Chapter 32: Door Number
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The atmosphere stiffened, and suddenly the air became quiet.
“Got bitten by a mosquito,” Chu Feng answered Little Shiyu without batting an eye, his expression very straightforward.
Seven-year-old Xie pointed at the red dot on Chu Feng’s neck. “What mosquito? It bit you so badly?”
Chu Feng reached up to cover his neck, hiding the red dot. “A very vicious mosquito.”
As he spoke, he casually took back the iron-gray scarf matching X from 7-year-old Little Xie’s hand. His expression was calm, and Chu Feng nonchalantly tied the scarf back around his neck as if nothing had happened.
Lin Lan stood to the side, pretending not to know what was happening, with a look that said, “I don’t understand anything, I haven’t understood anything.”
But 7-year-old Xie hadn’t given up yet. Like all curious kids, he kept pressing for answers.
“Why is the mosquito so vicious?”
Chu Feng sighed, “Why are you talking so much today?”
Little Xie looked aggrieved. “You scolded me.”
Chu Feng squatted down helplessly, comforting him, “We’re dealing with something very important now. We’ll introduce you to the very vicious mosquito another time, okay?”
Dr. Xie sneezed in the West City Hospital.
“I don’t want to know,” Little Shiyu turned his head away. Since Chu Feng was busy, he obediently didn’t bother him anymore, quietly refraining from asking further questions.
Chu Feng turned back to continue inspecting the corner of the wall. As soon as he turned his back, Little Shiyu cast a dagger-like glance at X.
—This person is most likely the vicious mosquito!
Little Shiyu was not stupid; he could tell that the red dot was definitely not from a mosquito bite.
X raised an eyebrow at him, neither confirming nor denying. Although he was not the one responsible for the red dot, he didn’t mind being misunderstood by Little Shiyu. He smiled gently at the 7-year-old Shiyu, showing the tolerant understanding of a mature man towards a little brat. This attitude of adults towards little brats made Little Shiyu even angrier.
Seven-year-old Little Xie stood by Chu Feng’s side like a knight protecting a princess from a dragon, keeping X and Chu Feng apart.
X glanced at Little Shiyu’s attitude, said nothing, and turned back to continue his investigation.
The corridor in the old residential building was not very clean.
X found something among the dust and footprints: a strand of hair.
White in color, with a bit of black-gray at the tip. X picked it up and turned to show it to Chu Feng.
Little Shiyu acted like an impenetrable barrier, blocking X and allowing him to see things but not approach Chu Feng.
X looked down at him, reached out, and picked up the knight-like Little Shiyu. Seven-year-old Shiyu was effortlessly lifted by the 1.9-meter-tall X, his small hands and feet struggling constantly. X ignored his struggles, lifted him up, and placed him behind him.
Taking another step forward, X deliberately leaned in very close to Chu Feng in front of Little Shiyu, handing the discovered strand of hair to Chu Feng. Then, he turned to Little Shiyu and smiled kindly, “Be good. Your Older Brother Chu Feng and I have some things to discuss.”
He emphasized “your Older Brother Chu Feng,” but his tone seemed mocking, especially with Little Shiyu knowing about the red dot beneath the iron-gray scarf. This address sounded even more ironic.
Little Shiyu now particularly hated this bandaged weirdo!
Chu Feng didn’t notice the undercurrents between the two beside him. He took the hair discovered by X and examined it closely. “Cat hair?”
X nodded. “Yes.”
Chu Feng pinched the cat hair in his hand and looked at the bloodstains on the green wall that hadn’t been covered yet. Could it be that the victim wasn’t a person but a cat?
So the killer didn’t care much about the blood splattered on the wall; the walls were painted very roughly. If the killer really did kill someone in the corridor, Chu Feng couldn’t imagine how careless or contemptuous of the law they had to be to act so recklessly.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Lin Lan said from the side. “Look at the previous question. Room 402 is where the cat abuser is, but we’re in Room 304 now.”
The building they were in now was occupied by residents with door numbers ending in 3 and 4, while residents with door numbers ending in 1 and 2 were in the building behind. The cat abuser from 402 would have to walk past the intersecting staircase to get to the fourth floor here, then go down one floor to the third floor.
“Is it possible…” Chu Feng pondered, “that the cat belongs to the person in Room 304?”
Lin Lan thought about it and agreed! It was possible that the cat abuser from 402 caught the cat at the door of 304 and killed it on the spot, which was entirely possible.
“Is there any clue related to the question on the fourth floor?” Chu Feng turned to ask X.
The fourth floor was in an abnormal state infected by the virus, and Chu Feng and Lin Lan hadn’t gone in just now. After X went in, they lost contact with him.
“It’s pitch black,” X said. After he went in, he opened the door to Room 404 and happened to see two Little Shiyus playing inside, seeming to wait for Chu Feng. So X put them in a sack and brought them out.
“So why were you in Room 304?” Chu Feng asked the Little Shiyu observing swallows in front of him.
—According to the usual situation, the three seven-year-old Little Shiyus should all be in Room 404 waiting for him. Cat-holding Little Shiyu would go with him to visit the little kitten they rescued from the tree, spider-catching Little Shiyu wanted to show him the big spider he caught, and swallow-observing Little Shiyu was supposed to go with him to see the swallows.
There was no reason for Swallow-Observing Little Shiyu to suddenly run to Room 304.
“…Just…taking a stroll.”
Swallow-Observing Little Shiyu said with a somewhat distracted look, obviously speaking casually.
Characters in Dream City might repeat their past actions. Chu Feng thought that perhaps he had seen Little Shiyu coming out of Room 304 before, but it was too distant, and the image was already quite blurry.
At that time, Little Shiyu was carrying a black plastic bag. Little Chu Feng didn’t see what was inside the plastic bag and assumed it was just some food. Because Room 304 was where Uncle from the convenience store lived, Little Shiyu should have gone to get some snacks and then returned to the fourth floor.
Little Chu Feng stood at the door of Room 404, watching Little Shiyu approach, but at that time, he didn’t actually know what seven-year-old Shiyu had been doing in Room 304.
“Should we go in and check?” Lin Lan pointed at the half-open door of Room 304.
“No use,” Chu Feng shook his head.
Because he had never been to Room 304 as a child, he had only been to Shiyu’s house in this building, and Shiyu seemed to be wary of him wandering around.
Chu Feng remembered one time when he didn’t come according to the schedule arranged by Little Shiyu. He came early and didn’t notify Little Shiyu, climbing from the first floor to the fourth floor by himself and knocking on the door. Little Chu Feng wanted to surprise Little Shiyu.
As a result, that time was the first time Little Shiyu got angry at him, especially fierce. Little Chu Feng couldn’t understand it at all.
As he grew older, Chu Feng began to understand what kind of environment Little Shiyu lived in as a child. The neighbors upstairs, downstairs, left, and right were not like normal people at all. He didn’t inform Little Shiyu of his casual visit, so he might run into these bad people in the corridor.
In his childhood, Little Chu Feng followed Little Shiyu, taking care of little cats, observing little swallows, and watching Little Shiyu catch big spiders in this building.
Little Chu Feng had a very good impression of this residential building when he was a child. He had a very happy time here, which was completely different from the delicate and boring commercial house where he lived with his family. Little Shiyu’s place was like a maze, very interesting!
Today, Chu Feng began to realize that the childhood maze he found interesting had some terrifying aspects.
The reason he found it interesting was simply because Little Shiyu only showed him the fun and interesting side. He had never been to places Little Shiyu didn’t take him, and even when he came to Little Shiyu’s house, it was at carefully planned times—times when Little Shiyu’s drug-addicted father was definitely not home. Little Chu Feng had never seen Little Shiyu’s father once.
In Chu Feng’s mind, there was no strange uncle living in Room 304, he had only seen the corridors of 304, 303, and so on, so the projection of the appearance of this building, but what it was like inside, he didn’t know.
Except for Room 404, where Little Shiyu lived, which restored the impression from the past, the other rooms were filled with things he bought from the system mall. There wouldn’t be any clues from the past secrets.
Chu Feng thought to himself, if the bloodstains on the third-floor wall were from a cat, according to the safety question from Little Shiyu, asking who the victim was, and also asking for the murderer’s door number, then someone else must have died in this building, and they were murdered.
“I’m a bit curious, why did the question ask for the door number?” Lin Lan said, “Because the first question asked who the victim was, why didn’t the second question continue to ask who the murderer was? Why did the victim use a name, but the murderer used a door number?”
Chu Feng also felt that this was indeed a kind of hint.
“Hey, cousin, do you think it might be… the murderer couldn’t use the people mentioned in the question, so he had to use the door number instead?”
According to the correspondence of the questions. From bottom to top:
Room 304 – Uncle from the convenience store, peeping through the peephole.
Room 404 – Xie Shiyu’s family
Room 403 – Drunkard, knocking on doors at midnight
Room 401 – Auntie, a gossip
Room 402 – Unemployed man abusing cats
Room 504 – Unoccupied, but since sounds were heard, Chu Feng guessed that someone was secretly living there.
The system spirit was very attentive and had listed a table on the screen for them, with the original questions next to it, making it convenient for them to review at any time.
Lin Lan looked at the table, “In that case, the only one who cannot be represented by a person mentioned in the question and can only be represented by a door number… is this Room 504 where no one actually lives! If the murderer is there, and the question asks who the murderer is, there really is no way to specify who it is. So, using the process of elimination… the murderer’s door number should only be 504!”
The question is, who did 504 kill?
First question, who is the victim?
Chu Feng: “There might also be other situations.”
Usually in answering questions, you solve the first question first, and then based on the answer to the first question, you can answer the second question. In math papers, if you can’t solve the first question, you basically have to give up on the rest, writing some formulas might get you two points.
“There’s one more person.” X suddenly said.
Except for 504, there’s another person in this question who can only be represented by a door number, unable to specify who they are.
X pointed to the first sentence of the question: “You are the resident of 404, and you have a group of strange people living around you.”
The “you” in 404 is also a person who cannot be specified.
Chu Feng was stunned, and Lin Lan’s whole body shivered:
“…It…can’t be! Shiyu was only seven years old at that time!”
X looked at the screen—
The system spirit cooperatively pulled up the information:
Character: 7-year-old Swallow-Observing Little Shiyu
Combat Power: 850000000000000…
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