chapter 6
Cheng Miao quickly asked, “Did your parents say anything about the culprit?”
Hu Zi gave her a puzzled look. “Wasn’t the culprit some old lady? I heard she never married and went crazy because of it. But she ran away ages ago, and no one’s found her yet.”
At that point, Hu Zi grew a little embarrassed. “I only wanted to come look because I heard this place was haunted and got curious…”
Expressionless, Cheng Miao thought, Serves you right, you little brat. Now you can’t get out, can you?
Watching Hu Zi hang his red face and fidget with his fingers, Cheng Miao knew she would get nothing else from him.
According to Hu Zi, every former resident believed Aunt Li was the killer. Yet after seeing the illusion in Apartment 401, Cheng Miao did not believe the matter was so simple.
She searched the clinic’s front room again, even turning over the treatment bed where the children sat. Aside from the patient log, she found no other clues.
That made sense. If incriminating evidence could be found in a clinic full of people coming and going, Doctor Xu might as well have given up crime, rolled up his bedding, and gone home.
Cheng Miao took out the missing-person notices she had removed from the stairwell and compared them against the patient log, page by page. Sure enough, every missing child had visited this clinic, whether or not they lived in Building 4.
More importantly, Cheng Miao had assumed that Liu Xue herself had drawn the small heart beside her signature. Now she found hearts on the medical forms of several other missing children as well.
Someone had tried to erase them, leaving only faint impressions. They were invisible unless the page was examined carefully against the light.
Cheng Miao was now more than eighty percent certain that Doctor Xu was connected to the long string of child disappearances in Minsheng Lane. She simply could not determine his motive yet.
Humans are not human. Cheng Miao contemplated the words in the hint.
They probably implied that the man everyone called good was nothing of the sort, while Aunt Li, whom everyone believed evil, was actually innocent.
Now that she had identified the killer, Cheng Miao pulled herself together. The second-floor clinic had to contain another undiscovered clue.
Strangely, even after she took out the diary, no illusion of Doctor Xu appeared in the front room.
She did not believe the diary had abruptly stopped working. The location must be wrong. The diary triggered the room owner’s most emotionally intense moment, or perhaps simply the clue most useful to the player.
The clinic’s most important clue clearly would not appear here in the public consultation room.
After ordering the children to stay put and not run around, Cheng Miao entered the bathroom again. This time, she took a mop from the sink with her.
She probed the drain with the mop head for a long while and, sure enough, pulled out several strands of fine, soft, long hair.
Disgusted, Cheng Miao rubbed her arms and took out the diary.
Slice! Slice!
It was the sound of a sharp blade parting skin and severing tendons.
A figure in a white coat appeared in the bathroom before her. Doctor Xu crouched on the floor with his back to Cheng Miao. Liu Xue lay in front of him, her face purple, her expression frozen in terror.
Unexpectedly, there was another person in the cramped space. Liu Xue’s jump rope, which the girl always carried, was wound around Aunt Li’s neck. Her eyes bulged, and she had died with them still wide open.
It was easy to imagine what had happened. After waiting in vain for Liu Xue, Aunt Li had gone to the clinic to find her and stumbled upon the scene of the girl’s murder.
Doctor Xu had not expected Liu Xue to tell anyone she planned to visit him. With no way to conceal what Aunt Li had seen, he went all the way and strangled her in the bathroom as well.
Aunt Li had no family and poor relationships with her neighbors. No one would search for her even if she disappeared. In fact, it was precisely her disappearance that convinced the residents of Minsheng Lane she had kidnapped the children and fled.
Liu Xue still wore her red dress as she lay on the cement floor. Distinct handprints circled her neck, where strangulation had left broad purple bruises.
Her small body rested in a thick, viscous pool of blood. A blade had cut open her limbs, exposing stark white bone.
From where Cheng Miao stood, she could see only Doctor Xu’s blood-spattered profile. He seemed to be enjoying himself, the corner of his mouth lifted as he hummed a tuneless song.
Some blood apparently splashed into his eye. Doctor Xu clicked his tongue in annoyance and wiped carelessly at his face. Then he tore off Aunt Li’s outer blouse, used it to mop the blood-soaked floor, and tossed it aside.
No wonder Aunt Li’s clothes had looked familiar to Cheng Miao in Apartment 401. The so-called rag in the bathroom was the last garment Aunt Li had worn.
Cheng Miao gagged. The hellish scene assaulted her senses so violently that she could almost smell the metallic reek of blood congealing in the air.
But when Doctor Xu, who had been intent on dismembering the corpse, heard her retch behind him, his hands stopped without warning.
Cheng Miao’s skin prickled. Every cell in her body screamed danger.
Doctor Xu lowered the cleaver in his hand and slowly turned around.
Objectively speaking, he was decent-looking. Not exactly handsome, but clean-cut and earnest, like a studious young man.
Now, however, blood covered the face that would ordinarily have seemed approachable, and a neurotic gleam shone in his eyes.
“Who… are you? What are you doing in my home?”
Cheng Miao’s heart sank. She had not expected the scene in the clinic to differ from the illusions on the fourth floor. The Doctor Xu before her felt extremely dangerous. He seemed almost like a real person, one who could see her and… touch her.
There was nowhere to hide in the front room. If he reached the children with that cleaver, who knew whether the clinic would gain several new ghosts?
Keeping her movements subtle, Cheng Miao retreated toward the bedroom as she watched the blood gleam on Doctor Xu’s blade. She had left the folding stool she had used for protection in there.
Against a lunatic wielding a deadly weapon, the folding stool made a far more intimidating weapon than the paring knife hidden in her clothes.
“Never mind… Whoever you are, you saw everything just now, didn’t you?” When Cheng Miao refused to answer, Doctor Xu spread his lips in an unnatural smile.
Would you believe me if I said I didn’t? Cheng Miao quipped inwardly, even as she kept him talking. “After what you did to Liu Xue, don’t you believe in retribution?”
“Retribution? Heh… If retribution existed, I should have died a long time ago.” Doctor Xu seemed to recall something amusing and gave a bone-chilling laugh.
Realizing he meant that the previously missing children had met the same fate as Liu Xue, Cheng Miao cursed the scum under her breath.
Doctor Xu drew closer. Cheng Miao could delay no longer. She had assumed that since the murderer was right here, the ever-present ghost of Liu Xue would at least emerge to fight him to the death.
Yet no ghost appeared. Cursing the truth of the saying that even ghosts feared the wicked, Cheng Miao suddenly let terror flood her face. Her expression changed so dramatically that anyone who saw it would feel their scalp prickle.
“B-behind you… The dead little girl… she stood up!”