Caught Red-Handed

This tent was splattered with blood and gore, most of the bloodstains on the canvas radiating outward in a spray pattern.

Several military-green quilts were soaked through with blood, so thoroughly that even after all this time, they could still be wrung out. The whole scene looked like something a deranged murderer had gone to great lengths to deliberately arrange, making one's scalp crawl.

One thing to be clear: the human body is about 70% liquid, but not all of that is blood. Normal total blood volume only accounts for about 7% to 8% of body weight.

To set up a scene like this, you'd need roughly thirty pounds of blood or more.

In other words, the blood of the six people who had been living in this tent was probably all right here.

"How atrocious! Seal this place off first, and make sure you find the bodies."

That calm voice grew even colder: "Also, Xiao Li, take some men and gather the nearby residents for questioning. Hah, I refuse to believe six living people can just vanish into thin air."

Soon, several sets of footsteps appeared outside the tent where Lu Bai was.

Swish~

The tent flap was yanked open.

Two fully armed soldiers strode in quickly, knocking on the tent frame with their rifle butts.

"Get up now."

Gao Pangzi jolted awake, squinting as he cursed angrily: "What the hell are you doing? Can't a man get some sleep?!"

His outburst got no response; instead, they helped rouse the others in the tent.

Lu Bai silently got up and sat upright.

One of the soldiers, his skin dark, waved a hand: "Put on your clothes, hurry it up."

"Soldier, sir, did something happen?" the frail youth asked, rubbing his eyes, his voice still full of weakness.

"Less talk, move faster."

At this moment, the sky was just barely turning light.

A dozen or so residents were scattered in a loose circle on the open ground, men and women alike, but all of them looked somewhat irritated.

There was no helping it—no one likes being forced awake like this.

Especially when no one had told them what was going on.

Inside the yellow caution tape, Zhou Zongming smoked a cigarette with a grave expression.

He pointed with the hand holding the cigarette toward a few nearby tents and asked: "This one, this one, and that one over there—are all the people here?"

A full six people, and half a platoon of soldiers had searched the area for a long time without finding a thing.

There were no other clues in the tent either. Not even a suspicious footprint to determine how many killers there were.

Could someone really be hauling six corpses around?

"Company Commander, everyone's accounted for."

The reporting soldier was also disappointed. If any resident had suddenly gone missing, they might at least narrow down a suspect.

Zhou Zongming tossed his cigarette butt to the ground: "Have you questioned everyone?"

"Yes. When it happened, no one heard anything."

"Six people, killed without making a single sound."

Zhou Zongming shot the soldier a sidelong glance: "Could you do that?"

The soldier gave a stiff smile: "Honestly, if they were all sound asleep, it probably wouldn't be hard."

"And after that? Draining the blood and packing up six bodies to take away?"

"Uh, that's a bit much."

The soldier thought for a moment, then added: "Company Commander, do you think there's more than one killer?"

"Either way, it's definitely a pro... Damn it!"

Zhou Zongming stopped mid-sentence as he suddenly noticed a figure leaning in by the tent flap, craning his neck to peer inside.

That figure was, of course, Lu Bai.

He had been staring at the inside of this tent for a while now.

The blood on the quilts wasn't evenly distributed—some had clotted into lumps, while other parts had naturally squeezed out blood blisters, leaving the surface pitted and uneven.

It looked like a pile of multigrain pancakes slathered in tomato sauce.

No way an ordinary person did this.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing, kid?"

Zhou Zongming hurried over and grabbed his arm.

He couldn't budge him.

Lu Bai turned around, flashing an innocent smile: "Just taking a look around."

Zhou Zongming thought he just hadn't used much force earlier, so he waved his hand, signaling Lu Bai to leave quickly.

"Don't you see the caution tape here? Whatever you saw, forget it all."

Zhou Zongming swept a glance at the others. Because Lu Bai had lifted the tent flap, the gathered residents had basically all seen the scene inside the tent. Cui Qing was even so scared his legs went weak that he plopped down onto the ground.

He didn't suspect Lu Bai, though. After all, a boy who looked like a high school student generally wouldn't give off a dangerous vibe, especially with a smile that bright.

Hm? A smile that bright?

Zhou Zongming crossed his arms and gave Lu Bai another once-over. "Kid, you're not scared?"

"Scared of what?"

Lu Bai brushed it off casually. "Maybe I'm the killer. Doesn't psychology say murderers usually like to return to the scene after the crime?"

Zhou Zongming felt a headache coming on. He didn't think Lu Bai was the killer—just a weird-acting high school student.

If he had to pick suspects from the nearby tents' residents, Gao Pangzi's crew actually had a bigger chance.

"Alright, go back to sleep."

Gulp gulp gulp~

In the evening, after squatting at the tent entrance and finishing a bowl of seaweed egg drop soup, Lu Bai smacked his lips and squinted as he watched the people coming and going.

The neighboring tent still had a ring of caution tape around it, but the bloodstains inside had long been cleaned up.

All the daily necessities had been packed up as evidence and taken away.

The people taken in for questioning that morning had all been warned not to spread the matter.

Even if some scraps of information leaked out from who knows who, it would at most become idle chatter after meals.

In the eyes of most residents, today was still just an ordinary day.

But Lu Bai hadn't let his guard down all day.

He knew clearly that a Deathmatch Participant was nearby.

Although he didn't understand why the other party chose to target ordinary people, the ultimate goal would still come back to hunting down Deathmatch Participants.

"At this point..."

Lu Bai picked up his tray. "...let's eat first."

Time's passage doesn't bend to human will. Nightfall came again.

Since they'd been forcibly woken up before dawn, sleepiness came early.

Gao Pangzi didn't even chat with his two lackeys as usual. As soon as his head hit the pillow, he started snoring before long.

One by one, the people in the tent drifted off to sleep.

The Military Tent had extremely strong light-blocking properties.

After the lights went out, even if it wasn't pitch-black to the point of not seeing your hand, it wasn't much better.

In the darkness, a teeth-grinding whimper arose.

Only by relying on the faint light seeping through the gap in the tent flap could one barely make out a silhouette.

It was a person, holding a burly figure upside down.

Just like when slaughtering a chicken—first slash the chicken's neck, then grab it by the legs and lift it up to speed up the bleeding.