Ning Shu silently watched as the uncle, wearing his gloves, reached his hands into the corpse’s gut and cut open the stomach to examine it carefully.

  Ning Shu didn’t feel well. She silently swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

  “Who do you think the killer is?” asked Zhang Jiasen who was standing next to Ning Shu.

  “Everyone is a suspect,” Ning Shu said indifferently.

  Everyone who shared a room with the victim, including Ning Shu and Mei Ziqing, were suspects. The original host could have killed the victim before Ning Shu entered this body.

  Or it could have been several people in the room who killed the victim together. It could also be the owner of the paintbrush, Pan Chen.

  There were a million possibilities anyways, so it was impossible to be sure.

  Why did the president of the club, Fan Junyang, choose a remote place like this? When Ning Shu looked out the window, there were only a few families around. It was very quiet, except for the occasional barking from the two dogs.

  There wasn’t a soul in sight.

  Ning Shu just couldn’t figure out why the first person to die was the person sleeping next to her.

  In each loop, the deaths were different and they happened in a different order. There was no pattern to it at all.

  Everyone in the traditional painting club was a suspect. Everyone was also in danger.

  Zhang Jiasen narrowed his eyes. “Is it possible that it was a supernatural force?”
“It shouldn’t be a supernatural power.” Mei Ziqing shook her head, “I have a psychic constitution and there’s no strange magnetic field around.”
Ning Shu looked at Mei Ziqing with some surprise. She didn’t expect for Mei Ziqing to have an ability like this.

  Ning Shu pondered for a moment. She then pinched Zhang Jiasen’s hand until it bled, staining her fingers with blood. She recited an incantation and applied the blood to her eyelids.

  “Tch, this body of yours isn’t a virgin,” she told Zhan Jiasen. Her expression was disgusted. She couldn’t see anything as a result.

  Ning Shu wiped the blood from her eyelids.

  “It is perfectly normal around here. These deaths are man-made,” the uncle said bluntly. “Throw the body out.”
The uncle took off his gloves and tossed them over the corpse. He then grabbed the antiseptic spray and sprayed his hands in a frenzy.

  “What’s going on here?” An old woman came out of the room next to the living room. Her body was crooked. Her face was covered with spots from old age and her hair was white as snow.

  Next to her stood a girl who was around seventeen years old. The girl was holding on to the corner of the old woman’s coat. She was wearing a thick cotton coat and had very strange eyes. Her dark pupils were very small and were surrounded by a grayish-white color. Her eyes looked like they were covered by a shadow.

  “This, this…” The old woman stumbled in shock when she saw the body on the table with its innards exposed. “What are you doing!? Leave. You aren’t welcome here.” The old woman looked flustered.

  “Grandma, what’s wrong?” The girl tugged tightly at the old woman’s clothes.

  “How could you kill someone in my house? Go away! You will be punished for this.” The old woman pointed her cane straight at them.

  “Granny, we didn’t kill this girl,” advanced task-taker Lu Shanshan said mildly.

  “I don’t care. You can’t stay in my house anymore.” The old woman waved her hands dismissively, looking determined.

  Lu Shanshan frowned. She turned towards the blind girl and said, “Little sister, there is no way we can leave now when it is snowing so hard. Please let us stay here. We really didn’t kill this person.”
The girl tugged at her grandmother’s clothes. “Grandma, let them stay here. We’ve never had so many people here before.”
“Girl, you didn’t see what they were doing.” The old woman looked anxious.

  “We’ll pay five times as much to stay,” Lu Shanshan said.

  “Grandma, with this much money I can go to the hospital for my eyes,” the girl said excitedly.

  The old woman sighed but didn’t say anything.

  Lu Shanshan made a victory sign towards the school doctor uncle, who had an indifferent expression. He stared at his hands to make sure not even a speck of dirt stayed under his nails.

  Ning Shu carefully observed this pair of grandmother and granddaughter. They were the owners of this house. She heard that the girl had an eye disease and was born blind. Her parents had gone out to work and hadn’t returned for many years.

  Editor: Sam

  Translator: Kaho