Translator: Cinder Translations
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Fan Li seemed to think of something, and his expression suddenly became strange. He picked up a pair of sneakers and turned to walk out the door.
He walked down the corridor, as if heading downstairs.
Everyone followed him. The Fatty and Jiang Cheng were at the back of the group, and as they passed the boys' bedroom, the Fatty was pulled by Jiang Cheng into the bedroom.
"What are you doing?" the Fatty asked in terror.
"Just checking a few things."
"Why are you dragging me along?"
Jiang Cheng pulled open the drawers in the bedroom one by one. After a moment, he squatted down beside the bed and dug out a pair of slippers from under it. He then looked up at the Fatty and calmly replied, "Because I'm scared."
Fatty: "..."
After a while, Jiang Cheng and the Fatty arrived in the living room downstairs and saw that Sister Nuan and the others were gathered around the shoe cabinet, all the shoes turned out and neatly arranged on the floor.
Hearing Jiang Cheng coming downstairs, Fan Li set down a pair of women's casual shoes in his hand. The Fatty noticed that the faces of the three of them were not looking good.
Just as Chen Xiaomeng opened her mouth to speak, Jiang Cheng said, "Did you discover that there are not only two boys in this villa, but also two girls?"
Fan Li's eyes trembled as if he wanted to say something immediately, but he held back and, after a moment, asked in a deep voice, "What exactly do you do?"
"Stop with the useless talk. First, tell me what you've discovered," Jiang Cheng placed the items in his hand down and looked at him calmly.
Fan Li picked up two pairs of shoes to show Jiang Cheng. They were two pairs of women's casual shoes, identical in size, which they had previously judged to belong to the same girl.
With a grim face, Fan Li turned the two pairs of shoes over to show the soles. "The outer side of the left shoe is severely worn, while the wear on the right shoe is concentrated on the inner side."
He looked up and stared into Jiang Cheng's eyes. "The wear on the soles is related to walking posture, and once a habit is formed, it's nearly impossible to correct. So these are two different people's shoes. There are two girls in this villa."
"But why is there only one girl's bedroom on the second floor?" Chen Xiaomeng asked, "And there's only a single bed in the bedroom?"
Jiang Cheng shook his head. "The two small bedrooms upstairs are both occupied by girls, each having a single bed."
"What do you mean?"
"This is what I found in the bedroom covered with military posters." Jiang Cheng took out the slippers he found under the bed, "The size is small; you can compare it with the casual shoes."
Actually, it didn't need to be compared, but Fan Li still took them and placed them together. Now everyone could see clearly that the owner of these slippers should be a woman.
"Isn't it too far-fetched to say that just based on a pair of slippers that there's a girl living in that room? Perhaps these slippers were left behind by a girl in the boys' bedroom," someone said.
"And looking at the decoration in that bedroom, it seems like a boy lives there," another remarked.
"But men wouldn't use such things in their bedrooms." Jiang Cheng pulled out a package from his pocket and handed it to Chen Xiaomeng, who had raised the question.
After receiving it, she raised her eyebrows—it was a pack of opened sanitary napkins.
Sister Nuan looked at Jiang Cheng. "So you're saying that both bedrooms upstairs are occupied by girls, and one of them has a personality that leans more towards masculinity?"
Jiang Cheng nodded. "That's right."
Chen Xiaomeng seemed to just realize something, her expression a bit confused. "Then where are the other two boys living? We've only found three bedrooms in this villa."
One of them was the master bedroom for the male and female owners.
Based on their deductions, the remaining two small bedrooms belonged to the two girls in the villa.
"Could they be on the third floor?" the Fatty suggested quietly. "We haven't been there yet."
Before he finished speaking, Sister Nuan shook her head and said, "That shouldn't be the case. I observed when we arrived; this villa only has windows on the first and second floors. The third floor is a dark room."
Common sense dictates that no one would place a bedroom in a dark room without windows.
Chen Xiaomeng seemed to realize something, her expression tense as she said, "So these two boys are not members of this family; they are outsiders!"
Fan Li glanced at her and coldly replied, "They should be called intruders."
"And they're not boys; they're two adult men," Jiang Cheng added.
At these words, Chen Xiaomeng shuddered violently.
Indeed, after the assumption that these two were the children of the male and female hosts was overturned, just looking at the two pairs of shoes left behind, one was close to Jiang Cheng's size, while the other was even larger than Fan Li's size.
Jiang Cheng looked at the two pairs of sports shoes lined up on the floor, saying, "When I first saw this pair of shoes, I found it very strange. They are too cheap and quite worn out, clearly not matching the other shoes in the shoe cabinet. The person living in this villa doesn't seem like someone who would settle for such shoes."
The living room fell silent for a moment, as the previous line of thought was overturned, and the narrative shifted from a relatively straightforward family tragedy to one of intrusion by criminals.
After a while, the Fatty looked around and quietly said, "So two men broke into this villa, first taking care of the male and female hosts, then imprisoning their two daughters, and finally killing them."
"Remember the water stains left by the female ghost? And the hair of a woman left in the bathtub of the bathroom?" Sister Nuan said with a grim face. "That ghost was probably drowned in the bathtub."
"As for Xie Yu, who was scared to death and then dragged away for abuse, it was also the ghost's revenge, which explains why the ghost made him wear those shoes left by the intruders."
"Because she imagined Xie Yu as the person who once abused her."
As the few of them analyzed the truth of the case, the day had already brightened. No one urged the Fatty to cook; they simply ate some small bread and snacks to stave off hunger.
It wasn't that they cared for the agile Fatty, but their time was running out.
Jiang Cheng had already noticed that the days in this world were becoming shorter, while the nights grew longer.
According to his estimates, in no more than two nights, the daytime in this world would completely disappear.
"What will happen when the daytime disappears?" The Fatty's eyes widened like two light bulbs, his throat rolling hard.
Jiang Cheng turned around, patting the Fatty's shoulder reassuringly, "Don't worry."
The Fatty's pale cheeks flushed slightly.
Jiang Cheng continued, "At worst, it means the ghosts will appear and kill without restraint."
Fatty: "???"
The group walked down the second-floor corridor, taking advantage of the relatively safe time during the day to conduct a second search of the villa.
(End of this chapter)
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