Translator: Atlas Studios
Editor: Atlas Studios
As expected, it was there.
Without changing his expression, Li Ang asked for the address of the other daughter, whom the old man had visited in the past.
Desheng Road, Patriarch Building.
It was only four streets away from Qianhua Road… What kind of supernatural event could it be?
Compared to the previous quest, the quest reward this time was much less significant. There was no extra EXP or Game Credits. Based on the literal description, he was only required to find out the truth. He did not need to kill or eliminate the spirit.
Was it more focused on deducing and deciphering?
Li Ang watched the middle-aged woman push her father away and turned to ask Wang Congshan, “Have you eaten lunch?”
“Ah…” Wang Congshan froze. “Not yet.”
“I’ll treat you to sour and spicy noodles with pig intestines,” said Li Ang. “That store has already been there for ten years. Their pig intestines are strong, oily, and unrivaled in Yin City.”
Wang Congshan was puzzled. She and Li Ang had known each other for many years. The last time Li Ang had treated her to food had been in primary school, when she had eaten a dark red plum.
After she had wiped it clean and swallowed it, she had asked Li Ang where he had picked this fruit and why it had been so sweet. Li Ang had smiled proudly. The fruit tree had grown on the side of the road on his way home from school. Every day, he had irrigated it with his urine, so the plum had been naturally sweet and delicious.
Unhappy memories made Wang Congshan cautious. “Where is that pig intestine noodle store?”
“Just at the corner of the south street of Yin City Dongda Coloproctology Hospital.”
Li Ang said, “You know, the essence of pig intestine noodle lies in the knot, which is the end of the pig’s large intestine. The casing in that part is thicker, contains more lard, and is chewier. It tastes like a lesion in patients with blood-borne intestinal obstruction.
“The last time I went to eat it, I tasted the bodily smell of perennial hemorrhoid patient Old Zhang, who was in Bed 4 of Ward 7 on the third floor of Building 2 of the inpatient department of Dongda Coloproctology Hospital.”
Wang Congshan’s face was a little pale. “I don’t feel hungry all of a sudden. Eat it yourself.”
“Sigh…” Li Ang said regretfully. “Then I will go first.”
After bidding her farewell, Li Ang got into a cab and made a beeline for Desheng Road and the Patriarch Building.
This was a dilapidated old apartment building with rustic red square tiles on the outside of the wall, and the gaps between the tiles were covered with black blotches caused by rain erosion.
The old green glass windows did not allow light in and the rotating air-conditioning frames were covered in dust, which was a stark contrast to the modern high-rise buildings a few streets away.
The Patriarch Building had twelve floors that were divided into the left and right sides. Building 1 on the left was dedicated to residents, while Building 2 on the right was rented to a sanatorium and a beauty salon.
Buildings 1 and 2 were connected with a wall. Only the emergency exit passed between the two buildings.
Li Ang looked up to examine it for a while and tore off a missing person notice from the roadside telephone pole.
“Bao Fangtian, female, 51 years old, 1.61 meters tall, long hair, 70 kilos. She went missing in the Desheng Road area at 1.30 p.m. on June 17.”
“She was wearing a black short-sleeved knitted sweater, yellow shorts, and brown sandals. She is from the southern suburbs of Yin City, has a local accent, and suffers from mild mental illness. We hope that anyone who knows her whereabouts will contact her family quickly. You will be rewarded.”
Next to this was a photo of the missing old woman and her family’s contact number.
Li Ang glanced at it and folded the missing person notice in his hand before he walked straight into the duty room at the entrance of the Patriarch Building.
Two people were sitting in the duty room, one of them old and one young. The old one was listening to the radio, while the young one was scrolling through TikTok.
“Hello, excuse me.” Li Ang knocked on the duty room door and said with the missing person notice in his hands, “I am Bao Fangtian’s relative. I want to check the surveillance footage of the past few days…”
“Not again!” The young security guard put down his cell phone impatiently and answered with a frown, “Didn’t we tell you before? We didn’t install surveillance cameras in the corridors of this building! Plus, the people here come and go. We can’t remember where the old lady went after coming out of the sanatorium.”
Li Ang had pretended to be a family member of the missing person to look at the surveillance footage properly. After learning that no surveillance camera had been installed in the building, he frowned slightly and left the duty room.
“Can I only check it floor by floor?”
According to the middle-aged woman, her sister had lived on the seventh floor of Building 1 on the left.
Li Ang walked straight into Building 1 and put the Cat’s Eye into his eye socket. He checked it floor by floor, trying to find traces of the spiritual existence.
Several minutes later, his efforts were still fruitless.
Upon seeing that his Spirit was about to run out, Li Ang, who had a faint dizzy spell, took out the Cat’s Eye. By using the emergency exit, he arrived at Building 2 and checked it floor by floor.
The 12th to 18th floors of Building 2 all housed residents. The 7th floor was a beauty salon called Fragrant Fate Beauty, while the 5th floor was a sanatorium called New Rehabilitation Home. The floors below the sanatorium were also leased to various businesses.
There was an elevator in Building 1 and 2. However, the businesses in Building 2 had purposely built a special elevator on the right side of the building to facilitate access. This elevator could only go to the 7th floor or lower.
As for the 6th floor between the 7th and 5th floor, it had been sold to the head of a household who had been away all year. In order to prevent homeless people or fame-seekers from using this opportunity to live on the sixth floor in secret, the emergency exit to the 6th floor was closed with a rolling shutter door.
An iron sliding door had also been installed outside the dedicated elevator entrance on the 6th floor and covered with black opaque plastic curtains.
Li Ang quickly checked all the floors of Building 2 and even accessed the 6th floor, which was sealed by the rolling shutter door, with a picklock to enter it and check.
On the 6th floor was nothing besides the iron sliding door covered by the black curtain.
The windows on the entire floor were tightly closed and dusty, but there were no footprints.
Nobody had ever been to the 6th floor of Building 2.
He still did not find anything.
Li Ang arrived at the bottom of the Patriarch Building, looked up at the impoverished old building, and began to think.
There was only one door that was connected to both Buildings 1 and 2. The daughter was living on the 7th floor of Building 1, and the old man, who had been healthy, had lost his mind. Before this, the woman, who had been suffering from a minor mental illness, had been in the sanatorium on the 5th floor of Building 2, and the 6th floor of Building 2 had been sealed by an iron door…
All the clues came together and weaved the truth.
“I see.”
Li Ang grinned and pushed his glasses before entering the elevator on the left side of Building 2.
He pressed the button for the 6th floor.
The elevator slowly ascended and opened with a ding-dong.
When the elevator door opened, what greeted his eye was naturally the iron sliding door specially constructed by the owner on the 6th floor. The iron sliding door was sealed by a black plastic curtain that looked cold and stiff.
In the extremely narrow gap between the iron sliding door and the elevator door was a person who was facing Li Ang.
It was a middle-aged woman in a black short-sleeved knitted sweater, yellow shorts, brown sandals, and long hair.
This was Bao Fangtian, who had been missing for several days.
She had been dead for many days, as her body had turned black. Her huge waist had slimmed down due to dehydration and her face, which seemed to be in pain, was fierce and terrifying. She was staring at Li Ang with those empty, dead eyes of hers.
Between the gap, Bao Fangtian slowly toppled forward. With a thud, she knelt in front of Li Ang.
With a person and a body inside, the lift was filled with silence.
The elevator door slowly closed and the elevator descended.