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Jiang Cheng made no sound. He got up quietly and hid in the bathroom.

When Fatty woke up, the figure he saw "sleeping" on the floor by the bed wasn't Jiang Cheng, but a shadow that had just crawled out.

In other words, it was a ghost.

The real Jiang Cheng was hiding behind the bathroom door. While Fatty was dazed in front of the bathroom, he pulled him inside.

Chen Xiaomeng fumbled and turned on the bedroom light.

When the light came on, everyone saw the mess on the bed and a wet stain on the floor.

The water stain led from the bed all the way to the door.

The few of them walked to the door and looked out, only to find water stains in the corridor as well.

The water stains extended to the end of the corridor and stopped in front of the locked room.

Xie Yu was taken away wrapped in a quilt by the ghost. The thought alone sent shivers down their spines.

No one dared to hope he was still alive.

Fan Li suppressed the chill in his heart and turned to Jiang Cheng, "What did the ghost look like? Did you see it clearly?"

Fatty shook his head vigorously, saying it was too dark in the room at the time, and he...

The others knew he meant he was too scared.

After all, he was a newcomer, and they could understand.

Just as Sister Nuan was about to say something, Jiang Cheng suddenly said, "It was that girl."

"What?"

"The ghost was that girl from the family of four!"

Fan Li asked in surprise, "How do you know?"

No one had seen any photos of that family since they arrived, so they had no way of knowing what they looked like.

Of course, the middle-aged man and Xie Yu were exceptions.

Jiang Cheng looked up, staring at the locked door at the end of the corridor. After a moment, he said, "The ghost was wearing a pair of women's casual shoes. I saw them in the shoe cabinet."

Chen Xiaomeng said with a pale face, "It seems our previous deduction was correct. The other family members in the villa abused the girl and eventually killed her. And now... she's back for revenge."

"Her death has nothing to do with us. Why is she looking for us?" Fatty couldn't help but feel lingering fear as he recalled what had just happened.

Sister Nuan sneered, "Are you going to reason with a ghost?"

"Alright," Fan Li interrupted, "Enough talk! I'm going to check it out. Who's coming with me?"

He was naturally referring to the locked room at the end of the corridor. The ghost had dragged Xie Yu and disappeared in front of that room.

This was a very important clue.

In the end, everyone decided to go together. After all, splitting up would only be more dangerous.

Moreover, according to what Fan Li and Sister Nuan had said, ghosts rarely killed consecutively in a short period.

This time was different. Fan Li only gave the door a gentle push, and it opened.

The lock... was opened.

Behind the door was a small room. Because there were no windows, they could only see a little by the light reflecting from the corridor.

The area was about two-thirds the size of the boy's bedroom.

It was quite dark inside, and no one dared to enter for the moment.

It wasn't until Jiang Cheng took a few steps forward and reached out to feel along the wall near the door that the light in the room turned on with a crisp click.

Although they were mentally prepared, everyone couldn't help but gasp when they saw the room.

In the center of the room was a rolled-up quilt. A pair of shoes extended from the quilt, hanging limply on the floor.

After a few seconds of composure, Sister Nuan walked forward and slowly lifted the quilt.

"Ah!" Chen Xiaomeng covered her mouth.

Xie Yu was curled up in the quilt, his eyes bulging, pupils dilated, face ashen, and facial and neck muscles contorted. He was clearly dead.

His arms were stiff, held protectively in front of his chest like claws, as if defending against something. The veins on the back of his hands were bulging.

Jiang Cheng stepped forward and pulled up a corner of Xie Yu's shirt.

His body was covered in bloodstains, as if he had been whipped with something like a whip, and there were also wounds from sharp objects. His hands were tightly cuffed together.

Sister Nuan was holding a backpack she had found nearby. Inside were a leather whip, a dagger, a rope, handcuffs, and several candles of different thicknesses.

After comparison, the rope in the backpack was the same as the rope found in the warehouse earlier.

Fatty stared at the blood-stained tools, his voice trembling with fear, "Xie Yu... was tortured to death by the ghost?"

"No," Jiang Cheng stood up. "The wounds on his body were very regular, with no signs of struggle. This means he had already lost consciousness when he was being abused."

"I think he was scared to death first, and then the ghost dragged him here to be abused."

"Whipping a corpse?"

Jiang Cheng nodded, "I think so."

"Bro, can you be any calmer!" Fatty wailed, his face a mess. "If I weren't with you, judging by your reaction, I'd suspect you did this!"

Jiang Cheng's face was full of righteousness. "Don't spout nonsense. While things like this happen at nightclubs, it's always on the basis of mutual consent, and it's usually not this extreme."

Seeing that Jiang Cheng was about to derail the conversation again, Fan Li quickly stepped in to stop him, saying they could gossip later and should focus on finding clues for now.

Unexpectedly, Jiang Cheng pointed to the shoes on Xie Yu's feet and said, "These shoes are wrong. They aren't the ones he was wearing before."

Prompted by Jiang Cheng, everyone shifted their gaze from his face to the shoes.

They were a pair of sneakers, very ordinary, and somewhat worn. They indeed didn't match Xie Yu's rather refined clerk attire, and the shoes looked very bulky.

Fan Li took a dagger from the backpack Sister Nuan had found, squatted on the floor, and used the blade to untie the laces one by one, pulling the shoes off.

A scene that surprised everyone appeared.

There was another pair of shoes wrapped inside the sneakers!

It was a pair of leather shoes, squeezed and deformed. Inside, Xie Yu's instep was strangely twisted, as if all the bones had been crushed and then forced in.

It was obvious that these were Xie Yu's own shoes.

"Are these the shoes of the boy from the family of four?" Chen Xiaomeng looked down at the sneakers, puzzled. "But the sneakers we found in the shoe cabinet on the first floor..."

Jiang Cheng knew where her confusion lay. Although these two pairs of sneakers looked similar in style, their sizes were vastly different, not like they belonged to the same person.

"Could it be that the pair in the shoe cabinet were shoes the boy wore while growing up, and this pair is for when he got older?"

Jiang Cheng thought for a moment and replied, "It's possible, but I think the probability is low. We've searched the entire villa. Has anyone else seen shoes of a similar size?"

Everyone fell silent. After a long pause, Sister Nuan spoke with a strange expression. "So you're saying there are three men in this villa: a husband, and his two sons."