Chapter 141 "Huh? Nobody's here?"

Because everyone was free and甄琥 (Zhen Hu) brought up the idea of visiting 元昉 (Yuan Fang), 明媚 (Ming Mei), 慕辰 (Mu Chen), 鹿小瑶 (Lu Xiaoyao), and 甄琥 (Zhen Hu) decided to go together to 元昉 (Yuan Fang) and 白筱 (Bai Xiao)'s place.

In the old residential area, 元昉 (Yuan Fang) and 白筱 (Bai Xiao) lived on the first floor. The door wasn't locked. They thought someone would be home, but when they pushed it open, they found the place empty.

"Why isn't the door locked if no one's home? Did they just step out and not go far, so they didn't bother?"

Lu Xiaoyao immediately voiced her guess when they realized the place was empty.

Mu Chen stood at the doorway of a room in the dimly lit apartment. The old apartment complex's unit design and size were far inferior to modern ones.

When the four of them stood together in the living room, they felt the room was exceptionally cramped. The already small space was filled with all sorts of clutter.

Zhen Hu turned on the fluorescent light, and they could finally see the furnishings in the room.

Old, dilapidated, and small—that summed up everything in the room.

The room was piled high with sorted recyclables, as if they were waiting to sell everything off at once.

But if you looked closely at the recyclables, you'd realize that some of them weren't simply trash.

After surveying the living room for a moment, Mu Chen walked towards a dark doorway to the side.

"It doesn't seem like...it's more like they left because of Bai Xiao's matter last night and haven't returned."

Ming Mei saw Mu Chen staring at the tidy bed in the room. Ming Mei also glanced at it, and then Mu Chen said those words. But to Ming Mei, it sounded a bit strange.

"Bai Xiao was arrested last night, and then Yuan Fang was summoned. In the middle of the night, just getting out of bed, he probably didn't have time to make the bed, right?"

In Ming Mei's opinion, it would be more convincing if the bed in the bedroom were more disheveled.

"No, because he didn't sleep at all." Mu Chen felt that Yuan Fang hadn't slept at all last night. "His wife is out killing people, how could the husband sleep soundly at home? Isn't he worried that his wife might suffer outside?"

"With her like that, who would dare to make her suffer?"

Lu Xiaoyao, who had fought Bai Xiao last night, felt she had a lot to say on this topic.

"She's so fierce, anyone who crosses her is unlucky, right?"

Mu Chen and Ming Mei had already walked to the kitchen next door while Lu Xiaoyao was speaking.

Mu Chen stood in front of the kitchen trash can, looking at the yellowed and aged outer leaves of the green leafy vegetables that had been removed.

However, at this time, these unwanted vegetable stalks, besides being old and yellow, also looked withered. Judging from the time, they'd been there for quite a while.

"There's still soup simmering in the pot. Judging from the oil floating on the surface, it wasn't made this morning."

Although she had no cooking talent, Ming Mei was still good at distinguishing the quality of ingredients.

After all, her family started with that.

When Ming Mei was a child, she heard her mother say that her uncle used to stay up all night playing games when he was young and immature, and then pretend to be hardworking by getting up early to make mala tang (spicy hot soup).

Then her mother deliberately turned off the heat preservation setting on the big pot of red oil soup, just waiting for her uncle to jump into the pit the next day.

"But, this doesn't prove anything, does it?" Even if it was soup cooked last night, does that mean people who cook soup one night have to eat bone broth ramen the next morning?

"Yes, it doesn't prove anything, but—"

As he spoke, Mu Chen found a hidden digital alarm clock in the pile of bottles and jars of seasoning.

Mu Chen fiddled with it and successfully found the set time—03:00.

This time, isn't it all-nighter?

"In theory, Yuan Fang should be working at your place today, right? Staying up all night to make soup and set an alarm, I can't believe Yuan Fang doesn't know anything."

Mu Chen didn't believe it before, and now that he had evidence, he was even more disdainful.

……

"Wow! What is this, what is this?"

Just as the two of them were discussing the real owner of the house in the kitchen, the other two in the house weren't idle either, and seemed to have discovered something amazing.

"Whoa! Is this a whetstone?"

Lu Xiaoyao saw the round, rough stone next to the washboard in the bathroom, and she quickly had an idea.

It was just a little strange to put a whetstone in the bathroom.

"It seems like it really is." Zhen Hu also came over to take a look, and out of the corner of his eye he saw some obvious dried water stains on the floor tiles below the stone.

It was as if the dark gray whetstone had been used not long ago. The person who used it seemed to have finished in a hurry, and the water stains with mortar were splashed everywhere, and a lot of water was spilled on the ground.

His gaze finally fell on the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom. There was obviously a pool of water on the ground that didn't look like it was splashed out, but more like it had gathered on its own.

As for why this happened...

He cursed himself inwardly for not messing around in other people's homes, but Zhen Hu's hand still honestly opened the cabinet under the sink. As a result, as soon as he opened it, he was so shocked by the various knives placed on the special knife rack that he couldn't close his mouth.

Small axes, small saws, and some sharp small hammers—although each style wasn't big, they looked very sharp, and the weight wasn't light either.

All kinds of deadly things were available here.

Lu Xiaoyao was also stunned by the scene.

When Ming Mei and Mu Chen heard the noise, they came out and followed their low calls to the front of the bathroom door, and were taken aback by the cabinet that wasn't big but was stuffed full of crime tools.

"Damn, if this wasn't a game, the police would have come to investigate and take these things away, right?"

In addition to being surprised, Lu Xiaoyao also came back to her senses and said that it was unreasonable for these things to appear here now.

"Yeah, if this wasn't a game, we wouldn't have had the opportunity to discover these..." Zhen Hu agreed with Lu Xiaoyao while squatting down to carefully observe everything in the cabinet.

"Huh... it seems like there are two things missing here."

Sharp-eyed Zhen Hu looked at the two empty slots on the filled knife rack, and then looked at the "weapons" on the left and right sides of the empty rack, and said, "One should be some kind of axe, and the other... this side seems to be some kind of awl."

"Axe! Bai Xiao attacked me with an axe yesterday!" As soon as she heard that an axe was missing, Lu Xiaoyao immediately realized that it must have been taken out by Bai Xiao.

"What about the awl?" Ming Mei, who hadn't spoken all along, said faintly, "Yesterday, after Bai Xiao was subdued, she didn't have any awl-like weapons on her body, and no similar awl-like things were found around the corpse she killed."