After The Honest Person Was Discovered For Simultaneously Pursuing Three People - Chapter 79

Chapter 79: 510

Madam Song’s funeral was scheduled to be held three days later, with the official announcement stating that she died of a sudden flare-up of a chronic illness and that rescue efforts were unsuccessful.

Only a very few people knew the actual cause of her death. Some reporters came after catching wind of the news, wanting to uncover the secrets behind this “marriage of the century” that once dominated the headlines, which was now seen as a saga of tragic aristocratic romance. However, the Song family’s servants were extremely tight-lipped about the matter, and the reporters had to reluctantly leave.

The servants’ reticence was not just because the mistress of the manor had suddenly committed suicide by jumping off a building; the attitudes of the other male masters were also very strange.

Old Master Song sat in the makeshift mourning hall for one night, and the very next day, he was seen chatting and laughing normally with the visiting guests. As for the eldest young master of the Song family, the servants had always thought his feelings for Madam Song were the deepest and that he would be heartbroken upon hearing the news. To their utter surprise, the eldest young master remained an indifferent bystander from beginning to end.

When he saw Madam Song’s body, there were no tears, not even an expression.

The most unexpected was the second young master. The servants knew he and Madam Song had long-standing resentment. Although he had witnessed Madam Song’s death right in front of him, they thought he would feel more fear and relief than despair.

Everyone thought so, except for Tao Ning.

When Madam Song died in front of him, he was quite shocked, but he still endured his fear to comfort Song Yucong beside him, because he saw the immense sorrow and collapse in Song Yucong’s eyes, although outwardly, only tears showed.

“Song Yucong!”

Tao Ning wanted to hug him tightly, but the man pulled him into his arms, covering his eyes with his trembling hand. Tao Ning heard a shivering voice from above his head, “Don’t look… Tao Ning… Don’t look.”

The man was clearly holding and comforting him, but his tall body was shaking uncontrollably, and he was incoherently repeating “Don’t look, Tao Ning.” No matter how you looked at it, he didn’t seem to be comforting anyone else; rather, it was as if he was eagerly, desperately trying to draw warmth and a sense of survival from the person in his arms.

“Don’t look… Tao Ning… Don’t look.”

Song Yucong told Tao Ning not to look, but he himself stared blankly at the cold corpse on the ground.

Tao Ning was even jolted by Song Yucong’s icy hand. Feeling distressed, he wrapped his arms around him, patting his trembling back, constantly soothing and gently stroking him. Finally, he used a voice as gentle as a feather to comfort the man. “I won’t look, I won’t look… Song Yucong, listen to me, Song Yucong. I won’t look, and you shouldn’t look either. Can we go back first, please? Please… Song Yucong, let’s go back first.”

Perhaps it was because Tao Ning was on the verge of tears near the end that the emotionally unstable man finally stopped his incoherent babbling. He looked as if he had just woken up from a dream, and a flash of living vitality crossed his beautiful eyes, which greatly resembled his mother’s—the person in his arms was afraid because of him, and his voice was choked.

However, all he could see was endless red blood, terrifyingly sticky blood on everyone, especially the pair of eyes on the ground that would not close. It was only the sound of the person in his arms crying that pulled him back to reality from his fear. Only the person in his arms truly told him that he was alive.

Song Yucong forced himself to look away from his mother’s body and at the person in his arms. When he saw Tao Ning’s frightened eyes, the sight of blood subtly vanished from his vision.

Tao Ning became the only person in his eyes not stained with blood.

Song Yucong looked at him, nodding slowly as if in slow motion. “Okay… We’ll go back… We’ll go back.”

The sounds of the ambulance, the hearse, and other noises drove the entire villa into a state of chaos. The outside world had many different opinions about Madam Song’s death.

But soon after, Song Heng, the eldest young master of the Song family, came out to manage the situation. He blocked all the flashing lights and difficult questions from countless reporters with a gentle smile and a consistent explanation.

That night, Haizhou news and Hong Kong media published extensive reports on the matter. Some lamented the passing of the “Pearl of Hong Kong,” Miss Wu, while others engaged in conspiracy theories about a tragic aristocratic love story, suspecting it was a murder. Some news outlets discussed the disposal of Wu Yue’s inheritance after her death. A small section praised the eldest young master’s composure.

Tao Ning was led by the hand by Song Yucong back to the bedroom. Servants and the family doctor filed in. The doctor injected Song Yucong with a sedative before forcefully separating Song Yucong’s tightly held hand from Tao Ning’s.

Tao Ning’s tightly strung nerves finally relaxed a little. At the same time, the bloody scene and Song Heng’s voice still lingered in his mind.

Darkness swept over him like a tide, and Tao Ning lost consciousness.

He had a very familiar dream again. This time, his vision was no longer just darkness. Tao Ning could finally see a glowing crack. He peered out through the gap and found that he was immersed in a giant glass container, with countless black tubes pointing toward him.

Tao Ning wanted to look down but couldn’t move. He could only see endless white space. But what terrified him was that, as far as the eye could see, there were several “people” immersed in a transparent solution, completely naked, with black tubes inserted all over their bodies.

All the tubes converged in the center of the room, where an eight-meter-tall suspended turntable was spinning at high speed.

He could clearly see the liquid in the black tubes flowing out again after passing through the turntable, finally converging into the containers, like a massive central processor. The “people” in the containers could only be kept alive by relying on this central processor.

But this was not what terrified Tao Ning. It was that the “people” in the containers looked exactly like him.

This realization left Tao Ning utterly lost. The dream was so real that he didn’t even dare to look at the world outside the darkness through this crack that offered a glimpse of light.

Until he opened his eyes again and saw a person’s eyes.

It was a man wearing a white coat similar to those worn in operating rooms. Tao Ning had never seen him before. The man’s features were very plain, the kind you would never notice in a crowd. He was standing in front of him, God knows since when, staring at him with a slight, knowing smile.

Centered on the man, several other people in white coats stood around him, and several pairs of eyes looked over as well.

Tao Ning couldn’t describe their gaze. It was like what he saw on TV—tourists at the zoo, perhaps. The way those tourists looked at the animals was exactly how these people looked.

Then… was he an animal?

Tao Ning felt this dream was too absurd. He wanted to wake up, but it was no use.

The man stared at him, his lips moving. Tao Ning couldn’t understand what he was saying. At the same time, the water in his container began to circulate, and the black turntable behind them spun rapidly. Tao Ning suddenly felt a sharp pain in his ears. The next moment, he could suddenly hear rustling sounds.

These sounds went from loud to soft, from far to near, until Tao Ning could clearly hear a voice—

“Today is May 10th. Let’s call him 510.” The man smiled gently. “Did you hear that, 510?”

Even in the dream, Tao Ning could feel his body stiffen, because this voice was exactly the same as Song Heng’s voice he had heard when he returned to the bedroom that day, and the same as the second system’s voice that appeared in his mind.

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