Chapter 33: Room 404
Shoutout to nyanmaru for the commission!
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“Just a guess,” Chu Feng tapped the screen, covering up the crazy combat power of 7-year-old Little Shiyu on the screen.
“Yeah, that’s right!” the system spirit supported its master. “Making deductions based on incorrect guesses will only lead to false impressions, by Holmes. Let’s look for other clues!”
Lin Lan: “…Did Holmes really say that?”
“Let’s go up and take a look,” Chu Feng pointed to the fourth floor.
They had already explored the clues on the third floor.
Main clues: ① Dropped cat fur; ② Bloodstains covered by green paint on the wall.
Inference: The cat died in the third-floor corridor.
Further speculation: The uncle who runs the convenience store in Room 304 had a cat, and it was killed by the unemployed man from Room 402 who abuses cats.
As Chu Feng ascended the stairs to the fourth floor, he thought to himself that currently, these were the most direct pieces of evidence they had, and they could only explore up to this point. They needed to find more clues on the fourth floor.
“Move the characters out of this building for now,” Chu Feng instructed the system spirit.
The system obediently transferred 7-year-old Little Shiyu who was holding the cat and Spider-Catching Little Shiyu to a safe place. 7-year-old Swallow-Observing Little Shiyu had already been infected with the virus and was temporarily isolated.
Clack, clack, clack.
Chu Feng, Lin Lan, and X proceeded to the fourth floor, with X leading the way as usual and Chu Feng bringing up the rear. The system spirit flew beside its young master, its fur glowing with a flashlight:
“Be careful, the floors above the fourth are all infected abnormal floors!”
X entered the darkness first, followed closely by Lin Lan. As Chu Feng stepped in, a cold breeze blew over his neck, his thin shirt unable to resist the chill of the summer.
“It’s strange…” Lin Lan muttered, “There are no windows in this corridor, so how can there be wind…”
Click.
In the darkness, a light appeared ahead as X switched on the lights in the fourth-floor corridor.
The light cord had been deliberately cut short, with the end of the cord glued to the upper left corner of the wall with transparent adhesive, far above the reach of an average person’s hand, clearly indicating a reluctance to let people casually turn on the lights and waste electricity. For newcomers to this building, it would be impossible to know where the light cord was stuck unless they carefully searched the wall.
But in the pitch darkness, X once again found the position of the light cord.
“Another easy find?” Chu Feng raised an eyebrow, looking at X.
X: “…”
“Weird, where are the swallows?” the system spirit said, flying around the four corners of the corridor ceiling.
Chu Feng lifted his eyes and glanced at the wall. The floors above the fourth floor of the residential building were infected by the virus, either brought by swallows or possibly originating from 7-year-old Little Shiyu himself. As a precaution, they needed to make dual preparations, solving the puzzle of 7-year-old Little Shiyu while also controlling the swallows that might carry the virus.
Chu Feng remembered that there used to be a swallow’s nest at the entrance of Little Shiyu’s house. But now, the wall was empty, with only faint traces and stains of swallow nests, but no nests or sight of the baby swallows.
“Could it have been…removed by someone?” Lin Lan suggested, recalling news reports about communities removing bird nests during the selection of sanitary cities to prevent bird droppings from staining the walls and floors and affecting the appearance.
Chu Feng frowned, vaguely recalling that Little Shiyu had complained to him before about the malicious auntie from Room 402. Their house already had a swallow’s nest, and the two swallows had painstakingly built a nest and were incubating eggs. Little Shiyu’s mother was also very happy, as swallows nesting near the house was considered a symbol of good luck. Little Shiyu was also excited and had made plans with Chu Feng to invite him to see the swallows together once the baby swallows hatched.
However, on that day, Auntie from Room 402 called painters to paint the walls and intentionally painted toward their side, causing their swallow’s nest to be destroyed.
The newly born baby swallows fell out of the nest and onto the ground, and all of them died, leaving blood stains all over the entrance of Little Shiyu’s house.
“That auntie…is unbelievable!” Lin Lan looked at the wall.
“They didn’t help Brother Xie’s family paint their walls either, the mud from the swallows on this wall is still there. They just deliberately found an excuse to destroy the swallow’s nest at someone else’s door, and there were still live baby birds in that nest. Is that auntie abnormal?”
The system displayed the list of residents in the building: “It seems like there are no normal people in this building.”
Lin Lan: “…That’s true.”
X: “Auntie called people to paint the walls?”
Chu Feng also immediately thought of the half-green wall on the third floor covering the bloodstains.
Lin Lan: “Could it be that Auntie called people to paint it?”
The cat fur from the third floor, a bit of bloodstain, now connected three people.
The cat was possibly owned by the uncle from Room 304, killed by the unemployed man from Room 402, and blood splattered on the wall. Then Auntie from Room 401 called someone to paint the walls on the third floor, and incidentally, destroyed the swallow’s nest at Little Shiyu’s door.
The system brought up the [security question]: “Looking at it this way, the original question still has Room 403, the drunkard, and Room 504, the Schrödinger’s resident. I wonder what roles these two people play.”
“Let’s go in and take a look,” Chu Feng stood at the door of Room 404, taking out a steel key from his backpack, the pointed tip of the cross-shaped key aimed at the keyhole.
The home of Little Shiyu had a green iron door with numerous small black rust spots on the surface. The bronze-colored door handle was rusty, with a cross-shaped keyhole in the middle.
The upper half of the green iron doors was hollowed out, with several iron bars inserted, resembling the iron railings of a prison. Through the gaps in the bars, one could see the second door inside, a brown wooden door with a small peephole.
No matter how many times Chu Feng saw this door, he still felt…a bit unsafe. The iron railing above the first green iron door wasn’t very dense, and a hand could easily reach in through the handle of the first green iron door. With a little tool, one could directly open the door lock from inside. No need to pry the door open.
—This left only the protection of the second door. However, the second door was a wooden door, much more fragile compared to the iron door. If a grown man had enough strength, he could kick the door open and barge in.
Creak—
The door opened.
Lin Lan walked in, and the place where Little Shiyu used to live as a child was very small. Although he knew that Little Shiyu’s family was not well-off, seeing Little Shiyu, who now drives a Lamborghini and owns a bunch of villas, having lived in such a place as a child still made Lin Lan feel a bit shocked.
The entire house was no more than 40 square meters, deliberately tidied up but still quite messy. There wasn’t enough space to put so many things in such a small area. There were even drug needles in the trash can.
Chu Feng frowned. He remembered that after restoring his memories, he had cleaned up all this mess. He had bought some cute toys and high-end furniture for Little Shiyu, making the small room look very warm.
But now, with the invasion of the virus, all the decorations Chu Feng had done were shattered, and this room had returned to its original state.
Cigarette ash, drug needles, paper bags on the table with a pinch of white powder inside, unwashed pots, a stove covered in black and yellow grease stains, slightly spoiled leftovers, damp clothes that hadn’t been dried in the sunlight, hanging by the window. The whole house was chaotic.
The less than 40-square-meter house was divided into two rooms. Turning left after entering the door was where Little Shiyu lived, and going straight was his parents’ area. There was no living room; a large bed was placed there, connected to the kitchen, dining table, and toilet, with a window, barely considered his parents’ room.
Such a small house didn’t have a balcony, only one window with deep blue glass. A clothesline was tied to the window, hanging some washed pajamas and trousers, some of which were torn and patched up to be worn again. Each piece of clothing and pants hung on the clothesline like a hanged person.
“I’ll take a look over here with him.” Chu Feng pulled Lin Lan and walked into Little Shiyu’s room.
Just now, X had caught those two Little Shiyus from here. He had already seen Little Shiyu’s room, so he turned to the “living room” – his parents’ area – to look for clues.
After 22 years, Chu Feng walked into the room where Little Shiyu used to live. It looked much more normal than the living room, at least there were no drug needles in the trash can.
“Would Little Shiyu hide something under the bed?”
Lin Lan checked behind the door, behind the cupboard, and then got down on the floor to inspect under the bed. He remembered that when he was a child, he often hid comic books under the bed. Children would definitely think of these hidden places to hide things.
Chu Feng didn’t squat down to look. As far as he knew, Xie Shiyu didn’t usually hide things according to ordinary people’s thinking. For example, the last time they found the graffiti book, with drawings of alcohol bottles, and even tick marks, the notebooks recorded the deeds of 24-year-old Xie Shiyu killing those four people, but Xie Shiyu had put this graffiti book openly in the drawer of the study, without any guilt.
Xie Shiyu would hide things, but he would intentionally put them out in the open, disguised as normal objects.
Chu Feng looked at the cabinet that X had placed in plain sight, on top of which were some dinosaur toys, very old. They might be second-hand toys that others didn’t want, picked up by Little Xie’s mother and given to him.
Chu Feng had bought many novel toys like remote-controlled cars, remote-controlled airplanes, and electric dinosaurs from the Dream City Mall for Little Xie to play with. But now, those novel toys had all disappeared, and the cabinet had returned to its appearance from 22 years ago.
Chu Feng held a flashlight and searched through the cabinet, quickly finding a notebook with dinosaur patterns on it.
He remembered, this was the notebook given out by the school teacher on the first day of first grade, with one for each student in the class. Girls had little kittens on theirs, while boys had little dinosaurs.
On the notebook, a green little dinosaur with big eyes looked at Chu Feng, with large spikes on its neck.
Chu Feng opened the dinosaur notebook, and inside were all doodles.
After flipping through a few pages, Chu Feng realized that this was Little Shiyu’s diary from 22 years ago! As a first grader, little Little Shiyu didn’t write many words yet, so his diary was filled with doodles.
He immediately thought of 24-year-old Xie Shiyu’s graffiti notebook, with simple drawings of alcohol glasses, each with a checkmark indicating it was completed.
—This kind of symbol and habit of recording should have been developed since childhood.
Chu Feng quickly searched for the checkmarks in the diary.
Soon, Chu Feng found a page where the diary depicted a schematic diagram of this building, with two windows drawn for each floor and the apartment numbers written on the windows.
Next to the schematic diagram of the building, Little Shiyu had drawn five checkmarks!
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