ocean-life Episode 44, second floor... It's Liu Li from next door!
Episode 44, second floor... It's Liu Li from next door!
Pliers!
The heavy metal clamps, carrying all of Cheng Tan's strength, slammed down!
It wasn't the floor, the ceiling, or even the loose floor tile where the secret room was discovered.
It was the wall next to it!
"Pass--!"
A dull, solid impact rang out in the cramped room, making everyone's eardrums buzz.
Dust fell in clumps, and fragments of wall plaster flew everywhere.
On the wall, a spiderweb-like network of cracks instantly appeared centered on the point of impact, with the center of the cracks sunken in, revealing the dark red bricks inside.
"Are you crazy?!" Lynx exclaimed.
Li Kai was also stunned: "Cheng Tan! What are you doing?!"
Cheng Tan acted as if he hadn't heard anything. He was breathing heavily, his eyes fixed on the depths of the crack, burning with madness.
He raised the heavy, cold pliers again, aimed at the densest cracks, and used all his strength—
"Bang!!"
The second time!
The sound of bricks shattering was clearly audible. A hole the size of a bowl had been smashed in the wall, its edges rough, and it was dark inside, exuding a musty, stale air.
"3D! Cutting off the 'D' makes it '2'!" Cheng Tan's voice was hoarse and urgent. As he continued to widen the opening with the pliers, he quickly explained, "A die is a cube, three-dimensional! Missing a corner destroys a dimension! Cutting off a part of '3D' might make it '2D'? But the number '3' and the letter 'D' engraved on the cut surface... that's not a dimension! It's a room number! 3D—3rd floor, unit D! Or... building 3, room D? No! Anping Lane only has building 7!"
He slammed the hole a third time, widening it to the point where a person could crawl through.
"It's about orientation!" Shadow understood instantly. He rushed forward and, together with Cheng Tan, forcefully pried open the loose bricks. "The dice represent spatial orientation! One corner of the cube has been cut off, pointing to the missing part of the cube! In this room, the missing part of the cube—is the next room!"
"Next door? Room 402!" Lin Qian exclaimed.
Wu Wenbin also realized: "Right! 402! Liu Li's room! '3D' might not be a room number, but some kind of code, but the missing corner is pointing in... the other side of this shared wall!"
A terrifying light flashed in Li Kai's eyes: "The second secret chamber isn't downstairs...it's next door?!"
「快帮忙！」程谭吼道，「『点数之和为七』！403是4+0+3=7！402是4+0+2=6！我们这边是『7』，隔壁是『6』！骰子两个相对面点数之和是七！我们和402就是『相对面』！秘密在对面！通路可能就在这墙里！」
People only have a sudden realization when they are pushed to the limit. Just now, this explanation was like lightning cleaving through the fog.
Everyone, including A-Zhe and Xiao-Fei who were still in shock, rushed forward and frantically pried and smashed the wall with their hands and anything they could find—wrenches, paperweights.
Bricks and cement blocks continued to fall, filling the air with dust. Beams of flashlights crisscrossed amidst the swirling dust.
The wall wasn't particularly thick; it was an old-fashioned brick-and-mortar structure. With everyone digging frantically, the opening rapidly widened, and in less than half a minute, a hole large enough for an adult to bend over and pass through was smashed open.
Looking over, the other side of the cave entrance was pitch black.
Everyone could feel the air convection, and a... stronger musty smell, mixed with a sweet and stale odor.
Cheng Tan was the first to stick his head out and shine his flashlight on the other side.
A beam of light pierced the darkness.
The opposite room was almost a mirror image of 403, but it was more cluttered, with piles of discarded furniture and miscellaneous items, and was also covered in a thick layer of dust.
However, the scene illuminated by the flashlight beam in the center of the room caused Cheng Tan's blood to freeze instantly, and his breathing to stop.
He saw a rope.
That... wasn't a rope lying on the ground.
It's a rope hanging down.
It hangs down from a fixed point on the ceiling, at the end...
It was tied around a person's neck.
a woman.
She was facing away from the hole in room 403 and towards the door of room 402, with her feet about 20 centimeters off the ground, dangling in mid-air.
Its body swayed slightly, casting a flickering, eerie shadow in the dusty beam of light.
She was wearing dark clothes and her hair was disheveled.
What made Cheng Tan's heart stop was that the woman's hands were not tied up, but hung down at her sides.
On the ground to her right, a small stool had fallen over and was lying on its side.
Upon closer inspection, he realized that the rope used for hanging was not an ordinary rope, but rather... a piece of black, stripped, rough electrical wire.
The wire was deeply embedded in the woman's neck, leaving a shocking, purplish-black indentation below her Adam's apple.
"Electric...electric wire..." Cheng Tan's voice caught in his throat, turning into a silent gasp.
The weapon of the second nightmare!
He dreamt that he strangled Li Wan with such an electric wire!
And now, it has strangled another woman!
"Who?! Who is it?!" Li Kai squeezed through the crowd and gasped when he saw what was happening.
"Is it... Liu Li?" Lin Qian's voice trembled.
The shadow had already nimbly slipped through the hole and landed silently. He rushed to the woman hanging below, but instead of touching her body rashly, he first shone his flashlight on her face and then quickly checked the surrounding ground and ceiling.
"She still has body temperature! She just died!" the shadow shouted in a deep voice. "Hanging! There wasn't anything high enough for her to stand on! This stool isn't high enough! Could she have been strangled and then hung up there! To fake a suicide?"
He crouched down to examine the overturned stool: "There are friction marks on the edge of the stool, as if it was kicked over during a struggle. There are drag marks in the dust on the ground...more than one person!"
Li Kai, Cheng Tan, Lin Qian, and Wu Wenbin also crawled through the hole one after another. Lynx hesitated for a moment, then followed. A Zhe and Xiao Fei remained at the entrance, too frightened to move, only daring to peek inside.
Room 402 was even more dilapidated than 403. The windows were also sealed off, but not as tightly as those in 403, with a few gaps letting in faint nightlight and the sound of rapid rain.
The sweet, stale smell in the air grew stronger, like a mixture of spices and putrid substances.
The flashlight beam illuminated the woman's face as she hung there.
It was the face of a middle-aged woman, pale and swollen, with wide-open eyes and dilated pupils, frozen in extreme terror and pain.
Her mouth was slightly open, and her tongue was not noticeably protruding. Her appearance was ordinary, somewhat different from the image of "Liu Li" that everyone had imagined, but her age and general features seemed to match.
"Is she really Liu Li?" Wu Wenbin asked in a low voice.
"I need to verify your identity," Shadow said, carefully rummaging through the woman's coat pocket and finding an old wallet. Inside the wallet was an ID card.
He shone a flashlight on his ID card.
Name: Liu Li.
Date of birth: 197X.
Address: Room 402, Building 7, Anpingli.
It really is Liu Li!
The owner of apartment 402, Li Wan's former neighbor, the woman whose life was declared "dead" by the lipstick-related information!
She is really dead now.
He died under the electrical wire, the weapon that corresponded to Cheng Tan's second nightmare.
The time of death may have been just 3 minutes ago.
It is 3:03 now.