Chapter 777: A Clue

"Not bad," the woman said suddenly, putting me on edge. I slowly lowered the hand holding my rice bowl.

"You don't need to be nervous. I'm just a little curious." The woman ate slowly, pushing the meat dish in front of her over to my side. "That child was covered in blood, his eyes and ears pierced through. A normal person, upon seeing such a scene, would probably prefer to eat something light."

Only when she mentioned it did I realize that after finishing the surgery, she had stuck to vegetables, only occasionally picking up a piece of meat. This was how a normal person acted. I, on the other hand, had probably grown so accustomed to gore that my subconscious ignored it. It wasn't until she pointed it out, and the various scenes from the Pig Cage Apartments surfaced in my mind, that I finally began to feel a little nauseous. But only a little.

I lowered my head to finish the last bite, placed the bowl and chopsticks on the chair, and tilted my head to stare at her.

During my time as a private detective, I had seen all kinds of people, but this was the first time I had met a woman like her. "What should I call you? Ninth Master?"

She openly extended her right hand toward me. "Yan Shengnan, senior lecturer in forensic ethics at Jinghai Medical University."

"Forensic ethics? Your School of Forensic Medicine actually has a major like that?" I shook her hand, temporarily setting aside my hostility.

"Of course," she replied casually, walking toward the door with her bowl. "He's already awake. If there's anything you want to know, you can go ask him, but it's best not to agitate him."

I waited until she left before stretching and storing the Filthy Ghost, which had been crouching behind the door, back into the Ghost Ring.

In the exact moment my ghost art connected with the Filthy Ghost, I sensed a trace of fear from it. Among all the ghost entities I possessed, the Filthy Ghost was the most dim-witted and rarely expressed any emotion of its own.

"Was it afraid of that woman? That shouldn't be possible."

Going up to the second floor, I pushed the door open and walked in. The young man I had brought out of the Red Building lay half-dead on the hospital bed, three-quarters of his head wrapped in bandages.

"I think we need to have a good talk," I said, sitting beside him and speaking into his uninjured left ear.

Hearing my voice, the young man opened his mouth. He struggled to raise a hand, trying to grab me. "Did you catch Zhu Li?"

He didn't know what had ultimately happened in the Red Building; his memory was still stuck at the point before I entered the Animal Realm. Bandages covered his face, so I couldn't see his expression. "Not yet, but don't worry. He also has something I'm looking for, and I will bring him to 'justice.' Let's put him aside for now. I'm more curious about you. For an ordinary person to survive in such a dangerous place... don't tell me it was just good luck."

"If my luck were good, I wouldn't be lying here talking to you." The young man smiled bitterly. "My name is Kong Ying. The reason I moved into the Red Building is because my older sister, Kong Yi, went missing in Jinghai. After investigating, I finally locked onto Zhu Li."

"Your family member went missing, so why didn't you call the police?" My tone was cold, as if stating an ordinary fact.

"When my sister ran away from home the first time, we did call the police. But it happened over and over again, so many times that eventually, the police were unwilling to intervene. Who could have known that this time it would be real..." Lying on the bed, the young man told me the story of him and the Faceless Woman.

The Faceless Woman I had encountered in the Red Building was originally named Kong Yi. She was seven years older than the young man and the daughter of a township academy principal. She had been incredibly rebellious since childhood, smoking and binge drinking. If all her bad habits were listed out, they would fill an entire A4 sheet of paper.

She argued with their parents almost every day, fighting fiercely over all sorts of things. Running away from home, self-harm—many things you would usually only see on TV genuinely happened to her.

Humans are a combination of angels and demons. In the eyes of her parents and neighbors, this girl was hopelessly worthless, a piece of trash wallowing in her own degradation. But in the eyes of her younger brother, his sister was a hero.

More than once, he had seen his sister feeding stray cats and dogs and helping strangers she had never met before. Whenever he was bullied at school, it was always this sister who stood up for him.

Kong Yi had a terrible relationship with their parents, but she was exceptionally close to Kong Ying. This was also one of the reasons why he had come to Jinghai to look for her.

The school Kong Ying attended was Jinghai Medical University's School of Forensic Medicine. That icy older woman outside was his mentor, as well as his romantic partner.

When he revealed this relationship, I was a bit surprised. It was only as I kept listening that I realized this half-dead young man on the bed had a slight sister complex.

To investigate the truth behind Kong Yi's disappearance, Kong Ying had run all over Jinghai City in his spare time. Yan Shengnan stayed by his side, strategizing for him, but they never made any progress.

That was until a few months ago, when Kong Ying received a call from a stranger. On the phone, that person told him about the Red Building.

Stroking my chin, I honestly couldn't tell if Kong Ying was lying, because he couldn't produce any evidence to prove that the call ever existed.

I hadn't found his phone, not knowing where in the Red Building he had lost it. When I asked about the vocal traits of his caller, he was evasive and unclear. The most crucial point was that back in the Old Granny's room, she had told me that right before I arrived at the Red Building, she had heard someone making a phone call outside in the hallway!

Combining the footsteps and everyday walking habits, the Old Granny had told me that the person making the call was the young man living on the top floor—Kong Ying, the very person lying in front of me now.

But when I confronted him about this, he flatly denied it, claiming he hadn't left his room at all during that timeframe and that the Old Granny must have misheard.

I had kept this detail in mind. Comparing what the young man and the Old Granny had said, one of them was definitely hiding something from me.

The time the Old Granny heard the voice on the phone almost perfectly matched the time I had called the other live show streamer. This was a very critical point.

This meant that even if the young man wasn't a live show streamer himself, he had some connection to one. If the call he received wasn't from me, it was very likely that the other live show streamer had called him immediately after receiving my call, telling him everything about me.

According to the Old Granny's description at the time, she had heard footsteps going downstairs first, and after the call connected, they turned back around. This abnormal behavior was enough to explain the problem.

I pressed my hand lightly against the young man's neck. Both of his eyes had been gouged blind, so he couldn't see anything. He could only feel a gradually increasing pressure on his fragile neck. That sense of danger made him want to scream for help.

"No matter your reason for deceiving me, I want you to understand something right now. I am not a soft-hearted person. I saved you only because you're useful to me. If you're intentionally lying to me for the sake of some shady ulterior motive, then not only you, but your mentor will also be implicated." A murderous aura pressed down on Kong Ying like a tidal wave. The Blood Fox Tattoo on my chest flashed with a red light, looking as if it were about to leap right out of my collar.

"I'll talk, I'll talk, okay?!" The young man felt like he had just escaped a wolf's den only to fall into a tiger's lair. Blood seeped from beneath his bandages, and his exposed skin was frighteningly pale. "The person who helped me in secret over the phone never revealed his information. He also forbade me from revealing his existence to outsiders. I haven't even told Sister Yan about this."

I slowly loosened my grip. "What are the characteristics of that person's voice? Be detailed."

"It's a middle-aged man. Talking to him is like talking to a robot. His tone and the speed of his speech rarely change. That's it, that's all I know." Kong Ying lay paralyzed on the bed, completely powerless to resist me.

"How many times have you talked on the phone in total, and what did you talk about?"

"Nine times, I remember that very clearly." Kong Ying touched his neck. He was getting tired, and his voice grew lower and lower. "That person is like a prophet; it's as if he can see through to the future. Whenever I was about to encounter a life-threatening danger, he would always discover it in advance and tell me how to avoid it. It's precisely because of his repeated warnings that I was able to survive in that haunted building."

"He was guiding you in secret?" I narrowed my eyes. "Tell me every single word he said to you."

A few minutes later, I had roughly figured out the relationship between Kong Ying and the mysterious man, and I also learned just how difficult it was for Kong Ying to have lived in the Red Building for three months without an obsession taking root in his body.

He had been targeted by the Red Building Tenants dozens of times from start to finish, mostly relying on his own grit to survive. And whenever something with power beyond that of an ordinary person appeared, the mysterious man would call in advance to warn him, telling him to evacuate or hide somewhere in the Red Building until dawn.

"It's a miracle you've managed to survive this long," I said, tapping my fingers against the edge of the bed. But in my heart, I felt troubled.

'What is the purpose of that live show streamer helping Kong Ying? Could it also be for the Reincarnation Mirror Fragment? The help call opportunity rewarded by the Live Show has already been used. Do I really have to spend ten points to make another call?'

The Live Show's help call function was full of twisted humor. Before making the call, there was absolutely no way to know who would pick up. My current situation was already terrible enough; if I spent ten points and the call somehow went to the Butcher again, it would probably be very difficult for me to leave Jinghai alive.

"Um..." Kong Ying lay on the bed and waved his hand in the air. "If you're looking for that person, I might be able to provide you with a clue."

"What clue?"

"The number that person used to call me was different every time. Later on, I asked my mentor to help me look up the registration locations for those numbers. They were all local to Jinghai, and..." Kong Ying hesitated before saying, "...all the phone owners were dead people."