Chapter 1079: Sin and Greater Sin
“What happened?” More and more people gathered at the fifth-floor corridor. Many tenants ran over. Chen Ge dragged Wen Qing to the corner. It was not the time to get mixed up. Xiang Nuan’s blood door did not disappear. When Chen Ge entered the door, the monster from the living room followed. At the time, he tried to close the door, but he was not the door pusher, so that was beyond his capacity. Chen Ge suspected that the monster following them was the killer, but only he knew about the monster’s presence.
“I’ll have to figure out a way to lead the tenants to find and locate that monster.” Looking at the gore inside the room, Chen Ge took a light breath. To act so brazenly behind another person’s door, the monster from the cursed hospital must have some kind of back up. “The cursed hospital’s study on the door should have begun much earlier than mine. They understand these ‘doors’ better than I do. Perhaps the world that is filled with danger in my eyes looks different to them.”
The cursed hospital had cultivated many monsters like the non smilers. These people had lost their consciousness and humanity. All they did was smile; they would be forever hated, perfect to survive behind the door. Standing in the corner, as Chen Ge listened to the discussion among the tenants, he tried to come up with a solution as fast as he could.
“It’s quite easy to see why the outsider would kill someone. The front door is locked, so they can’t leave this building. This means that they need a safehouse to hide in. After killing the owner, that means that they will be able to hide inside that room and use that room as a secure spot to continue observing and investigating the rest of the building.”
From this, it showed the different side of how Chen Ge and the cursed hospital dealt with things. The bottom line for the cursed hospital was much lower. In their eyes, the ‘people’ behind the door could not be counted as people. As long as it was to their benefit, they could be killed without any question.
“That was not a bad idea, but some kind of accident probably happened during the process and caused them to abandon this room and go searching for another room.”
With that in mind, Chen Ge looked at the girl inside the room hugging the dead body. “Is the reason for that this little girl?”
Using Yin Yang Vision, Chen Ge did not find anything too special about the girl. She looked soft and weak, completely unthreatening.
“Move out of the way! Don’t block my way!”
While Chen Ge was thinking, a young man’s voice came from the sixth floor. He turned back to look and saw a disheveled man rushing down the stairs. This man looked more desperate than the other tenants.
“Yan Er!” The young man was calling an unfamiliar name. When the girl inside the room heard his voice, she cried harder. Pushing his way through the crowd, when the young man arrived at Room 504, he was stunned. He froze at the door, the energy slowly leaving his body.
“Big brother…” The girl’s face was covered in blood and tears. She looked both pitiable and scary.
“What happened here?” The young man stepped into the room and knelt next to the middle-aged man. His body was shaking like he could not believe what he was seeing. The girl finally found a sanctuary. With tears in her eyes, she started to narrate what happened earlier.
The girl’s name was Qu Yan. She shared Room 504 with her father, Qu Gui. Her older brother, Qu Yin, and his girlfriend stayed above them in Room 601. Qu Yan had the habit of sleeping early, and since her father had serious snoring issues, she would close the bedroom door every night. But earlier, when Qu Yan was fast asleep, she heard strange noises coming from inside her room. It sounded like mice biting on the closet or something crawling under the bed.
Qu Yan was frightened, so she quickly switched on the bedside lamp. There was nothing that suggested anything was wrong, but Qu Yan could not fall back to sleep; her mind kept wandering, feeling eyes on her from underneath the bed or inside the closet. She tossed and turned. The more she thought about it, the more scared she became. She wrapped herself in her blanket and left her bedroom to find her father.
Knocking on her father’s door, Qu Yan told her father that she was scared because it felt like someone else had entered the room. Qu Gui tried his best to console Qu Yan, but honestly, he did not think much of what she said. Seeing that Qu Yan was reluctant to go back to her own bedroom, he succumbed and allowed Qu Yan to sleep in his room. He told Qu Yan that he would guard the living room and stop any bad guys from entering. That way, Qu Yan could sleep soundly. After bidding Qu Yan good night, the middle-aged man left his bedroom for the living room.
After her father left, Qu Yan was still quite unsettled due to being left alone, so she went to lock the door.
A few minutes later, when Qu Yan felt like sleeping again, she suddenly heard the doorknob of the bedroom behind twisted. She only heard it once. When the person realized that the bedroom door was locked, they stopped doing it. That banished sleep from Qu Yan’s mind. She called her father’s name loudly, but no one answered from the living room. Fear wrapped around her heart, and she screamed louder and louder until knocking came from the door of the living room. The neighbors’ voices could be heard outside the front door. She then decided to open the bedroom door to check.
The moment she opened the door, her mind went blank. The whole living room was covered in blood. Her father was splayed out in the middle of the room, unmoving. The girl had no idea when she opened the front door. The neighbors probably just wanted the girl to be quiet so that they could rest, but when they saw the scene inside the room, even they were stunned.
“The entrance of this apartment is locked. The murderer must be still in the building!” Qu Yin tried his best to calm down. He resisted the sadness. With bloodshot eyes, he stared at the gathered neighbors. “The person that killed my father is now inside this building!”
The neighbors looked at each other. The familiar faces that they saw daily had a murderer hiding among them. That was a scary thought.
Looking at the pained expression on Qu Yan and Qu Yin’s faces, Chen Ge had confusion running through his mind.
“Qu Yan was the one who first discovered that something was off. She felt like a stranger had infiltrated their home, and she was proven right later, but how did that person manage to sneak in so silently? The person probably had the key to Qu Yan’s home and knew the place very well. Combining all that happened after that and the appearance, and timing, how come it feels like for me the greatest suspect is the older brother, Qu Yin?”
Chen Ge’s analysis was not unfounded. He had followed the police on multiple cases. He was quite familiar with investigation, logical construction, and the chain of evidence.
“Qu Yin lives on the sixth floor, right above the fifth floor, so he would have heard Qu Yan’s screams, but he was not the first to the scene. In fact, he arrived much later. What was he doing during this period? Changing out of his bloody clothes? Cleaning the blood stains from his hands?”
His eyes wandering between Qu Yin and Qu Yan. Actually, Chen Ge had a more brazen suspicion. The killer could have been Qu Yan too. This could have all been staged, but the chance of that was not big. After all, in terms of motive, why would any of them kill Qu Gui?
Chen Ge initially suspected that the killer was from the cursed hospital, but things did not appear to be that simple. Things became much complicated. Chen Ge’s mind from spinning. As he eavesdropped on the neighbors, he found out that the relationship between Qu Yin and Qu Gui was bad, and it was due to the Qu Yin’s girlfriend. It was the reason Qu Yin had moved out. Qu Yin had the motive, but it was not that strong a motive. After all, Qu Gui was his father; he would not kill him for his girlfriend, right?
“The walls are painted with cursed pictures, so the actual killer should be the monster from the cursed hospital. There is no question about that. However, I feel like someone is assisting these monsters from the cursed hospital.” Chen Ge kept his eyes on Qu Yin. “The people from the cursed hospital has probably formed some kind of contract with Qu Yin. The monster helped kill Qu Gui while Qu Yin helped to provide them with a cover. That way, it was an exchange of benefits, but it tied both of them to the same boat as well.”
The monster from the cursed hospital understood the rules behind the door better than Chen Ge. That came from years of studying, and they knew how to easily obtain the door for themselves. With threats and benefits, they could get anyone to work with them.
Before sin, there was deeper sin. The monster from the cursed hospital was not afraid that they would be scammed.
“I seem to have underestimated that cursed hospital.” Chen Ge dragged Wen Qing back a few more steps. They melted into the crowd to avoid Qu Yin’s sight.