Congratulations on Your Successful Escape

Chapter 32

Mo Yi stood up, somewhat stumbling as he quickly walked to the overturned bed.

This time, instead of searching through the beds four bedposts which faced the ceiling, he pushed it hard to lay on its side and felt around the front of the bedpost.

Sure enough, he soon found a dusty paper ball.

Mo Yi lightly shook off the dust on it and then gently and cautiously started to spread open the paper ball.

The tan and slightly yellowed piece of wrinkled paper looked old and dirty.

On the piece of paper, with childlike strokes, was a crayon drawing of a little person being hanged.

Underneath the little person were a few scattered English letters.

There was a faint expression between Mo Yi’s brows.

As expected, his guess was correct.

Regardless of whether it was beneath or under, they were both relative positions. The bed was turned over, so naturally, the clues could only be found in a backwards manner.

He didn’t hesitate too much, spreading open the two pieces of paper and placed them on top of one another. He then turned on the flashlight, illuminating it from the bottom up.

The wan beam of light passed through the dark yellowed paper, and the light seemed to be sullied by the dull dust.

As Mo Yi gently moved his fingers, the gallows and the little person slowly overlapped in the same place, and the handwriting on the paper was subsequently pieced together:

“Thanatos”

Thanatos?

Mo Yi’s brows creased, a puzzled look flashing through his eyes.

In Greek mythology, Thanatos was the name of the God of Death who presided over death and destruction.

Although Mo Yi was not very familiar with Greek mythology, he still knew a bit about Thanatos.

However, he was unable to figure out what the appearance of Thanatos signified.

Mo Yi subconsciously smoothed out the uneven edges of the pieces of papers, his gaze fixed on the two spread out papers, head bowed in contemplation.

At this moment, he seemed to have thought of something and abruptly raised his head to look at the Dean’s Room across the room.

Song Qi was standing by the door inside, rifling through the files on the ground. His head was lowered, and the expression on his face was barely visible across the semi dimly lit room.

Mo Yi’s eyes lit up, voice raised as he spoke to Song Qi, “Do you see the files of these orphans over there?”

Song Qi slightly raised his head, paused, and then replied, “Yes.”

Mo Yi’s face looked a little pale under the light, but his eyes were astonishingly bright, like flames burning within an abyss. He took a deep breath and then said, “Try to see if there were any poor orphans from aristocratic families, or at least if any orphans were from middle class families with a long heritage.”

If his previous guess about the teddy bear was correct … then every time it appeared, it brought him step by step closer to the truth.

Whether it was the teddy bear or the brief handwriting on the notes, both had the distinct characteristics belonging to extremely wealthy children. However, every clue on the pieces of paper were extraordinarily unusual —be it The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri or Thanatos, they all exceeded an ordinary child’s common knowledge, not to mention that during this time period, illiteracy was commonplace.

Thus, there was a great possibility that the child who was leaving behind clues everywhere came from a family with an excellent upbringing. In that way, they were exposed to a high-quality aristocratic education at a rather young age.

There was a soft sound of paper being flipped through in the Dean’s Room. A moment later, Song Qi’s voice was heard, “Found it.”

But, before Mo Yi could breathe out a sigh of relief, he heard Song Qi add on, “Quite a few.”

Mo Yi’s brows were tightly creased, and a deep mark was left between his brows.

That meant that more clues were needed in order to narrow down the scope.

He subconsciously tightened his fingers, and the old paper in his hand made a weak crinkling sound.

Mo Yi was startled and subconsciously looked at the paper in his hand.

… Thanatos?

He was somewhat lost in thought, and then suddenly raised his voice and said, “Then, among these people, are any of them brothers?”

Song Qi answered quickly this time, “Yes.”

Mo Yi’s heart which was lodged in his throat finally dropped back down.

As the God of Death, Thanatos had never appeared alone in Greek mythology. He had a younger brother, the God of Sleep, Hypnos, and both of them were sons of the Goddess of Night. They always showed up together as a duo, ferrying the bodies of the deceased under the dim light of night.

In addition, whether it was hide-and-seek or hangman, these two games needed there to be more than one person to play.

Therefore, Mo Yi surmised that there was a pair of brothers.

He breathed out a sigh of relief and stood up, using his palms to prop up his body. Because he had crouched for too long, his legs and feet were a little numb. Mo Yi stumbled and nearly fell.

However, Mo Yi couldn’t pay attention to the unresolved numbness below his knees. He quickened his pace, detoured around the numerous small beds in the room, and headed directly to the Dean’s Room.

Song Qi happened to be walking out of the room, and the two met face to face.

Mo Yi suddenly realized that Song Qi’s complexion seemed to be getting worse.

Slightly worried, he asked, “Are you okay?”

Hearing this, Song Qi looked at him deeply. His pair of light gray eyes seemed even lighter in colour and luster, and under the light, there was a glowing halo. He gazed at Mo Yi for a few seconds, then suddenly curled his lips and smiled. “It’s nothing.”

Since he said so, Mo Yi couldn’t keep asking, and could only let out a word of caution, “If you don’t feel comfortable, don’t try to force yourself.”

Song Qi nodded, and then handed the document in his hand to Mo Yi.

Mo Yi pursed his lips, reached out to take the document, and lowered his head to carefully read it.

It was a pair of brothers. The older brother was called Albert while the younger brother was called Aaron. They were both very common Hebrew names and it obviously had a lot to do with the family’s religious beliefs.

In addition, what attracted Mo Yi’s eyes even more was their surname, “Howard.”

Although Mo Yi didn’t know much about British surnames, he was aware that the Howard family was a rather prestigious aristocratic family in England. Did that mean that … the two children were related to this family?

But if that was the case, how did they end up in this orphanage?

Mo Yi continued to read, doubt rising from the bottom of his heart.

Perhaps due to the orphanage’s shady illegal activities, many of the records were extremely brief, and some were even intermixed with slang used by the lower classes of that era, making one feel even more at a loss.

Mo Yi frowned, mulling over the meaning of the words while slowly turning to the second page.

There were two newspaper clipping the size of a block of tofu pinned there. The pages were yellowed, but the handwriting could still be made out.

Both were obituaries.

The first one was about a man who unfortunately died on the battlefield, whereas the second one was about a down-and-out family of a nobleman who was set aflame, and it was the mistress, who was suspected of being mentally insane, who set the fire.

The whole tragic events were more or less slowly being outlined.

A husband who was tragically killed on the battlefield in World War I, a wife who went insane because she couldn’t bear the grief and thus set fire to the house, and a pair of brothers who lost their father at a young age and ended up in a public orphanage after being tossed from home to home.

Mo Yi carefully looked at the date. As a result of it being World War I then, the number of orphans had increased sharply, and the government’s primary energy was placed on battles overseas. This made it possible for darkness to flourish, allowing such illegal shadowy businesses to remain unchecked

A steady stream of orphans were sent here through various secret channels, and were then quickly sold, staying here temporarily in the meantime for no more than half a month.

— The record of this pair of brothers went on for a full year and a half.

Looking at the last recorded date on the page, Mo Yi was taken aback, and a vague thought flashed through his mind.

He hurriedly rummaged around in his backpack, and then took out the book he found in the library.

Mo Yi flipped through the pages of the book, dust swirling in the air, and found another yellowed newspaper clipping pinned there.

The damp and illegible handwriting on the newspaper clipping showed a tall woman standing in front of the camera, her pale and blurred face staring straight at the camera lens, looking disinterested and stiff.

Yet, what Mo Yi paid attention to were not the photos, but the dates marked on the newspaper clippings:

March 17, 1919.

Mo Yi turned his head to look at the orphan’s record again. The last date marked on it was:

March 10, 1919.

The brothers stayed in this orphanage until a week before the death by hanging was executed.

For what reason did they stay here for so long?

Was it because of their aristocratic status that the Dean did not dare to easily sell them off?

Mo Yi frowned. There was always a vaguely unsettling feeling lingering in his mind, slightly making him inexplicably agitated.

He tucked the newspaper clipping back into the book, stretched out his hand towards the bedpost beside him to prop himself up, and stood up.

Looking up, Mo Yi’s eyes suddenly landed on the portrait hanging on the wall.

The wan light in the Dean’s Room illuminated the narrow room, coming from overhead, looking ice-cold and gloomy.

The stiff and solemn face of the tall woman was framed by a broken photo frame. In the yellowed and curled up photo, the woman was staring straight ahead with her vacant hollow eyes, standing with her hands folded, looking particularly unsettling in a solemn black dress.

Her posture and clothes on her body were exactly the same as in the newspaper clipping.

The pit of Mo Yi’s stomach tightened, and his body suddenly stretched taught as if electrocuted while chills ran down his back.

— He knew here his sense of discordance came from.

The judicial process for sentencing a person to the gallows in England was extraordinarily long, and even sometimes took several months. Since the Dean was executed in March, that meant she was arrested and imprisoned at least as early as February.

In that case, after the Dean was arrested and the orphanage was closed down —

Who recorded these accounts?