Shekh didn't touch the snake skin, but stood aside and said, "This thing has been there for a long time, several years, but it's not as dusty as the ground. Someone cleans it regularly."

Shi Jin squatted down, held a lighter and shone it on the ground. After lowering his gaze, he could indeed see some footprints on the light gray marble floor tiles.

"Copper coins are used to ward off evil spirits, and the snake molt is Lu Xiaohui's way of driving away evil spirits and protecting the people in the hotel. As for who did this, I suspect it was Manager Zhang."

Sher: "Manager Zhang knows everything about Lu Xiaohui and trusts her so much, so their relationship must be very close."

"Intimacy?" A word came to Shi Jinzhe's mind.

"Could these two be lovers?"

"You mean love between people of the same sex?"

Shi Jinzhe exclaimed in surprise: "You don't watch adult films, so you know about this?"

Shekh said casually, "Love is natural. I've seen two male lions. One was injured and died, and the other stayed by its side for a long time, driving away scavengers for its mate. Finally, it was exhausted and starved itself to death."

I also saw two female waterbucks. One was being relentlessly pursued by a predator, while the other broke away from the herd, returned to attack, and drew the predator's attention, thus sacrificing herself.

Fearing that Shi Jinzhe might not believe her, she added, "They're not brothers, not mother and daughter; I've seen their intimate behavior."

"That's good, their feelings are pure."

In nature, the innate instinct of animals is to survive.

Going against their instincts and sacrificing their lives—that's probably what makes them so devoted to each other until death.

While marveling at the situation, Shi Jinzhe also felt a sense of unease.

After hesitating for a while, he asked Shekh, "Have you ever seen that between men and women?"

"There was also a pair of geese. After their mate died, the other one refused to go to a warmer place with the flock and eventually froze to death in the cold winter. When I found it, it was still covering its mate's body with its body."

Shekh turned and walked back to the room. "But what I said are just isolated cases. Most people change partners every day. Just take it with a grain of salt."

"It's alright, even isolated cases are quite enlightening."

Shi Jinzhe felt a little relieved and didn't say anything more.

He and Shekh left the seventh room together to continue checking the next one.

As he walked down the corridor, he said softly, "If they really are lesbian lovers, then given how long Manager Zhang has been at the hotel, this relationship has lasted for quite some time."

Sher felt there was something off about the theory of a homosexual couple: "If Lu Xiaohui and Manager Zhang were a couple, Zhang Anguo's death could be explained as clearing obstacles for them to be together, but what about the bridesmaid? What was her cause of death?"

Shi Jinzhe speculated: "Could it be that Zhang Anguo killed the bridesmaid? Perhaps Lu Xiaohui loved the bridesmaid, but Zhang Anguo interfered in their relationship, so Lu Xiaohui killed Zhang Anguo in a fit of anger to avenge her love."

"What about Manager Zhang? How does she explain that? The bridesmaid was in her forties when she died, which wasn't many years ago. Would Lu Xiaohui fall in love with someone else so quickly?"

"It's hard to say, but since Lu Xiaohui and her bridesmaid both chose to get married, they might not actually be a same-sex couple. They might just be good friends, and we might have guessed wrong."

Shekh sighed, thinking that humans were really complicated. "You're right, we don't need to keep guessing it's about love."

She opened the door to the next room with the corrosive liquid seeping from her hand: "Let's keep this hypothesis as a backup plan for now, and decide later."

After checking the eighth room, the two continued down the path.

Rooms eight through thirteen remained empty.

Upon reaching the fourteenth guest room, Shi Jinzhe and Shehe once again saw the red rope, copper coins, and snake molts.

Shi Jinzhe stared at the room numbers: "They are all multiples of seven. If nothing unexpected happens, we can see this thing in the twenty-first, twenty-eighth, and thirty-fifth rooms."

Two hours later, just as Shi Jinzhe had predicted, they found a total of five strings of copper coins and five snake molts in the first thirty-five rooms.

The entrance to the forty-second guest room.

Sheh placed her hand on the door lock, and before opening the door, she informed Shi Jinzhe: "We're about to make a new discovery."

As the door was pushed open, Shi Jinzhe walked into the forty-second guest room.

The flickering firelight illuminated the messy footprints on the ground. The position of the soles of the feet was clear, but the area left at the heels was a bit small, indicating that the shoes were not large, and it was most likely the footprints of a woman.

Lowering the lighter, Shi Jinzhe noticed drag marks on the ground. Following the marks, he saw a long-haired woman covered in blood tied to a chair.

She sat in the center of the room, unconscious, with a large pool of blood at her feet and her body covered in blood.

The dried bloodstains made the woman's hair clump together, creating a somewhat gruesome scene.

Sheh sniffed lightly: "It's Xiaowan who was possessed, but the ghost has left her body. She's not injured, and the blood flowing through her veins isn't human."

"If it's not human, then it's been splashed with the blood of another animal. Can you smell what kind of blood it is?"

Shi Jinzhe could vaguely guess the answer; he figured it was either a chicken or a dog.

"Chicken." Shekh loved eating chicken and was very familiar with its taste, so he wouldn't mistake it.

"That's because Manager Zhang brought the possessed person here and splashed him with chicken blood."

Shi Jinzhe lightly tapped his finger: "She's using soapberry and chicken blood to prevent the ghosts from harming the guests here."

"She and Lu Xiaohui were both trying to prevent the ghost from harming the guests here. Don't forget those snake molts."

Sheh ignored Xiaowan, who was tied up, and dragged Shi Jinzhe into the luxurious private room to search for things along the wall.

The footprints on the ground were only inside the house, so Manager Zhang must have come in by another means.

She didn't take the elevator or the main entrance when she escorted Xiaowan upstairs, so there must be other doors in the house for her to enter and exit.

Suddenly, a narrow door, just wide enough for one person to pass through, appeared in the range of the lighter's light.

Shi Jinzhe gestured, indicating that the door was about the width of his shoulder: "A room with two doors at the beginning and end; this is a transit station design."

“Transfer station…” Shekh recalled the sealed-off corridor at the end of the fourth floor.

The wall divides the room in two from the hallway. Guests can only see the outer door, unaware that there is another door inside the room that leads to the back of the wall.

"I wonder if the fourth floor is structured the same as this one."

Shekh's words carried displeasure. If it was the same, then Liu Run had once again outsmarted her.

Shi Jinzhe turned off the lighter: "Just open the door and you'll see."

The room fell dark again, and Shekh pressed the door lock: "Hold my hand tight."

She gently pushed open the door, and a musty smell immediately filled the air, like socks that had been soaking in water for three days without being washed, damp and smelly.

The two held hands and walked out of the small door one after the other.

Shekh looked around and said, "Nobody's here, let's light a lighter."

As his eyes emerged from the darkness, the dilapidated and faded walls confirmed that Shi Jinzhe was indeed behind the wall.