Chapter 301: Rich Lady – Everly Strikes It Rich!
Remia and Gregory escorted Everly all the way to the entrance of the hotel where she was staying. Only after safely delivering the penniless Everly to the door did they wave goodbye and quietly leave.
Watching the two investigators disappear into the distance, Everly turned toward the hotel, already thinking about what she needed to do next. The moment she looked up, however, she spotted three familiar figures through the hotel’s glass doors.
“Grandpa? And Misha… Orff…”
She froze for a moment. Her eyes reddened, her nose stung, and a broad smile spread across her face. She dashed into the hotel.
“Grandpa! What are you doing here?”
Throwing herself forward, Everly wrapped her grandfather in a tight hug.
“The news about Shelly’s posthumous art exhibition became a huge sensation. The moment I saw the reports, I got on the first flight over.”
Old John hugged his granddaughter just as tightly. Seeing that she was still healthy, energetic, and full of life, the tension that had weighed on his face finally melted into a smile.
“I’m fine… And I’m about to receive a huge sum of money!”
Sniffling, Everly looked up at her grandfather with a bright, spirited grin.
After stepping out of his embrace, she turned to her two best friends and hugged them as well.
“Misha, Orff—I never imagined you two would come too. I’m really touched!”
“Because we’re friends! Something this big happened, of course we had to come see you. I’m so relieved you’re okay!”
Beaming, Misha hugged Everly tightly and gave her several hearty pats on the back.
Standing beside her, the introverted Orff summoned every ounce of his lifelong social courage and stammered,
“Th-that’s right. We’re friends.”
Laughing, Everly answered by bumping fists with him.
She had never felt happier.
With such wonderful family and friends by her side, and a massive inheritance waiting for her to claim, she felt like the happiest person in the world.
…
After the joyful reunion came an endless stream of practical matters to deal with.
Everly’s phone had fallen into the second painting and, to this day, had never been spat back out. Of course, given the raging storm and the ocean liner capsizing at the time, even if the phone had been ejected from the painting, it probably wouldn’t have survived.
So the first thing Everly did after returning to the hotel was gather her ID and money, head to her mobile carrier’s retail store, replace her SIM card, and buy a new phone.
Only after getting a new phone could she begin handling the inheritance.
Shelly had a dedicated estate attorney named Charlie. Unfortunately, the distinguished lawyer had turned into a monster at the posthumous art exhibition and gone to meet his Maker. Several of Charlie’s assistants had died alongside him.
Fortunately, the video one of the assistants had recorded for Everly during the exhibition had been preserved. The SAI censored all the portions containing the posthumous artworks that were unsuitable for public viewing before returning the edited footage to Everly, along with an appraisal report from a professional authentication agency. With those two pieces of evidence, Everly had everything she needed to prove that she met the conditions for inheriting the estate.
The next step was to hire several experienced lawyers to handle all the remaining procedures for her, including victim compensation, estate inheritance, tax filings, and the rest of the legal paperwork.
Everly only wanted the money—she had no patience for dealing with that mountain of tedious formalities.
As a result, she remained in New Alder City for a while longer.
During that time, reporters from countless media outlets tracked her down through every possible channel, all hoping to interview her.
The death toll from the posthumous art exhibition had reached 127, attracting widespread public attention. Although the authorities immediately issued statements denying any supernatural cause and even invited several respected experts and scholars onto television programs to confidently declare that the tragedy had been caused by a toxic gas leak, not everyone was convinced.
The strongest argument supporting the conspiracy theories was that every one of Shelly’s posthumous paintings had been mysteriously “damaged” for reasons no one could explain.
Shelly’s posthumous exhibition had featured a total of sixteen paintings.
By the time Team A of the investigators arrived, three of them—Scars, Encounter, and Life—had already been ripped apart, their canvases completely destroyed. They were most likely the ones Everly and the Great Whale had damaged from inside the paintings. As for Self-Portrait, it split apart on its own right in front of Team A after they had finished eliminating the tentacled monster in the small gallery.
Through the crack in Self-Portrait, a battered and bruised Everly fell out.
The Great Whale, which had carried Everly into the Fruit with it, was nowhere to be found. No one knew whether it had simply been unable to leave the painting.
As for the remaining twelve paintings, the SAI confiscated them all as special containment items.
Each of them depicted scenes that Shelly had accidentally witnessed while using his Spirit Vision ability. Because they had captured the images of certain entities that were never meant to be known by ordinary people, the paintings themselves carried an intense memetic contamination and were completely unsuitable for public display. Moreover, several of them were believed to be connected to a number of unsolved major criminal cases, so the SAI needed to take them away for further study.
Everly wholeheartedly supported the decision.
After all, the paintings couldn’t be exhibited or sold. Keeping them herself would be like storing a collection of ticking time bombs that could go off at any moment. Since the SAI wanted them, they were welcome to take every last one—she didn’t mind in the slightest.
With all sixteen paintings suddenly gone, and no time to replace them with other authentic Shelly works that had never been publicly exhibited, the SAI had no choice but to announce that the artist’s posthumous works had also been destroyed in the accident.
It was a rather unconvincing lie.
A toxic gas leak wasn’t a fire or a flood. How could it possibly have destroyed paintings hanging safely on the walls?
It was that single oversight that set off a wave of speculation and debate across the internet.
And because Everly was the sole survivor of the incident—and the only person to inherit Shelly’s entire estate—about 80% of the internet’s amateur detectives concluded that she was the real murderer.
As an amusing footnote, another 15% were convinced that Everly and Old John had committed the crime together.
Then, at the height of the controversy, another bombshell broke.
Just a few days earlier—the very night of the posthumous exhibition—the famous painting Under the Moon, widely regarded as the finest work of Shelly’s career, had inexplicably been destroyed.
When Everly heard the news, she sat frozen for a long moment before tremblingly opening the online news clip.
“I swear there was absolutely nothing wrong with either the lighting or the temperature and humidity in the storage room. But look for yourselves—the canvas split open on its own without anyone even going near it!”
In the video, the wealthy Gegha City businessman who owned Under the Moon pointed at the surveillance footage while pouring out his grievances to the reporter.
The broadcast then switched to the security recording.
The surveillance camera faced the painting hanging on the wall. Late that night, Under the Moon suddenly tore itself apart straight down the middle, as though ripped open by an invisible force. The paint on the canvas began to run like tears, streaming downward until it smeared both the canvas and the wall into a complete mess.
Remembering everything she had experienced inside Under the Moon, tears instantly welled up in Everly’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks.
The businessman had treasured the painting dearly.
After purchasing it, he had taken out an expensive insurance policy on it. Except for the occasional loan to special exhibitions, he kept it hanging safely in his private collection room, and only invited guests to view it when especially distinguished visitors came to his home.
For such a carefully cherished masterpiece to be ripped apart overnight—its paint dissolved, leaving behind nothing more than a worthless ruined canvas—was an outcome that no one could accept.
At first, the businessman assumed that something had gone wrong with the temperature or humidity controls in his collection room. He hired experts to inspect the painting, but after examining it, they concluded that the canvas had been torn apart by brute force.
The reason the paint had melted, however, was even more unbelievable.
Laboratory analysis showed that the molecular structure of the pigments had been destroyed almost instantaneously.
Under normal circumstances, those pigments would only deteriorate under intense light or extremely high temperatures. The problem was that when the painting was damaged, both the room’s temperature and lighting had been perfectly normal.
The incident was so bizarre that, once it was reported, it immediately caused a nationwide sensation.
After all, both incidents involved paintings being mysteriously destroyed. One was Under the Moon, widely regarded as Shelly’s greatest masterpiece, while the others were the final works he left behind before his death. Although the two events had occurred hundreds of miles apart, people were quick to connect them, driving public interest to an even greater frenzy.
Before long, sensational tabloids and countless self-media channels were overflowing with speculation and conspiracy theories surrounding the posthumous exhibition.
Some interpreted everything as a supernatural phenomenon, claiming that Shelly’s ghost had taken away both the guests and his most treasured paintings.
Others continued to insist that Everly was the prime suspect.
Even this group, however, had begun to accept that there might have been a supernatural element involved in the destruction of the paintings.
Perhaps, they argued, the ruined artworks were Shelly’s silent protest.
Enraged by the way his daughter had treated him, yet powerless to stop her while alive, he had taken his own paintings with him in death, preventing her from profiting from them.
Supporters of this theory dug even deeper and uncovered Old John’s background as a Vietnam War veteran.
Many took this as evidence that Old John had been the mastermind and technical adviser behind the entire affair. After all, how could a college student like Everly possibly have orchestrated such an elaborate crime on her own?
On the American internet, the number of people who believed this theory continued to grow.
Fortunately, Everly and Old John had always kept a low profile, so their photographs had yet to be dug up. But given the internet’s growing obsession with playing detective, it was only a matter of time before their personal information was exposed.
Everly knew she couldn’t let that slide.
After all, she was on the verge of inheriting a fortune worth tens of millions. Money was the one thing she wasn’t short of.
Furious, she hired one of the country’s most prestigious legal teams. Anyone who published her or Old John’s personal information—or explicitly or implicitly suggested that either of them was connected to the case—received one of her lawyers’ cease-and-desist letters within days.
Faced with such an aggressive legal offensive, the controversy died down before it could spiral any further.
Only after hiring a dedicated estate attorney and completing all the necessary authorization paperwork did Everly return to school with Misha and Orff.
As for Old John, he volunteered to remain in New Alder City and handle the long list of remaining legal and administrative matters on Everly’s behalf.
The posthumous art exhibition had taken place in April, but by the time all the legal issues had finally been resolved and Everly officially inherited Shelly’s estate, it was already summer vacation.
The bad news was that, before receiving the inheritance, Everly had to pay compensation to the victims, legal fees, taxes, and countless other expenses. Altogether, the bill came alarmingly close to the total value of the estate she had originally expected to inherit—a staggering sum that was enough to make anyone’s head spin.
The good news, however, was that the posthumous exhibition tragedy, combined with the mysterious destruction of Under the Moon and the other bizarre incidents, had propelled Shelly’s fame to even greater heights after his death. His paintings had become shrouded in an aura of mystery, attracting the interest of many people who had never before paid attention to the art world.
There was also an unwritten rule in the art world: the moment a great artist dies, the value of their works skyrockets.
As a result, although Everly had to pay enormous compensation for the crimes Shelly had committed, the actual value of the estate she inherited still far exceeded her original expectations.
That was because Shelly’s estate consisted of far more than just cash, bonds, real estate, and luxury cars. It also included more than a dozen of Shelly’s ordinary, non-supernatural paintings that had never been sold.
At current market prices, a conservative estimate put the value of those dozen-plus paintings alone at no less than twenty million U.S. dollars. And, given Shelly’s posthumous surge in fame, they still had tremendous room to appreciate in value.
Everly had truly struck it rich.