I suddenly looked back, and everyone followed my gaze to the back. A figure had appeared on the stairs of the tenement building and was walking upstairs!
It was a strange person, no more than a meter tall, with blood-red hair trailing behind. Blood was constantly flowing onto the ground, sliding from the top of the stairs downwards. It turned out that the dripping sound was caused by the blood, and she had no hands!
We all swallowed nervously, clutching our guns for courage. Xia Xiaoling, however, said, "It must be an illusion. Let's be careful. This room is probably very unusual!"
"Let's explore inside. Maybe we can uncover Xi Jingfan's secret!" Liu Yuning said.
Zhang Keying added, "Exactly! There's definitely no such thing in this world."
We mustered our courage and crossed the threshold of the room. As we examined the shoe rack beside us, we found many brand-new cloth shoes placed there, all white and seemingly around size 41.
At that moment, I wasn't sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me. There was no one around, yet I saw a foot inside one of the white cloth shoes. The girls who saw this screamed and hid behind me. I, however, feigned composure and said, "Don't be nervous, it must be..."
Before I could finish, all four of our phones rang simultaneously. As if under a curse, we all picked up our phones and looked at the screens. To our surprise, the calls were all from the same number!
We gathered together, staring at the number 132******** on our screens, our eyes wide. How was this possible?
We hadn't answered, yet the phones automatically moved to the answer button. Then, on all four screens, an old woman's face appeared, chuckling and grinning downwards, followed by a blood-red covering that engulfed the entire screen. At the same time, hurried footsteps echoed from upstairs in the tenement building!
We immediately threw our phones down and pointed all four guns towards the stairs!
"Who's there!?" we all shouted in unison!
The strange person from before, as if driven mad, with disheveled hair and holding a child's head, charged towards us with outstretched arms!
We couldn't help but pull the triggers. The gunshots echoed one after another. The person, riddled with bullets, collapsed powerlessly on the stairs and then slid down from above. Because of the terrifying, jerky way he slid, constantly losing balance, we hesitated to approach until he was completely at the bottom. Only then did we move closer to him. A man, about thirty years old, holding the head of a child, about ten years old, appeared before our eyes!
I squatted down and checked his pulse, finding him completely dead. The person's head had been shot multiple times. Perhaps we shouldn't have been so quick to fire, but this person was too terrifying. As I examined his legs now, I discovered his feet had been amputated. I didn't know whose child it was. I wanted to call for backup, but when I turned to find my phone, it was gone!
Everyone was frantically searching for their phones. We had just thrown them nearby moments ago; how could they have vanished so quickly? I raised my wristband, thinking it might help me contact the outside world, but I forgot that He Xin hadn't been discharged yet, and Yuan Hezhe couldn't be contacted with this. I tapped the wristband and confirmed my suspicion.
Damn it! It seemed we were trapped again and needed to find a way out before we could call for help. After a while, everyone understood our predicament.
"Then let's keep searching. I don't believe this tenement building has no other way out!" Liu Yuning said indignantly. Now, none of us could see each other's faces clearly, and we could only identify each other by voice.
Xia Xiaoling said, "This person's knees have wooden boards attached; his lower legs are gone. No wonder he looked so short earlier. But, uh... the feet we saw on the shoe rack earlier, they weren't..."
"Don't even joke about that, how could that be?" Zhang Keying asked fearfully.
"There were four legs in total, and they didn't seem to belong to the same person. I suspect this family has definitely... definitely been amputated..." I guessed. The others followed me as we stepped over the man's corpse and continued upstairs. I had examined the child's head earlier; it was mostly bone. Based on the time of death, it seemed to be around three years ago.
Reaching the second floor, we found walls everywhere. Cobwebs covered the eaves, and wooden boards littered the floor, making an ear-piercing creaking sound with every step, which was incredibly unsettling. We used a multi-band light source to survey near the walls; it was all we had left. But we found nothing. We reached the end of the second floor and discovered a room with its door ajar. We exchanged glances, took a deep breath, and kicked the door open, then proceeded into the room with our guns drawn!
The room was very old, but the furniture was intact. An ancient wooden bed lay in the center. To the left, along the wall, was a dressing table. An old woman was there, combing her hair in front of a mirror, but she didn't move. She held a wooden comb, fixed in her snow-white hair, and gazed with vacant eyes into the round, ancient bronze mirror. She wore a gray nightgown and sat quietly in a chair.
Xia Xiaoling, bewildered, cautiously approached her from behind and gently lifted her head. As we witnessed the face in the mirror, completely covered in bloodstains with its features sliced off, we all recalled the image on our phones!
So, the old woman was also dead, and right here!
Xia Xiaoling quickly let go and stepped back a few paces. "This family has truly all met a tragic end! And no one knew for years!"
"It seems there's a lingering case behind Xi Jingfan. If that person hadn't impersonated her to infiltrate the hospital, this tragedy would likely never have been discovered!" Zhang Keying said.
Liu Yuning nodded. "Exactly. Could it be that the murderer simply wanted to expose this case to us?"
"This killer seems quite interesting and very cunning. If we could contact the outside world right now, we could have everyone come and investigate!" I said.
"These bodies aren't going anywhere. Let's continue exploring the tenement building. When the opportunity arises, we can notify the outside world!"
As Zhang Keying spoke, we conducted a routine sweep of the room. However, after so many years, the traces were minimal. We only found some very faint fingerprints on the dressing table. Given the old woman's appearance, the exposed bones, and the dried-up bloody face, she had been dead for a very, very long time.