Chapter 110: The Madman

(Page 1 of 3)

Ding Wu followed Ji Changge inside in confusion. In the dim cellar, an oil lamp burned, and indeed someone was kneeling there. Taking a closer look, Ding Wu realized it was truly Wang Erlang.

Wang Erlang glanced up at Ji Changge, then continued carving something into the wall with a knife, as though he had not seen him at all.

“These drawings are very good,” Ji Changge remarked, standing beside him.

“You can understand them?” Wang Erlang asked without raising his head.

“Half of them. Otherwise, I would not have been able to get out yesterday, and Grand Academician Wang would have been killed by you as well.” Ji Changge’s voice was cold.

The movement of Wang Erlang’s hand paused.

“You were hiding here before we arrived yesterday, weren’t you? When you discovered that someone had entered, you escaped through the secret passage and trapped us all inside. But you didn’t know that Grand Academician Wang was in there too,” Ji Changge said.

“If I had known the Old Ancestor was inside, I naturally would not have sealed the door from outside. This is not a place where you can come and go as you please. Unfortunately, you still found the exit. I had planned to keep you locked in here for several days, so you could taste what it was like to be trapped in a cellar without light or air! Hahahaha!”

Wang Erlang suddenly burst into wild laughter.

Ding Wu tightened both hands around the hilt of his sword and watched Wang Erlang tensely. So Ji Changge had been trapped here that day. No wonder he had been unable to find him.

“Your mother was having an affair with that man here, wasn’t she?” Ji Changge asked, staring at the graffiti on the wall.

“Shut up!” Wang Erlang suddenly raised the small knife in his hand and glared viciously at Ji Changge.

Ji Changge turned to look at him, a smile blooming at the corners of his lips.

“You didn’t even have the courage to kill that man back then. How could you bring yourself to kill someone like me, who has never wronged you?”

Wang Erlang slowly lowered the knife.

“You’re right. I’ve been a coward since childhood. I didn’t even dare kill that adulterer. Later, I told my Second Uncle what had happened, and he killed them both…”

“You saw it with your own eyes?” Ji Changge asked.

“My parents had always had a poor relationship. My father usually lived with his concubine and rarely came home. As time passed, my mother could no longer endure her loneliness and began an affair with a servant in the household. She thought I was young and didn’t understand anything, so she never made much effort to hide it from me. Whenever they met in secret, they came to this cellar.

“That day, she went to meet her lover again. I secretly ran to inform my Second Uncle. He was furious, took up a knife, and went to the cellar. I followed him in secret…”

“You watched your mother being killed and felt nothing?” Ji Changge asked, suppressing his anger.

Wang Erlang smiled.

“My Second Uncle did the right thing. Only then could Mother be purified and cleansed of her sins. She was filthy. She had actually coupled with a lowly servant. Why should she have remained alive?”

(Page 2 of 3)

Ji Changge and Ding Wu stared at Wang Erlang as though he were insane. How could such a person exist in this world?

“Afterward, you and Wang Sinian fabricated a story and deceived everyone, claiming that your mother had been killed by bandits on her way back to her family home,” Ji Changge said.

“It wasn’t fabricated. My mother was killed by bandits!” Wang Erlang said blankly. Then he shook his head. “My mother was killed by my Second Uncle. My Second Uncle told me she had been killed by bandits.”

“No. She was killed by bandits.”

Wang Erlang suddenly crouched down and clasped both hands over his head.

Looking at the anguished Wang Erlang, who seemed to have become an entirely different person, Ji Changge wondered whether even he could distinguish fact from delusion. To keep the young Wang Erlang from accidentally revealing the truth, Wang Sinian had repeatedly insisted that his mother had been killed by bandits. After hearing it often enough, perhaps even Wang Sinian had come to believe it—let alone a child. Ji Changge silently considered this.

Gradually, Wang Erlang regained his composure.

“Were Shen Ying, Liang Shuxuan, and He Yunxiu also killed by you?” Ji Changge asked coldly.

Looking at Wang Erlang’s smiling face, he felt as though the person before him were a venomous snake.

“My Second Uncle killed them too. I merely stood by and watched. My Second Uncle was the fairest judge of all. He passed judgment on every impure person.

“That lunatic Shen Ying flirted with men everywhere she went. She deserved to die. Liang Shuxuan spent every day flirting and bantering with all kinds of young masters. Even when she was at my home, she shamelessly flaunted her charms. As for He Yunxiu, she was even worse. She was engaged to Lu Yi, yet she still went out and carried on with other men. They all deserved to die.

“My Second Uncle brought them here and judged their crimes. He washed away their sins with blood, so they could enter the Western Paradise.”

Wang Erlang spoke with unconcealed pride.

“Every time Wang Sinian killed someone, you stood by and watched?” Ji Changge asked in disbelief. This Wang Erlang was even more deranged than Wang Sinian.

Wang Erlang nodded.

“I liked watching the fear on their faces. Didn’t they enjoy trampling on others? They screamed, cried, and begged, but no one could hear them, and no one came to save them. It was just like me back then, when Mother locked me in here.

“I was trapped in this place for three days and three nights, and not a single person noticed. Mother never came to let me out. She cared only about meeting her lover. She didn’t care whether I lived or died.”

Watching Wang Erlang laugh and cry at the same time, Ji Changge glanced once more at the drawings on the wall. What he had failed to understand the previous day had become clear when he saw another skeleton—that demonic figure represented the adulterer.

“You were trapped here for three days and three nights. How did you get out?” Ji Changge asked.

“I kept drawing. I drew myself, Little Black, and Little Flower. I drew for a very long time. Later, my Second Uncle found me and rescued me.”

“What about Wen Qiniang? She had done nothing to wrong you. Why didn’t you stop your Second Uncle from killing her?” Ji Changge asked, staring at Wang Erlang.

Wang Erlang shook his head, his eyes filled with sorrow.

“I truly didn’t know that Seventh Uncle intended to kill Seventh Aunt. If I had known, I would never have let her come. Why would I want to hurt the woman who was about to become my wife?”

Looking at Wang Erlang’s pained expression, Ji Changge felt that he did not seem to be lying. Perhaps some trace of humanity still remained in him. At the very least, his feelings for Wen Qiniang had been sincere.

“You’re lying.”

(Page 3 of 3)

A voice suddenly came from the doorway. Wang Erlang turned toward it, his expression cold.

Wang Jue suddenly took out a sheet of paper—the drawing of Wen Jing—and said coldly, “This is your handwriting. Others might not recognize it, but I know your writing too well. You deliberately let your Second Uncle see the drawing. You knew from the beginning that Wang Sinian intended to attack Wen Qiniang.

“You sealed the cellar door to delay us and give Wang Sinian time to act. You knew perfectly well that the Old Ancestor was inside, yet you didn’t care whether he lived or died.

“You’re worse than a beast. Wang Sinian was merely the tool you used to kill people. You pretended to be pitiful only so that we would believe you had done nothing wrong. You don’t think you’ve done anything wrong at all.”

Wang Jue’s words left everyone stunned.

Wang Erlang’s expression gradually changed. He clapped his hands and said, “As expected of the wisest man in Jiangnan. What else do you know?”

“Every time you fed Seventh Uncle dead cats, you watered that kapok grove with the blood of wildcats. You never regarded Seventh Uncle as a human being. Wang Erlang, you hid yourself very well.”

Wang Jue’s eyes were filled with disgust.

“Hahahaha! So what if I did? I’ve never killed anyone. What can you do to me? My Second Uncle killed them all.”

Wang Erlang bared his teeth in a grin.

Ji Changge seized Wang Erlang by the collar. A man like this was a threat to everyone as long as he remained alive.

“You did kill someone. Do you think I wouldn’t know simply because you refuse to admit it?” Wang Jue asked with a smile.

Wang Erlang gave a cold laugh.

“Wang Seventeen, don’t be so pleased with yourself. Are you trying to trick me into confessing? I didn’t kill anyone. Nothing you say will matter.”

“Is that so? Dare you claim that you didn’t kill your father?”

Wang Jue fixed him with a piercing stare.

Wang Erlang’s face turned ashen with rage.

“Don’t slander me! My father clearly died of illness. Don’t even think of pinning that on me!”

“Whether he died of illness or not will be clear once the coffin is opened and the body examined. Nothing stays hidden forever.”

Ji Changge gave Ding Wu a meaningful glance. Ding Wu stepped forward and bound Wang Erlang’s hands.

“Let’s go. Three times in, three times out. This time, you won’t be able to talk your way out of it.”

(To be continued…)