Thinking Forest Mansion (4)

The butler was resting in his room. After leaving the maid's room, Ji Xun went straight to his door and knocked.

"Hello, honored guest. How may I help you?" the butler asked with a smile.

Ji Xun cut straight to the point. "Is the maid married?"

The butler froze, clearly not expecting him to ask about the maid. "No, but I've heard the young lady mention that she has a lover in town."

Ji Xun nodded and returned to the maid's room.

Fang Rui asked, "Well?"

"Nothing but lies." Ji Xun repeated the butler's words to the others.

"If the maid's lover is in town, she has no reason to risk bringing these things back to the mansion."

Fang Rui said, "Maybe we were right. The maid's lover is here in this mansion."

Tang Cha asked, "Who could it be? The cook, the butler, or the master?"

Lu Jiancheng reminded him, "It could also be the mistress."

Tang Cha: ...

There were four guest rooms on the second floor. Ji Xun and the others were staying in the one to the right of the stairs. Directly opposite the stairs was the mansion's study.

The players had already given the study a cursory search, leaving papers and books scattered across the floor.

The shelves held books from all over the world, both old and new, with newspapers and periodicals mixed among them.

One was a thick hardcover book. Ji Xun found several sheets of paper tucked inside its cover.

"What are these?"

Fang Rui took them from him and skimmed them. "They look like marriage contracts."

"All seven of them are marriage contracts?" Tang Cha asked in surprise.

Fang Rui nodded, picked out two, and set them aside. "These two both have Katherine's signature as the bride. Every other one has a different name."

"This is a tradition in the mistress's family."

The butler's voice suddenly came from the study doorway. He walked toward Ji Xun with a smile, then crouched beside him and gazed nostalgically at the marriage contracts.

"The mistress's family has always kept their marriage contracts. She once said that even after she was gone, her grandchildren would know how deeply their grandparents had loved each other." The butler pointed at the two contracts Fang Rui had set aside. "These two belong to the mistress. You may not know this, but she was married once before she wed the current master. Unfortunately, Mr. Lin passed away young, and she remained a widow for many years. Even this mansion was named in his memory."

So that was how Thinking Forest Mansion had gotten its name.

The butler sighed. "The mistress originally had no intention of remarrying. Only after the master courted her repeatedly did she accept his proposal. They didn't move back to town after marrying because they wanted to avoid further gossip."

After all, no matter the era, people always subjected remarried women to unfounded speculation.

"Understandable."

The butler stood, his gaze shifting slightly. "None of you had lunch. Was the cook's food not to your liking?"

From Ji Xun's assessment that the butler told "nothing but lies," Tang Cha could tell he had an extremely poor opinion of the man.

Ji Xun never bothered being pleasant to anyone he disliked. Right now, for instance, even though the butler kept looking warmly at him, Ji Xun simply flipped through the books without sparing him so much as a glance.

"We're actually fairy boys. We usually just drink dew, so we don't need to eat." Tang Cha spouted nonsense with a perfectly straight face, then pointed at Fang Rui. "Oh, and she's a fairy girl."

The butler: ...

The butler rose and gave them a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I see. There's food set aside in the kitchen. If you get hungry, please help yourselves at any time. Whatever you do, don't eat anything of unknown origin."

A threat. A blatant threat!

Tang Cha took the hint and said solemnly, "Don't worry. We won't."

The cook prepared dinner as well. The ingredients were largely unchanged from lunch-beef, mushrooms, bread, and so on-just prepared differently.

The butler explained, "There was a heavy rain a few days ago, and the road to town has become difficult to travel. For now, we can't purchase a wider variety of ingredients. We're sorry for the inconvenience, but the cook will do his best to provide you with carefully prepared meals."

Ji Xun and the others still didn't go downstairs for dinner, making do with the wild fruit they had picked at noon.

The mocking laughter of the players in the first-floor dining room practically pierced the floor and flew into Tang Cha's ears.

While the players ate, Ji Xun's group of four went up to the third floor and got a preliminary sense of the mansion's layout.

Besides its four guest rooms, the second floor had a study and an art studio. The third floor contained five guest rooms, the couple's bedroom, and a piano room.

However, every room except the guest rooms was locked.

As the four left the third floor, they happened to run into the players returning to their third-floor guest rooms after dinner.

The player who had first mocked them for being cowards sneered, "Well? Find any clues?"

His companion chimed in, "Brother Dong, you've got to be kidding. They haven't even dared leave their room all day. How could they find any clues?"

"Exactly. The butler told us not to eat anything else, but they just wouldn't listen. We should stay away from people like that. If they trigger a death condition, they might drag us down with them."

The man called Brother Dong laughed and tried to shoulder past them, intending to swagger upstairs and put these cowards in their place.

But...

Lu Jiancheng stood in front of Ji Xun and the others with his arms folded, looking so fierce that he might have had several murders under his belt.

Brother Dong swallowed nervously, fear creeping into him. One of his lackeys said, "Brother Dong, let's not stoop to their level."

As though handed a way out, Brother Dong lifted his chin and blustered, "Exactly. I'm a veteran player on the Top 100 Ranking, after all. I'm not wasting words on these low-level players. Let's go!"

His words sounded tough enough, but his retreating figure looked an awful lot like someone fleeing in panic.

Tang Cha muttered, "What's wrong with him? They're the ones who wouldn't stop running their mouths."

"You should get back to your room as soon as possible."

The speaker was Deng Tianyu, who had been the first in the dining room to point out that the cook's food probably wasn't poisoned.

He nodded to Ji Xun and offered a friendly warning. "You weren't in the dining room just now. The butler said some of the floorboards in the corridors are loose. He wants us not to 'wander around' at night, in case we get hurt."

He put particular emphasis on "wander around."

It seemed that leaving the guest rooms at night and eating anything other than the cook's food were the death conditions they knew of so far.

"Thank you." Ji Xun gave Deng Tianyu a slight nod.

Night fell, and the corridor's dim light shone through the gap beneath the guest room door. Ji Xun faintly heard very soft footsteps outside.

But the footsteps only wandered through the corridor, never approaching their door.

From the study opposite them came the sound of a door opening and closing. On top of that, the bed in the room above theirs kept creaking.

Ji Xun had sharp hearing, and the overlapping noises irritated him endlessly.

"This is so annoying. Are they having a party upstairs?" Tang Cha rolled back and forth on the sofa, complaining nonstop.

Fang Rui threw back the blanket covering her head and let out a heavy breath. "Could something have happened to them?"

The entire mansion seemed to be making noise.

"Aah!"

A man's shrill scream rang through the entire mansion. From some unknown floor came a voice filled with sheer terror. "A ghost! Stay away!"

Ji Xun's pupils contracted sharply. He moved close to the door and listened carefully.

Another set of frantic footsteps followed the man, seemingly chasing him. "Wan Mingfei, stop running! The butler said we can't leave our rooms at night! Come back!"

Wan Mingfei seemed to have broken down in terror. Ignoring his companion's attempts to stop him, he ran desperately toward the first-floor entrance hall.

His companion gritted his teeth, thinking that even if he had to knock Wan Mingfei unconscious, he had to bring him back.

Ji Xun and the others couldn't tell what was happening to the two men. They only heard the sound of wooden boards snapping, followed by a wail from the man chasing Wan Mingfei.

Wan Mingfei's fleeing footsteps stopped abruptly. Both men fell silent at the same time.

Silence returned to the mansion.