Chapter 137: The Most Terrifying Situation

Only this piece of clothing was completely soaked in blood. From the chest to the back, from the collar to the hem, inside and out, it was dyed entirely red.

"Perfectly intact, with no signs of knife tears. The blood is mostly coagulated on the surface. This clothing wasn't worn by a victim; it belonged to the killer."

I reached into the pocket to search for anything useful. It was sticky inside, feeling like I had plunged my hand into spoiled glue.

"What's this?" Sure enough, my fingers brushed against something.

It was a square, palm-sized photo frame.

A thick layer of blood smeared the plastic frame. I grabbed some nearby clothes to wipe it clean, finally revealing the figures in the photo.

It was a family portrait. Unlike the one displayed in the hanged man's study, this photo had five people in it.

The mother stood next to the father while holding an infant, and an older brother and sister stood on either side of them.

"The people in the photo look very young. This must have been taken before the little boy's parents divorced." Having just welcomed a new son, the whole family beamed with bright, harmonious smiles. No one could have predicted the tragic abuse the little boy would later suffer.

"The killer brought this photo along while committing the murders. Was it for some kind of ritual? What was his goal?" Remembering how Xia Chi had once used a photo frame to pass on secrets about the Underworld Live Show, I cracked this one open out of habit. Sure enough, tucked behind the photo, there was something else.

"Light brown paper?"

It was the same color as the pages in the little boy's diary. Thanks to the frame's protection, these sheets hadn't been soaked in blood.

I held them up and quickly scanned the contents:

"These past few days, I've kept having the same dream. I dream of my room, of my brother and my father, and I dream of taking a knife and killing them all."

"Is this a nightmare? No, at least I don't think so. When the blade sinks into flesh, I don't feel any fear or panic, only an indescribable joy. This must be a sweet dream."

"I've experienced unprecedented happiness in this dream. So dreaming can actually be this joyful."

"The Dream Realm keeps getting longer. Every time I'm about to wake up, I meet a monk. He wears two masks. He is gentle and kind to me, but reveals a ferocious, demonic face to those who bully me."

"No one has ever treated me this well before, not even my parents. He guides me, comforts me, and shows me the way out of this misery."

"He's right. I should do exactly as he says. It's the perfect solution. I've already practiced it countless times in the Dream Realm."

"Yes, kill everyone!"

"My endurance never wins their sympathy or approval; it only invites worse torture. They don't even see me as human. None of them do!"

"They could never imagine I'd actually do it. Just thinking about it makes me so happy."

"I sneaked back from school behind everyone's back. I'm going to finish my plan. I'm going to make the Dream Realm a reality."

The rest of the page was deliberately scribbled out and illegible. It seemed to describe the boy's psychological shifts after committing the murders.

I stuffed the papers into my pocket and kept the photo in hand. Honestly, I could have just tossed the picture aside and let it soak in the blood, but I reconsidered. This photo was a crucial emotional anchor for the little boy. It might prove very useful later on.

Just as I was about to slip it into my pocket, my fingers brushed against something.

Something sticky on the back of the photo.

"I almost missed a vital clue." Bringing it up to my eyes, I saw four sentences scribbled on the back—whether in fresh blood or red ink, I couldn't tell.

"What crime did they commit?"

"Why did I kill them?"

"How many people did I kill?"

"Who am I?"

All of them were questions. I rubbed my chin in thought. "Four questions. The combination lock needs exactly four letters or numbers to open. Is there a connection between the two?"

The sound of running water slowly grew louder in my ears. It was coming from the bathtub deep inside the bathroom.

'Should I go take a look?' This apartment had already given me a thoroughly horrifying experience, and I dreaded running into another terrifying entity. I forced down the urge to step forward and investigate.

'Curiosity killed the cat. I don't have much time left anyway. It's best to stay as far away from that obvious death trap as possible.'

I turned and walked out of the bathroom, my mind racing as I pondered the answers to the four questions on the photo.

'What crimes did this family commit?' I thought. 'The father had a close relationship with his female student, the mother betrayed the father, and the brother and sister had an unspeakable secret. But forcing it into actual criminal charges is a bit of a stretch.'

'No, that's wrong.' My train of thought was off. The crimes the boy mentioned were likely rooted in a twisted sense of morality and ethics.

I suddenly remembered the copy of the Seven Deadly Sins on his father's bookshelf. 'God loves the world, yet humanity is born bearing sin. Out of the seven original sins, one perfectly matches this family's situation...'

'The sin of greed!' I realized. As I walked past the open front door to the living room, I glanced out into the profound darkness of the corridor. It felt as if something was looming out there, carrying a suffocating pressure that drew closer by the second. I was genuinely terrified that a massive hand might suddenly shoot out from the dark and drag me away as I walked by.

Even though malicious ghosts lurked inside this apartment, they were at least a visible threat. Compared to that visceral terror, I was far more afraid of the deep darkness outside the door, because it represented the absolute unknown.

Suppressing a shudder, I hurried into the hanged father's study.

I found the Seven Deadly Sins on the desk and flipped to the chapter on the sin of greed.

The entire book was in a foreign language. The only thing I could understand was the page number printed at the bottom: "h-6."

'One letter and one number. If the four questions correspond to the four parts of the password, does that mean I have to choose between the letter and the number?' I frowned, glancing up at the clock on the bookshelf. 'How is that possible?'

The hands on the clock clearly indicated it was already 1:57 AM. I only had three minutes left until two o'clock.

'How did time pass so fast?!' Cold sweat beaded on my forehead, but I didn't even have time to panic. I looked out the door and saw a woman, her face covered in blood, crawling across the living room floor. Through the open doorway, her eyes locked onto me in the study.

"Fuck! The thing locked outside managed to get in?!" The mangled corpse slowly crawled toward me, the blood dripping from her face leaving a gruesome, ever-extending trail across the floorboards.

And that wasn't even the worst of it. The older brother's face—features twisted and blood vessels bulging—also appeared in the study doorway, slowly inching toward me.

My phone screen pulsed with a faint glow. A single user ID was frantically spamming the chat with a hysterical stream of messages.

Guo Jingjing: "Stay here! Stay here! Stay here!"

Guo Jingjing: "You can't get out! You'll never escape!"

Guo Jingjing: "I found you! I found you! We found you!"

I had barely lowered my head to glance at my phone when something lightly brushed against the back of my neck. It felt as if a block of ice had been dropped down my collar, sending a freezing chill straight down my spine.

I turned and looked up. The hanged father suspended in the center of the room had his mouth split wide open, staring dead at my face.

Being attacked from front and back, surrounded by enemies on all sides, was barely enough to describe my current predicament.

"Fuck!" This wasn't my first time cursing out loud. To terrify someone like me—who had undergone professional training and survived multiple live broadcasts—so badly that I was losing my mind, just what kind of absolute horror was this?

'Calm down!' I forced myself to look away, turning my eyes back to the rapidly spinning hands of the clock. 'Just over two minutes left.'

The second question was, "Why did I kill them?" The little boy had suffered so much horrific injustice that I could easily think of dozens of reasons for him.

The malicious ghosts drew ever closer. Not daring to linger near the doorway, I stepped onto the study chair and vaulted onto the desk. From this new, elevated vantage point, my line of sight shifted, and I noticed a letter pinned beneath the corner of the desk.

I tore it open. Inside was a DNA paternity test with the name crossed out. The results clearly stated that the child was not biologically related to the father.

'This has to be the little boy's test report. If they hadn't proven he wasn't related to them, his father and siblings wouldn't have been so completely ruthless in torturing him.' I flipped the medical report over and found several lines of text, all written in different handwriting.

Looking closely, I gasped in shock. The very first line scribbled on the back of the report read: "That little bastard, I'm going to kill him with my own hands!"