Caught!

Chen Ge checked the dates on all the text messages. They had all been sent after midnight, which matched Wang Qi's account exactly. But that was also what he found most terrifying.

How could a corpse sealed inside a wall send text messages every night?

A supernatural phenomenon? If a Vengeful Spirit were really behind this, how could the people who dug up the corpse still be alive and well?

"Someone's definitely behind this." Chen Ge had pieced together all the clues, and he knew it perfectly well. "The person using the dead man's phone to text Wang Qi every day is the one who killed his fiancée. He's also the real culprit behind the Massacre Case from five years ago."

"I think I know who the killer is." Chen Ge stood inside the hut, holding the phone. "The tenants in the Apartment Building think Wang Qi is crazy, and the Landlord always drives him away whenever he sees him. He's the only person I've seen tonight who doesn't live in the Apartment Building but keeps turning up nearby. So he must be staying somewhere close to it."

"But the key problem is this: when I argued with the Landlord over the rent, he told me there wasn't anywhere to stay within several kilometers. That means Wang Qi couldn't have been living in another apartment or a Hotel. Thinking about it, he was probably hiding in this Wooden Hut most of the time."

"If he's the owner of this Wooden Hut, then everything makes sense. This poor man carrying a Missing Person Notice and searching every day for his missing wife is actually the one who killed his own fiancée!"

Chen Ge could hardly believe that he had actually chatted with a murderer and even tried to open up to him.

His Adam's apple bobbed. Only now did he begin to feel afraid. "That lunatic must have suffered some kind of trauma. He collects the dead woman's clothes and uses her phone to send himself messages. Maybe there's another personality hidden inside him, one that takes over his body whenever he falls asleep."

The more he thought about it, the more terrifying it seemed. Chen Ge scrolled through the phone, hoping to find more clues. "The pink phone should have his fingerprints on it. It's evidence, so I need to keep it safe."

As he stared at the screen, he couldn't tell whether his nerves were making his eyes play tricks on him or if something else was going on. He saw the blurry reflection of a girl. She looked about seventeen or eighteen and was wearing a bloodstained school uniform.

He rubbed his eyes and was about to take another look when a sudden chill brushed the back of his neck, as though something had touched him. The shock made Chen Ge whip around!

The air in the Wooden Hut seemed to freeze. As he looked behind him, Chen Ge felt his heart was about to leap out of his chest.

The door had opened at some point without a sound. A little more than two meters away, Wang Qi stared at him with bloodshot eyes and slowly raised the axe in his hand!

Time seemed to stop. The two men stood on opposite sides of the hut, neither moving.

"Just a little more..." Wang Qi's voice sounded completely different now. It was filled with a suppressed madness, like an uncontrollable beast.

Chen Ge said nothing. He gripped the Tool Hammer tightly, feeling a little grateful for the ghostly figure that had appeared on the screen. If the Vengeful Spirit hadn't shown itself to warn him, Wang Qi might have already injured him.

"What a shame." Wang Qi took a step forward. Chen Ge immediately raised the hammer in front of himself. "Don't get worked up. You saw what was on the phone?"

Chen Ge had no idea what this lunatic was planning, so he stayed on high alert.

"It's really nothing special." The weariness vanished from Wang Qi's face. He was excited, completely unlike the man he'd seemed to be at first. "From the moment you entered the Apartment Building and we first spoke, I told you my wife had to be hidden somewhere inside. So? Was I lying?"

He lifted the clothes his fiancée had once worn with the axe. "After all, I was the one who sealed her inside the wall."

As he spoke, Wang Qi's tone suddenly changed. His emotions swung wildly, as though he'd remembered something painful. Gripping the axe, he brought it down hard on the clothes. "I did nothing wrong. She was the one who was wrong. She insisted on leaving. I just wanted to do everything I could to keep her here."

Wang Qi blocked the doorway, axe in hand, and stared at the clothes he'd hacked to pieces on the floor. "I didn't want to do this, you know? I didn't want it to turn out like this..."

No matter what Wang Qi said, it didn't change the fact that he'd killed someone, so Chen Ge paid no attention to his words.

Clutching the Tool Hammer, Chen Ge stealthily slipped the dead man's phone into his pocket. He kept his eyes on the hut's door, looking for an opening and ready to escape at any moment.

"I'm a very unlikeable person. That's what almost everyone around me says. No, even if they don't say it, I can feel it." Wang Qi wasn't merely a psychological case; his mental state was seriously disturbed too. Every time he spoke, it sounded as if he were talking to himself. He seemed trapped in a vicious circle, unable to climb out.

As Wang Qi spoke, Chen Ge slowly shifted his position. He ran three or four escape plans through his mind, like distracting Wang Qi or luring him closer, but the hut was so cramped that none of them seemed likely to work.

Wang Qi's voice grew sharper. He was becoming more and more unstable.

The longer he stayed, the more danger Chen Ge felt he was in. He decided to stop waiting and forget about all those half-baked plans. He tensed every muscle, and as Wang Qi neared the edge of losing control and began swinging the axe unconsciously, Chen Ge pushed off with his legs and charged at him like a cannonball!

Even a cornered rabbit will kick at an eagle. This was probably the boldest decision Chen Ge had made in his first twenty-some years of life. While facing the true culprit behind a serial murder case, he was even more reckless than the murderer!

The two or three meters between them vanished in an instant. Wang Qi was a beat slower to react in the darkness. Chen Ge had the advantage of surprise, and he'd already been aiming for Wang Qi's head for several minutes.

"Thud!"

The Tool Hammer slammed down hard. Chen Ge felt a hint of warmth on his wrist, then kicked Wang Qi in the stomach and bolted through the door!

As soon as he burst out of the Wooden Hut, Chen Ge ran toward the dense woods. This time, he headed in the right direction. The trees gradually thinned, and the view opened up. But the danger hadn't passed. He could feel someone following him through the woods. The flashlight beam bobbed and kept striking the branches; the sounds of them snapping made that clear.

He didn't dare stop for a moment. Chen Ge ran for his life until he reached the paved road near the town. Only then did the sounds behind him slowly fade away.

"They must have left." Chen Ge ran several hundred more meters along the paved road. Suddenly, sirens rang in his ears. Looking into the distance, he saw police lights appear at the end of the road as several police cars came speeding toward him.

"I'm saved!" He felt as if he'd come across long-lost family and stood in the middle of the road. "I'm the one who called the police! I caught the culprit behind the Massacre Case from five years ago!"