Chapter 2 Aftermath

After examining the body, the three exited the bathroom. Facing such a bizarre corpse, no one felt comfortable.

"Time of death is approximately within the last three hours," the burly man said, looking at his pocket watch and nodding definitively. "That is, between 2 AM and 5 AM."

"How can you be sure of the time?"

The burly man glanced at the innocent-looking woman who asked the question, told her the time and order they were assigned for night watch, and handed her the pocket watch to look at. The timer on it showed it had been running for exactly seven hours.

Jiang Cheng's shift was next after the middle-aged man, and the chubby man after that was awakened by the need to relieve himself. That's when he found the middle-aged man dead.

At that moment, the chubby man shakily got up and asked why the middle-aged man had died. The burly man sighed, closed the bathroom door, and the group returned to the sofas near the fireplace.

As a newcomer, Jiang Cheng had said very little. He listened intently and analyzed, and most of his insights came from the most experienced burly man and the woman with a mole on her lip.

From the information revealed in the group's discussion, Jiang Cheng understood that in this world, people were rarely killed for no reason. Those who were killed must have touched some kind of taboo.

And the so-called taboo was likely a key clue to solving the task.

"What did he do that we didn't?" the male clerk asked, huddling between Jiang Cheng and the innocent-looking woman. He was clearly terrified and didn't want to die inexplicably like the middle-aged man.

The innocent-looking woman frowned slightly and said, "Could it be because he went to the first-floor bathroom? Is that the hidden taboo in this task, that anyone who goes there will die?"

"No way," the chubby man squatted on the ground, hands on his knees, and said softly, "I went to the bathroom too, when we were searching the living room yesterday."

Jiang Cheng turned to look at the chubby man and said after a moment, "Then you should be careful. Even though you have a thick neck, it should still be easy enough to snap."

The chubby man almost burst into tears at that.

The burly man seemed a little displeased with Jiang Cheng's attitude but didn't say anything. He just shook his head and said it shouldn't be that way. Almost all of them had been to the first-floor bathroom, and if something was going to happen, it shouldn't just be the middle-aged man.

"Maybe it's just a matter of order?" the woman with a mole on her lip said. "You should understand that ghosts rarely kill people in quick succession."

The burly man glanced at the woman but surprisingly didn't refute her.

"So there really are those things..."

Jiang Cheng's long-held speculation was confirmed. The door that appeared in the dream was undoubtedly in the realm of supernatural events, and it seemed reasonable for ghosts to appear in supernatural events.

"So, the thing we need to fight against in this world isn't people, it's ghosts?!" The male clerk's face was drained of color.

Given his previous behavior, no one bothered to pay attention to him.

"Since someone died, it means this villa is our destination. The so-called journey doesn't exist. The appearance of that car was just to send us here," the innocent-looking woman said, looking around. "The problem is this villa."

"What could be wrong with the villa?"

The innocent-looking woman stared at the chubby man who asked the question and said after a moment, "For example, some terrible things happened here before."

The villa looked quite luxurious, and there were no signs of damage inside. It was indeed suspicious that it had been abandoned so inexplicably. Jiang Cheng thought what the innocent-looking woman said was quite credible.

The burly man walked to the villa door, grabbed the doorknob, and pulled hard, but the door didn't budge.

"It's locked," the burly man said, turning his head without even trying a second time. "It seems this is the task location. We can't leave until we solve what happened in this villa."

"Now that we've confirmed the task location, let's split up and look for clues. It's already daylight now, so it should be safer."

Despite these words, the death of the middle-aged man was a wake-up call for everyone, especially the three newcomers, Jiang Cheng, the chubby man, and the male clerk.

To speed things up, the group spontaneously formed teams, one veteran with one newcomer.

The chubby man followed the burly man, the male clerk followed the woman with a mole on her lip, and Jiang Cheng teamed up with the innocent-looking woman.

For safety, the search area was temporarily limited to the first floor of the villa.

The burly man's team was responsible for the living room and the area near the door, the woman's team was responsible for the remote storage room, and Jiang Cheng and the innocent-looking woman went to the kitchen and dining room.

Everyone was within direct line of sight of each other, so they could help each other if anything happened.

This time, with the previous experience, the search was more thorough and careful.

Half an hour later, everyone reunited in front of the fireplace, and it was completely bright.

"This is what we found in the storage room," the woman with a mole on her lip said, taking out a thick rope, a hemp rope, with a dark red stain on one part.

The burly man took it, rubbed it hard a few times, and then put it under his nose to smell it. "It's blood," he said, looking up at the woman.

The woman nodded. "It was behind a pile of firewood. I also found this nearby."

She opened her right hand, and in her palm was a light green brooch, shaped like a maple leaf, giving the impression that the owner of the brooch was a gentle girl.

Could it be that a girl was once tied up and left there?

"What did you find?" the woman asked, tilting her head to look at the burly man.

"Come and see," the burly man said, walking toward the door, and the group followed him.

Standing by the door, the burly man felt around and pressed a spot on the wall. Jiang Cheng had good eyesight, and he saw it was a light blue button.

The button was embedded in the painting by the door, blending in with the sky-blue background, making it hard to spot without careful observation.

As the button was pressed, a crack appeared on the right side of the wall, and then it slowly opened, revealing a well-hidden built-in shoe cabinet.

The shoe cabinet had three shelves. Except for the third shelf, which was still intact, the dividers between the first and second shelves were broken, and various shoes were mixed together.

After sorting them, there were two pairs of men's leather shoes, a pair of women's red high heels, and three pairs of women's casual shoes.

The woman with a mole on her lip picked out one of the three pairs of casual shoes and placed it next to the red high heels. "These two pairs of shoes probably belong to the same person."

The remaining two pairs of casual shoes clearly belonged to a younger girl, and the sizes of the two pairs of shoes were also completely the same.

On the third shelf was a pair of men's sneakers. After comparing them, the sizes were quite different from the men's leather shoes.

"From what we can see so far, this villa used to be home to a family of four: a father, a mother, and a girl and a boy," the innocent-looking woman said, looking up. "This also matches the distribution of the bedrooms on the second floor: a master bedroom for the parents, a girl's bedroom, and a boy's bedroom."