Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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The interrogation room was brightly lit, yet the light made everyone feel uneasy.
The clean table was empty. Li Yuebai and Ye Qing sat on one side, while Liang Jing sat opposite them.
“Sister Liang, it’s just a statement, don’t be nervous,” Li Yuebai reassured her. “Next, we need to figure out why Weng Zichen suddenly… became like that.”
“I don’t know,” Liang Jing blew her nose with a tissue, her eyes still red. “I have absolutely no idea.”
“Then just tell me about today’s events,” Li Yuebai didn’t intend to put too much pressure on her. “Start with when you were alone in the lab.”
“Okay,” Liang Jing nodded reluctantly. “These past few days, because I’ve been preparing for my divorce, I haven’t been home. I’ve been staying in the institute’s dormitory, and I haven’t seen Weng Zichen for several days.”
“Hmm.”
“After waking up this morning, I ate breakfast in the institute’s cafeteria and then went to the lab alone to extract neurotoxins from snake venom. Everything was normal. Then around noon, Weng Zichen arrived.”
“How was he?”
“At first, he was the same as before, wearing a linen suit and carrying a briefcase containing divorce papers. He came in and started arguing with me, about all sorts of things.” Liang Jing recalled painfully, rubbing her forehead. “I told him that it was a lab, and if we wanted to argue, we should go outside, but he ignored me. Then in a fit of anger, he picked up a chair and smashed the glass cabinet.”
“Was it the glass cabinet containing snakes?”
“Yes, it contained venomous snakes.” Liang Jing choked up again. “We had planned to apply to have it replaced with bulletproof glass, but unfortunately, the funding hadn’t been approved. Actually, ordinary glass like this won’t be damaged unless it’s hit hard, but…”
The chair was made of heavy stainless steel. A grown man picked it up and smashed it against the glass with the sharp corner, it thus naturally shattered into pieces.
“Soon, the venomous snakes crawled out. In his panic, he stepped on one, and it immediately bit his ankle… It was a highly venomous viper.” Liang Jing’s hands trembled slightly. “He immediately collapsed to the ground, unconscious. Although I hated him, I couldn’t just stand by and watch him die, so I immediately went to help. Unexpectedly, before I even reached his side, he suddenly woke up and stood up.”
“How long did it take from fainting to waking up?”
“Less than thirty seconds.”
The speed at which a vampire in its dormant form possessed a human was very fast; thirty seconds was more than enough.
“When he woke up, the moment he opened his eyes, I was terrified. I almost screamed. His eyes weren’t human eyes anymore; they were like a snake’s… vertical pupils! Scales had appeared on his skin. I still can’t understand why just being bitten by a snake would cause this?” Liang Jing was both terrified and confused. “I consider myself an expert in this field, having seen countless cases of death from venomous snakes, but none of them have ever caused such a thing…”
Liang Jing was unaware of the vampire situation. Li Yuebai planned to explain it to her slowly once she calmed down. After all, her brother’s death and her husband’s mutation were both related to vampires, and she had the right to know the truth.
But… it seemed too much of a coincidence that both of these things happened to her.
“Is there surveillance in the lab?” Li Yuebai asked.
From Liang Jing’s description, the dormant vampire must have taken advantage of Weng Zichen’s unconsciousness after being poisoned.
But how could it be such a coincidence? How could there just happen to be a dormant vampire in the biological research institute’s lab?
“There are security cameras,” Liang Jing replied. “But I didn’t even see clearly why he became like this. How could the cameras possibly capture that… The camera resolution isn’t very high…”
Ye Qing pulled up the security video.
Initially, it matched Liang Jing’s description perfectly. The screen showed Liang Jing conducting an experiment alone. At 11:20 AM, Weng Zichen kicked open the slightly ajar security door and barged in.
“Wait, something’s not right here,” Li Yuebai gestured, and Ye Qing immediately paused the video.
“Sister Liang, why didn’t you lock the door? This doesn’t make sense.” Li Yuebai said, full of suspicion, “The biological laboratory is a sensitive research area, off-limits to unauthorized personnel. Extracting neurotoxins from snake venom is quite dangerous. Even normally, the door should be locked before conducting experiments. Especially considering your recent ordeal, you’re very insecure; you should have locked the door even more.”
“I…” Liang Jing’s face turned pale. “I don’t know, I don’t know why I didn’t lock the door.”
Ye Qing pulled up earlier surveillance footage. The footage showed that Liang Jing used to be very careful, always thoroughly checking the lab’s security before locking the door and always checking the outside security before leaving.
But starting a few days ago, she became less careful, often leaving the door wide open.
“Skip this question for now and continue.” Li Yuebai pressed play again.
The rest of the plot unfolded predictably. Weng Zichen angrily yelled at Liang Jing, who calmly retorted. Neither would back down, and soon Weng Zichen lost control, grabbed a chair and frantically smashed the table, computer, glassware, and cabinets… until he was bitten on the ankle by a viper and collapsed unconscious.
Next, Ye Qing slowed the playback.
The expected object appeared— a black shadow floated out of the pen holder on the table, not hovering in the air, but directly entering Weng Zichen’s head.
“Huh? What’s that?” Liang Jing exclaimed in surprise, “I didn’t see it. Why was it captured on camera?”
“Some things are invisible to the naked eye, only captured by a camera,” Ye Qing replied briefly. “I’ll explain later.”
“That’s it, the dormant Lilith,” Li Yuebai tapped the screen. “It came out of the pen holder.”
The pen holder was yellowish-brown, bulky and crudely shaped, looking like an ancient pottery piece without any patterns.
According to past surveillance footage, this pen holder only appeared in Liang Jing’s lab a week ago.
Soon, the evidence department brought it over.
“Where did this pen holder come from?” Li Yuebai put on plastic gloves and examined the pen holder carefully.
“It was delivered to me by courier a week ago,” Liang Jing said, her voice trembling. “I usually fill in my work address when I shop online, so I often receive packages at the mailroom. This time, when I opened it and saw it was something I hadn’t ordered, I wasn’t surprised. After all, my classmates and friends know my address and occasionally send me things, so I just opened it and put it in the lab.”
Although called a pen holder, it should actually be called a bottle. It was cylindrical with a conical bottom and a downward-pointing tip. Originally, it could only stand upright in sand, but it seemed to have been modified and fitted with an extra iron bracket, allowing it to sit properly on the table. The bottle walls were very thick, and it was quite heavy.
“It looks like an antique; it must be quite old,” Li Yuebai said, tapping the bottle wall, which produced a dull sound.
He had previously read some introductions to ancient Western artifacts in his textbooks, among which the Phoenician bottle was particularly famous. The Phoenicians were a seafaring people who flourished before the Common Era, and their pottery bottles were found throughout Eurasia and Africa. Chronologically, this bottle could only be earlier than the 16th century, making it entirely possible for a vampire from the early 16th century to hide inside.[1]
Ye Qing had the bottle examined using X-ray vision, and it indeed revealed a cavity in the conical section at the bottom!
It was now 100% certain that Lilith had emerged from here.
But why did Lilith specifically target Liang Jing and her husband?
Was it just a coincidence, like Xu Lili’s case? Xu Lili hadn’t offended anyone, nor was she a vampire’s preferred possession target; she had simply been incredibly unlucky, buying a castle stone online and incurring disaster.
But Liang Jing was different. Her younger brother, Liang Tian, was killed not long ago, and now the vampire snake demon Lilith has appeared. What were the odds of two calamities befalling her alone, purely by coincidence?
“No… I suspect it’s not a coincidence.” Li Yuebai frowned. “Sister Liang, please forgive my abrupt question, but what have you done since Liang Tian’s death?”
“What have I done?” Upon hearing the mention of Liang Tian, Liang Jing’s expression immediately shifted from grief and fear to anger. Her hands, which had been resting on the table, clenched tightly, and her voice turned icy. “Of course, I cooperated with the police investigation!”
“No, you’ve been under much more pressure than that.” Li Yuebai sighed. “Given your personality, you would never allow your brother to die without a clear explanation. Therefore, you must have been secretly investigating this case on your own.”
“So what?” Liang Jing’s eyes widened suddenly. “He’s my own brother! Why can’t I do something?”
“We can help with Liang Tian’s matter too,” Li Yuebai said softly.
Liang Jing stared intently at Li Yuebai, seemingly assessing whether he was trustworthy.
She knew very well that Gu Xisha and Ye Qing both had a good relationship with Liang Tian, and Gao Chengyu’s case was directly related to Gu Xisha. Moreover, this person in front of her had saved her today…
If she couldn’t trust them, then there was no one else in the world she could trust.
Liang Jing sighed: “Okay, I’m secretly investigating Liang Tian’s death and Gao Chengyu’s case.”
“Any progress?”
“I’ve come to a very absurd conclusion.” Liang Jing shook her head with a bitter smile: “From all the signs, it seems Gao Chengyu has come back to life and killed Liang Tian, but how is that possible?”
She was so close to the truth that Li Yuebai’s heart skipped a beat.
“That’s it.” Li Yuebai said softly: “The reason the pen holder was sent here is because of this.”
“Could it be…?”
“Because of your secret investigation, Gao Chengyu discovered it, but he can’t show himself publicly.” Li Yuebai said, emphasizing each word: “So he sent you the pen holder, trying to use that thing to control you, or even kill you.”
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Probably something like this.