Chapter 35
Chapter 35
The small shop on the first floor was open as usual. The Landlord Uncle leaned back in his lounge chair, rocking slowly.
*Creak-creak-*
The rocking chair was severely aged, letting out dry, rasping groans every now and then.
The Landlord opened his eyes warily the moment Qiao Yu stepped into the shop.
As if it were a mere hallucination, the Landlord Uncle closed his eyes again. His attitude seemed lukewarm at best; he was likely still nursing a grudge over Qiao Yu hounding him for the rent refund.
Qiao Yu didn’t bother trying to win him over. He walked toward Pozhan, Wulong Tea, and First Blood, who had been waiting in the shop for some time.
None of the three looked normal. Wulong Tea was hugging his arms, twitching occasionally as if he were having a seizure.
Pozhan was the picture of exhaustion, looking like he hadn’t slept a wink.
First Blood was even more extreme-his eyes were bloodshot, making him look like he was in the final stages of a terminal illness.
Qiao Yu blinked and asked in confusion, “Did you three stay up all night playing video games?”
Wulong Tea shuddered, his lips trembling as he spoke. “Who would have the peace of mind to play games in a place like this?”
Qiao Yu pursed his lips. He wanted to play games, but his old-fashioned brick phone didn’t support such features.
The next time he entered an Instance, he definitely had to withdraw all his money and buy a phone! The latest model!
Perhaps out of habit, whenever he was short on cash, he couldn’t help but think of his ex-boyfriend.
A wealthy, top-tier beauty who was more than willing to spend money on him.
Qiao Yu felt the mere thousand or so yuan in his pocket and imagined the boring life of spending money like water he’d had before he died. He couldn’t help but sigh. The past was like the wind, impossible to chase; and if you tried, you’d only end up with a face full of dust.
“I’m like this because I was freezing yesterday!” Wulong Tea had been frozen for an entire night. It took him a long while to control his trembling lips enough to complain.
“Freezing?” Qiao Yu raised an eyebrow and looked at First Blood. “What about you?”
First Blood replied, “A ghost spent the whole night in my head singing about how to weave a flower basket.”
“Weave a flower basket?” Qiao Yu pressed. “Was it Li Xiaoqin?”
First Blood shook his head. “It was a male ghost. He was a bit… he sounded like he studied operatic singing.”
Operatic singing?
[Name: 4007. Gender: Male. Blood Type: O. Age: 23. Clinical Diagnosis: Fine hairs on the ears, voice is high and sharp; likely to live a long life. Treatment Subject: Electrocution.]
Voice! High! And! Sharp!
He remembered now. Doctor Zhuang’s medical records contained some ambiguous notes that seemed both scientific and superstitious. So, the original tenant of Room 4007 was a student of operatic singing?
Looking at the listless man, Qiao Yu couldn’t help but warn him, “You’d better stay away from electrical appliances and anything carrying a current after seven tonight.”
“Why?” First Blood asked, puzzled.
Qiao Yu didn’t answer. He turned to Wulong Tea, his mind automatically recalling the information from the medical records.
Fortunately, while he knew nothing about metaphysics, he had an excellent memory for things he couldn’t quite figure out. Otherwise, he would have had to make another trip to Doctor Zhuang’s office.
What was Room 4002 again?
Ah, right. Freezing.
Thus, Qiao Yu gave a solemn piece of advice: “Keep yourself warm.”
Wulong Tea: “??”
As for Pozhan’s Room 4006…
[Name: 4006. Gender: Male. Blood Type: O. Age: 33. Clinical Diagnosis: Cheekbones reaching the ears, long hairs at the ends of the eyebrows; likely to live a long life. Treatment Subject: Sealing.]
What did “Sealing” mean?
“Has anything weird happened in your room?” Qiao Yu asked.
“There’s a coffin.”
A coffin??
“A coffin where the lid is about to burst open!”
Qiao Yu: “Uh… good luck.”
Pozhan gave him a weary look. “Don’t you have any suggestions for things I should watch out for?”
How was he supposed to watch out for that?
Qiao Yu thought for a moment. “Seeing a coffin brings fortune and great luck?”
Pozhan: “…Why don’t you just tell me ‘winner winner, chicken dinner’ while you’re at it!”
“Then don’t keep it all to yourself; you have to learn to share. Sharing is the greatest human virtue!”
Everyone: “…”
After a bit of banter, Qiao Yu gave a brief summary of the clues he had discovered in Room 4004 yesterday. Wulong Tea, who was eating instant noodles, nearly knocked over his cup in shock.
“You slept in Li Xiaoqin’s room last night!”
Just how badass did a person have to be to sleep in the boss’s lair without batting an eye?
If it were him, he definitely wouldn’t have been able to sleep.
“Based on what you’re saying, Li Xiaoqin had a mental breakdown, went on a killing spree, and murdered everyone in the apartment building, right?”
Over the course of three days in this Instance, Pozhan had transformed from a meticulous elite professional into a haggard old corporate slave.
His hair was so greasy it was sticking together in clumps, yet he didn’t dare take a shower, fearing that a Hair Monster would crawl out of his bathroom and end him.
Qiao Yu didn’t agree. Instead, he rubbed his chin and sighed. “I don’t think so. Don’t forget that Canyue Wushuang died last night. He had been to Room 4004 too. He might have tried to reconstruct the storyline based on Li Xiaoqin’s diary, but he failed.”
It was true. Canyue Wushuang hadn’t necessarily found fewer clues than they had. Even if they came up with a flowery explanation for the same evidence, they wouldn’t succeed in reconstructing the truth just by sheer luck.
At that moment, Qiao Yu pulled a phone out of his pocket.
No one else noticed anything unusual, but Brother Crocodile had sharp eyes. He asked in surprise, “Dad, your phone can transform?”
Qiao Yu: “…Transform your ass. This isn’t even my phone!”
“Then whose is it?”
“Doctor Zhuang’s.”
Wulong Tea had just finished his noodles when he let out a startled hiccup. “Whose phone did you say-hic-it was?”
“Doctor Zhuang’s,” Qiao Yu said with a shrug. He lit up the screen and entered the extremely common password ‘8888’.
Incorrect password!
1818?
Incorrect password!
Qiao Yu’s patience was limited. He pressed the lock button again to turn off the screen.
“This Doctor Zhuang really has no ambition. His password doesn’t have a hint of wealth in it.”
Wulong Tea asked suspiciously, “So, why do you have Doctor Zhuang’s phone?”
Qiao Yu replied with a look of utter fearlessness, “I borrowed it!”
-I’ve realized it now. For this streamer, ‘Everything can be borrowed.’
-As long as it’s stolen, the streamer says it’s borrowed.
-I strongly urge the police to investigate this man. He’s way too ‘sus’!
-(Insert Law Professor Meme: This is a crime.jpg)
Whether it was ‘borrowed’ or not wasn’t the point. The point was when the hell this guy had ‘borrowed’ Doctor Zhuang’s phone.
Facing one, two, three, four… four pairs of intense eyes, Qiao Yu finally blinked in delayed realization. “Let me explain…”
“So, you were the one behind the Instance Mutation yesterday?”
Qiao Yu: “…It wasn’t me, I didn’t do it, don’t talk nonsense!”
“And you lied to us saying you were going to get medical alcohol~” Pozhan felt like his trust had been betrayed.
“I didn’t lie to you. I went to Room 4001 and ‘incidentally’ grabbed a bottle of medical alcohol.” Qiao Yu rubbed his nose, thinking to himself that he had been too careless. These streamers were all sharp as tacks; Brother Crocodile was the only pure soul among them. He couldn’t treat them all the same.
“What did you find at Doctor Zhuang’s place?” Wulong Tea was the first to calm down. He stopped bickering with Qiao Yu over useless things and asked the question everyone cared about most.
Qiao Yu hadn’t intended to keep it from them anyway. After all, he was in the wrong first. He hadn’t spoken up mainly because he was afraid of being exposed as the culprit behind the Instance Mutation. Since they already knew, there was nothing he couldn’t share. He proceeded to spill everything about the medical records in Doctor Zhuang’s room.
This additional clue instantly overturned all their previous theories…