The Mystery of the Inner Demon

Chapter 358 3 AM

As she left Crescent Moon Mountain, Lü Dandan glanced back at the ruins of the villa.

"I will come again next year. I believe that Professor Zhong's spirit in heaven will surely bless you to recover." These were her last words to Zhong Kui.

Zhong Kui remained expressionless; she was not Zhong Xiaoyu and could not empathize with Lü Dandan's words.

Lü Dandan turned her head away dejectedly, her face disappearing into the twilight.

The five of them went down the mountain together and found a hotel in Baicheng to stay in. The next day, Lü Dandan had to part ways with them.

Qi Fei lay on the hotel bed, unable to fall asleep. When he closed his eyes, he could almost see the monster, its face overlapping with Xi He's. He couldn't understand the twisted love between Xi He and Zhong Xiaoyu. When everything defied common sense, his thoughts were left at a loss.

The phone screen lit up in the darkness, and a message popped up.

Qi Fei picked it up and saw that it was sent by Lü Dandan.

She said she had something to talk to him about, and they should go to the hotel lobby on the first floor to discuss it.

Qi Fei checked the time; it was 3 a.m. He couldn't help but feel puzzled. Just as he was about to make a call, the message was suddenly retracted.

This made him even more curious, and after waiting for a while, Lü Dandan did not send any more messages.

Qi Fei made a phone call, but the phone went unanswered.

Perhaps Lü Dandan sent it to the wrong person.

But at this time, who did she meet in the lobby on the first floor?

Since he couldn't sleep anyway, Qi Fei decided to go downstairs to check on things.

There was only the waiter on duty at the front desk in the lobby; there was no one else there.

Qi Fei asked the waiter and was told that he hadn't seen anyone else come down from the elevator.

Qi Fei's profession as a criminal investigator made him more vigilant than the average person; Lü Dandan wouldn't send a message in the early hours of the morning without a reason.

He remembered Lü Dandan's room number, so he went back upstairs and knocked on her door. He knocked several times, but no one answered.

When he called again, Lü Dandan's phone was switched off.

Everything was developing in a direction that worried him. Disregarding etiquette, he called the waiter to swipe his card to open Lü Dandan's room door, and the scene inside was like a nightmare coming true.

In the dead of winter, the window of Lü Dandan's room was wide open, and the white curtains fluttered in the cold wind. Qi Fei walked through the entryway and saw Lü Dandan lying face down on the bed, a bath towel wrapped around her neck, motionless, already dead.

The waiter rushed out the door with a startled cry behind Qi Fei.

Lü Dandan had already put on her clothes and shoes for going out, but her phone fell to the ground and broke.

It seems she really is going out; the news is true.

There were no signs of a struggle in the room; Lü Dandan was strangled to death almost without any resistance.

Everyone who received Qi Fei's message went to Lü Dandan's room.

“Zhong Xiaoyu’s sister Dan is dead,” Zhong Kui said indifferently.

Qi Fei didn't blame her for being heartless. She had been isolated from many of Zhong Xiaoyu's emotional perceptions, and she couldn't understand Zhong Xiaoyu's pain.

"My God, who would kill her?" Wu Shanqiu said in disbelief, then looked at Qi Fei in confusion, "Brother Fei, why did you think of coming to Lü Dandan's room at this hour?" Qi Fei said, "Because I received a message from her asking me to meet her in the lobby on the first floor, but she quickly withdrew the message. I was worried that something had happened to her, so I came to check on her. I didn't expect that something really had happened."

"Huh?" Wu Shanqiu took out her phone and showed it to Qi Fei. "Speaking of which, it also shows on my phone that she retracted a message she sent. But I was asleep at the time and didn't see what it said."

"Hmm? I have one too." Jiang Tianyi took out his phone to check.

“I don’t have a cell phone,” Zhong Kui said expressionlessly, then glanced at Qi Fei. “Don’t doubt me. Shan Qiu and I are in the same room. When Shan Qiu received your message, I was still asleep. We live on a different floor from Lü Dandan. Even if Zhong Xiaoyu woke up without my knowledge, she wouldn’t have enough time to commit the crime.”

"Why is the window in the room open?" she continued to ask.

"I don't understand this either. When I arrived at the scene, the window was open," he said.

Wu Shanqiu walked to the window and looked outside: "Brother Fei, come and see!"

Upon hearing this, Qi Fei immediately came over. Wu Shanqiu pointed down and revealed that Lü Dandan's room was on the fourth floor. The third floor faced the hotel lobby, which had an extended platform. There was also a roof along the third floor, just big enough for one person to pass through.

"If the murderer jumps out of the window, he can reach the third floor," Qi Fei immediately thought.

"Considering the time it took to commit the crime, the murderer must have fled in a hurry." As he spoke, he looked down and carefully examined the windowsill. Sure enough, he found footprints on it. Judging from the size, they belonged to a male and were definitely not Lü Dandan's.

“The problem is, it’s easy to jump down from here, but there’s no way to climb back up without tools,” Qi Fei observed, then turned to look at the main entrance of the room. “Looks like we need to check the surveillance footage on the fourth floor.”

Police from Baicheng arrived quickly and retrieved the surveillance video.

There weren't many people around at 3 a.m., which made the screening process much easier.

In the empty corridor, the door to the fire escape suddenly opened.

A man's figure appeared in the picture.

Upon seeing this person, Qi Fei and Zhong Kui simultaneously moved closer to the screen.

This person was wearing a mask and looked very similar to Qi Fei in build, though slightly thinner.

That silhouette alone was enough to make Qi Fei's heart clench.

In the video, the man took a few steps toward Lü Dandan's room, then suddenly stopped, turned around and looked up at the monitor, as if he could sense Qi Fei watching him through the screen.

This scene felt familiar. A few months ago, in the surveillance footage of an office building in Nancheng, that person stared at Qi Fei across time and space in front of the surveillance camera in the same way.

In the dim light of the corridor, Qi Fei couldn't see his face clearly, but strangely, he knew that the man was smiling, a chilling smile.

Sure enough, the man in the video took something out of his pocket and showed it to the camera—it was a glass marble.

"Xi He?!" The four people from Nancheng exclaimed in unison, none of them expecting this person to appear at the inn.

After completing his ritual, Xi He continued walking towards Lü Dandan's room, rang the doorbell, and swaggered inside.

Everyone knew that Lü Dandan's opening of the door marked the beginning of her death, but that was an unchangeable fact.

From that point until Qi Fei arrived, the door was never opened again.

The murderer was identified so easily, but finding him is no easy task.

"Why did Lü Dandan let Xi He in?" Zhong Kui asked. "And why didn't he leave through the main gate after killing someone?"

(End of this chapter)