Chapter 41: Double Substitute Literature

“Yu Wangxiao, what posture do you think she’s using to play the piano?”

Lin Jiangye narrowed his eyes and tried to analyze it. “The piano is placed in the middle of the attic, half her body is lying by the window, and then… she lifts her feet backward and presses them onto the piano? Very reasonable.”

“It is indeed very reasonable, but there’s no piano in the attic. The piano room is on the second floor. No one normally uses it, and it’s always locked.”

With one light sentence from Yu Wangxiao, the matter suddenly became strange.

“It can’t really be haunted, right… Has this happened before?” Lin Jiangye sniffed. The distance was too far, so for now, he could not smell food.

“It has happened before. Just strange sounds, nothing dangerous.” Yu Wangxiao’s tone was calm. He lowered his eyes and wiped the incense ash from his hand, clearly already used to it. “She won’t attack us. When her condition is bad, she only attacks Yu Lin.”

“Only Yu Lin?” Lin Jiangye’s favorable impression of her greatly increased. He raised his head again and greeted her warmly. “Sister-in-law, Sister-in-law, come down and play.”

“…Thud, thud.”

The messy piano sound rang out a few more times. The woman expressionlessly propped herself up on her thin arms and crawled backward, slowly disappearing from the window bit by bit.

Thump, thump, thump—

Soon, heavy sounds of both hands and feet came from the wooden spiral staircase, accompanied by the startled cry of a young caregiver chasing after her. “Madam! Madam, where are you going?! Ah…”

“Ah, that caregiver seems to have fallen down by herself.” Lin Jiangye listened to the movement and silently said.

This bizarre, chaotic scene was not the first time it had appeared in the old residence. Yu Wangxiao remained calm. “Mm. She gets up very quickly. Most people can’t catch up to her even by running.”

“So amazing. Can ordinary humans crawl that fast?”

“As long as they practice for a few years, anyone can. After her mental state developed problems, she would suddenly start practicing crawling from time to time. No one could persuade her to stop. When she could still communicate normally at first, I asked her why she had to crawl on the ground… She said she felt sorry for the child.” Yu Wangxiao recalled the past and seemed rather helpless about her strange logic.

“Felt sorry for the child, but still attacked Yu Lin every now and then?” Lin Jiangye was a little confused. “Alright, maybe this can also count as a form of maternal love…”

Before they could discuss it properly, she had already reached the back mountain courtyard with her eerie crawling posture, the young caregiver panting behind her.

The old residence had four floors in total, and the attic counted as half a fifth floor. She had crawled all the way down in less than half a minute. Her speed was indeed quite shocking. Lin Jiangye thought of the Old Madam Gus he had seen on the island, then looked at how skilled she seemed at this moment. A thread of vigilance rose in his heart.

She wore long cotton-linen clothes and trousers, with a high-neck wool sweater as the base layer. Her limbs were all fitted with thick wrist guards and knee pads to protect her from too much wear and strain while crawling.

What the Yu family could do for her seemed limited to this. Satisfy her material needs, ensure her physical health, arrange regular treatment and consultations, and rely on expensive medical fees and resources to preserve her dignity and vitality… but nothing more.

Lin Jiangye saw it clearly, and in that instant, he could also smell an abnormal withered scent quietly spreading, like flower petals nearly dried through, hanging shakily on branches, liable to shatter into pieces with only a light breeze.

For now, she had not turned into a living dead.

But that was only for now.

Clearly, this woman had also been immersed in years and years of unknown madness, stepping onto the road toward mutation.

They had to find a way to stop this process now. Otherwise, very soon, very soon, they would face an irreversible ending.

“Her name is Du Ning. Say hello?” Yu Wangxiao lightly supported Lin Jiangye’s waist, calm and unruffled as though everything were normal, and introduced gently, “Sister-in-law, this is Lin Jiangye, the young master the Lin family found and brought back a few years ago. You should have an impression of him.”

The woman named Du Ning squatted on the ground. Her gaze struggled out from the mountain of heavy wrinkles piled around her eyes. Her bloodshot eyes opened desperately wide, fixed firmly on Lin Jiangye.

She was silent for a moment. While kneading the corner of her shirt, she moved her lips extremely slowly. Her lips, coated with lip balm, were also well cared for, but they looked stiff and clumsy, as though they did not belong to her at all.

“Thud, thud…”

A strange and discordant piano sound slowly spilled out from within her body.

The caregiver widened her eyes in shock, so frightened she could not speak. Trembling, she quickly stepped backward, undisguised panic in her eyes.

It seemed she also did not know where the piano sound came from until this moment, when she first noticed it.

Yu Wangxiao looked thoughtful and beckoned to the caregiver. “Don’t be afraid. Come here. How long has it been since she last took the initiative to speak?”

“…Two, two years.” The caregiver carefully avoided Du Ning’s line of sight and, using the rockery in the courtyard as cover, slowly shifted behind the two of them.

“Over these two years, the piano sounds have appeared more frequently, right?”

“Yes, yes. But generally, they only sound around four or five in the morning. I checked through the window several times, and Madam was basically sleeping properly. Mr. Yu, what exactly is going on? Is it, is it haunted…”

As the caregiver trembled, she also lit three sticks of incense for herself. In a panic, she bowed to Du Ning, then shakily turned and bowed to the peaceful old woman in the coffin. In her fluster, she no longer knew whether she should chant Amitabha or Immeasurable Heavenly Worthy.

“Thud, thud…”

The piano sound rang out faintly again, extremely penetrating as it echoed constantly through the back mountain.

The caregiver was so frightened she nearly burned herself, but Du Ning did not have her in her eyes.

This scene bore a slight resemblance to Lin Jiangye in the ICU last night. The same eerie phenomenon of “speaking loudly without using the mouth” had appeared.

Only the reactions of the observers were completely different.

Du Ning kept looking at Lin Jiangye, seeming a little curious. She tilted her head and slowly approached him on both hands and feet.

If one ignored the somewhat horrifying wrinkles around the corners of her eyes, Lin Jiangye even felt… her expression was very pure and harmless, a kind of innocence close to that of an infant. There was none of the intense aggression and malice of the living dead.

Yu Wangxiao could see this too. He did not want to alarm her and break the current peaceful situation.

So he looked at the caregiver, his tone steady and carrying a reassuring meaning. “Go rest. I’ll give you a week off. If you’re truly afraid, then before the end of this month, go to the butler and resign.”

“No, no need for time off! If I’m not here, Madam won’t have anyone to take care of her… They’re all afraid of Madam and won’t take good care of her. I’m the only one who isn’t afraid.” The caregiver was startled and hurriedly refused. At this moment, her attitude became much firmer, and she no longer stammered as she spoke.

Yu Wangxiao lightly curved his lips. “Mm. Then thank you for your hard work.”

“No, no, it’s not hard…”

After sending away the panicked caregiver, the courtyard became quiet again.

At the same time, Du Ning had been slowly moving closer in Lin Jiangye’s direction, finally reaching a distance where she could touch him.

Her slightly thin hand lifted bit by bit and pressed against Lin Jiangye’s knee. She paused, seeming to feel something was not right, then struggled to reach farther upward.

But for some unknown reason, she seemed to have completely forgotten that she could stand. No matter how hard she tried, she could not reach her target. Her expression gradually became anxious, and the piano sound almost formed an eerie resonance within her body, growing faster and faster, louder and louder.

Lin Jiangye waved his hand to tell Yu Wangxiao not to come closer yet. He carefully observed the direction of her fingers and very seriously hummed a few notes of the strange piano tune.

Immediately after, he suddenly understood and half-squatted down. “Sister-in-law, you want to touch my face to confirm that I really exist and that I’m not a hallucination you created, right?”

“Thud, thud, thud, thud—!”

In the next instant, Lin Jiangye heard a heavy and loud low note. This meant she was very happy.

Lin Jiangye did not know why he could understand, but he could. As long as he listened carefully to the emotion in the piano sound, he could clearly sense Du Ning’s emotions.

Du Ning truly seemed pleasantly surprised. She lightly reached out and touched his face, then pulled her hand back as if shocked by electricity after only that one touch. After hesitating for a long while, she touched him again.

“How is it? I’m very real, right? Absolutely real. Speaking of which… are you really Du Ning?”

“Thud, thud…”

Lin Jiangye thought for a moment, casually picked up a dry branch, and wrote the clear characters “Du Ning” in the soil, pointing them out to her. “It looks like this. Do you recognize this name?”

“Thud.”

Du Ning imitated him and also found herself a dry branch, clumsily writing and drawing at her feet.

She gripped the branch tightly in her fist. Her strokes were very childish, and the force she used was also wrong. After struggling for a long time, she finally finished writing. Clearly, many strokes were missing, lacking arms and legs like a crooked child’s drawing.

But even so, Lin Jiangye and Yu Wangxiao could both see what she had written.

Yu Ling.

Lin Jiangye tilted his head in confusion and quickly gave Yu Wangxiao a look asking for knowledge. Yu Wangxiao shook his head, rare confusion showing in his eyes.

This name was too strange. Although the pronunciation was similar, it absolutely was not Yu Lin. From the structure of the characters alone, even if Du Ning only had a child’s intelligence, she should not have written such complex wrong characters.

Lin Jiangye boldly guessed, “So, your name isn’t Du Ning, right? You are Yu Ling?”

“Thud, thud!”

“Your father is called Yu Chaoyuan, and your mother is called Du Ning. Is that right?”

“Thud, thud!”

Du Ning happily revealed a smile and even clapped excitedly. Then she turned around with her back facing Lin Jiangye and continued writing and drawing with the dry branch by herself.

It was as if she had found an interesting new toy. She played with great absorption and joy, quickly drawing several round faces.

Lin Jiangye secretly peeked at her doodles and discovered that these faces all had different features: long hair, short hair, bald…

He did not disturb her creation and quietly moved to Yu Wangxiao’s side, whispering, “Hey, why don’t we carefully recall this again? Are you sure you have a nephew?”

“I’m sure, but also not necessarily.” Yu Wangxiao looked thoughtful. “Yu Chaoyuan and Du Ning married very early. Before my eldest brother even graduated, the family had already arranged their wedding. After graduation, they directly registered the marriage… At that time, I hadn’t been born yet.”

After all, they were brothers more than twenty years apart in age. As the youngest son of the Yu family, Yu Wangxiao had never known much about what Yu Chaoyuan did when he was young.

He could only recall through the descriptions of elders. Of course, it was not as if he had never investigated in secret. For self-protection while also taking power, Yu Wangxiao had not let go of any effective information.

But wealthy families were taboo about scandals. Any rumors that could be suppressed had been killed early, and any mouths that could be sealed had all been firmly sealed. Those who dared to spread things casually had probably been thrown into the harbor decades ago.

“In other words, suppose they had a child before you were born, but didn’t raise that child to adulthood… That is possible, right?” Lin Jiangye whispered. “But the name Yu Ling sounds way too much like Yu Lin. So strange.”

“Mm, very strange. If following North City pronunciation habits, Yu Ling and Yu Lin would sound exactly the same, because they aren’t good at distinguishing front and back nasal sounds.”

When Yu Wangxiao said this, he paused slightly, his gaze moving up to a corner of the second floor, then continued, “Du Ning is from North City. Before coming to A City, she had never left North City.”

This sentence contained a rather large amount of information. Lin Jiangye followed his gaze upward and saw Yu Lin’s room.

His eyes met Yu Lin’s.

Yu Lin’s legs had not fully recovered. He leaned on a cane and openly looked at the two people in the courtyard below. The line of his lips was pulled extremely flat, and his slightly cold face was covered with a layer of gloom.

A pampered young master had been locked in detention for an entire night, so it was not surprising that he showed this kind of expression.

Lin Jiangye could not help laughing softly. “Tell me, could this really be double substitute literature?”

“The one looking for a substitute turned out to have been someone else’s substitute from birth…”