Taboo

After examining the corpse, the three of them left the bathroom. Anyone would have felt uneasy facing such a bizarre corpse.

"Time of death was probably within the last three hours." The burly man looked up from his pocket watch and said with certainty, "So, sometime between two and five in the morning."

"How can you be sure?"

The burly man glanced at the girl who had asked. He told her when they had been assigned to keep watch and in what order, then handed her the pocket watch. Its timer showed that exactly seven hours had passed.

Jiang Cheng was next on watch after the Middle-aged man, and the chubby man, who was due after him, had woken up needing to pee. When he went to relieve himself, he discovered the Middle-aged man dead.

At that moment, the chubby man shakily got to his feet and asked why the Middle-aged man had died. The burly man sighed, closed the bathroom door, and led everyone back to the sofas by the fireplace.

As a newcomer, Jiang Cheng had barely said a word. He had been listening and analyzing the whole time, and most of the opinions he offered came from the experienced burly man and the woman with a mole on her lip.

From the information revealed during their discussion, Jiang Cheng understood that in this world, people were rarely killed for no reason. Anyone who was killed must have broken some kind of taboo.

And the so-called taboos were very likely the key clues to solving the mission.

"What did he do that the rest of us didn't?" The male office worker huddled between Jiang Cheng and the girl. He was clearly terrified and didn't want to die inexplicably like the Middle-aged man.

The girl furrowed her lovely brows and said, "Could it be because he went to the bathroom on the first floor? Maybe that's the hidden taboo in this mission, and anyone who goes in there dies?"

"I don't think so." The chubby man squatted where he was, both hands braced on his knees, and spoke softly. "I went to the bathroom too, yesterday, while we were searching the living room."

Jiang Cheng turned to look at the chubby man. After a moment, he said, "Then you'd better be careful. Your neck may be thick, but I could still snap it if I tried hard enough."

The chubby man nearly burst into tears at that.

The burly man seemed displeased with Jiang Cheng's attitude, but said nothing. He only shook his head and said that was probably not it. Almost all of them had used the bathroom on the first floor, and if that were the cause, the Middle-aged man shouldn't have been the only one to die.

"Maybe it only happens one at a time?" the woman with a mole on her lip said. "You should know that ghosts rarely kill people one after another in such a short time."

The burly man glanced at her, but, unusually, didn't argue.

"So those things really do exist."

Jiang Cheng's long-held suspicions had been confirmed. The door that had appeared in his dream undoubtedly belonged to the realm of the supernatural, and it seemed reasonable that ghosts would appear in supernatural events.

"So what we have to fight in this world isn't people, but ghosts?!" The male office worker turned deathly pale with fright.

Given his earlier behavior, no one was willing to pay him any attention.

"If someone has died, that means this villa is our real destination. The journey was never real. That bus only brought us here." The girl looked around. "The problem lies with this villa."

"What could be wrong with the villa?"

The girl stared at the chubby man who had asked. After a moment, she said, "For example, something terrible might have happened here in the past."

The villa looked quite luxurious, and there was no sign of damage inside. It had simply been abandoned for no apparent reason, which was indeed suspicious. Jiang Cheng thought the girl's theory sounded plausible.

The burly man walked to the villa's front door, grabbed the handle, and pulled hard. The door didn't budge.

"It's locked." The burly man turned around. "Looks like this is definitely the mission location. We can't leave until we figure out what happened in this villa."

"Now that we've confirmed the mission location, let's split up and look for clues. It's already morning, so it should be relatively safe."

Even so, the Middle-aged man's death had served as a warning to everyone, especially Jiang Cheng, the chubby man, and the male office worker, the three newcomers.

To search more efficiently, they divided themselves into groups, each pairing a veteran with a newcomer.

The chubby man went with the burly man, the male office worker went with the woman with a mole on her lip, and Jiang Cheng teamed up with the girl.

To be safe, they restricted their search to the first floor of the villa for now.

The burly man's group took the living room and the area near the entrance. The woman's group searched the storage room in a remote corner, while Jiang Cheng and the girl went to the kitchen and dining room.

They stayed within one another's line of sight so they could help each other if anything happened.

This time, with their earlier experience to guide them, they searched more thoroughly and carefully.

Half an hour later, they regrouped by the fireplace. It was now fully daylight.

"This is what we found in the storage room." The woman with a mole on her lip took out a thick hemp rope. There were dark reddish stains on one end.

The burly man took it, rubbed it between his fingers, then held it under his nose and sniffed. "It's blood." He looked up at the woman.

She nodded. "It was behind a stack of firewood. I also found this nearby."

She opened her right hand. In her palm lay a pale green brooch shaped like a maple leaf.

Had a girl once been tied up and left there?

"What did you find?" The woman turned her head toward the burly man.

"Come and take a look." The burly man headed for the entrance, and the others followed him.

Standing beside the door, the burly man felt along the wall and pressed a spot. Jiang Cheng had excellent eyesight and saw that it was a pale blue button.

The button was embedded in a painting beside the door, blending into its sky-blue background. It would have been hard to notice without looking closely.

As soon as the button was pressed, a crack appeared in the wall to the right of the door. It slowly opened, revealing a built-in shoe cabinet that had been cleverly concealed.

The shoe cabinet had three tiers. The third was still intact, but the divider between the first and second tiers had broken, leaving all kinds of shoes jumbled together.

After sorting through them, they found two pairs of men's leather shoes, a pair of red women's high heels, and three pairs of women's casual shoes.

The woman with a mole on her lip picked one pair of casual shoes from the three and placed it beside the red high heels. "These two pairs probably belonged to the same person."

The remaining two pairs of casual shoes clearly belonged to a younger girl, and both pairs were exactly the same size.

On the third tier sat a pair of men's sneakers. After comparing them, they saw that their size differed considerably from that of the men's leather shoes.

"Based on what we've found so far, this villa was once home to a family of four: the husband, the wife, a girl, and a boy." The girl looked up. "That also matches the bedroom layout on the second floor: a master bedroom for the couple, a bedroom for the girl, and another for the boy."