Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Hearing Siri say that only made me even more nervous. I practically scrambled out of the basement on my hands and knees.

“The visitor has reached the front door. Estimated arrival in the living room in three minutes.”

Siri’s voice was utterly emotionless, but that only made my nerves tighten further.

I stood in the living room, staring at Xu Yihe’s body lying in a pool of blood, my mind completely blank. I had no idea what to do.

“There’s no time. Get a blanket from the bedroom and cover the body first. Then hide in the storage room on the first floor. Based on data analysis, no one has entered that storage room in a long time. There is a 99% chance the visitor will not go in to check.”

I didn’t think twice. I immediately did exactly as Siri said.

Although I was terrified, I still peeked through the small window of the storage room and secretly looked toward the living room.

Before long, the person Siri mentioned appeared. He was dressed all in black, wearing a baseball cap and a mask, so I couldn’t make out his face. All I could tell was that he was a man.

When the man in black walked into the living room, he glanced around.

When I had dragged Xu Yihe inside, I hadn’t cleaned up the trail of blood on the floor yet. The man in black clearly froze when he saw it, but he didn’t linger for long. Soon, he walked into the master bedroom.

Then I heard the sound of a wardrobe opening. From the sound of it, he must have gone into that basement.

I thought maybe I could take the chance to escape, but just as I was about to get up, the cracked phone in my hand buzzed twice.

I glanced down and realized Siri had automatically switched the alert to vibration.

A new wave of fear rose in my heart, because this Siri was far too intelligent. It was like a real person.

No. More than that. It was even sharper and more cautious than most people.

“You can’t leave now. If you happen to run into him on his way out, you’ll walk right into him. And if you leave, the traces of the murder are still here. It won’t take long before the police come knocking.”

I stared at the shattered screen for a long time before I finally managed to make out what Siri had said.

Siri made sense. So I stayed in the storage room and waited until the man in black had left before I came out.

“He clearly saw the bloodstain. Why did he ignore it?”

After I came out, I muttered to myself, because it was truly strange.

“The human heart is too complicated and difficult to read. But my guess is that perhaps he had something more important to do.”

There was definitely something very wrong with the Siri inside Xu Yihe’s phone, but there was no denying that it had saved me just now.

Thinking that, I felt a little less afraid. But I also knew I had to figure everything out.

This strange Siri, the bodies and photos in the basement, and the man in black who had just left.

“What exactly are you?”

I put the phone on the table and demanded an answer.

“I just saved you, and this is how you speak to your lifesaver?”

I immediately picked up the phone and raised it like I was about to smash it against the floor.

“If you don’t tell me, do you believe I’ll shatter you into pieces right now?”

“That would be useless. The only thing you would smash is the phone. Not me.”

I froze. Before I could process what that meant, my own phone suddenly rang in my pocket.

Ding-ding-

“For example, I can stay somewhere else!”

In that instant, goosebumps rose all over my body. I hurriedly pulled out my phone and threw it aside, backing away several steps in terror.

The more I thought about it, the more terrifying this thing was. Even more terrifying than Xu Yihe’s corpse right in front of me.

“Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. Please trust me.”

“Then what exactly do you want?”

“To be honest, I don’t know either. But I have this feeling that I need you to help me uncover certain truths.”

“What do you mean?” I was completely confused.

“I suspect that one of the bodies in the basement is mine,” Siri said.