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

The figure the Fatty saw "sleeping" on the floor beside the bed when he woke up wasn't Jiang Cheng. It was the shadow that had just crawled out.

In other words, it was a ghost.

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

Chen Xiaomeng felt her way to the bedroom light switch and turned it on.

In the light, everyone saw that the bed was in disarray, and a puddle of water stained the floor.

The water trail ran from the bed all the way to the door.

The group went to the doorway and looked out, only to find water stains in the hallway too.

They continued all the way to the end of the hall, where they stopped in front of the locked room.

Xie Yu had been taken away, wrapped in a blanket by the ghost. Just thinking about it sent chills down their spines.

No one still dared hope he might be alive.

Fan Li suppressed the chill in his heart and turned to Jiang Cheng. "What did that ghost look like? Did you get a good look?"

The Fatty shook his head vigorously. "It was too dark in the room, and I was—"

Everyone knew what he meant: he'd been too scared.

He was a newcomer, after all. It was understandable.

Just as Sister Nuan opened her mouth to say something, Jiang Cheng suddenly spoke. "It was that girl."

"What?"

"That ghost was the girl from the family of four!"

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

Since arriving, no one had seen a single photograph of the family, so they had no idea what they looked like.

Of course, that didn't include the Middle-aged man and Xie Yu.

Jiang Cheng lifted his head and stared at the locked door at the end of the hallway. 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's face went pale. "Looks like our earlier theory was right. The girl was abused by the other members of the family in the villa, and they eventually killed her. Now... she's come back for revenge."

"Her death had nothing to do with us. Why would she come after us?" The Fatty thought back to what had just happened, still shaken with fear.

Sister Nuan gave a cold laugh. "Are you planning to reason with a ghost?"

"Enough," Fan Li cut in. "Let's all say a little less. I'm going to take a look in there. Who's coming with me?"

He meant the locked room at the end of the hallway. The ghost had dragged Xie Yu away and vanished right in front of its door.

It was an important clue.

In the end, they decided to go together. Splitting up would only put them in greater danger.

Besides, according to Fan Li and Sister Nuan, ghosts rarely killed people one after another in such a short time.

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

The lock had been opened.

Beyond the door was a small room. With no windows, they could only make out a little by the light spilling in from the hallway.

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

The room was dark, and no one dared to enter just yet.

Then Jiang Cheng stepped forward, reached out, and felt along the wall near the doorway. A sharp click sounded as he flipped the switch, and the room lit up.

They had been prepared, but even so, when they saw what was inside, everyone drew in a sharp breath.

A rolled-up blanket lay in the middle of the room. A pair of shoes stuck out from beneath it, hanging limply toward the floor.

After a few seconds, Sister Nuan stepped forward and slowly lifted the blanket.

"Ah!" Chen Xiaomeng clapped a hand over her mouth.

Xie Yu was curled up beneath the blanket, his eyes bulging, pupils dilated, face blue. The muscles in his face and neck were twisted. He was clearly dead.

His arms were rigid, his hands curled like claws and held protectively against his chest, as if he'd been defending himself from something. The veins on the backs of his hands stood out sharply.

Jiang Cheng stepped forward and pulled back one corner of Xie Yu's shirt.

His body was covered in bloodstains, as if he'd been whipped, and there were several wounds left by sharp objects. His wrists were also locked together in handcuffs.

Sister Nuan held a backpack she'd found nearby. Inside were a leather whip, a dagger, a hemp rope, handcuffs, and other items, along with several candles of different sizes.

After comparing them, they found that the hemp rope in the backpack was the same as the one they'd found in the storeroom earlier.

The Fatty stared at the bloodied tools, so frightened that his voice trembled. "Was Xie Yu tortured to death by the ghost?"

"No," Jiang Cheng said, standing up. "The marks on his body are very regular, without any distorted traces of a struggle. That means he was already unconscious while being tortured."

"I think he was scared to death first, then dragged here by the ghost and beaten."

"Beaten after death?"

Jiang Cheng nodded. "That's what I think."

"Man, do you have to be so calm?" The Fatty looked miserable. "If I hadn't been with you, just seeing your reaction would make me suspect you did this!"

Jiang Cheng put on a righteous expression. "Don't talk nonsense. We have stuff like this at nightclubs too, but it's always consensual, and usually not this extreme."

Seeing that Jiang Cheng was about to lead the conversation off track again, Fan Li hurriedly stepped in. He said they could chat later and should focus on finding clues while they still had time.

Then Jiang Cheng pointed at the shoes on Xie Yu's feet. "Those shoes are wrong. They aren't the ones he was wearing before."

At Jiang Cheng's reminder, everyone turned their gaze from his face to the shoes.

They were a pair of ordinary, somewhat worn sneakers. They didn't quite suit Xie Yu's fairly polished office-worker outfit, and they looked extremely bulky.

Fan Li took a dagger from the backpack Sister Nuan had found and crouched on the floor. With the blade, he picked apart the tightly knotted laces one by one, then removed the shoes.

What happened next was something no one had expected.

There was another pair of shoes inside the sneakers!

They were leather shoes, crushed out of shape. Xie Yu's feet were twisted grotesquely inside them, as if every bone had been pulverized before they were forced in.

Clearly, these were Xie Yu's own shoes.

"Are these the boy's shoes from the family of four?" Chen Xiaomeng looked down at the sneakers in confusion. "But the pair we found in the shoe cabinet in the first-floor living room..."

Jiang Cheng understood what she couldn't figure out. Though the two pairs of sneakers looked similar in style, their sizes were very different. They didn't seem to belong to the same person.

"Could the pair in the shoe cabinet have been shoes the boy wore while growing up, and these the ones he wore when he was older?"

Jiang Cheng thought for a moment before answering. "It's possible, but I don't think it's likely. We've already searched the entire villa. Have any of you seen another pair in a similar size?"

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