The old butler's cloudy eyes were filled with sorrow and terror.
His ominous whisper, along with that yellowed suicide note, stirred the already turbulent depths of the mystery, making it even more chaotic.
An entirely unexpected new variable was injected into this death countdown nearing its end.
The young lady of the O'Connor family, Kevin O'Connor's elder sister, a young female poet who studied Irish folklore and legends, chose to end her own life half a year ago.
Her death seed intricately connected to "Weeping Blood Hill."
Lin Jie's gaze locked onto the suicide note. His mind, accustod to processing information at high speed, now felt overloaded with confusion.
There were too many clues, too tangled, like a ss of haphazardly knotted yarn. Each thread end pointed to a possible answer, but trying to pull on one would only tighten the entire tangle.
Julian's expression also turned grave.
He carefully took the suicide note from the old butler's hands. Instead of opening it imdiately, he first carefully observed the envelope's material, the wax seal, and the faded yet powerful feminine handwriting on the letter paper.
This was the deeply ingrained professional instinct of a top-tier ancient docunt scholar.
"The ink is 'Grafton' brand tannic ink, produced locally in Dublin," Julian concluded with a single glance.
"Although the handwriting appears sowhat ssy due to the writer's agitated state at the ti, the pen strokes still retain the distinctive Insular script style of the Connaught region's convents for won, characterized by religious restraint and artistic beauty. It can be confird that this is indeed a genuine article from half a year ago."
"Let us see," Julian's eyes flashed with a cold pursuit of truth, "just what kind of hell, which drove her to despair, did this poor young lady with a poet's sensitive soul glimpse before deciding to bid farewell to the world."
He used a small silver letter opener to slice through the solidified wax seal, then slowly unfolded the creased letter paper.
The letter's content was not long. It wasn't a traditional suicide note, but more like an investigation log written in a delirious state under fear, chaos, and ntal derangent.
"...Blood... blood everywhere..."
"That hill is weeping... no, it's not the hill weeping... it's those flowers... those deep crimson heather flowers... their roots are buried in the poet's heart, that's why the petals are the color of blood..."
"The harp isn't there. I searched all over that damned cenotaph. It was emptied long ago by grave robbers, nothing remains, only the wind singing a lant on the empty hill..."
Reading this, Julian's brow furrowed tightly. This part confird their earlier speculation: the "Silver-Stringed Harp," the core of the curse, had long been stolen, and Miss O'Connor, the folklore researcher, had also discovered this.
However, the subsequent content of the letter veered in a surreal direction that no one had anticipated.
"No, that's wrong... I was mistaken about everything."
"The harp... it never left that hill... it just changed form, it ca to life..."
"It no longer needs strings to sing. Its 'wail' is the sound of the wind. Its 'body' is those dark heather flowers stained with the poet's blood!"
"They're alive! Those flowers, they are all alive! They're watching ! They're singing to ! They tell they are 'Tarlough's Revenge'! They are the most vicious curse brought down by the Moon Goddess Danu! They want to drain the last drop of blood tainted with betrayal and lies from the O'Connor family!!"
"They've set their sights on ... because O'Connor blood also flows in my veins. I hear that damned wail! It's in my head! Day and night, never ceasing!"
"No, I can't die! I can't die like an 'accident' like my foolish male relatives! I am a poet, a follower of Tarlough! I will et death in a more magnificent way, one closer to the 'gods'!"
"I will leap from the highest point! I will let my soul fly like a bird! Fly back to the eternal 'Land of Youth' that belongs to us Celts..."
The letter stopped abruptly here. The last few words were illegible due to the writer's shattered spirit and trembling hand.
The entire library fell into silence.
A deep confusion appeared on William's face. He could understand swords, bullets, even a brutal curse like the "Mark of Death," but descriptions like "the harp turned into flowers," tinged with the madness of a poet, exceeded the scope of his pragmatic, war-logic understanding. It sounded less like a threat and more like nonsense.
"This is a poor girl driven mad by her family's tragedy," Julian said, putting down the suicide note, his eyes filled with pity.
"Her spirit, under fear and long-term research pressure, developed a kind of 'synesthesia.' She mixed her fear of the curse, her sympathy for the bard, and her impression of the unique natural landscape of 'Weeping Blood Hill' together, ultimately creating a poetic yet terrifying 'living curse' illusion that existed only in her mind."
This was the most logical and "scientific" explanation. A gifted girl, after being exposed to a centuries-old bloody curse legend, found her spirit unable to bear the burden, eventually developed hallucinations, and moved towards self-destruction. It was a tragic story in itself.
Lin Jie, however, shook his head. His gaze passed through Julian and William, fixing on the window illuminated by sunlight.
"No, Julian."
"What if what she saw wasn't a hallucination?"
"What if," Lin Jie turned, sweeping his gaze over his two companions, "every single word she wrote, every seemingly insane description, was a fact she witnessed with her own eyes?"
This hypothesis overturned the judgnt made by Julian, the master of ancient docunts, based on logic and psychology.
"How is that possible?" Julian adjusted his gold-rimd glasses, instinctively refuting. "The transformation of material form must follow the laws of alchemy and the principle of conservation of energy. How could a harp made of wood and tal turn into a patch of organic heather flowers out of thin air? This defies all mystical common sense I know!"
"Then let's change our line of thinking." Lin Jie didn't directly debate the profound laws of mysticism with Julian. He began to reconstruct the model of the entire event from his unique perspective as an "observer from another world."
"We've been asking 'who is the murderer.' We've been looking for a specific 'person,' a 'revenger' who stole the harp and played it for vengeance. This is a line of reasoning very much in line with human criminal logic."
"But what if the murderer's logic doesn't follow our 'common sense' at all?"
"What if there was never such a 'person'?"
"What if," he paused, then delivered the final conclusion, "the harp itself is the murderer?!"
Ignoring the look of confusion on Julian's face, he continued at a rapid pace, building his reasoning model.
"Let's re-examine all the clues. Three hundred years ago, 'Blind-Eyed' Tarlough, a bard with Druid bloodline, poured all his resentnt, soul, and power into the 'Silver-Stringed Harp' before his death, creating a 'curse of revenge' bound to the O'Connor family bloodline for generations."
"In the next two hundred-plus years, although this harp remained sealed in the manor, it would still automatically sound from ti to ti, taking the lives of one or two O'Connor family mbers. This proves the curse itself possessed a certain degree of 'autonomy,' a semi-activated 'UMA'! It might not require a person to play it."
"Then, over forty years ago, a remorseful O'Connor patriarch returned this harp to Weeping Blood Hill, saturated with Tarlough's blood and Druid power. This was a fatal mistake."
Lin Jie's voice was full of force. "It was as if he replanted a 'devil's seed,' extrely poisonous and possessing infinite growth potential, back into the fertile soil suitable for its growth."
"After that, this 'seed,' fernting and evolving for over forty years on this land filled with the bard's emotional energy, finally broke free from the harp's material shell and rged with the heather flowers that had absorbed the poet's blood and resentnt."
"It no longer needs strings. The 'whimpering' sound when the wind blows over the hill, over those blood-colored heather flowers, is its new 'lant'!"
"It no longer needs a fixed form. The thousands upon thousands of heather flowers rooted in the poet's blood on Weeping Blood Hill are its new 'body'!"
"And the sensitive, gifted Miss O'Connor was the first person to discover this terrifying truth. Thus, she wrote those seemingly delirious words."
"She was also marked by this new UMA because of this. Her spirit was crushed by the incessantly echoing 'wail,' ultimately leading to her self-destruction."
This deduction cleaved through the tangled ss and contradictions, reassembling them in a way full of imagination and logic.
It offered a possible reason for the curse's forty-year dormancy.
This might not be a simple UMA incident, nor a case of human murder.
This was a revenge-murder planned and executed over centuries by "causality" itself.
And the "murderer" was "history itself."
"An aggregate co-existing with legend and plants..." Julian's mouth repeatedly chewed over Lin Jie's bold deduction.
"It sounds incredible, but it indeed explains everything! Good heavens! This is an entirely new UMA species classification! A new discovery sufficient to rewrite the definition of 'plant-type UMA' in the 'Black Book'!"
"What do we do now?" Professor O'Donoghue, who had been listening with his mind reeling, finally spoke up.
"Simple." Lin Jie walked to the floor-to-ceiling window from which he had torn the curtains, looking out at the decaying garden and the ominous outline of the Dartry Mountains in the distance.
"Since we have a deduction, what we need to do now is go to the scene to verify its accuracy."
"Before the sun sets tomorrow. Before Mr. Kevin ets his prophesied 'death.'"
"We will go and uproot that 'murderer,' along with that 'body' composed of countless blood-flowers, from that hill."
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