Chapter 292: Chapter 253: Accident
After running all the way back to the security room, Mo Daidai, who was at the telephone, visibly panicked, stood up quickly, "What’s the situation here?"
Yang Xiao picked up the bottle of mineral water on Mo Daidai’s desk, gulped down two mouthfuls, and only after catching his breath did he recount the whole incident to Mo Daidai.
"Well done," Mo Daidai’s eyes were full of admiration, "This way, even if you encounter that old thing again, as long as you have the telephone with you, you can remain unbeatable."
Mo Daidai gave Yang Xiao a sly suggestion, "How about this, you take the telephone apart and bring half of it with you next time, leave the other half with me, I’ll hide it for you. That way, the old guy definitely won’t dare to harm you fatally, you’ll only suffer some flesh wounds at most, you just have to endure it."
"Ha, your calculation almost hit me in the face, and you say you’ll hide it for me? You just want an extra treasure to control the old thing, don’t you." Both men were cut from the same cloth, and Yang Xiao saw through Mo Daidai’s little scheme at a glance.
Mo Daidai wasn’t upset about being exposed, just chuckled, "Actually, I have good intentions, if you’re not willing, then forget it."
Upon finishing, Mo Daidai was ready to go out on patrol. Yang Xiao kindly reminded him to make sure not to pass by the fourth floor, worried that the old fellow might be waiting at the door with a gun, ready to blast Mo Daidai as he passed by.
"Chu Xi, what do you do in the real world?" Mo Daidai stopped at the door and turned around to ask.
Yang Xiao stood straight, with an air of integrity, "Policeman."
"Believe what you will, but I want to tell you, if you have nowhere good to go, you can come find me after you get out," said Mo Daidai as he opened the door and walked out of the room.
After about an hour, Mo Daidai came back. He looked extremely tired, and his body was covered with a large area of water stains.
"What happened to you?" Yang Xiao asked curiously.
Mo Daidai sat down on the bed with a flop, lay down, and took deep breaths, "Tonight, grandma made me wash her feet, and I did it for a whole half-hour."
"It seems very dangerous." Yang Xiao knew Mo Daidai was not simple; grasping the difficulty of having worked him up like this.
"Not dangerous, but very troublesome." Mo Daidai took a long breath and sat up from the bed while moving his arms, "Only when I took off grandma’s cloth shoes did I discover that her feet were rotting. If I used a little force, skin and flesh would rub off, so I could only wash gently without a brush—just by hand, bit by bit. After washing, I also had to pick out her toenails that had fallen into the bloody water in the footbath and glue them back on, that’s why it took so long."
Yang Xiao waved his hands in disgust, "Alright, stop there. I’ve got the picture."
What Yang Xiao really cared about was what information Mo Daidai got from grandma; thinking with so much trouble, the payoff wouldn’t be small.
Hearing this, Mo Daidai’s face became serious, his voice lowered, "Grandma was very scared today. I felt it the moment I entered the door. Before I left, grandma told me to be careful. The Source Ghost appeared tonight, it showed up in the apartment and killed someone."
"Who was killed?" Yang Xiao probed.
"Grandma doesn’t know exactly who, but she sensed the presence of the Source Ghost. Every time this fellow appears, it kills someone. I had grandma point me in the general direction, and I think..." Mo Daidai paused, "it’s Cheng Ya."
Cheng Ya had already had part of her body stolen by the surgery ghost, and her brain was also affected; even if she didn’t die tonight, it would be difficult for her to survive till the end.
To Yang Xiao, the fact that Cheng Ya would die was not surprising, but he couldn’t figure out why she would die tonight. She had absolutely no tasks tonight; the ones carrying out commission tasks were Tong Han and Qu Yi, and she wasn’t scheduled for patrol either. There was no reason for her to be killed by the ghost.
"Did the rules change?" Yang Xiao was most worried about this point, as the closer they got to the truth, the more dangerous it became.
"I don’t know, but we’ll find out tomorrow morning." Mo Daidai said no more after this.
Both men, having nothing to shy away from, simply squeezed into the same bed to sleep, and didn’t wake up until daylight.
At a little past 8 o’clock in the morning, everyone gathered in front of the security room, and to Yang Xiao and Mo Daidai’s surprise, not only was Cheng Ya absent, but Qu Yi was also nowhere to be seen.
"Two people are dead?" Fu Xuechang visibly panicked, if these two were indeed dead, there would only be five of them left, scarcely meeting the minimum requirement for the task.
"What task was Qu Yi performing?" Tong Han also looked unsettled, limping slightly as he walked, his right shoe stained with splotches of blood.
"Room 5042, providing inspiration for the mystery novel writer Mr. Wen." Li Qingxuan recalled, with a particularly strong impression of the novelist’s occupation.
"Let’s go take a look."
The group arrived at room 5042, but the outside of the door was relatively clean, without the large black garbage bags that would indicate a body, and after a search nearby, they found no clues.
Having no luck there, the group continued upstairs to Cheng Ya’s room. They knocked for a while but got no response from inside. Fu Xuechang put his ear to the door and after a moment, shook his head at the others, spreading a premonition of ill fortune among them.
There was no other choice but to break in and check, Li Qingxuan asked everyone to step aside so that he and Fu Changxue, the two men with the strongest builds, could kick down the door.
The door was not very sturdy, and after several attempts, the lock broke and the door hinge snapped, sending the entire wooden door crashing down.
In an instant, a thick stench of blood assaulted their senses. Now prepared for the worst, it seemed likely that Cheng Ya had met a grim fate.
Those who were still alive were veterans and no strangers to dead bodies. For them, finding clues on the body was of utmost importance.
Following the smell of blood, they arrived outside the bedroom, the door slightly ajar. Pushing it open, the scene inside made everyone frown involuntarily, as the single bed was drenched in blood, the blanket dyed red, hiding a distorted human shape beneath its bulging form.
Aside from this, there was no other damage in the room.
Yang Xiao glanced at Mo Daidai, affirming that his words from the previous night were true. This was their first encounter with such a bizarre murder scene in the apartment, reminiscent of those he had seen in the briefings from the bureau before arriving, where, besides the solitary body, there were no signs of disturbance.
"Something about this scene is off, Cheng Ya was killed by that Source Ghost," Tong Han quickly concluded, a matter that seemed obvious.
Yang Xiao stepped forward, grabbed the corner of the blanket, and slowly lifted it to reveal a horrendous corpse. The limbs were twisted and broken backwards into an eerie arc around the body, the abdomen ripped open with intestines and organs spilling out in a jumbled mess. But what truly made everyone’s hearts tremble was the face of the body.
"How... how could it be her?!"
"Qu Yi!!"
