Translator: Cinder Translations
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"How did you wake up this morning?"
Fatty replied without thinking, "I was woken up by the screams of the woman in pajamas. She was shouting that someone was dead."
"Hmm, what did you see when you ran outside?"
"Everyone was gathered in front of a door, and there was a large pool of fresh blood on the ground in front of it," he explained as he recalled the events.
"And what about the woman in pajamas?"
"She," Fatty thought seriously for a moment, "was sitting on the ground, seemingly terrified, screaming nonstop. Later, she was slapped by the guy in the duck-billed cap, and that's when she quieted down."
"Do you remember her position?"
"Yes," Fatty paused, as if something didn't click for him, but he still answered honestly, "She was right behind the crowd, opposite the door where the incident happened."
He vividly depicted the situation at that time.
"Is there a problem with this?" he then asked.
"Of course there is a problem," Jiang Cheng replied calmly. "Her position is not right."
"The room where the incident occurred doesn't have a room number, but by checking the rooms one by one in order, it should be Room 414. This means that the room where the incident happened is closest to Room 407 among the four rooms we have."
"It was already bright outside at that time. Common sense would dictate that the woman in pajamas would quickly notice the large pool of blood in front of Room 414 as soon as she stepped out, leading her to scream immediately. How could she wait until she reached the door of Room 414 to start screaming and then just collapse there?" Jiang Cheng looked at Fatty. "She's not blind."
Fatty's eyes widened, staring at Jiang Cheng in disbelief.
It had to be said, this was indeed against common sense.
"This is just the first point." Jiang Cheng didn't give Fatty a chance to speak and continued, "Secondly, as a newcomer, and with her only roommate leaving the previous night and being unaccounted for, who gave her the courage to be the first to push open the door and step outside, not worried about a ghost standing right outside?"
Jiang Cheng continued, "If I were her, I would never do that, nor would I dare to."
"What about the third point?"
Jiang Cheng paused for a few seconds and said slowly, "The body of the woman in the cheongsam has been tampered with; someone had come before us."
Fatty thought for a moment and then raised his head, just as his mouth opened, he heard Jiang Cheng say, "I know what you're about to say: that it's possible a ghost also did something to the body, right?"
Fatty nodded.
During the last mission, Sister Nuan's body was taken by a ghost and hung upside down on a cross, while clerk Xie Yu was wrapped in a quilt and dragged away after being scared to death by a ghost, suffering a horrible fate.
"But the strange thing is that the woman in the cheongsam only has one injury, which is her broken jaw," Jiang Cheng continued after pondering for a moment. "However, the position of the buttons on her cheongsam collar has changed."
"Buttons?" Fatty frowned. "Position?"
"Yes," Jiang Cheng nodded. "The cheongsam the woman was wearing had three buttons at the collar. The first time I saw her, she had only fastened the top two. When the person from Room 405 came out just before she went to bed, she was startled and came out too, and at that time, she still had only the top two buttons fastened, with the last one left undone."
"But on the body of the woman in the cheongsam, all three buttons were neatly fastened."
"I don't think a ghost would have the mood to fasten the last button for her after killing her," he glanced towards the dormitory direction. "So I think the most appropriate explanation is that someone carefully examined her body after she died, but during the process of restoring it, they overlooked this inconspicuous button and hurriedly fastened it."
"Doctor," Fatty said, "first, I must declare that I agree with most of your reasoning, but this last button… couldn't it have been fastened by the woman in the cheongsam herself?"
"No way," Jiang Cheng replied firmly.
"Why not?"
Jiang Cheng took a deep breath, placed his hands on his chest, and made a rather unrefined gesture. "Very simple: if she fastened that third button, it would have constricted her breathing."
Fatty's eyes lit up as he recalled the impressive proportions of the woman in the cheongsam.
Her face was unremarkable, but if you talked about her figure…
Fatty nodded vigorously, "Doctor, you're right. I completely agree with your point."
"If all the above points are just based on common sense reasoning, then the last point is the solid evidence against the woman in pajamas." Fatty suddenly felt Jiang Cheng's image growing taller in his eyes, just as the latter said, "There were bloodstains on the soles of her shoes, which I discovered by chance while she was sitting on the ground."
"I get that," Fatty said excitedly; he finally felt he was on the same wavelength as Jiang Cheng. "Given her character, she definitely wouldn't dare step on a bloody area. She didn't enter the room before we arrived, so her persona crumbles—she is the one who moved the body before we got there!"
"No." Jiang Cheng shook his head. "The bloodstains on the soles are not the most important; they can also be explained as having been stepped on unintentionally or as an unconscious reaction due to shock. That's not solid evidence."
Fatty's enthusiasm cooled down. "Then what is the solid evidence?"
"Her soles had bloodstains, but the edges of her shoes were clean." Jiang Cheng slightly moved his stiff neck, finally realizing that analyzing the case for Fatty was more laborious than solving it himself. "The edges of her shoes were very clean; she had cleaned them."
Fatty pieced together the clues, and a few seconds later, he had an expression of sudden realization.
That's right, Jiang Cheng was correct; blood on the soles was not a big deal. He himself, as well as Jiang Cheng, certainly had blood on their soles.
Not only the soles, he looked down and noticed a layer of fresh red color on the edges of his own shoes.
Jiang Cheng did too.
Everyone who had entered the room would have picked up some blood; after all, the blood of the woman in the cheongsam had already pooled on the ground, forming some spots of blood.
But if someone had deliberately cleaned the edges of their shoes, that would reveal something significant.
She had a guilty conscience.
Otherwise, why would she do that?
With the old questions clarified, new ones surfaced. Fatty bit his lip and looked up. "Why did the woman in pajamas do this?"
The disadvantages of killing a teammate were obvious, especially since the woman in the cheongsam was not a novice.
"Fatty," Jiang Cheng said quietly, "don't you think the woman in pajamas is very similar to someone we know?"
"Who?" As soon as Fatty asked, an image immediately popped into his mind. He asked in trepidation, "Are you talking about that woman from last time?!"
"Yeah." Jiang Cheng glanced at him. "She said her name was Chen Xiaomeng, but I suspect it's a fake name."
(End of the Chapter)
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