Chapter 104
Chapter 104
Cheng Miao’s gaze turned cold. She reached the door in a few quick strides, Su Yang scurrying after her, his voice shaking. “Miss Cheng, please open the door and see if we can save him.”
Cheng Miao ignored the anxious man beside her. Gu Jian strolled over at a leisurely pace, reached out, and hauled Su Yang aside. “Brother Su, stop making such a racket. You’re disturbing the beauty’s thoughts.”
Sweat poured down Su Yang’s forehead. “He’s about to die in there! There’s no time to think. We have to save him!”
Gu Jian rubbed his chin and put on his best imitation of a famous detective. “How do we save him if the door won’t open?”
Su Yang anxiously reached for Cheng Miao. “I don’t have any useful Items, but you people are strong. Maybe you have something…”
Before he could finish, someone shoved him hard. He hit the floor with a heavy thud.
Qi Jiajia stood with her head bowed, her bangs hiding her face. Her entire presence was dark and brooding.
“Get lost.”
The young girl frightened Su Yang so badly that he shuddered and no longer dared shout.
The commotion drew all the players in the area. After hearing what had happened, Old Zhao said nothing. Su Yang was a newcomer and might not have noticed, but there were no screams anymore. Mohawk was almost certainly dead.
No one knew what rule he had broken. Who would dare enter Room 602 now?
Cheng Miao would.
Standing outside the door, she raised her hand and knocked three times. Knock, knock, knock. Then she turned the handle, and the door opened.
Su Yang covered his mouth and backed away. Little Red and Little Green also scrambled aside as though fleeing a monster.
Cheng Miao did not inspect the room. Holding the door open, she extended one hand in an inviting gesture.
Only after waiting another thirty seconds did she straighten and look inside.
From the doorway, everything appeared normal. The Landlord was not inside either. Cheng Miao stepped through the door. Only Qi Jiajia and her two teammates, along with Gu Jian, followed her in.
The apartment looked thoroughly lived-in. Clothes had been tossed everywhere, making Qi Jiajia cover her nose in disgust.
Lin Zhu followed Gu Jian into the kitchen. The bowls there were filled with uncooked rice, and there were no vegetables in sight.
“This guy is so strange,” Lin Zhu said. “Why put uncooked rice straight into a bowl? How is he supposed to eat it?”
Gu Jian wandered over. “He eats it like that.”
Lin Zhu stared at him. “You can eat raw rice?”
Gu Jian lowered his brows and grinned. Leaning closer, he adopted the tone of someone telling a ghost story. “Didn’t you know ghosts eat raw rice?”
With that, Gu Jian clasped his hands behind his back like a little old man and ambled away.
Lin Zhu shivered. Honestly, even if the ghosts did not scare him, Gu Jian would.
They searched the Landlord’s room from top to bottom. There was no trace of Mohawk, but they found many other things.
Several monitors stood in the Landlord’s bedroom, making it look like a surveillance room.
Remembering the constant sensation of being watched in the apartment next door, Cheng Miao switched on the monitors. Sure enough, they displayed the interior of her room.
The thought of spending five days in a room like that made her curl her lip.
Qin Musong came over and saw the display. His tone turned grave. “It’s too dangerous for you to stay here.”
Cheng Miao shrugged helplessly. “I can’t switch rooms. There’s nothing I can do.”
Qin Musong thought for a moment, then leaned close and whispered something in her ear. At his insistence, Cheng Miao agreed, though the corners of her mouth twitched.
They turned the entire apartment upside down. Inside a locked cabinet, they found a stack of photographs.
Some showed the Pregnant Woman, while many others showed young women. Cheng Miao frowned in disgust. The Landlord was a voyeur.
As she flipped through them, she suddenly froze and pulled back a photograph she had already passed.
The person in this picture…
Cheng Miao compared the smiling woman in the photograph to the female corpse she had encountered in the stairwell. They looked seventy or eighty percent alike. This woman was Shen Xin.
Shen Xin was the key to this instance, and the Landlord had spied on her while he was alive. Now they had a connection between the people involved.
Apartment 444 seemed to have trapped the players, but it had also trapped the souls of the five Longtime Tenants. If they could not leave, Shen Xin’s ghost was probably the reason.
If they avenged Shen Xin… Cheng Miao stroked the photograph. Would that allow them to escape?
There was nothing else to find in the room. The group was about to leave when Cheng Miao, walking last, sensed something was off.
She turned and surveyed the room again. At last, she spotted Mohawk on one of the monitors.
Somehow, Mohawk had been sucked into the screen. The image showed him inside a bedroom, his eyes bulging from their sockets. He had been frightened to death.
Cheng Miao did not alert the others. She left and closed the door behind her, only to be surrounded by the players who had waited outside.
After she briefly described what they had found, every woman present looked uneasily around herself.
Ignoring their discussion, Cheng Miao walked over to Su Yang. Old Zhao and the others had helped him up, and he now leaned against the wall with his head bowed.
“I want to know exactly what happened when you went in.” Cheng Miao studied the ordinary-looking man before her. There was something about him that made people instinctively find him approachable.
Su Yang stared at her blankly and parted his dry, cracked lips. “We reached the Landlord’s room. Big Brother said he knew how to pick locks, so he opened the door and went inside. I was about to follow him when the door locked. No matter how I turned the handle, it wouldn’t open… Then I heard him scream.”
Cheng Miao’s eyes chilled. “I told you what the Landlord did before entering. Neither of you paid any attention?!”
Su Yang froze, only belatedly realizing what she meant. Tears rolled from his bloodshot eyes. “Was that why?! We didn’t know! I wanted to tell him to be careful, but he moved too fast. He opened the door and went straight in!”
Seeing a grown man sob from fear and remorse, Cheng Miao did not press him further. Old Zhao and the others sighed and patted Su Yang’s shoulders.
“It isn’t your fault. This building has too many strange taboos. Who would know you had to copy the Landlord’s actions? Look at yesterday. The Landlord told us to eat that rice meant for the dead. If we’d obediently done as we were told, we might’ve been finished.”
Old Zhao had a point. Su Yang quickly calmed down and apologized to Cheng Miao, looking embarrassed.
Gu Jian had been yawning quietly off to one side. For some unfathomable reason, he suddenly gave several cold laughs, rose, and left in the elevator.
He was a good-looking young man, but his temper was bizarre. He was also an experienced player. No one dared provoke him, let alone follow and question him.
“Jiajia, come to my room. I need to talk to you.” Cheng Miao ignored the others and took Qi Jiajia back to her apartment.
With no other clues to pursue, the remaining players dispersed and resumed wandering through the building.
Cheng Miao and Qi Jiajia lay on the bed to rest. After an unknown length of time, a faint breeze stirred inside the room.
The Landlord’s deathly pale figure slowly materialized. He stared at the two girls on the bed, his face twisting into a covetous smile.
He crept closer and extended a hand. Just as his fingers were about to touch the sleeping Cheng Miao, Qi Jiajia sprang up beside her. A flash of bloodlust and savagery crossed the girl’s eyes as she lunged at him.