"What... what is that?" Wen Chongxian’s face turned ashen, and his voice almost took on a whimpering tone.
And the sound of high heels above lasted for less than ten seconds before it disappeared again. Everyone dared not breathe heavily, and it was Yang Xiao who first got up and walked towards the door.
Lian Jinsun followed closely behind, not forgetting to instruct a few people to stay behind and watch for any movent above; they would go up to have a look.
Yang Xiao, Lian Jinsun, Zhang Man, and Che Xuexiang took the stairs up to the ninth floor, passed through the corridor, and saw from a distance that the door to Room 9018 was ajar by a few inches. However, they had clearly locked the door that morning.
Taking out his cell phone, Lian Jinsun called A Qiang, who was staying behind, and A Qiang told him that it had been very quiet overhead during this ti.
In other words, it was highly possible that the thing was still in the room and had not left.
The four of them steeled themselves and approached until they were two ters away from the door. They stopped to listen carefully, and there were faint movents inside the room.
Deciding to cut the Gordian knot, Lian Jinsun stepped forward and kicked the slightly open door wide open. Before he could react, a short, sharp scream ca from inside the room.
It was a woman. Her scream startled the four people outside as well. Zhang Man and Che Xuexiang turned and ran, but through the kicked-open door, Yang Xiao saw a younger woman inside who was even more panicked than them, wearing a light blue uniform.
Yang Xiao and Lian Jinsun were taken aback. They did not recognize the woman, but they had seen that uniform before—it was what hotel employees wore.
"What... what are you going to do?" The woman, eyes full of fear, couldn’t help but retreat as she looked at Yang Xiao and Lian Jinsun.
"What are you doing here?" Yang Xiao countered.
"A guest at the front desk left a letter to be delivered to Suite 9018," the woman explained frantically, seemingly worried that Yang Xiao and the others might misunderstand.
"Where’s the letter?" Lian Jinsun reached out his hand, asking for it. Both he and Yang Xiao had the tacit understanding to remain at the doorway without entering the room.
At that mont, Zhang Man and the other person had also co back. After seeing the room keys in Zhang Man’s hand, the uniford woman picked up the large envelope from the table, handed it to them, and then quickly left the room under the watchful eyes of Yang Xiao and his group, hurrying away.
They noticed that the woman was wearing a pair of black work shoes, the kind with round toes and chunky heels, matte in finish, looking solid and subdued.
It wasn’t until the woman’s figure had disappeared around the corner that Yang Xiao breathed a sigh of relief and then shook his head, "It’s not her. The murderer’s high heels had thin, sharp heels."
"Still, we should verify just to be sure," Lian Jinsun said cautiously as he entered the room. Now the beds were all made up anew, and Yu Dagui’s body had disappeared, which was sothing Yang Xiao and his group had co to expect.
After checking around, Lian Jinsun didn’t find anything unusual. Then he went to the red telephone next to the bed, made a call to the front desk, and inquired whether a female staff mber had been sent to deliver sothing to Room 9018 recently. Only after receiving a positive reply from the other end did Lian Jinsun finally feel relieved.
Perhaps due to the shadow in their hearts, the four of them did not linger long. They locked the door and left with the envelope in hand.
Returning to Room 8018, after explaining the situation, the envelope was opened. Inside were several folded pages and a few photographs.
The edges of the photo had already yellowed, clearly showing its age, and more horrifying was its content, which featured two dead people, a man and a woman. The way the woman died mirrored exactly Yu Dagui’s death; she too had been scared to death.
As for the man, his fate was far more tragic. His entire body was drenched in blood, with not a single intact part. Half of his face had been smashed in, his eye socket collapsed, and his eyeball had fallen out.
Yang Xiao discerned that the background of the man’s photo was a bedroom, which was very luxuriously decorated. It matched very closely to the villa where he had stayed the previous night. If he wasn’t mistaken, this man died in that villa, in the very bedroom with the locked door.
On the back of the man’s photo, written in pen with beautiful handwriting, were the words stating the man’s na was Fei Yong. He died in the master bedroom on the first floor of Qi Chi Courtyard’s Building 3. He was also the first among the three victims to be killed.
There were several pages with corresponding detailed information, according to which, Fei Yong’s death was brutal, as he was tortured to death. The wounds on his body ca from various "Ominous Instrunts," the tools of torture included but were not limited to heavy blunt objects, short and sharp knives, as well as the stomping of high heels.
Another photo in the pile depicted a wooden door, which Yang Xiao recognized at a glance as the sa locked door on the first floor of the villa. The only difference was that the angle was taken from inside, and the back of the door was full of dense scratch marks.
The information stated that these scratch marks were all left by Fei Yong himself, his ten fingernails were all broken, presenting a ghastly sight.
Based on the post-mortem examination, Fei Yong’s ti of death was estimated to have been between nine in the evening and the early hours of the morning. His body lay on the bedroom floor, and the only clue was a single blood-stained high heel shoe print.
Yang Xiao then picked up another photo in order, which captured the bedroom floor. A familiar high heel shoe print appeared there, the shoe tip pointed straight at the body, and the body was right next to the door. Again, there was only one shoe print, also the left foot, giving the impression that the owner of the high heel shoe was chasing Fei Yong from behind, and in the critical mont of life and death, Fei Yong couldn’t open the bedroom door.
This was Fei Yong’s information. Next was the file of a woman nad Hu Yuan. She was the second victim of this case, found dead in a rental room, lying on the bed, eyes wide open with a twisted expression, both hands bent in front of her chest like chicken claws, her manner of death identical to Yu Dagui’s.
At Hu Yuan’s death scene there was also a bloodied high heel shoe print, again only the left foot, imprinted right beside the bed. It was as if soone had stood by the bed in the night and stared down at the victim, the shoe tip pointing at Hu Yuan’s body.
Hu Yuan’s ti of death was also between nine in the evening and the early morning.
Then there was the last victim, another woman, nad Sha ihui. She died in room 9018 of this hotel. Strangely, the envelope contained no pictures of her death scene, and there was scant information about her, only stressing that her death was particularly peculiar—with extensive fractures throughout her body and ruptured organs, suggesting she might have been hit by a car, her body even subjected to multiple run-overs.
"Hit... hit by a car?" A Qiang was utterly stunned. "Killed by a car inside a hotel suite?"
Yang Xiao continued to read on. While there was no photo, there was a simple pen sketch out of the scene, showing a human figure lying on the ground, the feet approximately 4 to 5 ters away from the door, the body facing upwards with limbs severely contorted, clearly illustrating the grueso scene.
Everyone felt a chill down their spine, unable to imagine how a car could have gotten inside the hotel, especially on the ninth floor, and after hitting a person viciously, then ran over the body repeatedly.
A single left foot shoe print was also left at the scene, this ti sprawling between the body and the door, as if it marked the threshold between life and death.
Three people, three different ways to die. They seed unconnected, yet led Yang Xiao and the others in a direction because among the three female victims they had investigated before, only one died in a car accident, the woman nad Fang Qingyun, who Lian Jinsun and his team had looked into.
She was a hostess at a karaoke bar, with a complex social background, and dressed provocatively due to her job. High heels were part of her standard attire. According to investigations, she was hit by a speeding van while drunkenly crossing the street.
"It’s her." Putting down the file, Lian Jinsun said solemnly.
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