The shrill screaming lasted only a very short time before dying into total stillness.
Ning Qiushui charged up the stairs first, Liu Chengfeng and the others behind him.
But when they reached the second floor, their steps suddenly halted.
Shock and disbelief surfaced on their faces.
"No... no way..."
Bei Dao's voice shook; his legs trembled.
Before them, the blood that had been spread across the floor... had vanished completely. Not so much as a fleck of it remained!
As if... everything that had happened that morning had been their collective delusion!
"Look!"
Just then, Yan Youping cried out sharply, pointing at the room at the end of the corridor.
They looked—and saw great swathes of fresh scarlet blood slowly seeping out from under the door, stretching out into the corridor...
Wind blew in through the open shutter window at the end, carrying a nauseating stench of blood!
"Holy shit..."
Liu Chengfeng forced the words out; every hair on his body stood on end.
The others looked no better.
Ning Qiushui stared at the shutter window, frowning.
He remembered clearly: that morning, when he had gone to examine Wang Yuning's corpse, he had shut that window in passing—and locked it.
However strong the wind outside, it absolutely could not have pushed that window open.
And the lock could only be worked from the inside.
Since coming down from the second floor, he had kept his eye on the old woman's doorway almost the whole time. She had never once come out—so she couldn't have opened the window.
And they had all been on the first floor searching for Ya Mo, so none of them could have opened it either.
In that case... who had opened that window?
Could it be...
Wang Yuning—already dead?
As the thought crossed his mind, Ning Qiushui felt his own hackles rise.
But unlike the others, he didn't shrink back. Inside the fear... he stepped forward, walking toward the door still seeping blood.
Watching him move, the people behind opened their mouths—and found nothing to say...
Fucking hell...
This Ning Qiushui—why were his nerves this strong?
Wasn't he afraid there might be something... behind that door?
"Ning Qiushui, have you lost your mind?"
Bei Dao called out, but Ning Qiushui paid him no attention at all, walking on toward the shutter window at the corridor's end.
Suddenly, another figure squeezed out of the group.
It was Liu Chengfeng.
He jogged up behind Ning Qiushui.
"Bro, wait for me..."
With Liu Chengfeng following too, the other three finally forced down the terror in their chests, gritted their teeth, and caught up!
At the end of the corridor, Ning Qiushui's first act was to pull the shutter window closed and lock it once more.
That done, under everyone's terrified gaze, he slowly pulled open the door of the room at the end.
As the door swung wide, Yan Youping vomited on the spot!
"Urk—"
The others recoiled half a step in fright!
Inside the room, Ya Mo's blood-soaked corpse hung suspended in midair, her belly hollowed out, the organs within gone—nothing left but the blood-slicked spine...
Her neck looked as if it had been snapped by some outside force, twisted a full ninety degrees, and with an eerie smile on her face she stared straight at them all...
No one dared meet her eyes.
Except Ning Qiushui.
He walked in beneath Ya Mo's corpse and studied it carefully, his gaze growing keener and keener.
"Almost identical to how Wang Yuning died. This was the same one's work."
"The old lady on the second floor?"
Ning Qiushui looked back toward the old woman's room, recalled the three words she kept repeating—and suddenly his pupils contracted.
Could it be...
"Wait—look, all of you... Wang Yuning's corpse is gone!!"
Bei Dao suddenly pointed past Ya Mo's body at the bed behind it, shrieking in terror.
They looked.
It was true.
Wang Yuning's corpse, which had lain on that bed, had vanished.
The bloodstains on the bed were gone without a trace as well.
So... where had her body gone?
Bang!
Ning Qiushui abruptly pulled the door shut. He glanced at the blood on the floor and said slowly:
"Downstairs first."
Beside him, Xue Guize goggled:
"Downstairs?"
"But—Ya Mo's body in there..."
Ning Qiushui shook his head and said evenly:
"Leave it. It will clean up."
At those words, gooseflesh crawled over every one of them.
As they followed Ning Qiushui down the stairs, they asked:
"Bro Ning—who's 'it'?"
Ning Qiushui answered without turning his head:
"The thing that's doing the killing."
"Is it... the old lady on the second floor?"
Ning Qiushui didn't answer.
Back in the villa's hall, the silence among them was dreadful.
Fear... had swallowed them all like a rising tide.
It went on that way until dusk, when Liu Chengfeng finally couldn't stand the oppressive gloom any longer and rose, saying gruffly:
"I'm gonna cook."
Ning Qiushui stood up as well.
"I'll come too."
"For the time being... whatever any of you do, don't do it alone."
With that, he paid the others no more mind and followed Liu Chengfeng straight into the kitchen.
As for Yan Youping—ever since learning that the ghost-thing in this villa killed with the kitchen's knife and fork, nothing on earth could make her set foot in the kitchen again.
In the kitchen, Liu Chengfeng waited until he was sure no one else had come in, then asked under his breath:
"Bro... tonight, you mean to go up to the third floor?"
Ning Qiushui, who was getting meat from the refrigerator, paused—then smiled without looking back:
"So you're not as dumb as you act."
"Rough on the outside, fine grain within, eh!"
Praised, Liu Chengfeng scratched his head sheepishly.
"Bro... there's one thing I don't get."
"Why don't we go up in the daytime? Why wait for night?"
"That place... has to be dangerous, right?"
The mistress's warning before she left, and their own gut instinct, told them all the same thing: the third floor was mortally dangerous!
What's more, the big iron door leading up to the third floor was fastened with an iron lock.
They had no key.
Rummaging through the refrigerator for something, Ning Qiushui said:
"Very dangerous indeed... especially in the daytime."
Liu Chengfeng froze.
With that one nudge from Ning Qiushui, it suddenly clicked!
"Bro, you mean... the killer ghost-thing isn't the old lady on the second floor—it's... on the third floor!"
"By day, it rests up there. By night, it comes down... to feed?!"
Ning Qiushui gave a slight nod.
"Right."
"The old lady should be an ordinary person—the bait that thing in the villa uses for... fishing."
"And I have one very ugly hunch... but it can only be tested tonight."