Shi Jinzhe: "Don't you have a place to live? How come you're being helped by Lu Xiaohui?"
"No, the house was mortgaged by Wang Luan and all the money was used to support her extravagant lifestyle."
Manager Zhang admitted, "Lu Xiaohui isn't a bad person. After she checked into the hotel, I found that she wasn't intentionally showing off. The lifestyle that made Wang Luan envious was just her daily routine."
"And then what happened...?"
"Later, a man named Jueping started pursuing me, saying all sorts of sweet nothings, but my father had passed away less than two years ago, and I wasn't in the mood for romance with him."
"Because his normal pursuit failed, he changed his approach and decided to start with Wang Luan. That tattered book was the method he suggested to Wang Luan."
“Using myself as the overt selling point and my father as the covert selling point, Wang Luan, under Jueping’s guidance, portrayed herself as a pitiful person who gave everything for her child, was neglected by her husband, and ignored by her family, in order to evoke people’s empathy.”
Manager Zhang's gaze never left Wang Luan on the ground, and she nodded in agreement:
“I admit that wives like this exist in many families, but Wang Luan is definitely not one of them.”
She looked up and asked the four of them, "Do you know what she did?"
"Under her flaunting, Lu Xiaohui grew increasingly fond of me. She wanted to adopt me as her goddaughter. When Wang Luan found out about this, in order to disgust Lu Xiaohui, he tricked me into going to that lecherous old man, Zhang Anguo."
Manager Zhang said sarcastically, "When Zhang Anguo assaulted me, she and Jueping were outside the door. Jueping even peeked through the peephole at the whole thing."
“I used to resent my father for sacrificing himself in the line of duty, feeling that he didn’t consider his family at all when he did it. But when Zhang Anguo grabbed my neck and I was powerless to resist, I really wished that someone like him could come and save me.”
She paused, pursed her lips, and blinked rapidly twice. "If my dad were here, he would definitely come to save me."
"...Then, how did you..." Meng Chengxi hesitated to ask the question.
How did I know?
Meng Chengxi: "...Yes, that's right."
"The hotel was too old, and the phone lines were crossed. I overheard the whole thing when those two were discussing the plan on the internal line."
"I now know that Jueping pursued me from the very beginning because of my reputation as a genius, and I also know that these two people wanted to make a lot of money by creating an inspirational story of a tragic girl's rebirth."
Shi Jinzhe asked, "So you killed them?"
“I didn’t think about it at first,” Manager Zhang sighed. “I know Wang Luan only loves herself, but at least she gave birth to me with great difficulty. I thought she might be bewitched by Jue Ping, so I went to confront her.”
"During the argument, she got so emotional that she blurted out her true thoughts that she had kept hidden for so many years."
Shi Jinzhe: "The ultimate goal is still for her own benefit, isn't it?"
"Yes, I want to climb higher because the man who stabbed my father to death was only sentenced to two years. Only by contacting more powerful people can I make him receive the punishment he deserves."
But Wang Luan made me study so hard, all for the sake of marrying into a higher social class, a son-in-law who would bring her prestige.
Manager Zhang slumped his shoulders: "At that moment, I felt it was meaningless. She angrily cursed my father for dying a pathetic death by stabbing him, saying it wasn't tragic enough and that I couldn't use it as a gimmick, so I killed her."
When Zhang Anguo assaulted me, he hit me in the same spot, and I stabbed Wang Luan there with the knife, not a single stab more, not a single stab less.
Shi Jinzhe stared at Wang Luan, who was lying on the ground, barely recognizable as a human. No wonder the masked woman said that the person she saw was covered in knife wounds.
The word "rape" is enough to illustrate how painful this behavior is for the victim.
Forced means coercive, and violent means brutal. Coercion is accompanied by physical beatings, which can leave many people with psychological trauma.
Wang Luan just watched helplessly as her own daughter was treated like this, all for the sake of her making a lot of money and having a prestigious but empty dream.
The matricide was the outburst of Manager Zhang's years of resentment, the collapse of his completely negated beliefs, and a departure from his principles.
Wang Luan's ridiculous reason was the final straw that broke Manager Zhang's back.
Manager Zhang took two minutes to calm himself down and continued with a composed expression:
“After killing Wang Luan, I tricked Jue Ping into coming over, drugged him, and strangled him with a telephone cord. After cleaning up the body, I wanted to turn myself in, but I unexpectedly ran into Lu Xiaohui, who stopped me.”
After much thought, Shi Jinzhe guessed that the reason Lu Xiaohui wouldn't allow it was because of Zhang Anguo: "If you turn yourself in, it will implicate Zhang Anguo. She doesn't want that, does she?"
"Yes, because she doesn't have children, she turns a blind eye to Zhang Anguo's infidelity. She begged me not to expose him. Without Zhang Anguo, she doesn't know how to run a hotel. What will she do in the future?"
Manager Zhang closed his eyes: "Lu Xiaohui was very good to me. I told her to give me half a day to think about it. As a result, that afternoon, she was hit by Zhang Anguo's mistress and her leg was broken."
"Lying in the hospital, she finally realized that forbearance would not bring about a change in the situation. She told me that she kept a snake as a pet and wanted to kill Zhang Anguo, so I helped her do it."
At this point, the reasons for the three deaths and one injury became clear.
Shekh, who had been silent until now, finally spoke up, "Thank you for telling me all this."
She just wanted to leave as soon as possible, but this required Manager Zhang to reopen old wounds and relive these painful experiences.
Games are really a terrible thing.
They'll kill the system sooner or later.
"You made all those exorcism items, didn't you?" Shi Jinzhe confirmed again.
"Yes, even in death, these three are not at peace. They have frightened guests several times. So Lu Xiaohui found someone knowledgeable to break the original feng shui, turning the accumulation of wealth into the dissipation of wealth, and dispersing all the energy here, including ghost energy."
She used offerings to subdue several people; these clothes were soaked in chicken blood and alum for 49 days, and wearing them was said to ward off evil spirits. Every night I would change into them and walk through the hallway to scare them away.
Meng Chengxi asked curiously, "Aren't you afraid of scaring the guests?"
"If they're scared, they won't come back, which is better for them."
"Aren't you scared?" Xiao Fang's face was still a little pale. "That's a ghost."
"I killed them all, what do I have to be afraid of?"
Manager Zhang picked up the blood-stained clothes from the ground. Wang Luan had been corroded into a pool of dark blue liquid, her ghostly aura dissipated, and she was beyond dead.
"Do you have anything else to do? If not, I'm going upstairs to check on Lu Xiaohui."
Shi Jinzhe: "There's one more thing, why is Lu Xiaohui's place completely sealed off?"
"The people we hired told us to do this, saying it was to protect Lu Xiaohui."
"I see." A notification popped into Shi Jinzhe's mind that the game was decrypted and he could leave early. He watched Manager Zhang leave.
"Wait a minute," Shekh suddenly called out to Manager Zhang, "This is for you."
A pale purple cloth appeared in Shekh's hand, a very small piece, just big enough to tie around his wrist.
Shi Jinzhe recognized it as her previous snake molt.
"Wear this on your body."
Manager Zhang glanced at her tail, took the fabric, and said, "Thank you."
She took a couple of steps and then turned back to tell Shekh, "You make me feel more comfortable than the one Lu Xiaohui offered. I'll keep this one safe."
Sheh didn't say anything. After Manager Zhang left, she told the other three, "If you can clear the dungeon, leave here as soon as possible. The danger in this dungeon doesn't come from the ghosts."
As the most important person with clues, Manager Zhang's words just now were a very clear reminder.
The snake that Lu Xiaohui provided was far more dangerous than these three ghosts.
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