Chapter 1081: Turning on Each Other

"Me, afraid? What do I have to be afraid of?" The middle-aged man's expression became slightly unnatural. He couldn't understand where Chen Ge's confidence was coming from.

"I'm helping everyone track down the killer, and you keep trying to change the subject. Could it be that you know something but aren't telling us?" Chen Ge narrowed his eyes. "The killer just left through the sixth-floor window — they couldn't have gone far. They should be hiding somewhere on the fifth, sixth, or seventh floor. If we'd searched those three floors first back then, there would've been a very good chance of cornering the killer. But you steered everyone toward looking for the landlord instead."

Chen Ge used a little rhetorical trick here — the middle-aged man had merely suggested going to find the landlord, but Chen Ge reframed it as the middle-aged man leading everyone there.

"The landlord lives on the ninth floor, far from the scene of the crime. I suspect you deliberately led us away to buy time for the killer."

"Bullshit! Don't listen to his nonsense!"

"You lured us to the ninth floor, and what's more, you apparently already knew the landlord had been killed — that no one would open the door for us. Everyone wasted nearly half an hour trying to break through that security door, and that was more than enough time for the real killer to wash the blood off." Every sentence from Chen Ge stabbed into the middle-aged man like a knife. "I don't want to suspect you, but all of this is just too convenient — so convenient it's as if you were deliberately buying time for the killer."

The neighbors' gazes toward the middle-aged man slowly turned hostile.

"Listen to me! I had no idea the landlord was already dead! If I'd known, I never would have brought it up!" the middle-aged man protested desperately. Chen Ge just stood to the side watching, not caring at all what the middle-aged man said. He simply wanted a reason — a reason to get inside the man's apartment.

None of these freaks were clean. As long as Chen Ge could get into their rooms, even without evidence, he would do his utmost to "find" some.

"I've known Brother Man for many years. I know his character, and I believe he's incapable of something like murder," Aunt Ding suddenly spoke up. Just when the middle-aged man thought she was defending him, Aunt Ding took an unexpected turn. "But this really is too convenient. Why don't we go check Brother Man's apartment first? I'm absolutely certain he's innocent, and this way we can clear up any unnecessary misunderstandings."

On the surface, Aunt Ding appeared to be supporting the middle-aged man, insisting she believed he wasn't the killer. In reality, she was trying to nail him to the wall. As a long-term tenant in the building, she probably knew something about the middle-aged man's secrets — knew he had something that absolutely could not see the light of day.

After hearing Aunt Ding's words, the middle-aged man's face turned very, very bad. He hadn't expected the one to stick a knife in his back at this critical moment would be Aunt Ding.

His gaze dark. The middle-aged man stared at Aunt Ding, fists clenched tight.

Chen Ge made no comment, his eyes drifting between Aunt Ding and the middle-aged man.

Aunt Ding had been the first to notice the spare key stolen from the wardrobe — her reaction had been extremely abnormal. In Chen Ge's eyes, it was quite possible that Aunt Ding was connected to the landlord's death. She was likely one of the people who killed the landlord.

That would also explain why she spoke up now, trying to pin the landlord's murder squarely on the middle-aged man.

Of course, the middle-aged man had only himself to blame. If he hadn't brought up the landlord, everything would have been fine. Now that everyone knew about the landlord's death, the killers naturally wouldn't let him off the hook. The best course of action was to make the middle-aged man the one who killed the landlord.

Chen Ge had figured this out too, and he simply went with the current, pushing the middle-aged man toward the role of the killer.

All he needed to do was shove the middle-aged man into the killer's position, and someone would certainly step forward to pin him down so he couldn't escape.

The cleared tenants and the uncleared tenants were splitting apart. Even among the cleared tenants, internal fractures were appearing. With this kind of gradual division, Chen Ge could draw closer and closer to his goal without lifting a finger.

"We absolutely must not turn on each other," Chen Ge said. Watching the fractures appear among the building's residents filled him with glee, but his mouth kept stressing unity. "Everyone, calm down! Let's go back to our original deduction. Xiao Sun said the electrician on the eighth floor had gotten into an argument with Qu Gui and even threatened him. That electrician has a motive for murder, so let's start by investigating him."

Chen Ge didn't let Aunt Ding rally everyone against the middle-aged man just yet. He needed to save the middle-aged man to create even bigger divisions later.

Leaving Room 901, Chen Ge stood at the front of the hallway with a smile on his face, followed one by one by the building's residents. The sight was almost unbelievable.

"Anyone home?"

Under Xiao Sun's lead, the group arrived outside the electrician's room.

Knocking shattered the silence of the eighth floor. Everyone stared at the security door before them.

The tenants were also curious about the electrician's secrets — there was something indescribable about prying into someone else's life.

After more than a dozen knocks, footsteps finally sounded from inside, and the security door slowly cracked open.

"What do you want?" A bearded man appeared in the doorway. He was not much of a talker, and his eyes were bloodshot, as though he hadn't slept properly in a very long time.

"There's been a murder in the building. We just wanted to give you a heads-up."

"Got it." The electrician moved to close the door, but Chen Ge grabbed the edge of it.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"It's not what I want — it's what everyone has decided." Chen Ge gestured to the tenants behind him. "For everyone's safety."

"We now suspect the killer may be connected to you. If you've got nothing to hide, then step aside. We won't touch anything in your apartment — we just need to confirm a few things." Xiao Sun had no patience for games and laid out their purpose directly.

"The killer is connected to me?" The electrician slowly raised his head, and his bloodshot eyes swept past Chen Ge's left shoulder, as though exchanging a glance with someone.

Chen Ge knew Aunt Ding was standing behind him to the left, and he was finding this increasingly interesting.

The fact that the electrician's first instinct when in trouble was to look at Aunt Ding meant he and Aunt Ding were concealing something together.

Combined with his earlier suspicion that Aunt Ding was connected to the landlord's death, this indirectly suggested the electrician was also involved.

When Chen Ge had seen the complex wiring in Room 901 earlier, he had suspected the killer was the electrician, since the electrician was likely the first person to discover the landlord's secret.

Chen Ge had his back to Aunt Ding. He didn't know what signal she had given the electrician — all he saw was the electrician's face growing worse after their eye contact.

"I stayed in my room all night. I didn't go anywhere. You've got the wrong person." The electrician refused to budge, and the group was at a standoff in the hallway. Chen Ge felt he couldn't let this drag on — if he backed down here at the electrician's door, his plan going forward would be even harder to execute.

These tenants were each shrewder than the last. Aside from Xiao Sun, no one was willing to take the lead. Chen Ge had no choice but to step up himself.

"The killer is a threat to everyone's safety. If you won't let us in, that means you're definitely hiding something." Chen Ge's tone gradually hardened. "We're not asking for your permission. We're informing you."

"Informing me? We're all tenants — what gives you the right to barge into my home? This is absurd!"