Pristine Darkness

Chapter 48

Breakthroughs on all fronts for the Scooby Gang! Fang Qing finds a crucial piece of the puzzle, Bo Jinyan and Jian Yao make a tragic discovery, and An Yan finds . . . a date? Read on to find out more!

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Translator: shl

Editor/ Proofreader: Anks

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Morning had become afternoon, and the experimental waste dump was bright with sunlight. However, Fang Qing was not the least bit happy. The odour of the different kinds of trash and strange reek of chemical waste had almost made him see stars. He also had to be very careful not to make contact with the nameless acids and poisons employed by the chemistry students.

The garbage collection vehicle had arrived at dawn, but Fang Qing had stopped the worker from taking the garbage. He thought, good thing this wise man* had reacted so quickly, otherwise 'that thing' would have been taken away by the garbage collectors, and even many lifetimes of searching would have proven fruitless.

*T/N FQ calls himself 老子 (Lao Zi) i.e. the Chinese philosopher who founded Taoism. Could also be used to refer to himself in an arrogant or joking manner.

However, he was going blind looking for it!

He had already searched through half the garbage bags in the room. He gritted his teeth and resumed his examination of the other half.

He opened yet another black bag and very carefully removed the contents one by one and laid them out. Bottles, tweezers, test strips . . . one hourglass, two hourglasses, three hourglasses . . .

The blood rushed to his head as he was seized by a sudden thought, and his movements accelerated.

An hourglass, the hourglass in Ke Qian's laboratory . . . as well as the objects in disarray on the shelves, obviously, something had been moved frequently -- in the words of Bo Jinyan, Ke Ai, as impersonated by Ke Qian, was a neat and tidy person; her things would not have been so disorganised. Why didn't he think of this before? Also, the adhesive, found coincidentally in the empty spaces on the shelves . . . what object had been placed there originally, and then taken away?

An hourglass.

Many hourglasses.

After a definite period of time, the bottom half of the hourglass would have become heavier and exerted greater force. What could this have been used to control?

He delved into the garbage bag and continued to rummage through it.

String, it was string. Countless strands of fine, strong white string. He pulled them out of the bag by the handfuls, and finally, pulled out a strangely shaped object.

It was made of iron and looked a little like a crossbow, but it wasn't. The innumerable strands of fine string he had just pulled out were connected to the two ends of the gadget. Multiple slim iron branches extruded from it; when Fang Qing pulled the strings on one end, the strings connected to the other end moved, and with quite a bit of force.

Fang Qing carefully examined the gadget for a while, then laid it to one side and continued searching inside the bag.

Then, he touched an object that was ice-cold.

Startled, he stood up and pulled the mouth of the bag wide in a single movement. Slowly, he brought out the huge object.

It was a dummy.

It was about the size of an actual person, with black hair down to the shoulders, lightly curled, and pale skin. It was wearing the same clothes as 'Ke Ai' had been wearing today: white T-shirt, cropped jeans. Its forehead, elbows, knees, ankles . . . and other places had tiny holes, all connected to the strings attached to the iron gadget.