Chapter 47 Shoe Prints

Fan Li seemed to think of something, his expression turning strange for a moment. Then, he picked up the sneakers and turned to walk out the door, heading down the hallway as if to go downstairs.

Everyone followed. Fatty and Jiang Cheng brought up the rear. As they passed the boy's bedroom, Jiang Cheng pulled Fatty inside.

"What are you doing?" Fatty asked, clutching his body in alarm.

"Checking some things."

"Why do you need to check while dragging me in here?"

Jiang Cheng opened each drawer in the bedroom. After a moment, he squatted by the bed, pulling out a pair of slippers from under the bed. He picked up the slippers, looked up at Fatty, and calmly replied, "Because I'm scared."

Fatty: "......"

A while later, Jiang Cheng and Fatty arrived in the downstairs living room, finding Nuan Jie and the others gathered around the shoe cabinet. All the shoes had been taken out and neatly arranged on the floor.

Hearing Jiang Cheng's footsteps, Fan Li put down a pair of women's casual shoes. Fatty noticed that the three of them didn't look too good.

Just as Chen Xiaomeng opened her mouth to speak, Jiang Cheng said, "Did you discover that there are not only two boys in this villa, but also two girls?"

Fan Li's eyes flickered. He seemed about to say something, but he held back. After a long pause, he asked in a deep voice, "What exactly do you do?"

"Don't waste time. Tell me what you found first," Jiang Cheng said, putting down what he was holding and looking at him calmly.

Fan Li picked up two pairs of shoes to show Jiang Cheng. They were two pairs of women's casual shoes, the same size. Based on their earlier assessment, they belonged to the same girl.

With a gloomy expression, Fan Li turned the two pairs of shoes over, revealing the soles. "The sole of the shoe on the left is severely worn on the outer side, while the wear on the shoe on the right is concentrated on the inner side."

He looked up, staring into Jiang Cheng's eyes. "The wear on the soles is related to walking posture, and once this habit is formed, it's almost impossible to correct. So, these are two different people's shoes. There are two girls in this villa."

"But why is there only one girl's bedroom upstairs?" Chen Xiaomeng asked. "And there's only a single bed in the bedroom?"

Jiang Cheng shook his head. "The two small bedrooms upstairs are both occupied by girls. Naturally, each has a single bed."

"What do you mean?"

"This is what I found in the bedroom covered in military posters," Jiang Cheng said, taking out the slippers he had found under the bed. "The size is small. You can compare it with the casual shoes."

Actually, there was no need to compare, but Fan Li still took them and placed them next to the casual shoes. Now, everyone could clearly see that the owner of these slippers was a woman.

"Is it too far-fetched to say that a girl lives in that room just based on a pair of slippers? Maybe the girl forgot to take her slippers from the boy's bedroom."

"And looking at the layout of that bedroom, it seems like it should be occupied by a boy."

"But men don't use things like this in their bedrooms," Jiang Cheng said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a package, handing it to Chen Xiaomeng, who had raised the question.

She took it, her eyebrows rising. It was an opened package of sanitary napkins.

"I found it in the bedroom drawer. More than one package," Jiang Cheng continued.

Nuan Jie looked at Jiang Cheng. "So, both bedrooms upstairs are occupied by girls, and one of them has a personality and habits that are more masculine."

Jiang Cheng nodded. "That's right."

Chen Xiaomeng seemed to have just come to her senses, her eyes a little confused. "Then where do the other two boys live? We've only found three bedrooms in this villa."

A master bedroom occupied by the husband and wife.

Based on their deductions, the remaining two small bedrooms belonged to the two girls in the villa.

"Could they be on the third floor?" Fatty whispered. "We haven't been there yet."

Before he could finish speaking, Nuan Jie shook her head. "I don't think so. I observed it when we arrived. This villa only has windows on the first and second floors. The third floor is a darkroom."

Normally, no one would put a bedroom in a windowless darkroom, especially not wealthy people like the owners of this villa.

Chen Xiaomeng seemed to realize something, her expression tense. "So... these two boys aren't members of this family. They're outsiders!"

Fan Li glanced at her and said coldly, "You should say they're intruders."

"And they're not two boys, they're two adult men," Jiang Cheng added.

Chen Xiaomeng's body shuddered violently at these words.

Indeed, after the assumption that these two people were the children of the husband and wife was overturned, judging from the two pairs of shoes left behind, one pair was close to Jiang Cheng's size, and the other was even larger than Fan Li's size.

Jiang Cheng looked at the two pairs of sneakers arranged on the ground. "When I first saw these shoes, I felt something was strange. They were too cheap and too old, obviously out of place with the other shoes in the shoe cabinet. And the people living in this villa don't seem like people who would make do with anything."

The living room fell silent. The previous line of thought had been overturned, and the story had changed from a relatively straightforward family tragedy to an invasion by villains.

After a long pause, Fatty looked around and whispered, "So, two men broke into this villa, killed the husband and wife first, then imprisoned their two daughters, and finally killed them."

"Remember the water stains left by the female ghost? And the woman's hair left in the bathtub in the first-floor bathroom," Nuan Jie said with a grim expression. "That ghost was probably drowned in the bathtub."

"As for Xie Yu being scared to death and then dragged away and beaten, it's also the female ghost's revenge. That also explains why the female ghost put the shoes left by the invaders on him."

"Because she imagined Xie Yu as the person who abused her."

While the group was analyzing the truth of the case, the sky had already brightened. This time, no one urged Fatty to cook. They simply ate some small breads and other snacks to fill their stomachs.

It wasn't out of sympathy for the nimble Fatty, but because they didn't have much time left.

Jiang Cheng had already noticed that the days in this world were getting shorter and shorter, while the nights were getting longer and longer.

According to his estimation, the daylight in this world would completely disappear after at most two more nights.

"What will happen after the daylight disappears?" Fatty asked, his eyes as big as light bulbs, his throat bobbing violently.

Jiang Cheng turned around, patted Fatty's shoulder and comforted him, "Don't worry..."

Fatty's pale cheeks flushed slightly.

Jiang Cheng continued, "The worst that could happen is that the ghosts will appear and kill people without restraint."

Fatty: "???"

The group walked along the corridor on the second floor. They wanted to take advantage of this relatively safe time during the day to complete the second search of the villa.