C11 — Strange Tales By The Lakeside

With a muffled thud, the woman’s questioning came to an abrupt end.

 

Liu Jingyun, who flipped through the window, held a desk lamp and immediately knocked her unconscious. The little girl who had hit the woman looked a bit confused and awkwardly put down the weapon in her hand.

 

“Sorry, I subconsciously just…” Liu Jingyun touched her head and said, “I didn’t expect it to be that easy.”

 

Zhuo Yu:…

 

“It’s okay; you did a good job.”

 

Zhuo Yu couldn’t help but sigh that he had collected the right teammate.

 

Liu Jingyun tentatively patted the woman’s cheek and found that she had really fainted, so she relieved herself by boldly locking the door of the room and began to observe this bedroom.

 

Only when she came in did she realise that this bedroom wasn’t small; compared to the second bedroom, the specifications here were more like the master bedroom, and there was a dressing table and desk all ready to go. That woman was also not young; her age was about the same as that of the mayor, so she should be the mayor’s wife.

 

Where did the mayor go if he didn’t sleep here at night? Was he busy with the aftermath of the fire disaster? But when they arrived near this villa, not a single light was on.

 

Liu Jingyun was also prompted to think by Zhuo Yu; she hesitantly said, “I think the town mayor has a problem.”

 

Zhuo Yu cast an affirmative look at her and waited for her to continue.

 

Liu Jingyun was encouraged, and her originally hesitant tone became firm: “As the town mayor, he must know that the Golden Lake is dangerous; even if he doesn’t think it’s a supernatural force, he wouldn’t allow his daughter to go to a place where so many people have died.”

 

“That’s right; that’s why I came here.” Zhuo Yu recalled, “While travelling to the Golden Lake, the other actors once told me that the mayor told them that the horrors of the Golden Lake were all fairy tales for children. And those characters are all at the age where curiosity and rebelliousness are at their peak; do you understand what I mean?”

 

“Dissuading on the surface, but actually encouraging!” Liu Jingyun’s eyes widened. “The mayor was encouraging them to come to the Golden Lake.”

 

“That’s right.” Zhuo Yu revealed a childish expression: “The town mayor must know something. So now, I’m going to give you a task.”

 

Liu Jingyun became excited. “Tell me quickly; I promise to complete it; just don’t make me fight the BOSS!”

 

Zhuo Yu laughed as he pointed to his desk. “It’s very laborious for me to move my body, so go and help me take out all the papers on his desk; we’ll go through them one by one and we’ll definitely find clues.”

 

Liu Jingyun acted very quickly and immediately started rummaging around. Zhuo Yu, who was sitting in the corner, silently observed the newcomer.

 

She was bold, meticulous, merciless when she struck, possessing great willpower and desire to survive, and most importantly, she was obedient.

 

Zhou Wu, ah, Zhou Wu, do you know that this little girl you looked down on is probably the most promising actor in this batch of newcomers? The guy who looked at people purely based on their experience and strength would probably die on set soon.

 

Zhuo Yu didn’t want to waste talent like him.

 

It didn’t take long for Liu Jingyun to move all the information to Zhuo Yu’s side. Zhuo Yu flipped through a few and found that it was all about the town’s development plans, as well as housing expansion, applications for mining resources, and mapping. Just by looking at these documents, Nina’s father, “Marcus,” was really a responsible and good mayor of the town.

 

“The bottom drawer is locked; I can’t open it.” Liu Jingyun looked embarrassed.

 

Zhuo Yu touched the card and taught Liu Jingyun how to use it and a little bit of know-how. She fumbled around for a while, but after ten minutes or so, she got used to it and unlocked the drawer with a click.

 

“It worked; I did it~” Liu Jingyun was filled with a kind of pure joy from the bottom of her heart. She realised that ever since she had followed Zhuo Yu, she had been learning new skills, both driving and unlocking. Most of all, she saw hope in Zhuo Yu.

 

Hope to escape this horror film.

 

“Good job.” Zhuo Yu complimented Liu Jingyun like a mentor.

 

He took the document and found that the contents were really different.

 

“This… ” Liu Jingyun, who came over to look at it, was shocked. “What is he doing? This is a cult, right?”

 

The paper of these documents was different from the previous ones; it was covered with dense and weird magic patterns that, when combined, were like a monster’s face, and it clearly registered several families.

 

Biles, Rockefeller, Yak—these surnames were too familiar. Zhuo Yu took out the school file from the space and found that it was exactly the families of those four students.

 

And the record of this list was much more than that; there was a long list of surnames, and after each surname, it was recorded what they had donated. Some were money, used to maintain this secret organisation, such as Zhou Wu’s family; some pulled in relationships to form a network of people, such as Li Mingfeng’s family; while Fang Hao’s Yak family donated the least and had few assets, ranking at the end of the list.

 

Zhuo Yu saw the most outrageous one, which was contributing five thousand millilitres of human blo-od per month.

 

What exactly were they plotting? Was it related to the Golden Lake?

 

Zhuo Yu continued to flip through the papers below, one by one, that were almost sensational. They had made detailed records of every villager who drowned in the Golden Lake, with the earliest one dating back fifty years!

 

The mayor of the town would have been only a few years old at that time; could this be a family-style cult?

 

Zhuo Yu even saw a familiar face on the record photos—the same Yin corpse he met.

 

Although its body had expanded, Zhuo Yu dissected it all night and had a preliminary idea of his face, so he could recognise him.

 

This man was the mayor’s business partner in life and spent millions of dollars to get the “eternal life” qualification from the mayor’s hands.

 

This group was actually doing this kind of harm to people. Did they know that drowning in the Golden Lake would not only prevent them from living forever but would also turn them into monsters?

 

It seemed like the mayor was forming a pyramid/marketing organisation, letting people who wanted to join contribute money and effort, but also developing a downline, pitting more people in, and then using that money stained with human blo-od to pay dividends to the initial shareholder families.

 

And like Zhou Wu’s Biles family, they weren’t short of money, so Zhuo Yu felt that the mayor must have other luring means.

 

When a person had money and power, then they must be very life-thirsty, just like the rich people in reality, who didn’t hesitate to spend a lot of money on life renewal injections or run to Switzerland for life management.

 

For this kind of person, what they wanted most was eternal life.

 

Zhuo Yu’s fingers holding the document felt a few points heavier. Could the Golden Lake really make people immortal in a normal way?

 

Right, if the Golden Lake was really only a crisis, then why would they let their children go there to seek death?

 

The mayor must have a Trump card in his hands that Zhuo Yu didn’t know about.

 

“Things are getting interesting.”

 

Zhuo Yu recalled the boss’s pursuit of that student quartet, and he suddenly came to a realisation.

 

“I get it. I thought maybe «Strange Tales by the Lakeside» is a horror film from the student actor’s point of view, and that crocodile boss is the villain of the film. But after enough clues are gathered, thinking about it from a different perspective, the boss is just the guardian of the Golden Lake; he’s stopping this group of insatiable humans from exploiting the resources of the Golden Lake; he’s the means by which the Golden Lake protects itself, including that seven-day curse.”

 

 

“Awesome, big brother!” Liu Jingyun had a face of adoration. “Then what, then what!!!”

 

 

“Then we just need to figure out what the mayor’s cult is scheming, why it was formed, and what the boss and my character went through under the condition of circumventing the curse and the boss’s pursuit. Perhaps after understanding all of this, we’ll be able to know the requirements to pass this copy.”

 

 

Zhuo Yu revealed an ambitious smile. “The truth is already getting closer to me.”

 

 

The viewers outside the screen seemed to be infected as well, and the comments kept scrolling up.

 

 

[He’s amazing; I bet 50 flame points for nothing; I should have known better and chosen Zhuo Yu!]

 

[Worthy of being a genius writer, the plot is moving forward so fast!]

 

[More than fast, this guy has a good brain, but he’s also ruthless!]

 

[I’ve watched the film six times, and this is definitely the furthest the plot has progressed, and I feel like I’ve seen the dawn of hope.]

 

[Yeah, the previous movie had the group annihilated on the second day.]

 

[If Zhuo Yu survives, I’ll buy his full set!]

 

[Zhuo Yu is still a disabled person; if he can move his legs, I guess he’d have played even better.]

 

The audience was gradually immersed in the plot of “Strange Tales by the Lakeside. The cold-blo-oded revelry at the beginning of the film seemed to be swept away; they changed their minds; they didn’t want to see Zhuo Yu die; after all, this film was very rarely shown, and they wanted to see the real ending.

 

Zhuo Yu glanced out the window; it was almost dawn.

 

 

It had been a bumpy ride, and with the fire at the school and following the mayor, the night was quickly running out of time.

 

 

He used the time to continue reading the rest of the information until he flipped to the last page, the Golden Lake Land Transfer Statement.

 

 

Zhuo Yu’s breath stuttered, and a sharp, sharp pain suddenly came to his heart, again an effect of his role. His fingers trembled, as if this land deed held in his hand wasn’t a light and fluffy piece of paper but a thousand pounds of unbearable memories.

 

 

“A statement of transfer? No one would normally transfer it, right? You can make more money from a land sale; that’s a whole mountain.” Liu Jingyun was very puzzled by the content on it until she saw the signature on it.

 

 

Zhuo Yu.

 

 

It was Zhuo Yu again.

 

 

Not only was there a signature on it, but there was also a bright red fingerprint. The corners of this statement were a little torn, it looked heavily damaged, and it was also tainted with spots of blo-od.

 

 

Zhuo Yu couldn’t help but gasp for air. His legs hurt; it wasn’t physical pain at all. He had heard of people who had their limbs amputated in car accidents; after losing a limb, they would still feel that part still existed, and there was phantom pain that couldn’t be eliminated, no matter how many painkillers they took; it was just a drop in the bucket.

 

His strange behaviour was also noticed by Liu Jingyun, who worriedly supported Zhuo Yu: “Is everything alright? What happened?”

 

 

Zhuo Yu just frowned; he bit his thumb, and blo-od flowed down his finger. Then he stamped his fingerprint on the back of Asha’s file, comparing it with the fingerprints on the transfer statement.

 

It was exactly the same.

 

 

Zhuo Yu couldn’t believe that his character would give up the land that had been passed down from his ancestors, and besides, there was his and Asha’s home there.

 

 

He covered his forehead and let out a low laugh. “Haha, hahahahaha, traveller, ah, I know what you wish for.”

 

 

After Zhuo Yu said these words, the phantom pain of his smashed legs suddenly disappeared, and everything returned to calm, as if the thick hatred that had just surged didn’t exist from the beginning, and it quietly hibernated, as if waiting for the moment that Zhuo Yu spoke.

 

 

Not far away, the crocodile-headed man standing in the ashes finally relaxed the tense string in his heart.

 

 

He couldn’t find Zhuo Yu’s body, which meant Zhuo Yu was still alive somewhere.

 

 

The boss hid in the shadows, away from the crowd, like an old-fashioned hunter, and began to track Zhuo Yu’s trajectory. Right now, those few little bugs didn’t matter anymore; he put the mission of the Golden Lake on the back burner. The mission now was to follow his heart.

 

So, in the shadow of a canopy outside the window, Zhuo Yu saw the man.

 

And the boss, too, was looking at him.

 

---

TN:

I posted two chapters for the delay, happy reading 😌