# 228
Chapter 228 – The Truth Slowly Unfolds
02:06 a.m.
Lin Qiye’s phone vibrated softly. He frowned, pulled it from his pocket, and glanced at the screen.
Not a call—an unread text from an unknown number.
—Watch this video.
The line sparked confusion, then curiosity. Only a handful of people knew his number, and Night Watch’s security software blocked every spam message. Anyone who could text him like this had to be…
An Qingyu.
A second later the attachment arrived. He tapped it open; his brows snapped together.
Hand-held footage, interior of the tavern. The phone lay on the bar, lens angled toward the back-door—same framing as the surveillance recorder. The place was pitch-black; faint moonlight spilled into the yard, the picture grainy.
A figure stepped into view—standing in the courtyard—then jerked backward as if an invisible hand had seized his throat, slammed against the wall, feet lifting until he hung in mid-air…
Lin Qiye recognized the clothes and build: An Qingyu.
A nail rose from the ground, drifted at a weird angle, and speared the figure’s palm.
A second, a third, a fourth… When all four pinned the limbs, the fingers began to vanish—gnawed away inch by inch—exactly like the original tape.
Once the digits were gone to the roots, a final nail lifted and punched into An Qingyu’s chest.
End of clip.
Questions stormed Lin Qiye’s mind. He knew An Qingyu couldn’t really be dead; sending the file meant the riddle was solved. He started typing, stopped, shook his head, and hit dial.
The call connected at once.
“What did you find?” he asked straight off.
An Qingyu sounded amused. “I thought you’d open with ‘Are you okay?’ That video didn’t worry you at all?”
“Worry that you were murdered?” Lin Qiye said flatly. “Dead men don’t remember my number.”
“…Boring.” A sigh. “Anyway, how did I shoot it? Your whole theory hit a wall because of that creepy tape, right? Blood loss, wound angles—nothing added up, yet the footage made everything look… too simple.”
He paused for effect.
“It was reversed. That’s all.”
Lin Qiye’s breath caught; light flashed in his eyes.
“You mean—”
“The clip doesn’t show someone being mysteriously killed. It shows a man whose fingers were already cut off… healing at high speed. I’ll send the real-time version—watch.”
The line went dead. A new file popped up.
Lin Qiye opened it instantly.
An Qingyu hung on the wall, nails through limbs, fingers severed—yet no blood.
His chest muscles clenched; the chest-nail was squeezed out and pinged to the floor. Fingers regrew in seconds under hyper-regeneration. Second nail ejected, then the third, the fourth…
When the last nail fell he dropped to the ground, stepped forward, and threw a terrified glance at the lens.
Blackout.
Lin Qiye closed his eyes, inhaled slowly…
Now it made sense.
Why every nail’s angle felt off. Why fingers weren’t sliced but “eroded.” Why the body first slid to the wall then rose—everything ran backward.
Nails were pushed out by flesh, not driven in by invisible force; fingers regrew instead of being eaten; the body fell, then stepped forward…
He speed-dialed again.
“So from the start there was no stealthy, telekinetic, finger-chopping phantom. The whole thing was staged by a regenerator—and played in reverse?”
“Exactly.”
“But why?” Lin Qiye frowned. “Why go to the trouble? Why fake a supernatural murder?”
“Before motive, look at identity,” An Qingyu replied calmly.
“The man in the footage,” Lin Qiye narrowed his eyes. “He directed and acted. Which means Sun Xiao was only nailed up after the recording. Question is: was Sun Xiao already dead when that happened?”
He answered himself: “The inconsistent wound angles and scant blood tell us fingers were removed first, then he was pinned. For the ritual he’d be killed within ten seconds of amputation—so he was a corpse before the wall.
That means the real kill site is near the tavern. No—wait. A street-camera covers the entrance; you couldn’t carry a body in unseen. So the murder happened inside.
And the only person who could pull that off unnoticed… is the one who works there.”