The second loop.
Jiang Mingran hid among the clutter.
Dark yellow paper bags were stacked in front of him. This close, he could finally tell what they contained.
Chinese medicine.
The bags held medicinal herbs, their labels scrawled with names: "Bupleurum," "White Peony Root," "Dodder Seed," "Bugleweed," "Spatholobus Stem"...
The bitter herbal smell mingled with the faint stench of decomposition from the kitchen, creating a strange odor that made him feel sick.
Suddenly, something seemed to move inside a bag to his left.
Startled, he whipped his head around.
The bag stirred a few times. Then a gray mouse scurried out.
Only a mouse... Jiang Mingran relaxed, but his relief vanished almost immediately.
He'd been able to imitate a mouse's squeaks since childhood, and he was very good at it. Earlier, he'd naturally chosen that skill as a signal to warn Shao Lan.
But there were real mice here. If one squeaked, it would give Shao Lan a false alarm.
Lives were at stake. Jiang Mingran silently apologized, then reached out and grabbed the mouse.
He was quick. Before it could squeak, he'd snapped its neck.
The dead mouse fell to the floor. A few drops of blood seeped from its mouth. Its clasped paws relaxed, and a little ball rolled free.
He took a closer look and nearly threw up.
It was an eyeball.
Cloudy and shriveled, with blackened flesh clinging to it. It looked as though it had been detached from a corpse for a long time.
He turned aside and retched silently, forcing himself not to look at the dead mouse or the eye.
He raised his gaze toward the kitchen—and froze.
At some point, the kitchen door had opened.
Inside was pitch-black, with no sign of anyone. Only a small bluish flame flickered beneath the clay pot on the stove.
The killer was out!
Why had she suddenly come out?
Jiang Mingran instantly knew something was wrong. He wanted to signal Shao Lan at once, but then he sensed something.
Slowly, he raised his head.
Above him, the woman bent over with an eerie smile on her face, reaching down.
Her hands closed around his head. Then she squeezed as though crushing an orange.
The last thing he saw was red and white brain matter splattering out, soaking the dried-up eyeball on the floor.
...
Jiang Mingran finished writing.
His whole body shook, his fountain pen bleeding a blot of blue-black ink into the paper.
Even now, he couldn't understand how the woman had located him so precisely.
"I'm absolutely sure I didn't make a sound..." His pen moved weakly across the page.
After a moment's silence, Shao Lan took the pen and wrote two words.
"Her nose."
Jiang Mingran's eyes widened.
He thought he understood.
"The killer can't see. It isn't just her hearing that's enhanced. It's her sense of smell, too," Shao Lan wrote. "But she isn't sensitive to every scent. Otherwise, we'd have been found long ago." Read this novel at novelping . com for the best experience.
"What she's sensitive to is fresh blood."
In other words, the mouse Jiang Mingran had killed had given away his position.
He lowered his head, bitterly frustrated.
If he hadn't drawn the woman out, would Shao Lan have survived?
As though reading his thoughts, Shao Lan shook his head. "It wasn't your fault. We didn't have all the information."
"Also..." Something else had been bothering him. "Do you remember what those herbs were?"
Jiang Mingran wrote down the ones he could recall. After struggling to remember more, he added a few. "I really can't remember the rest."
Shao Lan studied the list. "Bupleurum, white peony root, dodder seed, bugleweed, spatholobus stem, raw cattail pollen, raspberry fruit, glossy privet fruit."
He read widely and had a general idea of what some herbs did. Bupleurum was used to soothe the liver and relieve emotional stagnation. Raw cattail pollen, if he remembered correctly, promoted blood circulation and dispelled blood stasis. Spatholobus stem nourished the blood and improved circulation.
But he knew little about many of the others.
Just as he was about to give up, Uncle Pancake leaned over.
"Looks like the recipe for an ovulation-promoting decoction. Women drink it when they're trying to have a baby."
Jiang Mingran brightened. "Uncle Pancake, you know Chinese medicine?"
He waved a hand. "No, no. Just a coincidence. When I was little, a barefoot doctor lived next door. Women in the village often went to see him. There was a rhyme all of us kids could sing."
"Bupleurum, white and red peony, bugleweed and motherwort; Spatholobus, achyranthes, liu, su, and cattail; Privet, raspberry, dodder, wolfberry, and psoralea— Soothe the liver, strengthen the kidneys, and help the eggs along."
Shao Lan compared the rhyme with Jiang Mingran's list. Most of the ingredients did match.
"So all those herbs outside the kitchen are something the woman drinks to get pregnant?" Jiang Mingran said. "That clue doesn't seem very useful. It just means Uncle Pancake really saw right. That monster in the kitchen actually is pregnant."
No. That was part of it, but it couldn't be all.
Shao Lan studied the paper, fitting countless scraps of evidence together in his mind.
A mountain of herbs. How long would it take to drink them all? Had she spent year after year swallowing those bitter medicines?
What had the diarist written? "I don't want to hurt her."
Of course he'd be torn and hesitant. [She] was his wife. She'd suffered so much trying to conceive their child.
Suffered... bitterness. Yes. When she killed people, she said it was "so bitter"...
Shao Lan closed his eyes. A vicious headache threatened to overwhelm him.
Something was wrong. A voice inside insisted there was something strange here.
"Brother Lan." Jiang Mingran patted him.
Shao Lan opened his eyes. Both Jiang Mingran and Uncle Pancake looked worried.
Neither was good at making decisions. Right now, he was the only person in the room they could rely on.
He quickly wrote down his conclusion. "Based on last time, [the woman in the kitchen] can hear us on the phone. Whoever calls the police will be killed."
Jiang Mingran went pale. "Then aren't we screwed...?"
They couldn't escape directly. They had to call the police. But only the living room phone worked, and speaking on it would alert the killer in the kitchen.
Shao Lan closed his eyes. Put that way, it really did seem hopeless.
But he kept feeling they'd overlooked something.
Jiang Mingran watched anxiously. Just as he reached to pat Shao Lan again, Shao Lan's eyes snapped open.
"Outside?" Despair washed over Jiang Mingran. Had Shao Lan lost his memory? "That's what we tried the first time! We went outside and died immediately!"
Shao Lan looked at him. "Where did we die?"
"The stairwell..."
"Right. The stairwell. When we went downstairs. What if we stay on this floor?"
Jiang Mingran paused.
"Across the hall." Shao Lan pressed the words hard into the paper. "The neighbor's dead. His apartment is empty."
Uncle Pancake was bewildered, but Jiang Mingran remembered.
In the previous loop, they'd found a diary entry:
"When I got home from work, I saw that the door across the hall was open. Brother Wang wasn't home. I went into my apartment and opened the refrigerator. I saw Brother Wang. Brother Wang was in my refrigerator."
Brother Wang was the neighbor across the hall. He'd offered to help [the diarist] but had been killed before he could do anything.
"I don't know what this [game] is," Shao Lan said. "But so far, every piece of information it's given us has been useful. I think the play area includes [the apartment across the hall]."
Hope flared in Jiang Mingran. "Then I'll go over there to call the police!"
As he started to jump up, Shao Lan caught him.
"It's only a guess," he stressed. "If I'm wrong, you'll die instantly, just like the first time."
Jiang Mingran shivered.
"But we don't have another choice!" he said. "We have to go in to find out!"
Shao Lan thought for a moment. His gaze traveled around the master bedroom until it landed on a red alarm clock on the nightstand.
A faint smile appeared in his eyes. "No. We aren't the ones going in."
...
Jiang Mingran opened the security door. The dim hallway came into view once more.
He crept out toward the apartment across the hall—[Brother Wang's] home.
He placed a hand on the handle and pulled gently. With a creak, the door opened.
Unlocked! Since its owner's death, the door had been left ajar!
Jiang Mingran quickly took out the alarm clock and tossed it inside.
It landed with a thud and immediately began ringing shrilly.
Riiing! Riiing!
He turned back.
At the other end of the hallway, the security door he'd just shut was opening.
Then a mop-shaped shadow appeared on the wall.
The woman.
She was frighteningly tall. In the hallway, she had to hunch to keep from hitting the ceiling. Her long, thin body resembled a mop handle, topped with a wild mass of hair covering her face. When she turned sideways, the shadow revealed a huge swelling partway down the "mop"—her protruding belly.
Slowly, she crossed the hallway toward the ringing alarm.
One step. Two.
Jiang Mingran was drenched in cold sweat. He barely dared breathe.
Pressed flat against the wall, he held his breath and watched her pass right in front of him.
Suddenly, she stopped.
She turned her head. A bloodshot eye appeared amid the tangled hair and met his gaze.