Chapter 364
The Rest of My Life is Long
Chapter 364 The Rest of My Life is Long
Outside Nanling, Rakshasa appeared in front of the police team waiting on the outskirts.
Its solitary appearance made Liu Tong realize that Qi Fei and Zhong Kui were in trouble, and he immediately led the police team to follow Luocha into the maze.
After navigating the maze, there was nothing inside the grotto except for the bixi (a mythical tortoise-like creature) and blank stone tablets.
"Captain Liu, could we have come to the wrong place?" Wu Shanqiu asked with some doubt.
Liu Tong and Luocha looked at each other, as if they understood the meaning in its amber eyes, and said, "This is the place it wants to bring us."
As soon as the words were spoken, it was as if time had turned back, and the stone tablet fell down again, revealing a dark hole.
Without hesitation, Rakshasa leaped into the black hole, while Wu Shanqiu was the first human to enter.
When she arrived at the underground palace, it was still engulfed in flames, but unfortunately, only Qi Fei remained conscious.
The moment he saw Rakshasa appear, he said to Zhong Kui in his arms, "Kui, you promised Rakshasa that you would go to Zizai Mountain to find it and Grandma. You can't break your promise."
…………
Time flies, and another spring has arrived. Wu Shanqiu appears in the criminal investigation team's office as usual. Every morning, she habitually looks at the empty workstation and sighs wistfully.
"What's wrong? Why are you sighing so early in the morning?" Liu Tong's voice came from behind.
Wu Shanqiu turned around and said, "Captain Liu, Fei Ge is still at the hospital taking care of Zhong Kui. How long do you plan to give him leave? He can't just stop working until Zhong Kui wakes up, can he?"
As they were talking, their phones rang at the same time.
Liu Tong took out his phone to check, but before he could say anything, Wu Shanqiu on the other end blurted out: "32.083615, 118.792761. I know the coordinates of this technical department by heart. It seems they still haven't cracked Zhong Xiaoyu's code."
Police retrieved Zhong Xiaoyu's USB drive from the underground palace in Xihe, but three months later, the password still could not be cracked.
Looking at the impatient Wu Shanqiu, Liu Tong smiled and said, "We haven't made no progress. At least we know that the password is 17 characters long. I asked the AI, and if it's a 17-character password, even if it's all numbers and disregards special characters, there are still a quadrillion possibilities. How easy is it to crack it?"
In the ward, Qi Fei stayed by Zhong Kui's side. On the bedside table were the gifts Zhong Kui had given him—the old compass, the snowman music box, and the myna bird specimen. These gifts, like Zhong Kui herself, were strange and playful.
Qi Fei's beard was unkempt and his hair was a mess, making him look completely different from the spirited man he was three months ago.
Qi Dongjun sought out top experts, but despite trying all available treatments, Zhong Kui remained in a deep coma with no signs of waking up.
His phone rang; he knew it was another location sent from Zhong Xiaoyu's USB drive. Luo Yang told him that the password, designed according to Zhong Xiaoyu's requirements, could only be deciphered by the person who entered it. However, the person who could decipher it was fast asleep along with Zhong Kui.
He held Zhong Kui's cold hand. Three months of coma had caused the muscles in her arms to atrophy, making them even thinner than before.
In a daze, something furry brushed against his feet. He looked down and was surprised to find it was Rakshasa, who had entered the ward without him noticing.
Strangely enough, ever since Nanling rescued them, Luosha really did return to Zizai Mountain as Zhong Kui had said. In the past three months, neither it nor Granny Meng has come to visit Zhong Kui.
Qi Fei never doubted Granny Meng and Luosha's loyalty to Zhong Kui, but he didn't understand why they were acting so cruelly.
As the Rakshasa appeared, Granny Meng appeared before him.
Under Qi Fei's astonished gaze, she stretched out her withered hand and offered a yellow paper iris.
"Did Zhong Kui ask you to give this to me?" Qi Fei asked blankly as he took the iris.
“It’s Zhong Xiaoyu.” Granny Meng’s answer surprised Qi Fei. “On Zizai Mountain, I saw with my own eyes that she and the master reached a reconciliation and planned to join forces to eliminate Xi He. At that time, the master was prepared to sacrifice himself, and no matter how I tried to persuade him, he wouldn’t turn back. Just when I didn’t know what to do, Zhong Xiaoyu suddenly appeared and gave me this origami, saying that if one day the master couldn’t wake up, I should give this to you in the spring. But it must be three months after the master falls into a coma; giving it to you in advance would only kill her. I had no other choice but to believe her. I hope what she said is true.” At this point, Granny Meng’s lips twitched slightly. “The rest is up to you.”
Qi Fei looked at the iris and vaguely saw writing on the inside of the paper. He quickly unfolded it and saw that it was still a string of numbers: "12009449130150197". It was a string of numbers that seemed to have no pattern at first glance, but Qi Fei would not forget that these were the latitude and longitude coordinates of the cabin on Zizai Mountain that Zhong Kui had told him at the beginning. However, how could these coordinates awaken Zhong Kui?
"Ding..." His phone received another message, the same automatic message from the hacked USB drive, with the familiar latitude and longitude numbers.
“Latitude and longitude…” Qi Fei murmured, “They said Zhong Xiaoyu set a 17-digit password.” Thinking of this, he quickly counted the number of digits on the iris origami, and sure enough, it was exactly 17 digits.
-
At the Nancheng Police Station, everyone was startled by Qi Fei's sudden entrance. He was clutching a yellow piece of paper and headed straight for the technical section.
His trembling fingers typed out the numbers on the paper one by one. As he pressed the Enter key, the interface that had always displayed the password error pop-up window showed something different for the first time in three months.
The USB drive contained a video recorded by Zhong Xiaoyu, as well as many file packages labeled with Zhong Kui.
In the video, Zhong Xiaoyu faces the camera, seemingly addressing Qi Fei directly: "Qi Fei, the fact that you can see me means everything is proceeding according to plan. Forgive me for making Granny Meng wait three months to give you the password. Zhong Kui forcibly awakening Iris's personality inevitably caused damage to my brain neurons. This damage will take at least three months to recover. For ordinary people, this damage means amnesia, but for me, it's an opportunity to destroy each of my personalities. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, it must endure the flames of destruction. And only one person can be reborn. I chose Zhong Kui because in this world, she is the only one of my three personalities who is loved, because you are waiting for her. The USB drive contains the method to awaken her and all the data to build her world. Awaken her, tell her all the stories. This video will only play once; after you watch it, I will disappear forever along with the video. Goodbye, Qi Fei, I wish you happiness."
The video went black, and Zhong Xiaoyu truly disappeared.
"Farewell, Zhong Xiaoyu," Qi Fei murmured.
-
In the ward, the spring sunlight shone on the irises by Zhong Kui's bedside. She slowly opened her eyes and saw Qi Fei's face. She weakly raised her hand and said, "Qi Fei, I think I had a very long nightmare."
Qi Fei grabbed her hand and pressed it against his warm cheek, saying softly, "Kui, the dream is over. We still have a long life ahead of us..."