After all, a room in an inn like this was only twenty or thirty square meters, so the internal investigation was assigned to the slender Yu Jing, who was skilled at analysis, and Hu Zhi, a thirty-year-old soldier who had experienced life-and-death situations and undergone all kinds of training in the military. The two of them worked together while the remaining four stood guard outside.
As soon as the two entered the room, a rotten stench assaulted their nostrils. Yu Jing endured his body's reaction and slowly adapted to the smell, while Hu Zhi's expression also turned ugly.
The two exchanged glances. Hu Zhi would inspect the bathroom and the surrounding area, while Yu Jing would inspect the inside of the room and the bed where the old man had been lying.
The first thing to draw Yu Jing's attention was the clippings pasted across the wall: "Female Supernatural Ability disciple Dies Suspected of XX While Working Part-Time at an Inn," "Strange Death of a Female Traveling Supernatural Ability disciple," "Female Supernatural Ability disciple Dismembered by a Guest"... The articles all focused on one point: a female Supernatural Ability disciple had once been murdered at the inn.
In Yu Jing's opinion, this female Supernatural Ability disciple should be the granddaughter mentioned by the old man.
What was strange, however, was that none of the newspaper clippings contained any report about a suspect. They all focused on the female Supernatural Ability disciple who had been killed.
Yu Jing had read some horror and suspense stories like this before. In them, ghosts born from resentment remained in the mortal world because they wanted revenge. Therefore, if the ghost simply wanted revenge, then in Yu Jing's view, the newspapers posted here should have contained information about the murderer rather than the victim.
Yu Jing then inspected the bedside table and found it filled with cobwebs and completely empty.
Finally, it was time to inspect the bed. Yu Jing lowered himself to look beneath it, intending to see whether anything was hidden there. There was no corpse stuffed under the bed as in a horror film, but beneath it, Yu Jing discovered something that sent a chill through him.
It was an iron rod three inches long, with five bells of different sizes tied to it by red threads.
The instant he saw the bells, Yu Jing's heart clenched, and a terrifying image flashed through his mind.
He immediately forced himself to calm down, reached out, and grabbed the bells beneath the bed. He threaded plant vines between them to keep them from shaking and ringing, then slowly dragged them into his hand.
"This thing is crucial. We can investigate the bells in detail after leaving this room. For now..."
When Yu Jing raised his head with the bells in his hand, the old man who had been lying on the bed like a corpse just moments before had vanished.
"How is that possible? Where did he go?" Yu Jing had only reached beneath the bed to retrieve the strange bells. If the other party had climbed off the bed, there was no way he would not have noticed.
"If vanishing into thin air isn't an option, then the only possibility is that he disappeared from the bed without touching the floor... Did he crawl away along the wall?"
When Yu Jing's attention shifted to the wall above the head of the bed, a series of faint footprints had indeed been imprinted there.
Following the footprints, he found that they ultimately led to the bathroom.
The thirty-year-old soldier Hu Zhi was currently lying inside, while the bedroom door, which had originally been open, had somehow closed.
An uneasy feeling swept over Yu Jing.
"Crack! Snap!"
A tearing sound came from inside the bathroom. Yu Jing was very familiar with that sound.
A soldier who had gained admission to the Dihua Ability Institute by stepping over his teammates' bones, and who had spent twelve years training in the military, was certain to possess physical abilities far beyond those of an ordinary person. The worst possibility, in Yu Jing's view, was that such a soldier had been killed without making a sound.
"Ugh..."
A blood-soaked figure rolled out of the bathroom.
Hu Zhi's sturdy body was now deathly pale. The reason he could not speak was that his tongue had been severed by a sharp weapon.
Having fallen in front of the bathroom door, Hu Zhi was in an extremely dire condition.
His bloodshot eyes looked toward Yu Jing, who stood inside the room. Driven by his will to survive, Hu Zhi struggled to inch his body forward.
This was not the first time Yu Jing had faced a nonhuman creature. Although the sight of such a bloody and inhuman scene made his legs go numb, his mind continued to turn rapidly.
The four people outside haven't come in to help despite all this noise. It seems they've also fallen into a terrible situation, so I can only deal with this alone... Judging by the way it tore through Hu Zhi's flesh, this old woman's physical strength is probably two to three times that of an ordinary person.
The window's security bars are badly rusted. I need to find a way out of this cramped room first. If I move the battlefield into the mountain woods, the heavy rain and the plants may give me a chance to fight this thing. Staying inside the room means certain death.
As the old woman slowly approached Yu Jing, several vines extended from his right hand behind his back, silently working at the points where the security bars had been welded.
"At least two minutes..."
Yu Jing looked at the old woman crawling over from the side wall and estimated that he did not have enough time.
In desperation, Yu Jing made a dangerous decision. He slowly raised the bells in his hand and pointed them at the approaching old woman, making sure they did not shake.
"I guessed right!"
The old woman stopped crawling the instant she saw the bells in Yu Jing's hand. Fear appeared in her cloudy white eyes.
During the standoff, the vines had already destroyed all the weld points holding the security bars behind him.
Making sure the bells would not ring, Yu Jing immediately spun around, raised both arms in front of him, and smashed through the window with all his strength. He fell outside the inn together with the loosened security bars. Ignoring the shards of glass piercing his arms, Yu Jing ran toward the depths of the mountain woods at top speed.
The old woman was completely enraged. Crawling on all fours like a spider, she chased after the fleeing Yu Jing...
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