The weapon by the pillow

Chapter 24 Death Time...Countdown

Could Room 403, Building 7, Anpingli be an altar?

For whom were the sacrifices made back then?

Who are we mourning now?

Chen Jing looked at her trembling hands and felt confused again.

It felt as if we had just walked out of one grove of trees and entered another.

"Sacrifice... If this is indeed the direction we're heading, then it's even more complicated!" she suddenly asked. "Master, do you have any indication? Or rather... a suspect! A sacrifice!"

"I don't know. But I've studied it for a long time, and if we follow the logic of rituals, the sacrifices are usually... sinners."

Zhou Zhigang said, "Xiaojing, I suggest you don't rush in. The person who set this up must have anticipated the police's reaction, and they may have included you all in their calculations. This case has already alarmed many people, not just a few inside... They may have prepared a trap, waiting for you to fall into it."

"We've received a report, although it wasn't someone inside... I can't just stand by and watch those people..."

"Let me finish," Zhou Zhigang interrupted her. "What you're looking for isn't 'how to rescue them,' but 'how to break the ritual.' Think about it: a ritual requires specific time, place, people, and procedures. If any one of these elements is broken, the ritual cannot be completed, and the mastermind…"

"If it's truly a ritual, then deviations are not allowed! Yes!" Cheng Jing calmed down. "I understand. Master, can you recall any other details? Any details that could be 'key to the ritual'?"

On the other end of the phone, Zhou Zhigang seemed somewhat dazed. He thought for a moment, then suddenly uttered a word:

"Time...yes, time!"

"Time? What time?" Chen Jing pondered for a moment, then her mind lit up. "After so much deduction over such a long period, everyone seems to have overlooked a crucial issue, which is the time of the crime, or rather..."

"The exact time of Li Wan's death!" Zhou Zhigang added.

"The forensic examination determined it was between 3 and 4 a.m. A very specific timeframe. If tonight's 'reenactment' is also part of the ritual, then the crucial moment, wouldn't it, also likely occur during this time period?"

Cheng Jing glanced at her watch: 2:47 AM.

There are 13 minutes left until midnight.

"The location is this room, and there are eight people... What about the program?" she pressed.

"The procedure..." Zhou Zhigang recalled, "Do you remember the placement of the tools on site?"

Cheng Jing immediately recalled the location of the tools scattered on the ground in the live stream: "They were arranged in an irregular ring on the ground."

"A ring shape..." Zhou Zhigang murmured. "Xiao Jing, do you remember the site plan in the site investigation report back then? The location of the tools, I recall... was also some kind of pattern."

A thought suddenly struck Cheng Jing: "Master, do you still have any documents from back then at home?"

"Yes, but they are all informal notes..."

"Can I see it now? I need to know that pattern!"

The sound of rummaging through things came from the other end of the phone. A few minutes later, Zhou Zhigang's voice rang out again, trembling with disbelief: "I found it... the sketch from back then... if you connect the positions of the tools... it's not a simple ring, it's... a distorted pentagram."

Five-pointed star.

Cheng Jing opened her eyes.

The ritual, the offerings, the five-pointed star... all of this points to a strange symbolism.

"Thirteen tools, corresponding to thirteen people, and there are still eight of them inside!" Zhou Zhigang's voice trembled even more. "What does that mean?"

"This means there are five people and five tools involved in this sacrifice!" Chen Jing exclaimed in horror. "Three people have already appeared, which means there are still two people and two tools that haven't appeared yet!"

"What kind of tricks will they pull this time!" A long sigh came from the other end of the phone.

At this moment, the chat in the live stream was still analyzing one person.

"Jin Dafu, has he disappeared, or is he dead? Does anyone know?"

The live stream room completely transformed into an ocean of information analysis and reasoning, with countless netizens simultaneously searching for information about "Jincheng Demolition Company," "Jin Dafu," and "Zhang Zhiqiang," and constantly posting the fragments they found.

But there was no information that people wanted; it was as if Jin Dafu was just a legend.

Inside the room, no one could find any information about Jin Dafu that had come afterward.

More importantly, at this point, they had no time to worry about anything else.

Because they suddenly heard a sound.

The sound did not come from the secret room, nor from inside the room.

Instead, it came from outside the door.

A clear, rhythmic knock on the door.

"Thump, thump, thump."

Three sounds, neither too loud nor too soft, echoed in the deathly silent stairwell, yet they struck everyone's heart like a heavy hammer.

There are people outside the door.

Could it be the person who sealed the door and set up this trap... who has arrived?

Have the police arrived? They're saved!

Li Kai was the first to react. He rushed to the door, pressed his ear against the cold iron door, and listened intently. The shadow moved silently to the side of the door, leaned against the wall, and crouched slightly, assuming a guarded posture. Lynx, A-Zhe, and Xiao Fei unconsciously huddled together. Wu Wenbin clutched his father's notebook and blueprints, and Lin Qian quickly pulled Cheng Tan behind her. Everyone's eyes were fixed on… the door.

This time, the chat room exploded with comments after a brief silence:

There's a knock at the door!

Are they police officers?!

"Would the police knock on the door like this?!"

Is the person behind it all here?!

I'm fucking not breathing!

[Knock on the door! Call for help!]

There were no footsteps or voices in the hallway outside the door.

After three knocks, everything returned to deathly silence, as if the sounds just now were a collective auditory hallucination.

But a few seconds later—

"Crunch... crunch..."

A slight scraping sound came from the direction of the window.

Everyone's gaze instantly turned to the window that had been nailed shut with wooden planks.

Through the gap between one of the wooden planks and the window frame, through the gaps that resembled "countless eyes," something was slowly squeezing in from the outside.

It's not the eyes.

Instead, it is a rectangular, dark-colored object.

After it squeezed in completely, it fell to the dusty ground with a "thud," rolled a few times, and stopped not far from the window.

It is a box.

A palm-sized, dark blue velvet jewelry box.

The box fell softly, but in the silence it sounded like a thunderclap.

"What is it?" the lynx asked, its voice trembling.

The shadow shone a powerful flashlight on the box. The deep blue velvet gleamed with a dark sheen in the light, and the lid was tightly shut.

Lin Qian took out a pen from her canvas bag. The pen tip had a tiny hook-shaped probe. She carefully extended the pen and gently used the hook to open the box lid.

The lid pops open.

Under the flashlight beam, the contents of the box were clearly visible.

It's not jewelry.

It turned out to be... half a lipstick.

The bright red lipstick in the plastic case appeared to be mostly used up, with only a short section remaining, lying diagonally on the velvet lining. The tip of the lipstick was flat, as if it had been pressed forcefully onto some flat surface.

On the inside of the box lid, there was a line of words written crookedly.

The bright red cream stood out starkly against the deep blue velvet.

"She died too, do you know why?"