Chapter 25 [Second Night Part Six]

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AUGUST 14, 2021~ 8ONI

Editor: Jue

Like a thief, Fang Daichuan poked his head out of Li Sinian’s room and looked around vigilantly.
Contrary to him, Li Sinian followed him leisurely, with his left hand in his pocket, like an old man strolling in his back garden.

Most of the paintings on the tapestry had disappeared, but there were still a few water stains on the carpet.

When Li Sinian saw the painting, his expression became serious.
He gently rubbed his fingers against the wet mural and smelled the liquid between his fingers.

“How is it?” Fang Daichuan asked nervously, his eyes widened.

Li Sinian frowned and rubbed his fingers: “It’s nothing special, it should be water.
How did you find out?”

The memory scared him. Fang Daichuan rubbed the goose bumps on his arm and recalled: “I couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night, so I wanted to go to find you, and then I saw paintings on these murals when I got out of the room.
I remembered that when we came upstairs, the window in the corridor was open.
I first thought, maybe the mural became wet from the rain that came in from the window and as a result, the painting was exposed.
But when I turned into the corner in front of your room, I heard a sound in the hallway so I quietly took a look.
The crazy boy was holding a small bucket and was splashing water on the mural.”

“Did you not see him when you were in the corridor?” Li Sinian asked.

Fang Daichuan shook his head decisively: “Absolutely not.
I think he must have gone to fetch water in the kitchen on the first floor at that time.”

As they talked, the sound of wind and rain became louder, the outside of the window started fogging up, and the thunder was rolling, shocking the whole island.
Li Sinian opened the window, the curtains and mural got instantly soaked in the rain.

The painting resurfaced.

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Golden light, white robe, snake carrying apple; fleshy wings, pointed horns, two-headed dog guarding the gate.
Li Sinian followed the painting and looked towards the dome.
He also saw the three sculptures.
He frowned deeply.

“You, do you understand it? I know it is the battle between God and Demon.
But how about that goddess?” Fang Daichuan asked. Anyway Li Sinian is half Western.
So he should understand this kind of thing better than him, a pure Chinese.

Li Sinian said hesitantly: “Blindfolded, holding a sword and a scale, this should be Justitia, the goddess of justice, in charge of justice and adjudication.
The Latin root for justice and righteousness, ‘Justice’*, is derived from her name.
During the Renaissance, people liked to make her statues, and the shapes were basically like this.
Blindfolded, meaning not disturbed by outside things, and holding a balance in the right hand, symbolizing the judgment of right and wrong.
The long sword on the left is to punish the unjust.”

(T/N: The ‘Justice’ is written in English on raw.
Also, the explanation is quite different from wiki, link below but again, the author took a liberty with her novel so don’t be alarmed.
Although personally I like Sinian’s explanation, much poetic to me)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice

“Wait a moment,” Fang Daichuan said: “Judging humanity, I know this script.
Isn’t this a theme in Agatha’s classic novel “And Then There Were None*”? Bring a group of guilty convicts to an island and kill them all.
——The boss has a high self-esteem, thinking they are in charge of justice, and even put themself as a goddess? They are also a playwright; the face probably is not good-looking.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None

(T/N: I highly recommend everyone to read this book if you haven’t, I read it years ago and even to this day I can still remember the plot, good stuff)

Li Sinian ignored him.

Fang Daichuan looked up for a while: “But why is she wearing a black robe? Don’t all the Greek goddesses wear a white robe? And why does she also have wings? Aren’t all the winged ones the Christian gods?”

“Maybe it’s not Justitia, but some pagan god?” Li Sinian shook his head while guessing, indicating that he had no answer.
He turned to look at the snakes and two-headed dogs on both sides: “But there are indeed snakes and dogs around Justitia.
The snake symbolizes greed, desire, and worldly power.
The dog symbolizes loyalty and friendship.
Justitia is not tempted by power, nor by human feelings, but only by reason and justice.”

Fang Daichuan watched with him for a while, until both of them were soaked in rain.
The central air conditioner in the villa was adjusted to a constant temperature mode, which was conservatively estimated to be around 20 degrees*.
He was currently soaking wet.
Standing under the air conditioner outlet, he felt cold all over his body so he closed the window.

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(T/N: Alright author did not give the specific but I am sure this is Celcius, just a note for people who did not use Celcius)

The tapestry was now full of water, and the picture would not dissipate for a while.
Twenty-four human faces were staring at them in the corridor.

“You just said you saw that kid splashing water on the wall?” Li Sinian thought of another thing.

Fang Daichuan nodded and shivered: “The window was left open tonight? I wonder when he ran out in the middle of the night, he saw the wet paintings, so he went down to fetch water, and splashed on the wall.”

As he said the word, he looked at the window.

Suddenly, he thought of something, turned his head abruptly, and looked at Li Sinian in horror.
Coincidently, a flash of lightning struck through the window, reflecting Fang Daichuan’s face pale, and his fright was very obvious in those dilated pupils.

Li Sinian didn’t know what was going on in his mind.

“That window!” The goosebumps rose from under his feet and rushed to his head, numbing his brain.
He remembered a detail that made him shudder.

——When everyone went back to their rooms, the window was open.
When he left the room, the window was closed, but the curtains and tapestries were vividly stained with water.
Then he pushed open the closed window and saw a white shadow, so he got frightened and ran to the corner to ring Li Sinian’s doorbell.
At that time, he was terrified and had no time and mood to close the window.
After that, he saw a big show between the child and his mother, then Li Sinian came back, they entered the room together, had a glass of wine, and then came out.

When they came out, the window was closed tightly.

The window was so high that it was impossible for children to open and close them directly.
If a child came out and saw the murals soaked in rain, then went down to fetch water, the time before the window was closed must be very short.
Before Fang Daichuan went out, after the little boy went downstairs, someone closed the open window.
Then Fang Daichuan opened it.
When Fang Daichuan hid in the corner and entered Li Sinian’s room, someone came out and closed the window again.

Fang Daichuan started sweating profusely.
He explained his thought process to Li Sinian in detail and Li Sinian had also started getting cold sweats.

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“According to you, someone repeatedly enters and exits the hallway just to close the window?” Li Sinian patted the hair on his arms and asked: “Why though? It’s just a window.”

Fang Daichuan said bitterly: “How the hell would I know?! What I fear the most is that whoever it is, they are not going in and out, but hiding somewhere in the corridor and watching me come out, then they closed the window when we were not here, and went back to hide again.”

Li Sinian let out a cold breath.
He looked left and right but there was no one around.
The only sound was from raindrops hitting the glass window from outside, but for no reason, he felt that there seemed to be a pair of eyes in the darkness, peering at everyone from the dark.

He raised his eyes to look at the sculpture of the goddess, the blindfolded Goddess of Justice, looking down the corridor compassionately, with a smile that barely showed at the corners of her mouth.

“You said you saw a white shadow on the reef?” Li Sinian suddenly noticed a point.

Fang Daichuan nodded: “Is that you? Did you go to the cabin near the reef?”

Li Sinian took a deep breath and looked out the window.
The view of the seaside was clearly reflected through the window.
He closed his eyes, turned his head to stare at Fang Daichuan, and said cautiously: “I didn’t go to the beach, I went to the wooden house on the hillside.” As he said, he lifted his foot, and Fang Daichuan could clearly see the mud on the soles of his shoes.
There was also moss and broken leaves stuck.

“Then who is that?” Fang Daichuan was completely stunned.
“Apart from the seer, who needs to run out of the house?”

Li Sinian lowered his head and thought: “I don’t know what special roles others will have.
I thought that there should only be 2~3 special roles, but now that I think about it, it seems wrong.
Do you remember the rule? ‘As long as there is a player remaining in the opposite faction, the game will continue’ This is not a killing game, but battle royale.
This game might have witch-hunter-guard, or maybe, witch-hunter-white wolf, I don’t know which one is used here.
We might have a third-party faction.
It would be okay if the special role was a white wolf or a thief.
If it was Cupid, it would be troublesome.”

(T/N: Explanation on the end of chapter)

He quickly calculated: “There is a seer and witch.
The guard is not impractical in real killing games and not playable at all.
The other two special roles may be the idiot and hunter.
But neither the idiot nor hunter needs to go out at night…”

Fang Daichuan had never played Werewolf before, so he hurriedly asked: “How does a hunter play? What does the idiot do?”

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“Hunter and the idiot are both in villager’s faction.
When a hunter gets voted as a wolf, he can take any random player and die together.
The idiot will not die when they get voted.
Instead, they will show their card and continue to play in the game.
However they can’t participate in the vote anymore, and only the werewolf can truly kill them.” Li Sinian explained.

It’s too complicated. As soon as Fang Daichuan heard the first two paragraphs, he chose to give up. Let Li Sinian do all the thinking.

However, Li Sinian couldn’t think of any reason to go out in the middle of the night.
He grabbed his little curly hair and said: “Anyway, tomorrow morning, I will wet the carpet at the stairs entrance.
You remember to take a book from your room and sit near the stairs pretending to read a book.
When someone walks by, look at the carpet to see who has mud on the soles of their shoes.”

That is a good idea.

Fang Daichuan was amazed by such shameless methods.

The water stains on both sides of the corridor had begun to slowly disappear.
Li Sinian took the last look and caught a glimpse of a Gothic English sentence in the corner of the mural.
The English sentence was engraved on the corner right in front of his door.

“It’s better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.”

Li Sinian became a little absent-minded.

“I’m still worried about one thing.” Fang Daichuan looked at Li Sinian hesitantly, not knowing how to say: “On the mural, there are only twelve people on each side.
Then…what about us? Are we the one on the dome, the battle between God and Demon? But you and I are in the same faction, right?”

Li Sinian suddenly recovered his mind.
He pursed his lips: “No matter where we are standing, that has absolutely nothing to do with that bullshit war of God and Demon.
Think about it, you being here is completely a coincidence.
If you can find hints about you in this villa, then it’s one hell of coincidence.”

It made sense.
Fang Daichuan was relieved now.
He turned his head to look at the rainstorm outside the window, praying in his heart. Please let this long night pass soon.

(T/N: Alright, so there are many variant of werewolf games and honestly I know you, the reader, is totally confused as why Sinian suddenly said this and that but someone has commented that apparently my t/n is too…extensive and distracting the flow [which is why I put this on the end] so here is the picture that shows different playing mode.
Yes it is on Mandarin [because this is originally Chinese novel lol] and no I won’t explain one by one.
Just know that basically how you play the game is changing depending on what ‘mode’ you are on.
Like I said before, this game is based on The Werewolves of Millers Hollow but apparently there are a ton of new roles and rules with each expansion so I will just assure you, that there are only 4 special roles here; witch, seer, hunter and the idiot so feel free to guess who is who.)