36 - Light and Dark Accounts

Translated by rabbitrisu

This time, Cheng Yun took the lead and divided the trainers into two groups, then entered the rooms for a blanket search.

Su Zimo, Jin Lei, Bai Man, Cheng Yun, Madman, and Wan Ling were in a group, and Qi Xiaomin, Du Xin, Fang Qin, Liu Xu, and Xiao Huo were in the other group. The combat power looked uneven.

Surprisingly, the madman who had always been passive and idle, was willing to get up from the sofa and walk behind the team.

Su Zimo was interested in Cheng Yun’s grouping. If Cheng Yun was fake, he really put himself and all the people who suspected him into a group. Along with the madman’s knowledge of mice and beasts, he could observe almost everyone who was a threat to him.

“What are we looking for?” This time, Cheng Yun asked Su Zimo.

“Leader Cheng, I don’t have much experience.” Su Zimo turned around, the silver chain of his glasses crossing across his pale neck. “But if it really is as we just guessed, and the slacking off of the staff in the villa may not be an isolated case, then maybe other clues can be found. These clues may guide us to discover the identity of the villa’s owner.”

“Of course, if anyone knows who’s sick in the villa, who better than a person living there.” Su Zimo thought for a while. “I feel that this patient is integral to the task for this nightmare world.”

“Now, it seems that the family doctor may be working lazily. That doesn’t mean that the other staff are also lazy, right?” The madman asked Su Zimo while tugging on his messy hair and rubbing his eyes. He sounded like he was half asleep.

Su Zimo naturally couldn’t tell them about the vase. After thinking about it, he said, “When there aren’t any other clues, any reasonable guess can become a clue, right?”

“Let’s go take a look at the chef’s room first?” Cheng Yun suggested, ready to open the first door in the corridor.

“Go to the housekeeper’s room first.” The madman’s voice sounded almost at the same time as Cheng Yun’s.

“The maid’s room is exactly the same. It’s indeed the housekeeper’s room that needs more searching.” Jin Lei agreed with the maniac’s suggestion. “We’ve been in once before, and there are many books scattered around.”

Su Zimo and Wan Ling stood behind Jin Lei together, since he found his presence in front of Cheng Yun seemed a little too high.

Cheng Yun watched the other group of people enter the gardener’s room, then nodded in agreement. He led the other five of his team straight into the corridor, pushed open the housekeeper’s door, and walked in.

The housekeeper’s room was larger than the maids’ large room, and it also had a side balcony. It was very luxurious treatment in the villa. It’s just that because the entire villa was abandoned, the bookshelf that was originally nailed to the wall fell down and its books were scattered all over the place.

As soon as the madman entered the door, he opened the cabinet inside and froze for a moment.

“What’s the matter?” The others followed him and found a giant safe hidden in the housekeeper’s cabinet?

Because there wasn’t much modern presence in the villa, even the simplest of lamps had been damaged. As a result, all the trainers thought that it was relatively old. Although they didn’t know the quality of safes from this era, the quality of one owned by the villa’s housekeeper shouldn’t be the best. It’s become rusty over the years, and the lacquer on the outside has peeled off.

Only the door to the safe was tightly closed.

“We need to open it.” Cheng Yun tried to manually move the safe and found that although the appearance was already ruined, the door was still locked.

“Leader Cheng, don’t you have that thing?” Bai Man kept quiet to cover her emotions, but then took the initiative to speak. “Can it be used?”

“What?” Cheng Yun froze.

After a few seconds, Cheng Yun took out a rusty and quaint key from his jacket pocket. “This key? This key rarely works, but you can give it a try.”

“……” When Cheng Yun took out the key, Bai Man’s figure couldn’t help but shake again. Even if she secretly stood firm with Jin Lei’s support, her face paled.

[Professional Thief’s Key (One Star)]

[Sale Price: 20 yuan]

[Description: A thief’s abandoned obsession. Can open all locks that have nothing to do with ghosts. The current nightmare world is limited to one use.]

Ordinary trainers couldn’t see the text boxes, so for them, the key could only be explained by ‘not working when it fails.’ Su Zimo suddenly felt that this world really needed an excellent shopkeeper who could give ‘use instructions’ for ghost tools, so that trainers using them wouldn’t be confused again…. Ahem!

Su Zimo took another look at Bai Man, who wan’t in a good condition and felt that the key should be the real Cheng Yun’s ghost tool. Now that it was taken out by the Cheng Yun in front of them, he was afraid that Bai Man was making some bad assumptions.

“First try.” Cheng Yun held the key in his hand and hesitated for a while. He looked at the one-star ghost tool that was no different from an ordinary key, and then at the safe with the knob-style combination lock in front of him. Seeing that the key and lock were completely different, it seemed that he didn’t know how to start.

After thinking for a few seconds, Cheng Yun touched the rusty and ruined combination lock with the tip of the ghost key in his hand. Perhaps because even the weakest one-star ghost tool had hidden powers, even though the lock in front of them was just tapped, it made a sound in the next second–

“Squeak–“

The cipher knob that needs to be spun actually turned without anyone touching it!

“Squeak–“

After four harsh squeaks, the rusty safe door popped open with a ‘boom,’ and debris and dust flew directly toward Su Zimo and the surrounding trainers. They finally saw what was hidden in the safe.

“What’s that?” Before everyone took out their cell phones to use their flashlights and take photos of the inside of the safe, all they saw was odd black things that didn’t seem particularly precious.

“It’s money.” The madman grabbed a stack with his hands, then used his cell phone to take photos of the colorful banknotes. He laughed ridiculously. “This junk may be the best-preserved things in the entire villa. How ironic.”

“It’s only a housekeeper, how could there be so much money?” Su Zimo looked at the old banknotes that were no longer issued. “When this style of money was issued, the house prices weren’t as outrageous as they are now. This money should’ve been enough to buy the entire villa.”

“Indeed. If we calculate assuming there’es ten thousand per stack, we can estimate there’s two million here.” Jin Lei crouched down and looked at the banknotes that occupied two thirds of the space in the safe, then her eyes lit up. “We may have found something good, You’re a blessing, madman!”

With that said, Jin Lei took out two leather notebooks from the last box in the safe. They were better than the work diaries! Because of the lack of light, Jin Lei and the people around her didn’t take a close look, but after turning a few pages, they found that there were many things recorded in the two notebooks, and that the words were easier to recognize than any doctor’s cursive.

“Let’s go to the main hall!”

The trainers kicked away all the banknotes that fell out of the safe like trash. They stared at the two worn-out notebooks like they were treasure, and eagerly left the poorly lit housekeeper’s room and ran to the main hall.

For the trainers, even though the banknotes could still be used, they would have to pay nightmare points to take every banknote from the nightmare world.

And for Su Zimo… his desire for money was probably one of the least among all the trainers.

After watching Cheng Yun’s group run back to the main hall, the trainers who were originally searching the other rooms also felt something, so they followed Su Zimo and returned together. Everyone was surrounding the long dining table in the center, looking at the two notebooks in Jin Lei’s hands that were being read simultaneously.

Because the writing in the notebook was written in black pen, it was very well preserved and could be read and distinguished.

“Do any of us know more about these accounts?” After looking through it for a while, Jin Lei looked up and asked everyone present. “I’m seeing stars.”

The trainers looked at each other.

“I know about it, but unfortunately I didn’t wear my prescription glasses when I went out for my morning exercise.” Elder Fang Qin was standing tiredly, then sat down with his Tai Chi sword in hand. He then looked at Su Zimo and said, “Mr. Su should be able to help. Let him see?”

“…..” Su Zimo hadn’t said anything, but then the two notebooks were pushed in front of him and he saw Jin Lei make a gesture to cheer him on.

“I’ve slightly learned.” Su Zimo rubbed his temples, and his eyes fell on the two open notebooks.

Jin Lei was right. Most of the two notebooks were accounts recording the daily expenditures of the villa in a certain year, and… This family from decades ago, the daily liquid flow was comparable to the current daily expenses of the Su family. ¹ In the days since he’s taken over the affairs of the Su family, Su Zimo stayed up late and turned over all kinds of accounts at unimaginable speed over and over again.

It’s just that this kind of account, which was written entirely in an ordinary notebook, wasn’t professional. In fact, no professional was needed to understand it. Even if Su Zimo didn’t look at it, it could be understood by another person.

After reading through the two notebooks one by one, Su Zimo once again found a breakthrough with the dates of the accounts. He opened the two notebooks on the table at the same time, starting from the first page and making detailed comparisons.

“Actually, this is just an ordinary account book. You can see it if you look closely. However, these two account books can’t be looked at separately. You need to look at them together. Su Zimo pushed the two notebooks to the center of the dining table. Starting from the first page, the date of each page was the same, but the recorded accounts are completely different.”

“Most of the expenses in the left notebook are relatively normal. Except, there are more ‘medical treatment’ items than in normal liquid flow, and those expenditures aren’t small.” Su Zimo said, then pointed to the right. “This notebook on the right has some more strange items.”

“For example, these ‘cosmetics (maid), liquor (chef), and ‘snacks’ are all expenses that aren’t in the notebook on the left, but these weird expenses all add up exactly to the ‘medical treatment’ items on the left.” Su Zimo paused, and asked, “Do you understand what I mean?”

“Light and dark account books.” Elder Fang Qin sat there, holding his Tai Chi sword emotionally.

“Light and dark account books?” Du Xin and Qi Xiaomin looked confused.

“There is the light account book on the left, which is mainly used for others to look at and check, so there won’t be any questions. Each item must be well-formed.” Fang Qin laughed. “The right notebook is a dark account book, which is the real one for this villa. There are too many outgoing expenditures that shouldn’t be seen, so it needs to be well-hidden and can’t be seen by any inspectors.”

“From the perspective of these two books, there were just some small movements at the beginning, then they became more daring toward the end.” Su Zimo turned the two books directly back to back. The light account book reads ‘medical treatment’ as required by Dr. Sun, but the dark account book says ‘Car Purchase Request (me).’

“The housekeeper wanted to buy a car?”

“He was rejected.” Su Zimo turned another page. “I can see that the housekeeper wasn’t happy. After learning that the advance payment was rejected, his pen pierced through the page. From the beginning up ’til then, the expenditures under ‘medical treatment’ had been getting bigger and bigger, but that advance payment may have exceeded what the other party was willing to pay.”

“The other party should be the owner of the villa. Did they never find that there was a problem with their family expenses?” Jin Lei narrowed her eyes and thought for a while. “Unless… the owner of the villa doesn’t live here at all!”

The owner of the villa didn’t live in the villa?

Jin Lei made a new guess.

“It’s not surprising that people who could afford such a villa wouldn’t own just one property.” Su Zimo also thought for a moment. “But this villa isn’t empty. Except for the family doctor and the staff, there must be another person living here.”

“Who?”

“Of course it’s the patient.” Su Zimo’s long fingers fell on the words ‘medical treatment.’

Translator’s Notes:

I was expecting zombies, not fraud, but this is good too.\nFootnotes

<ol>Liquid flow in an economic sense is the movement of any assets (money, etc.) in or out of an account.</ol>