INSIDER Chapter 34

Wei Rong’s eerie appearance startled the three men. Yet, to their surprise, she neither attacked them nor screamed. Instead, she stood motionless between the doors, her shadow stretched long into the room by the moonlight, her bloodshot eyes glaring at them as if they were dead.

This made them unsure if the Wei Rong standing before them was truly “Wei Rong.”

Lu Chu tightened his grip on the old flashlight, weighing its potential as a weapon.

“Creak—”

She forcefully pushed the doors wide open, allowing the moonlight to flood the room. She then slowly walked towards Lu Chu, speaking in a tone of joyful surprise, “Jianping, you’re back! Why didn’t you turn on the light? Do we have guests?”

Lu Chu’s expression was complex, and he tightened his grip on the flashlight but said nothing.

“Jianping, are you unwell? Why aren’t you speaking?”

Lu Chu shook his head. “No.”

“Jianping, I did as you asked and locked the storeroom next to the toilet. Why did you want it locked? It’s so inconvenient for us to use things now.”

As she spoke, she approached Lu Chu and handed him a set of rusted keys. “Here, we each have a set of keys to the storeroom.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Lu Chu extended his hand and took the keys.

Wei Rong smiled, though her smile was unnerving. “I’ll go make dinner for our guests. Jianping, wait for me.”

She turned and left for the kitchen.

Wei Rong seemed to be in a trance, mistaking Lu Chu for Guo Jianping. Her memory appeared to be stuck in a period when she and Guo Jianping were together, and from her monologue, it was clear that Guo Jianping had once asked her to lock the storeroom.

Holding the keys, Lu Chu exchanged glances with Song Gui and Qi Li. They decided that Song Gui would check the storeroom while Lu Chu and Qi Li stayed to handle Wei Rong.

Fortunately, though Wei Rong seemed mentally unstable, she was still herself and not possessed by something sinister. The three men could handle one mad woman without much trouble.

Wei Rong indeed seemed intent on cooking for her imagined “Guo Jianping.” She wandered to the kitchen, turned on the light, and began looking for materials to start a fire. Since she had gone mad, the kitchen hadn’t been used; relatives brought her meals. The kitchen still had the old large stove and bellows, requiring wood to light a fire.

Now, the kitchen was covered in dust and had nothing useful. Lu Chu and Qi Li silently positioned themselves outside the kitchen, out of her sight but ready to react. Wei Rong stood dazed, staring at the dilapidated kitchen.

Suddenly, her bloodshot eyes turned fierce. She began flailing her arms and shouting madly, “Guo Jianping! Guo Jianping! You bastard, you deserve it! You deserve it!”

“You only ever think of others! You’re a beast, you wronged me! You wronged Lin Lin!”

“You’re a beast! A beast!”

Hearing Wei Rong’s words, Lu Chu and Qi Li exchanged glances, their thoughts racing.

Just then, Song Gui returned with a book-like object, signaling for them to retreat while the moonlight still provided some visibility.

The three quickly climbed back over the wall.

Wei Rong seemed to forget about cooking for “Guo Jianping” and started shouting in the yard. Even as Lu Chu, Song Gui, and Qi Li moved away, they could still hear her screams.

They hurried back to the Lu family home, where Li Jiapeng and He Mingde were anxiously pacing the yard.

Seeing them return, Li Jiapeng rushed over, “How did it go?”

Song Gui held up the book he had taken. “Let’s go inside and talk.”

They gathered around the table inside, and Song Gui placed the book in the center. “I found this in the storeroom at Wei Rong’s house. It looks like a diary.”

“A diary?” He Mingde asked, surprised. “Guo Jianping’s?”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Li Jiapeng said, flipping through the book. “We’ve seen Guo Jianping’s handwriting at the school. It’s fluent and cursive. But this diary looks like it was written by someone just learning to write. The handwriting improves over time, becoming neater.”

Lu Chu pointed out, “There’s a name on the cover.”

Li Jiapeng shook his head. “I’m just too nervous. Let me see… It’s… Lin Lin?!”

“Yes,” Song Gui nodded.

He Mingde’s eyes lit up, and he took the diary from Li Jiapeng, flipping through it before reading aloud.

The first part of the diary was like a child’s assignment. Lin Lin wrote about how Teacher Guo encouraged them to keep a diary. At first, Lin Lin knew very few characters, using pinyin and drawings to fill in the gaps. This made reading difficult, but the initial entries were just everyday occurrences without useful information.

It wasn’t until a year after Lin Lin and Guo Jianping’s marriage that the entries took a turn. The neat handwriting became messy, indicating Lin Lin’s unstable emotions.

She had discovered Guo Jianping’s infidelity. Her words showed she didn’t know who the other woman was. That night, she confronted Guo Jianping but was met with cold indifference. After that, Guo Jianping’s behavior worsened, eventually leading to domestic violence.

A few days later, someone sent her an anonymous letter, claiming to be pregnant with Guo Jianping’s child and asking to meet.

That afternoon, Lin Lin didn’t meet the anonymous letter writer. Instead, she encountered a few drunken villagers who had been told Lin Lin was easy to take advantage of. She fought them off and ran home, biting a chunk out of one of them. Furious, they beat her until the village chief intervened.

The village chief took her home to Guo Jianping, but instead of helping her, he told Guo Jianping that the men were good people who had just drunk too much and that the incident shouldn’t be blown out of proportion. Guo Jianping agreed and didn’t take Lin Lin to the hospital.

After that, Lin Lin documented Guo Jianping’s continued coldness.

Later, she wrote about planning to follow Guo Jianping to find out who the other woman was.

The diary ended abruptly there.

Lu Chu said, “I think that after this, Lin Lin was killed.”