"Stay close to the wall, keep away from the railing — careful not to fall." Captain Yan found Room 104 and entered.
What set this room apart from the others was the assortment of old, dilapidated furniture inside, along with numerous children's drawings scrawled across the mottled walls.
"It feels like a family of three used to live here."
Beside a wooden table with a missing leg lay a scattering of shriveled apples. More apples — some gnawed on — could be seen under the table.
"Whoever lived here must have really loved apples." Chen Ge picked one up using a piece of paper and examined it. It had rotted and gone bad, its surface covered in mold. Seeing this apple, he suddenly recalled the ones he had encountered in the underground morgue. "Apples seem to hold some special significance for corpses. When I have time, I should ask those doctors about it."
"Look at this!" Tian Lei, who had been conspicuously quiet until now, suddenly spoke up. He aimed his flashlight at the wall on the left side of the living room.
On the cracked plaster was a somewhat strange drawing — two adults and a girl huddled together talking, while a little boy drew pictures a short distance away.
"These two adults must be the children's parents. The girl is their daughter, and the boy is the one drawing on the wall." Li Zheng attempted to analyze. "So it was a family of four."
"When we questioned Jia Ming before, didn't he say they never had children because of Huang Ling's condition?" Tian Lei raised his eyebrows slightly. "Could this man have found a mistress? Or did he lie to us?"
"He definitely lied to us, but on the matter of children, he probably didn't deceive us." Captain Yan emerged from the kitchen. "The apartment wasn't even fully finished. The people living here weren't Jia Ming and Huang Ling. The child who drew these pictures may have had no connection to them either."
"Homeless children?" Li Zheng stood by the window and glanced outside. "But why would they specifically choose this room? The building has no elevator — wouldn't living on the ground floor be more convenient?"
"The answer is probably hidden somewhere in this room." Chen Ge tilted his head back to look at the ceiling, his gaze lingering there for a long time.
The other three officers followed his line of sight upward.
On the ceiling of Room 104, someone had scratched out four faces using a sharp stone.
The four faces pointed in the four cardinal directions — north, south, east, and west — with a little girl drawn in the center. The four faces clamped down on the girl's limbs.
"What is this drawing supposed to mean? It doesn't look like something a child would draw."
The two adult faces bore the names Jiang Long and Zhang Chuyu. The two children's faces read Jiang Bai and Jiang Xiaohu.
"Jiang Long? Isn't that the name of the investor who jumped off the building? Why would someone write his name here?"
"It seems to be the names of his whole family of four." Tian Lei thought for a moment. "The residents probably vented their resentment onto Jiang Long — after all, he was the developer."
"Even if the residents had lost all reason, they wouldn't normally vent their anger on a dead man. Besides, the drawing shows Jiang Long biting other people." Captain Yan studied the image overhead. "The handwriting is childish, like a child's — but a child couldn't possibly reach the ceiling, and there's nothing in this room to stand on."
The three officers pondered various possibilities while Chen Ge slipped into the bedroom on his own. He had to keep his expression under control.
Of everyone present, only he knew that Jia Ming had already been possessed by Jiang Long. The appearance of Jiang Long's entire family's names in this room only strengthened Chen Ge's suspicion — Jiang Long had taken Jia Ming's body, most likely for the sake of this very Room 104.
"Is there anything special about this room?"