Three middle-aged people might have emotional entanglements, but adding a genius in his twenties just seems out of place.

Sheh's imagination ran wild: "Could Manager Zhang be the daughter of Zhang Anguo and Wang Luan? Zhang Anguo cheated on her so many times, so she used a surname with the same pronunciation to avoid arousing suspicion?"

"According to your logic, Wang Luan's husband also has to have the surname Zhang to avoid seeming strange. That's too much of a coincidence. Also, whether Wang Luan was willing or forced over those twenty-odd years remains to be verified..."

"Shh." Shekh suddenly pressed a finger to Shi Jinzhe's lips and pulled him slowly back behind the door. "Someone's coming."

The room went dark again, and Shekh blocked the doorway, looking out through the peephole.

The sound of heavy footsteps echoed in the empty corridor.

A red figure passed by the doorway, wearing a red shirt, red skirt, red high heels, and with long hair flowing down her shoulders.

The newcomer was carrying a snake skin, which was significantly larger than the five snake skins in the other rooms.

Manager Zhang, dressed in red, entered the corridor in the dark and entered the narrow door next door with ease, leaving only the strong scent of incense behind.

Without a carpet to absorb sound, the two soon heard the sound of high heels clicking on the floor tiles coming from the next room.

Shi Jinzhe whispered, "The lock on that room is broken. She'll soon find out someone's been here. We have to leave."

The clues in this instance are too fragmented; they haven't explored them all yet, and revealing them too early will only cause all sorts of trouble.

Once it gets noticed, especially if it arouses suspicion from other players, then Shekh will have to deal with it.

"Okay, hold on tight to me." Sheh gripped Shi Jinzhe's folded hand tightly, opened the door, and headed towards the direction Manager Zhang had come from.

Shi Jinzhe couldn't see anything, so he could only follow her. When they turned a small corner, the sound of high heels also disappeared.

Schech caught the faint sound of the door closing and knew that Manager Zhang had returned the way he came and caught up with him.

She whispered to Shi Jinzhe, "If you go out this way, there's another fire escape with steps. We just keep going up."

The footsteps grew closer, and the two quickly entered the stairwell where the fire doors had been removed, and began their ascent.

The rusty handrail was covered in dust, and when he reached the fourth floor, Schertton stopped.

There was a short-haired man at the top of the stairs. He looked to be under thirty. He had deep ligature marks on his neck, in sections, which didn't look like they were from being strangled with an ordinary rope.

He lay on the ground, looking up at himself. His mouth was sewn shut, and all that could be seen in his eyes was a small part of his eyeball that had moved to the corner of his eye; the rest was all white.

Shekh remained silent. This damned dungeon, we hadn't even figured out the first two ghosts, and now a third one has appeared.

Shi Jinzhe couldn't see clearly and didn't know that there was a male ghost lingering at the entrance of the corridor four meters in front of him.

He only felt Shekh stop for two seconds, and then pull him through a gust of cold wind.

Shekh slammed the male ghost into the wall, and he couldn't pry it out.

After removing the obstructions, the two entered the blocked fourth-floor corridor.

As she passed the second abandoned guest room, she smelled a very strong odor of incense ash inside.

Shekh released the clenched hand, switched its tail, opened the door, and with a swift flick of its tail, took everything off the table in the blink of an eye.

Once he returned to the normal corridor through the narrow door of the operating room, Shekh realized that Liu Run was lying to him.

She rushed back to room 403, threw her things on the bed, and turned to deal with Liu Run.

"Wait, wait, wait." Shi Jinzhe grabbed her. "You forgot, you petrified him and Cheng Youan. Neither of them can move. How can they open the door for you?"

...

Shekh had really forgotten about it.

"I just sensed a chilling aura. Did we encounter a ghost on our way back?"

Shekh gave a long, indifferent "hmm."

Seeing this, Shi Jinzhe came up with a discouraging idea: "How about this, you throw that ghost into 409 and let it stay with them for one night. Anyway, Liu Run's teammates will be looking for him, so we can just keep watch and get some more information later."

Shech only spent three seconds thinking before immediately agreeing to the proposal.

The sound of high heels echoed in the corridor. Manager Zhang couldn't catch up with the suspicious person, so he had to slow down and go back to the second floor.

After she left, Shekh went out alone, passed through the control room, and returned to the stairwell on the fourth floor.

The male ghost that had been slapped against the wall clung to it like a gecko. Shekh forcibly pulled him down and brought him to the door of room 409.

"Go in and scare people. If you don't die from it, you will."

The male ghost shook his head, it was unclear whether he understood or not.

Shekh kicked the ghost inside, and it passed through the wall in less than three seconds. Then, Cheng Youan's terrified screams came from inside.

Feeling refreshed, I returned to my room, where Shi Jinzhe had already picked up those things and was looking at them.

Shekh asked, "Did you find anything?"

“Yes,” Shi Jinzhe held up a torn-off newspaper for her, “Manager Zhang’s father, Zhang Xun, looks exactly like her, they’re practically identical. She and Zhang Anguo are definitely not father and daughter.”

Sher took the photo and it really did look so alike. Zhang Xun had some feminine features, and when he stood next to the eighteen-year-old Manager Zhang, the two looked like a copy and paste.

Shi Jinzhe: "There's also a photo album here, with many photos of the manager and her father together."

Sher opened the photo album, and the first old photo was of Manager Zhang as a baby, being held in her parents' arms, a heartwarming picture of the family of three.

Next to the time the photo was taken in the lower right corner, someone wrote: "[Xiao Wang's first family photo at eight months old]".

As you flip through the album, you'll find short captions for each photo.

There are photos of Manager Zhang at age three, holding a book and a certificate, and photos of her at age five, eating watermelon and getting watermelon seeds all over her face.

Aside from a few everyday photos, there are mostly pictures of Manager Zhang winning competitions, being put on Wang Luan's arm, and taking photos with various people.

These photos show that before Manager Zhang was nine years old, her life was filled with studying.

But the unchanging content began to change after she turned nine.

In the photo album, Wang Luan appeared less and less frequently. The photos changed from tedious study sessions to trips to parks, aquariums, and museums.

In all these photos, the person accompanying the father is Zhang Xun.

In the last photo, Schechner saw a special group photo.

[Xiao Wang has turned eighteen. This is our second family photo in seventeen years.]

In this family photo, only Zhang Xun and Zhang Wang are visible; their mother, Wang Luan, has been cropped out.

Shekh: "It seems that Manager Zhang dislikes her mother, Wang Luan, very much."

“Indeed, her father Zhang Xun was more important to her, and this feeling far surpassed that of Wang Luan.” Shi Jinzhe could somewhat understand this mentality.

It wasn't because someone took her sightseeing, but because someone was attentively accompanying her. No matter how intelligent Manager Zhang is, she's still just a child of a few years old. How could she not long to go out and play?

Her father enriched her otherwise dull childhood, leaving behind many beautiful memories.

Shi Jinzhe summarized the night's findings: "Zhang Xun was the first of these key figures to pass away, and now we can confirm that he did not cause the deaths of Zhang Anguo and Wang Luan."

If we rule out one possibility, then Zhang Anguo was bitten to death by a snake, and his death is inextricably linked to Lu Xiaohui's belief in snakes.

Wang Luan had stayed at the hotel for a period of time, and her death was also related to the couple. It is possible that Zhang Anguo had a dispute with her because of lust, or it is possible that she had a falling out with Lu Xiaohui because she didn't know how to behave and was killed.

As for Manager Zhang, it's unclear how much she feels for Wang Luan, but given that she doesn't like Wang Luan, the fact that she's stayed at the Peace Hotel for so long suggests that something more has happened to her.