Chapter 172.1

Chapter 172.1

After finishing the meal that felt like walking on thin ice, Yuri went back to his room and opened his parents’ belongings once more.

The wedding photo of his seemingly happy parents and a stethoscope.

With a beautiful lakeside backdrop, his mother’s veil fluttered in the breeze, and his father smiled as if he owned the world.

Anyone who saw this photo would be captivated at first glance. So the boy slammed the frame down repeatedly.

The glass shattered, his parents’ photo fell, and the frame became a mess.

“…What on earth was I expecting?”

But there was nothing special. It was just an ordinary frame.

For a moment, it felt like his mind had gone blank.

“Haah….”

Frowning, Yuri picked up the broken frame again.

‘Why am I acting like this?’

He had started to lose his composure after encountering that beast.

If he went around saying that a little beast with a metal mask was lurking right in front of him, rumors would spread that the Solzhenitsyn heir had finally gone mad.

He had already shown his foolish side in front of his grandfather several times. This vacation must surely be cursed.

So he needed to uncover its true nature as soon as possible to shake off this endless self-loathing.

Even if it meant tearing up the entire floor, he had to catch it and ask,

“What are you?”
Just as Yuri had roughly washed his face and lifted his head.

“…”

What caught his eye absentmindedly was a thick, cheap cardboard box. It was an old, yellowed keepsake box that no one had paid attention to.

As if entranced, he reached out his arm. Without knowing what he was looking for, his hand moved recklessly. Yuri began to quickly dismantle it with a peculiar expression.

Soon, after flipping the box completely upside down, the boy’s eyes widened and froze.

‘Isn’t there at least one room I don’t know about?’

It was a blueprint of some sort. Dozens, hundreds of branches dug into the ground like tree roots.

“Young master, what brings you here?”

“Could I possibly get some herbicide and cleaning solution?”

“Excuse me? Why would you need that…”

Yuri looked directly at the elderly estate manager and spoke the words he had prepared.

“Grandmother has been feeling down, so I thought I’d plant some flowers in the garden.”

“Oh, for the lady! Yes, just a moment!”

The herbicide contains copper sulfate, and the cleaning solution has phosphoric acid. Yuri concluded that mixing these two could easily corrode a wall, and he stood in front of one of the hundreds of rooms.

It was a blue door located in the corner.

Simple curiosity.

What could his affluent father have been lacking that led him to embezzle Russian assets? His father wasn’t someone who had a knack for making money, nor was he the type to be obsessed with wealth.

Yet, knowing full well that it was a dangerous act, why did he carry it out? For the first time in six years, Yuri found himself curious about his parents’ actions.

What was this blueprint for?

Typically, large mansions have bunkers or panic rooms for emergencies, but even considering that, he had never seen or heard of anything like this.

It resembled a tunnel. Yes, this was a level of tunnel that the winter castle had intentionally dug.

‘If my parents left this for me, there must be a reason.’

The boy, who had been grounded, wandered around the vast mansion, checking the points marked by his father with his own eyes.

However, unraveling his parents’ mystery might lead him to become estranged from his grandfather.

He absolutely must not live like his father did.

“…”

No, that’s not it. If there’s an anthill, it needs to be exterminated, and if a rat is found, its tail must be cut off.

With a cold expression, the boy turned the doorknob.

He felt as if every move he made was being reported to his grandfather, but the more he thought that way, the more he wandered around the mansion, lounging and sleeping anywhere, reading books, and cleaning.

Maxim despised anything rude and arrogant, but Yuri intentionally exposed that side of himself to his grandfather. He wanted to appear like a thoughtless, rebellious teenager.

In the meantime, he steadily sprayed the mixture of herbicide and cleaning solution inside the blue room.

One step, two steps, three steps from the door, thirty-eight steps away.

There was one tile that hadn’t adhered properly.

However, it was too small for an adult’s body to fit through, so he poured the chemical mixture all over it. Gradually, the bottom began to corrode, and a hole started to form, revealing a sunken space like a sinkhole. Yuri covered the secret trace with a carpet and sofa.

One night, a week later, Yuri took out his father’s stethoscope, removed the earpiece, and attached the microphone, completing all his preparations.

The boy planned to follow the invisible path with nothing but a flashlight in hand.