The Real Culprit!

The door panel slammed heavily against the wall, and Chen Ge rushed into the room, pulling open the glass window.

"Damn! So high?"

Standing by the windowsill and looking down, it was at least three or four meters from the ground.

Hurried footsteps echoed from the corridor, and the landlord and the tattooed man were rapidly closing in.

Chen Ge had no time to think, he climbed out the window, gripping the windowsill with his hands and stepping on the anti-theft bars on the first floor.

"He must have seen us moving the body!"

"We absolutely cannot let him go!"

The landlord's ugly, irritable face appeared at the doorway, brandishing a cleaver, his expression ferocious: "Still trying to run?!"

With this kind of setup, Chen Ge didn't dare to hesitate and let go, jumping down.

His arm was scraped by the wall, and his clothes were torn by the anti-theft bars, creating a large gash. After landing, Chen Ge rolled on the ground, picked up the tool hammer, and ran towards the outer wall of the courtyard.

"Quick! Catch him!" the landlord roared, throwing the cleaver in his hand at Chen Ge.

His head felt cold, and Chen Ge watched as the cleaver narrowly missed him, embedding itself deeply in the grass behind him. Cold sweat streamed down his face: "I absolutely cannot fall into the hands of these people, they already intend to kill me!"

The anti-theft door of the apartment building was also opened at this moment, and the fat man and the woman who had been lurking on the first floor rushed out, holding pruning shears used for trimming bushes.

"A bunch of lunatics!" Chen Ge ran at full speed, darting like an arrow towards the iron gate of the courtyard. He stepped on the new large lock the landlord had installed and, grabbing the rusty chain, climbed over the gate to escape.

The apartment building was surrounded by a dense forest. The night was pitch black, making it impossible to see the path. Coupled with being chased by several people, in his haste, Chen Ge plunged directly into the woods.

One chasing, one fleeing, the flashlight beams swept across intermittently, and the curses of the landlord and the tattooed man echoed behind him. Chen Ge didn't dare to look back, his mind filled with only one thought – escape quickly!

His clothes and pants were torn by branches and vines, and he was covered in mud and leaves. After running for a full fifteen minutes, Chen Ge finally managed to shake off the landlord and the others.

He half-crouched in the bushes, watching the faint lights sweeping back and forth in the distance. His fingers dug into the soil as he gasped for air.

That was too close!

When he was trapped in the apartment building, if he had hesitated or made a wrong choice in even one instance, he could have lost his life.

"The difficulty of this trial mission is too high, isn't it?" The missions issued by the Black Phone gambled with life and death, and even more terrifyingly, they happened in reality.

He had temporarily shaken off the landlord, but that didn't mean his situation was safe. Chen Ge huddled in the bushes, actually worried that if he turned his head, he would suddenly see the landlord and the others appearing behind him with pruning shears and a cleaver.

His heart rate returned to normal, and Chen Ge slowly stood up from the bushes. The landlord's flashlight beam had disappeared. The dense forest at night was deathly silent, with very few insect chirps or bird calls.

"Which way should I go?"

He was unfamiliar with the area and had been running wildly in the dense forest. Now, he couldn't even tell north from south.

"Maybe I should just hide here until morning?"

Chen Ge took out his phone and found that the livestream was still ongoing. After being black for over an hour, the screen was filled with question marks. Even seasoned viewers were starting to get confused by such a bizarre livestream room.

He didn't interact with his viewers. He checked the time and was about to open He Shan's reply when he suddenly heard the sound of branches shaking from his rear left.

Chen Ge immediately stuffed his phone back into his pocket, preventing the screen light from revealing his presence.

Gripping the tool hammer, his palms were sweating nervously as he stared intently at the rustling bushes.

After a moment, a faint beam of light shone over.

"Someone? Who's there?"

Just as Chen Ge was about to spring up and swing his tool hammer, he heard a familiar voice.

"Wang Qi? Didn't he leave the apartment building long ago? Why is he back in the middle of the night?" Although Chen Ge was curious, he knew that curiosity killed the cat and remained still in his spot.

"Did I see wrong? Impossible." Wang Qi swept his flashlight around a few times, pacing restlessly in the same spot.

"Absolutely must not go over. This person has as many problems as the tenants of Ping An Apartment." Chen Ge not only didn't approach Wang Qi but began to actively avoid him, moving in the opposite direction.

He hadn't gone far when Chen Ge found the terrain becoming increasingly steep. He seemed to have run in the wrong direction and entered the Back Mountain alone.

Passing through the bushes, a slope appeared before him. Surrounded by trees, Chen Ge saw a very simple wooden hut. A sign was nailed to the door. He leaned closer to examine it: "Fire prevention is like epidemic prevention, don't be careless; improve the investment environment, afforestation comes first."

"This looks like a place where a forest ranger would live." He tried pushing the door. The wooden door was unlocked. With a creak, a strange smell emanated from it.

"What is that?" He didn't dare to turn on his phone's flashlight, only increasing the screen brightness.

The wooden hut wasn't large, with various daily necessities scattered around, like a pile of trash.

Sniffing, Chen Ge walked towards the area with the strongest smell. He lifted the bed board, and underneath was a large pile of moldy clothes.

"Hoarding?" What his eyes saw was more severe than he had imagined. Most of the clothes under the bed were women's, never washed, and stained.

Casually picking up a few to compare sizes, Chen Ge found that these women's clothes were all the same size, likely belonging to the same person.

"The soil stains on them haven't completely dried and cracked. This piece of clothing seems to have been worn within the last day or two?"

Chen Ge possessed the Corpse Makeup skill and had a thorough understanding of human body lines and structures. While measuring the sizes with his fingers, the image of the female corpse embedded in the wall instantly appeared in his mind.

"The size fits perfectly. These clothes likely belong to the woman in the wall!"

Why would clothes worn by a dead person be hidden in this wooden hut? And they had been worn within the last few days!

Chen Ge's heart began to race. He spread the women's clothes in his hand on the ground and, from their pockets, found some crumpled scraps of paper with phrases like "I love you" faintly written on them.

"This handwriting..." Chen Ge then took out the paper strips he had retrieved from the doll's body. Comparing the two, the handwriting was eighty to ninety percent similar.

"The note inside the doll is from five years ago, yet these women's clothes were clearly discarded here within the last few weeks. Spanning five years, why would they share so many similarities?"

The same handwriting, the same confession letters—could the perpetrator of both cases be the same person?

He picked up the clothes again, and just as he was about to close the bed board, a phone with a peach-colored casing fell out from an inner pocket of the garments.

"The victim's phone?"

Reaching out to pick it up, Chen Ge pressed the power button and discovered that the screen was currently in the middle of drafting a text message.

"Save me?"

A bad premonition surfaced in his heart. With trembling hands, he opened the outbox, where every single message contained only two words—Save me!