Countdown
The pale light filled the bathroom, casting a frosty cold glow on Lu Miao's face.
She was like a goddess living in a shrine, coveted by the evil creatures outside the door.
A faint fishy smell lingered in the air and gradually became very faint.
The other party moved.
Lu Miao stood up silently, walked to the bathroom door, and put his right ear to the door to eavesdrop.
Tick.
The clock outside still worked.
Gurgle.
There was the sound of running water under the bathroom floor drain.
Apart from that, there was no sound of any biological activity in the room. It seemed that she was the only one in the dormitory from beginning to end.
Oh——
She yawned quietly.
Staying in the bathroom for two hours is boring.
Lu Miao sat back and browsed the trending news out of boredom.
Suddenly, a new message popped up in the Penguin group, and she immediately clicked on it to check.
[System Message]: The group owner has kicked Bubble Gum out of the group chat!
[System Message]: The group owner has kicked Wangzai Yogurt out of the group chat!
[System Message]: The group owner has kicked me out of the group chat because I don’t drink milk!
…
A series of system messages flashed across the screen, and Lu Miao was extremely surprised.
A total of 18 people were kicked out of the group.
There are now 148 members left in the group.
After a while, another system message appeared.
[System Message]: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter have started listening to music together
She was stunned.
Immediately, the name of the song to be listened to together appeared below the group name - "Paper Money Girl".
The duration of the song begins to increase and is already playing.
During the day, some group members will study the functions that have been enabled in this group.
There were no robots set up in the group, but the "Listen to T-Songs Together" function was turned on. Everyone agreed that this function was a trap.
Now is the time for the administrator to patrol. Group members with normal intelligence will not be so foolish as to use the functions in the group.
[Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter] This group member may be gone.
Lu Miao exits the group chat interface to prevent accidental joining of "Listen to Music Together".
Late in the night, when everyone is asleep, the midnight sky is like a huge black butterfly wing, blowing scales of despair down upon the world.
Humans groan in pain in their dreams, and only a very small number of people still experience nightmares in reality at midnight.
The group member who does not live alone is not as relaxed as Lu Miao. On the contrary, he hides in the bathroom in fear, praying that his family members do not get up at night.
The thin boy sat in the bathroom, his clenched fists wet with cold sweat from nervousness.
A faint stench drifted into the bathroom again, and he was absolutely sure that the stench belonged to the administrator because he had never smelled it on any of his family members.
That thing must have been passing his bathroom door.
No, he had to use his mobile phone to surf the Internet to relieve his fear.
Outside the bathroom, the air was mixed with thick humidity, as if the south wind had arrived, making the skin sticky.
There were footsteps outside approaching the bathroom door.
The boy's hand was shaking as he held the phone.
He was very familiar with the sound of footsteps in slippers.
It was his dad. What was he doing outside the bathroom? Didn't he agree not to get up and stay in the room at night?
Fortunately, his father did not knock on the door. He stopped outside the bathroom for a moment and then heard footsteps. He must be returning to the bedroom.
call--
The boy breathed a sigh of relief.
"Still in the bathroom."
The master bedroom is next to the bathroom, and the boy heard who his father was talking to.
At this moment, my mother's sleepy voice came from next door. "He's not finished yet?"
"No. Go to sleep and don't disturb the child."
"well--"
For some reason, the boy was restless and felt a sense of panic. In addition, the phone in his hand kept vibrating, and his heartbeat was like a dense drumbeat, beating wildly against his chest.
He felt that he had made a serious mistake and overlooked something important.
He shouldn't have done that. He strictly followed the rules and hid in the bathroom, and didn't make any mistakes.
He scratched his hair in annoyance.
Knock knock.
The sudden knock on the door scared him so much that his ears were filled with the sound of his heartbeat, and his lips turned pale as if they had been frozen by the cold air in the morgue.
Knock knock.
The other party knocked twice quickly.
"Are you ready? I need to pee."
An eerie chill ran up the boy's spine, and cold sweat ran down his neck like goose bumps.
The person knocking on the door was actually his father?
impossible!
His dad went back to the bedroom! His dad promised not to knock on the bathroom door at midnight! The person outside must not be his dad!
The boy covered his mouth tightly and said nothing.
"Are you done? I can't hold it anymore."
It’s definitely my dad’s voice!
Why!
"ah!"
A scream outside the door frightened him so much that he almost screamed out loud.
"What is it? Don't come over here-"
The boy was stunned.
Family members can really see the administrator too!
“Help—”
Bang! Bang!
His father changed to knocking on the door.
"husband!"
The boy's eyes turned red at his mother's shrill scream.
He opened the bathroom door without hesitation and rushed out to save his parents.
Just as he rushed out of the bathroom, there was no one outside the door.
A strong fishy smell and humidity instantly enveloped the place.
Then he remembered that there was no sound of footsteps before his father knocked on the door.
The boy, sweating profusely and feeling completely hopeless, finally realized the trap hidden in the rules and quickly unlocked his phone screen.
Fortunately, he often listened to this song, so he could quickly input the song title by entering the first letter.
Let’s listen to the song together.
The room returned to calm.
The dropped phone was picked up by a hand.
At 2:05 in the morning, Lu Miao stood up, stretched, and opened the bathroom door.
The white light from the bathroom broke through the darkness in the room, and the dark shadows of the furniture swayed for a moment.
The hours and minutes on the wall clock were luminous, so she could see the time even though she was standing in the bathroom door.
A car passed by downstairs, and the headlights quickly swept across the wall of the house, reflecting the clock face.
Lu Miao once again felt the sticky humidity in Qingshui Apartment.
She walked out of the bathroom without changing her expression.
In a blink of an eye, the car lights that swept past disappeared, and the darkness in the room became even darker.
At this moment, the luminous hour and minute hands entered her peripheral vision.
She put her clothes in her pockets, walked straight to the door, opened it and went out.
My accelerated heartbeat hasn't calmed down yet.
Just now she saw that the clock showed 2 o'clock.
The young deer now have no choice but to spend the night outside and wait for sunrise.
She chose to go to the rooftop.
There was a flower shed built by the employees' families on the rooftop, as well as a rattan chair, where she lay down for the night.
The gaps between the flower vines are relatively sparse, revealing the deep night sky, with occasional twinkling dusty stars.
She set the alarm for six in the morning and took a nap.
At six o'clock in the morning in spring, the sky is pale as a fish belly.
It's cloudy today and the sky is gray.
Lu Miao waited until about half past six, when the sunrise finally arrived.
The light golden glow was looming behind the clouds, and a few rays of morning light leaked through the weak spots between the clouds.
As she looked at the sunrise, she was covered with a layer of gentle morning light.
She suddenly had the idea to take a photo of the sunrise.
As a courtesy, she sent it to Si Lan.
Si Lan replied almost immediately.
[Mr. Si]: The hazy sunrise is also beautiful, thank you for sharing.
"Get up so early?" She was surprised.
[Deer]: You’re welcome.
As soon as the sun rose, new messages popped up from the penguin group.
[Group owner]: Countdown 50 hours and 24 minutes.
The number of group members has not been reduced, and the ban on all members has not been lifted.
Lu Miao pondered the group leader's message for a moment and went downstairs with doubts.
The humidity in the room had dissipated, and the morning light poured into the deserted hall.
The wall clock resumed working, but the time it showed was 2:10, which meant that the thing had just left for ten minutes.
Lu Miao had to manually adjust the time on the wall clock.
Not long after, He Ping'an, who lived next door, called.
"Captain, the police are taking action."
Lu Miao: "You didn't stay up all night, did you?"
"No, I designed a keyword program to capture the monitoring content. It automatically captures and creates simple reports. I saw it when I just woke up."
She breathed a sigh of relief. "What are they doing?"
The bureau was set up yesterday morning.
He Ping'an was responsible for hacking into the police alarm system and monitoring the content of the alarms.
"They were on their way to the Red Block after receiving a report of a body being found."
Red Block...
Lu Miao gritted his teeth secretly. "Is there something special about the corpse?"
"Yes, the informant said the body was naked, had no facial features, and its face was flat."
"Time to report the case?"
"At 6:23, the caller said he had just arrived at the crime scene to throw away trash and found it in the trash can."
"I'll be there right away."
“But that’s the Red Block, those guys’ territory.”
Lu Miao's other hand stroked the gun handle. "Even if their captain comes, I won't let him have any good results."
After hanging up, she went back to the department, put on a thin bulletproof vest, and then put on a white shirt to cover herself.
Under the black and fluorescent green leather jacket, there are two pairs of leather pistol-gun holsters.
She was carrying three guns and sped away on a motorcycle.
The Red Street District, also known as the Sin District, is composed of densely populated urban villages, and homeless people who are trying to make money from the field of ghost stories can be seen everywhere.
They don't go to work. When they come across a strange story field, they break in to earn material rewards. When they can't pay the rent, they live under overpasses or in unfinished buildings. Even worse, they wander the streets and commit robberies.
Citizens and the government hated the lazy and vicious homeless people, so they drove them to wander in the urban villages and prohibited them from leaving at will.
Over time, the urban villages have become red neighborhoods, attracting evil forces to move in and becoming a paradise for criminals.
However, they will not easily attack police officers handling cases. This is an unspoken rule followed by homeless people and criminals.
And when a shiny motorcycle drove into the red block, someone on the roadside picked up his mobile phone.
The motorcycle drove to the crime scene accurately and stopped next to the police car.
The two police officers guarding the cordon recognized the motorcycle and its owner.
The woman who got off the car had neat short hair, a heroic look, and a cold face like a rose with thorns. The fluorescent green earring on her right ear revealed her identity.
The homeless people and hooligans who were watching squinted at her.
"Captain Deer?"
Lu Miao told the two police officers guarding the scene why he came: "The crime scene may be related to my mission, I need to go in."
"Wait a minute, I'll go in and ask the captain."
She waited quietly, looking at the other officer on guard.
The police officer scratched his face and smiled awkwardly, with a faint dark blue under his eyes and a haggard look. "I'm working."
He was the only police officer who escaped from Nanjiang Botanical Garden and also her companion in escaping.
"you--"
Officer B, who had just returned, interrupted Lu Miao's questioning. "Captain Lu, the captain agrees."
Lu Miao climbed over the cordon and asked Officer B: "What is the name of the colleague who is guarding the cordon with you?"
"Chen Zhanqin."
She nodded and went to see the body.
The body was brought to the ground and is being examined by the medical examiner.
The body was bald, with a flat face that made the head look like an egg. Based on the body's gender, it was a male.
"Old Li, are there any clothes of the deceased in the trash can?" Lu Miao asked the criminal investigation team leader Old Li.
"There are torn and dirty clothes in the trash can. Forensic examination is needed to determine whether they belong to the deceased. But based on my experience, they are just homeless people's clothes."
Lu Miao frowned.
The body was indeed naked, without even any external injuries.
"This is a tough one." The medical examiner shook his head and sighed. "The deceased died within 24 hours, there are no obvious fatal injuries on the body, and the skin is pale and bluish with no livor mortis. I did a simple examination and found that the deceased's body lacked blood. An autopsy is needed to obtain further autopsy results."
"Lack of blood?" Old Li was shocked.
Lu Miao was secretly surprised, with a lot of thoughts in his mind.
"Oh my, Captain Deer is coming to the Red Block, why didn't you tell me?"
Hearing the voice that made his colleagues avoid it, Lu Miao's face became even colder.
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