Shiller recalled the woman he had seen in the hallucination from the perspective of a little boy. He was walking in a pitch-black tunnel, calling out Henry's na. Flas spread across the floor and walls. Amidst the flickering firelight, he vaguely saw a mummified corpse. When it died, behind it faintly lood shadows of gears and needles, appearing as if it were inside the Bell Tower.
Shiller was well aware that this might not be a fragnt of real mory but perhaps a hallucination or more likely a mory distorted by illusions and subjective impressions.
It was no surprise that Arrogant could discern sothing from it. After all, since entering the hospital, he hadn't been acting much like a doctor, likely spending all his ti studying the plot.
What he saw in the dream was much more complete than on Shiller's end, giving him many more clues and hence allowing him to deduce even more.
Although Shiller hadn't devoted his energy to this, with a little thought, he could roughly understand Arrogant's line of reasoning.
Clocks are a very key symbol; this doesn't an that the woman really died in the Bell Tower, but rather that the timing of Death is very crucial. Sothing that indicates ti had left a profound impression on the mory's owner.
There was a very special temperant about Henry that made Shiller realize he should not be misled by his performance. He might have spoken the truth, but he concealed the most important part.
Such people are natural born liars. When they lie, they don't feel the slightest guilt or remorse. They appear perfectly calm and composed when concealing the truth. A natural lack of moral sense gives them a great advantage in this regard.
"Let think," Arrogant said. "You hoped she would die at a timing you had designed, and this timing is very important. When was that?"
Henry looked at Arrogant, his expression gradually changing, no longer the naïve deanor from before, but becoming sowhat indifferent.
"You were not a victim of abuse from your mother. In fact, she was a mother that the public would recognize as good. You have no way to slander her. You must have tried this but failed. So you could only make use of her love for you to kill her."
"You set the house on fire, pretending to still be inside. She was overly concerned about you, so she went back to look for you, and then died in the fire. Originally, this should have been a perfect plan. But if that were really the case, you wouldn't be a Ghost now."
"You didn't witnes the scene of her burning to death. The Illusion I saw is rely your fantasy about your mother's death scene after committing such an act. But in this fantasy, sothing that shouldn't have appeared did – that charred corpse."
"Out of an escapist ntality, you imagined that your mother was burned to death by an Evil spirit. People often do this. When they do sothing they cannot accept, or when they make an irreversible mistake, they fantasize about sothing that doesn't exist at all and push the bla to this thing, to lessen their own sense of guilt."
"But you wouldn't imagine an Evil spirit because you feel guilty about your mother's death but rather because sothing went wrong in the process, causing your plan to not only fail but also to end up killing yourself."
"What you wanted to escape from was a foolish decision that led to your own death, not the fact of your mother's death itself."
"So what foolish decision did you make? Was it an accident that happened after you lost the care of your mother? No, if that were the case, you would bla the person who caused the accident, and not invent a ghost in your fantasy and then consider it the source of the tragedy."
"When you shift all responsibility to the ghost, it ans you can't find anyone else to take the bla, which ans it was entirely your own doing, and has nothing to do with others. It was your stupidity that ruined everything."
"What silly idea did you co up with? You killed your own mother and then went to the orphanage for care or were adopted by soone. Was it that the adoptive parents abused you?"
"No, no one could abuse you. Because you are a naturally bad seed, you have ways to deal with people who are unkind to you. Precisely because of this confidence, you dared to kill your own mother who cared for and protected you."
"So it seems the issue lies with your mother. Your act of killing her implicated yourself. Maybe she turned into an Evil spirit?"
"That's not right either. In your imagination, she did not hold any resentnt against you in her last monts but was always very worried about you. She didn't know who had killed her. Even if she really turned into an Evil spirit, she would not harm you."
"The problem is back at square one," Arrogant said, looking at Henry. "Why did you want to kill her at a specific ti? Was it so kind of sacrifice or ritual?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, my mother died in an accident. I too died in an accident," Henry looked at Arrogant and said, "I'm just a kid, why would I want to kill my own mother?"
"You indeed are a kid, but not an ordinary one. Ordinary kids wouldn't use partial truths to cover up important information. This makes you appear too cunning. Too clever by half."
Arrogant sighed slightly and said: "Your mother did die in an accident. That an accident occurred during the process of her death doesn't an that the death itself wasn't preditated. You also died in an accident, but it doesn't an the accident wasn't caused by yourself."
"What you've said is true, a master of lie detection could not find a half lie. But this thod can only fool the naïve. Or rather, you can only deceive those who are willing to believe in you, like your mother."
"When I just ntioned the sacrificial ritual, your emotions changed a bit. It seems my guess was on point. You intended to use your mother to complete a sacrificial ritual. The ritual has specific requirents for the manner and timing of death, which is why flas and tipieces appeared in your mories."
"If there were other options, you wouldn't have chosen to sacrifice your own mother, which proves she must have been very special. You discovered her special trait, and this trait could bring you great benefits, even if it ant being left with no one to care for you thereafter."
"What else? Oh, your father. You said you ca from a wealthy rchant's family, right? Then can you tell what this is?"
Shiller saw Arrogant holding a blue gemstone as big as the tip of his finger. The gemstone was encased in a cufflink with an intricate vine pattern, very delicately beautiful.
The reason it was a cufflink is that ordinary gemstone buttons or brooches usually have a flat cut design on the back, which is to cut a flat surface and then mount it on a tal base.
However, cufflinks are worn on the cuffs of sleeves. To facilitate movent of the hands, they can't be too heavy. To reduce the weight of the gemstone, a concave cut is typically used, carving into the convex surface of the gemstone to create a curved cover, then mounting it onto the base.
Making sufficiently delicate cufflinks only requires a very thin layer of gemstone, coupled with even more intricate tal openwork craftsmanship, rendering the piece almost weightless in the hand.
"It's a button," Henry replied. "A blue crystal gemstone button."
Before Arrogant could say anything, Shiller sighed and said, "Do your howork before pretending to be wealthy, kid. This is a cufflink."
"Isn't it still a button?" Henry said.
Shiller didn't bother to explain and sat down by the window. He took the cufflink from Arrogant's hand to fiddle with it, and then said, "That's exactly the problem. In your view, all buttons are buttons. But to the wealthy, if they don't classify buttons into dozens of categories and apply hundreds of new techniques, how else could they keep people like you, who want to pretend to be rich, out?"
"What are you saying?!" Henry stared coldly at Shiller, saying, "My father is a wealthy rchant in town, I just didn't see it clearly! This is indeed a blue crystal stone cufflink..."
Arrogant didn't argue with him and just rested his hand on the table, saying, "People always fantasize about what they lack. Since you've imagined your father as a respectable rchant, his status probably wasn't very high, and his work not very dignified. Perhaps he was a manual laborer."
"Of course, he must have died a long ti ago. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so much room for your fantasies. Or maybe you never t him at all. Ever since you have had mories, your mother was the only family you had."
"Your financial situation likewise wasn't that good, it was never the life you wanted to live. Your mother couldn't give you the good days you wanted. So you believe it's what she owed you. Trading her life for the life you saw in your ideals seed fair to you, and you sacrificed her without hesitation."
"But sadly, you didn't succeed. Sothing went wrong. The sacrificial ritual failed, and not only did you not rise above others, you couldn't even remain a person."
"You can't accept that such a perfect plan you designed failed, and you also can't accept that soone as smart as you, who often deceives others, ended up in such a sorry state today. So you blad it all on the evil spirit."
"The image of the evil spirit that destroyed everything in your mories wasn't conjured up out of nowhere. You had seen such a charred corpse before, and it was from it that you learned about the sacrificial ritual, prompting you to want to try it."
"The ritual failed. You feel you should never have listened to that evil spirit's words, otherwise it wouldn't have caused the death of your mother and yourself. You consider it the source of all the tragedy, and believe it killed both you and your mother."
"This charred body looks familiar, like the little girl from the village who was killed many years ago, the one you ntioned."
Shiller rembered the charred body that had suddenly appeared in the center of the room, indeed identical to the evil spirit that had appeared before the woman in the boy's dream.
"Oh, I see," Shiller said with a smile. "Don't tell you took the evil spirit's bait, sacrificed your own mother, got yourself killed, and ca here resentfully, seeking trouble with the evil spirit."
Looking at Henry's twisted expression, Shiller knew he had hit the mark, mainly because Arrogant had. His guesses about Henry's past were probably accurate. Faces of people whose defenses have been broken are always the sa.
Henry let out a scream, and a layer of blue fog sprayed from his mouth, flying towards Arrogant. But suddenly, a fla appeared in front of Arrogant, and the fog dissipated in an instant.
"Manny! Why are you stopping again?! These outsiders have made a ss of the hospital! I'm going to kill them!" Henry scread.
Arrogant showed an expression of obvious boredom. Shiller knew it was because Henry's ntal fortitude was so lacking that he collapsed even before Arrogant had begun to make an effort.
Shiller, who knew Arrogant very well, was aware that these deductions Arrogant had made were just the appetizers. Because he hadn't yet ntioned what exactly was going on with Dr. Foster, who appeared as a villain in the little boy's dream.
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