go through the cerebellum at all, and even only need suggestion!”

“Damn it!” Ningma said bitterly, “What exactly is that thing? If you don’t tell me everything, I will die and turn into a vengeful ghost and stay with you for life!”

The man’s face softened slightly when he heard Ningma’s malice. He glanced at the other person’s somewhat ferocious face and made eye contact before finally saying, “Do you know ‘Ling Wang’? He is a very famous king in the history of this place.”

“Ling Wang?” Ningma repeated, calming his excited emotions. The night was still long, and there was enough time to ask about everything that happened in this hotel one by one. “I don’t know much about the local culture here.”

“He appeared in the wild and chaotic world more than a thousand years ago, punishing the wicked and promoting the good, promoting Buddhism, subduing demons, and finally uniting the tribes, and was revered as ‘Ling Wang’.”

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