Why…
Jiang Mingran was certain that what he had just seen through the glass was Uncle Bing.
Why was Uncle Bing wearing red embroidered shoes?
Shao Lan clutched his right shoulder and asked hoarsely, “Did you see Uncle Bing’s head?”
Jiang Mingran nodded.
Shao Lan looked at Jiang Mingran sadly.
“Did you… only see the head too?”
A chill ran down Jiang Mingran’s spine, and he froze.
Slowly looking upwards, he saw that Uncle Bing’s face was pressed against the glass, silently watching the people inside.
His eyes were fixed, and his pupils were dilated.
Uncle Bing was dead; the woman had killed him after entering through the window. Uncle Bing’s lifeless face was pressed against the glass, then moved aside after a few seconds. Then, an almost entirely white eye appeared on the glass.
The woman, who had been half-crouching at the door, holding up Uncle Bing’s head, now stood up straight, her face parallel to the glass.
The invisible eye blinked, and then the woman smiled.
She slammed her head against the wooden door!
With a loud crash, Jiang Mingran watched in despair as the door panel instantly cracked.
The wooden door couldn’t compare to a security door; at this rate, if the woman rammed it a few more times, the door wouldn’t hold.
“Jiang Mingran.”
Jiang Mingran turned around, and Shao Lan calmly looked at him.
This young man looked only a few years older than him, but he maintained a high degree of composure.
Using his free left hand, Shao Lan pulled Jiang Mingran closer and whispered the plan in his ear: “You hide later, I…”
Upon hearing Shao Lan’s words, Jiang Mingran’s eyes widened suddenly: “No, brother, you’ll die!”
Shao Lan shook his head: “I can’t hide.”
He pointed to his blood-soaked right shoulder; the smell of the blood was like the constant location he was sending to the woman—no matter where he hid, she would immediately sense it.
“Is there something I can ask you?” Shao Lan coughed, “If I die, after you’ve confirmed the police can subdue the killer, commit suicide.”
Jiang Mingran was stunned.
Then, he understood.
“I will,” Jiang Mingran said. “Brother, I promise I’ll commit suicide.”
Shao Lan nodded.
If he could, he wouldn’t like to entrust his life to someone else.
But there was no other way now.
There were only two goldfish left in the fish tank. After this, everyone would only have one life left.
So in this cycle, someone among them had to live to witness the arrival of the police.
“There’s no time. Hide and don’t make a sound,” Shao Lan said.
Jiang Mingran, his eyes red, hid to the side.
With the woman’s final slam, the wooden door shattered with an unbearable thud, and a withered hand reached through the door panel.
Shao Lan leaned against the windowsill, unarmed, calmly watching the woman.
“Your child is very cute,” he said abruptly.
The woman’s hand, tearing open the door panel, paused.
Shao Lan glanced back. He couldn’t see which floor it was in the thick fog, but he could sense that the building wasn’t low. The wind, mixed with rain vapor, blew in, chilling him to the bone.
He looked at the woman: “Is it a boy or a girl?”
Jiang Mingran hid behind the table, trembling all over and restraining himself so as not to make a single sound.
“Don’t you know?” Shao Lan said. “Then shall I tell you?”
He said word by word: “Let me tell you, neither.”
“You have no child; your child is just a bundle of cotton stuffed inside a padded jacket,” Shao Lan said calmly.
Shao Lan had felt something was wrong the moment he discovered the simmering medicinal soup in the kitchen.
According to Uncle Bing, this formula was meant to promote pregnancy, but since the woman was already pregnant, why would she still need to keep drinking it?
Moreover, the deformation of the padded jacket when the woman protected her lower abdomen earlier allowed Shao Lan to confirm that that area was nothing more than a thick wad of cotton.
“Clearly having no child, yet you always protect your lower abdomen—is it because you’ve fooled yourself into believing it too? Does this self-deception make you happy?” Shao Lan asked coldly.
“You don’t have a child now, and you probably won’t in the future. After all, you’ve killed so many people… Which child would ever be willing to be reincarnated into the belly of a murderer?”
The woman slowly widened her eyes, and a line of bloody tears streamed out of her exposed single eye.
A moment later, she shrieked.
Slamming fiercely against the door, the already dilapidated wooden door flew outward, and the woman rushed toward Shao Lan.
She shrieked, her eyes entirely composed of whites turning completely crimson.
Shao Lan fell backward.
His body plunged into the thick fog, plummeting from the window.
The woman couldn’t see; she only knew that the prey reeking of blood was right ahead in the near distance. When she lunged forward and felt that it was the window ledge, it was already too late.
Her tall, slender body lost its balance, and more than half of her body rushed past the windowsill.
The woman hurriedly tried to catch her step.
However, right at that moment, Jiang Mingran, who had been hiding, rushed out.
Using all his strength, he slammed heavily into the woman.
Like a roaring beast, the woman was knocked out of the window, letting out a massive screech as she plunged into the thick fog.
Jiang Mingran clung to the windowsill, panting heavily.
This was Shao Lan’s plan.
Enrage her, cause her to lose her rationality to the greatest extent possible, and then… send her tumbling into the abyss.
Yet Shao Lan had also become the price to pay.
There was no other choice. Although the woman was already a monster, she clearly retained a certain degree of intelligence and even knew how to use Uncle Bing’s head to trick them into opening the door.
Therefore, there had to be a decoy…
The wind from outside the window whipped across Jiang Mingran’s face, his eye sockets burning red.
Uncle Bing was dead; Shao Lan was dead.
Alone facing the rain and fog outside the window, he felt as though a massive crater had been blown open in his heart.
“Brother Lan…”
“Xiao Jiang.”
A very faint voice, sounding as though the speaker had only a single breath left.
Jiang Mingran’s eyes widened.
“Xiao Jiang.”
It wasn’t an illusion!
Jiang Mingran looked down.
Shao Lan was hanging by the window.
He had used his jacket to secure his ankles to the window frame, and at this moment, his entire body was suspended upside down outside, head-first.
Jiang Mingran hurriedly grabbed his legs and pulled him back up.
Shao Lan collapsed onto the floor, blood foaming from his mouth with every breath he took.
The woman had collided with him as she fell out of the window, and right now he felt as though every bone in his body had been run over by a bulldozer, with not a single one intact.
“Go… go back to the other side,” Shao Lan weakly pointed toward the opposite unit.
Even though the woman had fallen down, her physique was completely at a monster’s level; it was hard to say whether a fall like that could kill her.
If she staged a comeback, Brother Wang’s…
The wooden door on that side was completely shattered, but the security door on the opposite side could still hold out for a bit.
Jiang Mingran carried Shao Lan on his back over to the opposite apartment and locked the security door securely.
As soon as the door was locked, the sound of police sirens rang out from outside the window.
“The police are here!” Jiang Mingran was practically moved to tears of joy.
Shao Lan also breathed a long sigh of relief.
He was too exhausted.
The blood loss had made him extraordinarily fatigued, as if a layer of fog hung over his mind. His thoughts had become extremely sluggish, and the moment he closed his eyes, he would instantly lose consciousness, relying solely on his last breath to hold on.
“Police, open the door!”
The door was knocked on.
Jiang Mingran hurried over, looking out through the peephole: “Special Investigation Team?”
“Yes, is the suspect inside? Are there any injured persons?” the man outside asked loudly.
“Yes!” Jiang Mingran eagerly opened the door, “Severely injured, in urgent need of rescue…”
Shao Lan leaned against the floor, watching Jiang Mingran undo the safety chain.
Suddenly, in his fog-filled mind, a thought flashed like lightning.
Too fast.
From the sound of the police sirens to the time the police knocked on the door, all counted together, it was less than a minute.
This was simply too fast.
Could they have managed it if they took the elevator?
Was there an elevator in this building…
Yet, yet… even if there was an elevator…
They clearly hadn’t even told the police their apartment number!!
When calling the police, every time they had only stated Building 7 of Xingfu Residential Area, without mentioning which floor or which apartment, because even they hadn’t managed to figure out the floor and room number.
How did the police know? How could they manage to accurately find their door in less than a minute?
There was only one possibility…
“Don’t open the door!” Shao Lan shouted with his remaining strength. “This policeman is fake!!”
It was too late.
Jiang Mingran’s eyes widened.
The man outside was wearing a semi-worn jacket. He wasn’t very tall, and his face looked somewhat haggard—he looked just like the most ordinary, exhausted middle-aged man.
Except for one thing.
The man was holding a long knife in his hand, and the moment the door opened, that knife thrust straight through the door gap and pierced into Jiang Mingran’s chest.