Light the Candles

"Hm?" Yu Xing took the note and narrowed his eyes, casually glancing over his shoulder.

No one had passed by.

Was the killer's note... updating in real time?

Now that was interesting. It seemed this was a supernatural deduction game.

But you think I'm desperate for this little bit of food? My own cooking tastes better... Tsk.

Yu Xing tucked the note back among the vegetables, closed the refrigerator as if nothing had happened, then bent down to open the freezer.

"If nothing unexpected happens... something weird and creepy should pop out to scare me, right?" he muttered, starting with the bottom drawer and eagerly pulling it open.

Empty.

A length of intestine.

A heart.

Yu Xing said, "These provisions aren't up to scratch..."

Aside from the bottom drawer, the middle and top drawers each held a different organ. The ones above seemed to have been doused with water and then tightly encased in ice.

Yu Xing took them out and looked them over. They had both lost all signs of life. The moment he touched the length of intestine, the ice around it shattered and came cascading down.

"Heh. You put these things in the freezer thinking you could mess with my judgment?" He cheerfully put them back the way they were, closed the drawers and the freezer, then held his hands under the faucet again.

As he listened to the water trickling between his fingers and the kettle bubbling beside him, Yu Xing added another detail to his profile of the killer: the building where the killer was hiding must be completely safe. There was no need to hide corpses in the freezer.

And judging by the wall of jars in the autopsy room, displayed like prized possessions, and the vegetables and animal meat in the upper part of the refrigerator, the killer's attitude toward corpses was one of "collecting," not "eating."

So those two things in the freezer must have been placed there on purpose, to make him think the killer ate them and fear the killer deep down.

People instinctively feared things beyond their understanding. And humans loved to make connections; often, all it took was a few hints for a situation to spread like a spiderweb and achieve its intended effect.

So the conclusion was that, rather than simply killing the "doctor," the killer seemed to prefer breaking the "doctor" psychologically.

Yu Xing dried his hands. He planned to search the other kitchen cupboards for clues to the combination lock, but his mind was busy too:

The killer had a desire to defeat the doctor... His personality wasn't all that calm. He'd only learned to endure because he feared having his normal-person disguise torn away in real life. Given the chance, he'd act—and there was also a mix of competitiveness, vanity, and even a little fear of the doctor.

"Ah..." Yu Xing sighed for no particular reason.

The killer had too many personality flaws.

He'd only used some simple profiling—inferring the other person's mental state from their behavior and using it to analyze their personality. It wasn't difficult, but the killer had it rough. Every "warning" and scare was practically handing him clues.

Since Yu Xing didn't know whether the killer was spying on him constantly in the form of a ghost, he decided not to voice this discovery. What if the killer got annoyed and stopped showing up?

Now he was more curious about what his doctor character had done to the killer before being tied up.

"Clink—"

Yu Xing had moved too roughly while opening the cupboard for bowls and chopsticks. The sharp clang of several metal chopsticks striking each other brought his teasing... analysis of the killer to an end, and he focused on searching for clues.

The cupboard held ordinary kitchen supplies. There was oil, vinegar, and soy sauce, but no salt; the pots, bowls, and other utensils were all there.

After rummaging around without much interest, Yu Xing finally spotted "hope for the whole kitchen" in front of the microwave.

"What's this?"

The microwave was plugged in and lit up inside. He could just make out a tiny key.

At the same time, a note was pinned beneath a bottle of soy sauce.

Yu Xing pulled out the note and saw the first line:

[The microwave is fake. I never need to eat leftovers. After all, I have so many "fresh" ingredients here~]

"You poor thing. He's even hinting that he eats corpses..." Yu Xing felt sorry for the killer for a second, then lamented the killer's scare tactic, which had conjured up something out of nothing.

He continued reading.

[This is actually a safe. It has a three-digit code. You can open it just by turning the duration and temperature dials. Inside is the key to the toilet tank. I've left you a surprise~]

[The riddle is: We in the morgue looked at you happily. We can sleep for many more days, but you stay awake all night under our gaze. We don't know what you're counting. Are you counting sheep? "One, two, three..."]

[Oops, I forgot to mention: you only get three tries. If you fail all three times, the key will melt from the heat, and you'll have no chance of escaping. Hahahahahaha!]

"Oh? A puzzle?" Yu Xing's gaze lingered on the riddle. He completely ignored the killer's gloating in the final paragraph.

Two seconds later, he leaned closer to examine the microwave's two dials. They were much finer than normal, with precise markings. Each full circle had exactly one hundred notches, with numbers marked only at 0, 45, 90, and 135.

"Hmm... The morgue... counting sheep?" Yu Xing straightened up, the corners of his eyes lifting in a faint smile. "Isn't three tries a little too generous for a word puzzle like this?"

He looked back, picked up the knife he'd taken from the autopsy room, and headed into the hall.

The hall was still completely empty. It was clear that before Yu Xing—or rather, the doctor—woke up, corpses had once lain on these iron beds. They must have been the owners of the organs in the jars in the autopsy room.

He had no idea where the corpses had gone.

This time, Yu Xing observed carefully, measuring the hall with his eyes based on his own steps. It was a square, twenty meters by twenty meters, for a total of four hundred square meters.

The iron beds were evenly spaced about three meters apart. Excluding a few empty spots, there were twenty-three in total.

After counting them, Yu Xing returned to the kitchen and tapped the top of the microwave, producing a dull little thud.

"Basic knowledge: morgue temperatures are set to -8°C."

He muttered under his breath and turned the [Temperature] dial eight notches counterclockwise.

"In the riddle, when I stayed awake all night, I wasn't counting sheep. I was counting the corpses in the morgue."

He turned the [Duration] dial twenty-three notches clockwise.

"Click."

The microwave door popped open a crack. Yu Xing took out the tiny silver key to the toilet tank.

With the key in hand, Yu Xing didn't waste time. He left the kitchen and headed straight for the toilet.

"Restroom" was a catch-all term. Yu Xing thought this place could also be called a "laundry room" or a "bathroom."

As soon as he entered, he saw two washing machines side by side, followed by a small wardrobe.

Bath towels and hand towels hung inside. Below them were body wash, shampoo, conditioner, and other toiletries. He had to admit that if he ignored his current situation, Yu Xing would have thought the place was pretty nice.

At least the floor was clean, so it didn't matter that he was wandering around barefoot.

Yu Xing slid open the glass door and peeked inside. It was a shower stall.

The toilet was inside the shower stall, and so was the tank he was looking for.

Swinging the key in his hand, Yu Xing walked over without a hurry.

There was no need to wonder why the tank was locked. He aligned the key with the lock, slipped it in, and turned it gently. The lid opened without a hitch.

The tank wasn't big. Yu Xing guessed there was probably no room for a human head inside, so he looked in with some curiosity to see what the promised surprise was.

There was only a note.

"Hmm..." Yu Xing made a faintly uncertain sound, as if debating whether to complain about why a killer liked playing around with little notes so much.

How old was he? Why keep making a fuss over pointless things?

He glanced over the note.

[I sewed the bedroom key inside a body. Guess which one it's in? Hahaha... Why not go out and take a look?]

The bedroom? So that room he couldn't open was the bedroom. The killer really did live here...

As Yu Xing was thinking, the bright light overhead suddenly began flickering as if something had interfered with it.

He raised an eyebrow. Amid the bulb's crackling, he passed the wardrobe. Then the light went out completely.

The darkness swallowed his eyes, accustomed to the light. Yu Xing closed them to adjust, quickly adapted his vision, and glanced outside.

It wasn't just the restroom that had gone dark. The hall was dark too, as if someone had pulled the main breaker.

He slowed his steps. As he reached the washing machines, a small patch of red light appeared in the hall.

The red light kept trembling. It was easy to tell it came from a candle.

"Someone there?"

He narrowed his eyes. The figure was some distance away, but he could just make out the outline of a head and an arm in the red glow.

Only, the person seemed to be lying down. Judging by the height, they were on an iron bed.

One of the beds meant for corpses.

Yu Xing didn't have long to watch. Soon, one red glow after another lit up, and he silently counted: twenty-three spots.

The iron beds, empty just moments ago, now each held a person—or rather, a corpse.

The corpses held red candles in both hands. Their light was an eerie red, turning the darkness into a grand scene of "lighting candles."

It was as if they were sending Yu Xing a message:

We hope something happens to you. We hope you're done for.

Someone else might have hesitated at this "creepy as hell" scene, but once Yu Xing got a clear look, he didn't stop for a moment. He headed straight for the nearest iron bed.

Barefoot, he came to a silent stop beside a corpse.

It was a male corpse who looked like a teenager. He lay straight and still, with little visible decay. His hands were clasped over his chest around a red candle. If you didn't look closely, you might think he was just asleep.

As Yu Xing bent down to examine the corpse, its tightly shut eyes twitched. They suddenly opened, and a pair of vacant eyes stared unblinking at him.

Once one had done it, the others followed suit. The corpses opened their eyes and turned their heads at different angles, directing their gazes toward Yu Xing.

Just as the riddle had said, they were watching him.

But there was one difference... The person in the riddle had stayed awake all night. Yu Xing, on the other hand, felt no unease at all. In fact, the corners of his mouth even lifted.

The red light fell across his deathly pale skin and loose hospital gown. His delicate, almost feminine features took on a bewitching, unreal quality that made people inexplicably uneasy.

Under the gaze of more than twenty corpses, he wore a gentle smile and stroked the hair of the corpse before him.

"That's more like it. I'd been wondering where you all went. It's Corpse Carnival—how could it happen without you?"