Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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“Host, are you still complaining that I didn’t give you cheats?” The system took credit: “The process was so smooth, and the alliance was so reliable…”
“Get lost, that’s not all your credit.” Li Yuebai was furious. He had never seen such a useless and shameless system that required the host to do everything personally.
Everything went smoothly. They got the silver-plated bullets and the silver-plated vine-patterned knife as quickly as possible.
Then, the second vampire case appeared.
Late one night, a call came in from the Heping Community, No. 112 Gaoyuan Road.
“Help… Help!” A panicked young girl’s voice came in from the microphone: “110? I’m calling the police! My roommate, my roommate is dead!”
“Please calm down. Are you safe now?” the female operator replied.
“Me? I’m safe. Nothing happened to me…” the girl sobbed. “My roommate was alone in the room, dead! There was blood all over the floor, and her head had fallen off!”
“Please hide in a safe, crowded place as soon as possible. We’ll send someone over right away.”
“This case is very suspicious,” Li Yuebai said.
Ye Qing nodded, took off his headphones, and submitted a police request.
When they arrived at the community where the crime occurred, the young woman who had called the police was squatting in the security booth at the entrance, her arms folded over her body, trembling, a key clutched in her hand. Upon discovering the crime, she had immediately locked the door and ran out, heading straight for the security booth, where there were security guards on duty all night and it was relatively safe.
After Ye Qing showed her his police ID, the girl looked them over, breathed a sigh of relief, and hurriedly led them to her apartment building.
Her name was Ma Xiaoting, and the deceased girl was her roommate, Xu Lili.
Ma Xiaoting and Xu Lili both graduated from university and stayed in the city to work. With no relatives living there, they shared a two-bedroom apartment. The houses in the Heping community were old, small, and inexpensive, perfect for young professionals like them who hadn’t made much money.
Going upstairs, Li Yuebai took the key from Ma Xiaoting and opened the door. The thick, bloody odor then hit them squarely.
Ma Xiaoting had been so frightened she didn’t even dare to look. Now, with their support, she slowly regained some courage and followed them inside, recounting the process of discovery of the body. “Lili always gets home earlier than me. I get home at 8 p.m., and she’s usually there around 7 p.m.” Ma Xiaoting pointed to a tightly closed door. “That’s her room. I usually call out to see if she’s there when I get home, but today, there was no response. Then I looked at the door and saw her shoes and bag, so I thought she probably hadn’t left. So I went to look for her. When I pushed the door open, I saw blood all over the floor!”
As she recounted her story, Ye Qing and Li Yuebai donned rubber gloves and gently pushed open the door.
The room was small, containing a bed, a computer desk, and other miscellaneous items. In the middle of the floor, a young girl lay in pajamas, her slippers tossed to the ground. Blood covered the floor, and much of it was splattered on the walls, the bed, and even the ceiling. It was a gruesome scene.
Blood gushed from the girl’s neck—her head was gone, the neck section not neatly cut, and blood still trickled from it.
Li Yuebai squatted down and looked under the bed—there were shoes, an old cardboard box, a trail of blood… and the girl’s head, still resting quietly beneath the bed, her expression agonized, her eyes wide open.
Who, what kind of power, could have severed Xu Lili’s head like that?
It couldn’t have been suicide; no one could have severed their own head like that.
And it couldn’t have been Ma Xiaoting; she was so frail, she simply wouldn’t have had the strength.
“Were there any signs of intrusion?” Li Yuebai asked.
“No… no.” Ma Xiaoting glanced at the body, covered her face again, and left the room, her voice sobbing. “We are the only ones with the key, and the windows were all barred. When I came back, the door was locked, and no valuables were missing.”
The windows were well sealed, and the bar was intact; it was impossible for an outsider to have broken in through the window.
“Does Xu Lili have any enemies?”
“Absolutely not. Neither of us is a troublemaker,” Ma Xiaoting said, feeling deeply aggrieved and sad. Provoking trouble wasn’t necessarily linked to causing trouble. On the streets, at the train station, in secluded alleys, on buses… these were the places where hooligans, human traffickers, and other criminals often preyed on quiet and honest girls. But this wasn’t a public space, it was a private home, so such an assumption didn’t apply.
“Could the perpetrator have followed her in?” Li Yuebai asked, “taking advantage of the moment Xu Lili opened the door and bursting in?”
“No,” Ma Xiaoting shook her head, pulling out her phone and pulling up her instant chat history. “Just at 7:30, Lili sent me a message saying she’d bought cold noodles and told me not to buy anything. It was sent from a computer, meaning she was already home at that time.”
Ye Qing and Li Yuebai exchanged a glance.
The likelihood of a human perpetrator decreasing and the likelihood of a vampire increasing.
“Has Xu Lili been acting strangely lately? For example…” Li Yuebai thought of the little girl who’d nearly had her blood sucked out in the basement garage. “…dazed, acting strangely, or something like that?”
“Bad moods are common. There are always sad things like getting scolded at work, breaking up with a boyfriend…” Ma Xiaoting thought hard. “If you’re talking about strange moods, she’s been a little off the mark these past two weeks. Her salary was docked, but she always acted nonchalant.”
Unable to find any valuable information, Li Yuebai decided to examine the body first.
On the ground next to the body lay a thin, unmarked silver ring stained with blood. Li Yuebai carefully picked it up and placed it in the evidence bag.
Most of the body was normal, with no unusual findings. Only her hands were unusual.
Xu Lili’s hands, from fingers to palms, were covered in burn marks! Some were so severe that the skin was torn open! It was as if she’d frantically tugged at a sparking electrical wire or a red-hot iron, burning herself like this!
Then, he searched the house for clues.
Li Yuebai had always been very careful to protect students’ privacy and would never forcefully check their phones or bags. However, in order to find out the cause of death, he had no choice but to temporarily offend the deceased.
The books, dolls, perfumes, cosmetics, celebrity posters… were all very ordinary, except for one thing that looked odd—a square black stone.
“What is this?” Ye Qing asked Ma Xiaoting, holding the stone.
“I don’t know, she hasn’t shown it to me.” Ma Xiaoting shook her head.
“Does Xu Lili keep a diary?”
“No paper one. She likes to write online and then make it visible only to herself.” Ma Xiaoting replied, “I usually do the same.”
Li Yuebai’s eyes cast towards the computer on the desk and the phone next to it.
The computer was in standby mode, but when it restarted, the screen had locked and asked for a password.
The same thing happened with the phone.
“I don’t know her password. I have my own computer and phone, so there’s no need to use hers… Besides, everyone has privacy, even my roommate…” Ma Tingting said.
“The password on a computer with this level of confidentiality is easy to crack.” Ye Qing bent down, looked at the screen, and with a slight tremor of his slender fingers, he produced a small device with a screen from nowhere. He then pulled a cable from the device and connected it to the computer: “Leave it to me.”
Li Yuebai had long known Ye Qing was an expert in computers, so he wasn’t surprised. He casually asked, “How long will it take?”
“Ten minutes at most.”
“Too slow.” Li Yuebai lowered his head and carefully examined the computer keyboard. “The password is ‘i love 1 days.’ Let’s try it first.”
Ye Qing had just activated the cracker and glanced at him.
The cracker was already very fast, so how could Li Yuebai say the correct password in no time?
Sure enough, after entering these characters, the computer screen lit up and transitioned to a welcome screen. The desktop slowly opened. The computer was old and slow, making a sound like it was about to fall apart, the fan blasting furiously.
“How did you know the password?” Ye Qing asked as he waited.
“Before going home, the victim bought two cold noodles.” Li Yuebai lost his usual smug look when solving puzzles. Instead, his expression was solemn and his voice was low. “The cold noodles were packaged in a red box. It was poor quality and had faded, so the color got on her fingers.”
One was for her, and the other was for Ma Xiaoting. Both were still on the table, uneaten.
“She put the box down and, as usual, turned on the computer first, and the red from her finger stained the keyboard.”
The white keyboard protector had a few faint red marks on the keys 1eiolvd. The combination spelled out “I love 1 d…”
“What’s after the d? How do you know? And it doesn’t always have to be arranged in this way.” Ye Qing frowned.
“There’s a German band called 1 Days, Xu Lili’s favorite.” Li Yuebai pointed to a plastic box under the table filled with posters and CDs.
“Yes, that’s right.” Ma Xiaoting lowered her eyes. “Lili always said she wanted to save up money to go to a concert.”
Finally, it booted up, and the desktop appeared before them in its entirety.
The instant messenger was still active, with a flickering avatar. Li Yuebai clicked on it. It was a message from a friend of Xu Lili’s named Wu He.
Wu He: “Lili, speak up! Stop pretending to be dead.”
Wu He: “You just scared me to death! You photoshopped such a terrifying photo of me! I’m demanding compensation for emotional distress! Treat me to dinner!”
Wu He: “Hey, such an old horror story! You’re still playing it.”
Wu He: “Stop pretending! Reply! Or I’ll get mad.”
….
Wu He sent a series of messages, all complaining about Xu Lili’s lack of response.
Of course, Xu Lili didn’t reply, because by then she was probably already dead.
“Do you know this Wu He?” Li Yuebai asked Ma Xiaoting, who didn’t dare approach.
“Yes, she’s a classmate of ours, but she’s not in this city, so we can only chat online,” Ma Xiaoting replied. “Sometimes when I’m on my way home from work and it’s inconvenient to reply to Lili, she just chats with Wu He for fun.”
The thought of having to inform Wu He and the others about Lili’s death brought tears to Ma Xiaoting’s eyes again.
Li Yuebai held his breath, not daring to open the chat interface.
Judging from Wu He’s words, Xu Lili had sent her a photo before her death.
The content of that photo must have been horrifying.
After being frightened, Wu He concluded that Xu Lili must be joking.
What kind of photo was it? Li Yuebai unconsciously reached out his left hand to hold Ye Qing’s arm, finding a sense of security. Then, with his right hand, he manipulated the mouse and scrolled up.
A photo appeared on the chat interface, sent at 7:45.
The person in the photo was Xu Lili, sitting at her computer, with a lovely smile on her face. It was obviously taken with the computer’s built-in camera.
Behind her, something dark and vague could be seen.
After seeing the thing clearly, Li Yuebai felt his throat choke.
It was a slender black figure, only the size of a palm, human-like, yet clearly not human, with slender limbs and a face that was both human and not human. It was twisted into a strange posture, flashing a creepy smile at the camera, one hand still stroking Xu Lili’s head.
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