Standing next to
"You and Granny Li go wait in the living room first."
Chen Ge stayed behind alone in the bedroom. He shut the bedroom door, crouched down beside the bed, and examined the boy's corpse.
Scorch marks from electrocution, bruises left by beatings — Chen Ge's gaze finally settled on the boy's neck. "He was strangled with an electric cord. There are wood shavings under his fingernails. Before he died, his arms were bound to the bed frame…"
Chen Ge untied the ropes from the body and draped a clean bedsheet over the boy. "The electrician seems like a quiet, harmless blue-collar worker on the surface, but in reality his temperament is far more volatile than an ordinary person's. He just bottles up all his rage inside and then vents his frustration by bullying those weaker than himself. Deep down, he's a thug."
The electrician's situation wasn't unique in this building. Chen Ge began thinking deeper. "Under the constraints of morality and law, their true natures are suppressed. But in Xiang Nuan's world behind the door, the worst parts of their characters are laid bare. This door seems to amplify the malice in human nature, turning everyone twisted and terrifying."
Chen Ge tried to guess at Nether Fetus's intentions, but there were far too few clues. He had no idea where to start.
Flipping through his backpack, he noticed bloodshot threads beginning to surface on the comic book. He tried calling out to his employees, but still got no response.
"Chen Ge!"
Wen Qing's voice came from outside the bedroom, and the next moment the door was pushed open. "Something's happened downstairs!"
Running footsteps, shouting, and wailing all mingled together in the hallway — total chaos.
"Don't rush. Let them carry on a bit longer."
Chen Ge strolled leisurely out of the room, the faces of those neighbors flashing through his mind. "Who will be next?"
The group made it to the second floor. A faint smell of blood hung in the air, and fresh bloodstains were still visible on the stairs.
"What's going on?" Before Chen Ge even got close, he heard Aunt Ding's weeping. The other neighbors had crowded into the hallway, completely blocking the way.
"The electrician's dead," Xiao Sun said, leaning against the steps, his face pale as a sheet.
"Dead?!" Chen Ge looked thoroughly shocked. He quickened his pace and pushed through the crowd. "Move!"
Standing at the landing between the first and second floors, Chen Ge froze. He saw Aunt Ding collapsed on the ground, wailing the name "Jia Qi" over and over, her hands and upper body drenched in blood.
Aunt Ding seemed to have lost her mind from overwhelming grief. Nobody could get close to her — or rather, nobody wanted to get close to her in this state.
"You… killed him?" Chen Ge's pupils trembled. "He was our only lead!"
"Jia Qi was the first child I ever took in. He went missing right in this very neighborhood! I've been looking for him all this time!" Aunt Ding's hair hung loose and wild, her hands pressed against the blood on the floor. "That was my child. Can you understand how a mother feels? Do you know what it was like for me to see that boy…"
Aunt Ding broke down completely, as if all her strength had drained away. She collapsed into the pool of blood.
"I can't really say it was Aunt Ding who killed him. I saw it with my own eyes — she and the electrician got into a struggle and they both tumbled down the stairs. The fruit knife just happened to land in the electrician's neck. You could call it karma." The one speaking was a tenant from the fifth floor, a tall man who always stood beside Aunt Ding. It was the first time he'd spoken to Chen Ge.
"An accident?" Chen Ge's gaze drifted past Aunt Ding toward the first-floor corridor.
The electrician had already made it out of the stairwell. His body lay right at the entrance, and on that iron door with the heavy padlock, you could still see bloody handprints.
"With a knife jammed in his neck — even if he hadn't died, he wouldn't have been able to talk. What a shame. We finally had a lead and it's gone just like that." Chen Ge's tone was tinged with frustration. He glanced at the tall man. "What should I call you?"
"My surname is Li."
"Why do you smell like medicine?"
"I'm a pediatrician."
"Are the medicines you give children really that strong-smelling?" Chen Ge shifted topics without waiting for an answer. "I wasn't present when the electrician died. Did any of you hear what his last words were?"
"He shouted Aunt Ding's full name…"
Xiao Sun tried to say something else, but Dr. Li cut him off directly. "The electrician is dead now. We need to confirm as quickly as possible whether he was the one who killed Qu Gui."
"But—" Xiao Sun insisted on speaking, only to be interrupted by Chen Ge as well. "He's right. The priority is to catch the killer. If the electrician was the one who murdered Qu Gui, then naturally everyone can rest easy. What I'm worried about is that the electrician was just an accomplice, and the real killer is still hiding somewhere in this building."
A living person had just been killed right before their eyes. The atmosphere inside the building grew heavier still.
"I'll take Aunt Ding back to her room first. She saw her adopted son's body today — the shock was too much." Dr. Li tried to lift Aunt Ding from the pool of blood, but after several attempts he couldn't manage it. He looked toward the crowd and waved over a short, stocky man. "Da Tou, come give me a hand."
The short man had no hair, and his face was severely swollen across most of its surface, giving him a somewhat deformed appearance.
Da Tou and Dr. Li helped Aunt Ding off to the fourth floor, while Chen Ge silently watched their retreating figures.
"Dr. Li is tall and looks quite strong — there's no way he couldn't manage to lift Aunt Ding. He was just looking for an excuse to bring Da Tou along. The three of them must know each other; they're a group."
Dr. Li, Da Tou, Aunt Ding, and the electrician — Chen Ge suspected these four had joined forces to kill the landlord and steal all the room keys.
As for their motive for killing the landlord, Chen Ge had roughly figured it out. The landlord had spied on their secret, and so the landlord had to die.
"So… what do we do with the electrician's body?" Qu Ying's head was about to explode. Qu Gui's corpse was still lying in the living room, and now there was one more body in the building. They had originally set out to track down the killer, but things had inexplicably spiraled out of control, as though someone was pulling strings from the shadows, intent on eliminating every tenant in the building.
"Forget about the electrician's body for now. I just made a horrifying discovery." Xiao Sun waited until Dr. Li and the others were far enough away before daring to speak. "The electrician was pushed down the stairs. It wasn't Aunt Ding who did it — it was Dr. Li. The two of them were running ahead of everyone else at the time."
"Jia Qi was Aunt Ding's adopted son. Why would Dr. Li be so impulsive? He doesn't exactly look like a man driven by justice." Chen Ge was slowly steering the neighbors' line of thinking. He couldn't be as blunt as Xiao Sun, because he still didn't know how many people in this building had been involved in the landlord's murder.
But one thing was certain — there couldn't be too many people who participated in killing the landlord. Otherwise, they wouldn't have had any reason to fear Chen Ge, let alone sacrifice the electrician.