Nightmare Onslaught - Chapter 11 - Analysis

Fan Li seemed to have thought of something, and his expression turned odd for a brief moment. Then, he picked up his sneakers and walked out the door.

Walking along the corridor, he appeared to be heading downstairs.

Everyone followed him. Fatty and Jiang Cheng were at the back of the group. As they passed by the boys’ bedroom, Jiang Cheng grabbed Fatty and pulled him inside.

“What are you doing?” Fatty asked, clutching himself in mock fear.

“Checking something.”

“Why are you dragging me along for this?”

Jiang Cheng began opening the drawers in the bedroom one by one. Before long, he knelt by the bed, pulled out a pair of slippers from underneath, and held them up. Looking at Fatty with a calm expression, he said matter-of-factly, “Because I’m scared.”

Fatty: “…”

A while later, Jiang Cheng and Fatty came downstairs to the living room and saw Nuan-Jie and the others gathered by the shoe cabinet. All the shoes had been taken out and were lined up neatly on the floor.

Hearing the sound of Jiang Cheng descending the stairs, Fan Li put down a pair of women’s casual shoes in his hand. Fatty noticed that the expressions on the faces of the three were rather grim.

Just as Chen Xiaomeng opened her mouth to speak, Jiang Cheng interrupted, “You’ve figured out that there aren’t just two boys in this villa, haven’t you? There are two girls as well.”

Fan Li’s eyes flickered as if he was about to say something, but he held back. After a while, he sighed and asked quietly, “Newcomer, who on earth are you?”

“Cut the chatter. Tell me what you found first,” Jiang Cheng said, setting down the slippers he was holding and looking at him calmly.

Fan Li picked up two pairs of shoes and showed them to Jiang Cheng. They were women’s casual shoes, both of the same size. Based on their previous observations, everyone had assumed they belonged to the same person.

With a somber expression, Fan Li flipped the shoes over, exposing the soles. “The outer edge of the sole on this left shoe is badly worn, while the wear on the right shoe is concentrated on the inside.”

He looked up and fixed his gaze on Jiang Cheng. “The wear patterns on the soles reflect walking habits, and once these patterns are formed, it’s nearly impossible to change them. These belong to two different people. There are two girls in this villa.”

“But why is there only one girl’s bedroom on the second floor?” Chen Xiaomeng asked. “And there’s only a single bed inside?”

Jiang Cheng shook his head. “Both of the small bedrooms on the second floor are for the girls. Naturally, each would have a single bed.”

“What do you mean?”

“This,” Jiang Cheng said, holding up the slippers he had retrieved from the other bedroom. “I found it in the room covered with military posters. The size is on the smaller side. You can compare it with the casual shoes.”

There was no real need to compare, but Fan Li still took the slippers and placed them next to the casual shoes. Everyone could clearly see that these slippers belonged to a woman.

“Isn’t it a bit far-fetched to claim that room belongs to a girl just because of a pair of slippers? Maybe those slippers were just accidentally left behind by a girl in the boys’ bedroom.”

“And judging by the way that bedroom is set up, it definitely looks like it belongs to a boy.”

“But a man wouldn’t typically use something like this,” Jiang Cheng interrupted, pulling a small object out of his pocket and handing it to Chen Xiaomeng, who had raised the question.

Chen Xiaomeng took it, her eyebrows shooting up in surprise. It was an opened pack of sanitary pads.

“I found them in one of the drawers in the bedroom. And it wasn’t just one pack,” Jiang Cheng added.

Nuan-Jie looked at him thoughtfully. “So you’re saying both of the small bedrooms upstairs are occupied by girls, but one of them has more masculine habits and behaviors?”

Jiang Cheng nodded. “That’s correct.”

Chen Xiaomeng seemed to just process everything, a look of confusion crossing her face. “Then where are the other two boys staying? We’ve only found three bedrooms in this villa.”

One master bedroom, clearly designed for the male and female homeowners.

And based on their deductions, the remaining two smaller bedrooms belonged to the two girls residing in this villa.

“Could they be staying on the third floor?” Fatty piped up tentatively. “We haven’t been up there yet.”

Before he even finished, Nuan-Jie shook her head. “That’s unlikely. When I first arrived, I noticed that only the first and second floors of the villa have windows. The third floor is a darkroom.”

As a general rule, no one would put bedrooms in a windowless darkroom, especially not the affluent owners of a villa like this.

Chen Xiaomeng seemed to realize something, her expression suddenly tense. “So those two boys aren’t members of this family-they’re outsiders!”

Fan Li cast her a sideways glance, his tone ice-cold as he corrected, “You mean intruders.”

“And they aren’t boys either,” Jiang Cheng added calmly. “They’re two grown men.”

Hearing this, Chen Xiaomeng visibly shuddered.

Indeed, once the assumption that they were children of the homeowners had been overturned, the clues left behind told a different story. Judging by the two pairs of shoes, one was roughly the same size as Jiang Cheng’s, and the other pair was even larger than Fan Li’s.

Jiang Cheng gazed down at the two pairs of sneakers neatly lined up on the floor. “The moment I first saw these shoes, I thought something about them seemed off. They’re way too cheap and extremely worn out, clearly mismatched with the other shoes in the cabinet. And the people living in this villa don’t strike me as the type to settle for something so shabby.”

The living room fell silent for a moment, as previous thoughts were overturned, and the storyline shifted from a straightforward family tragedy to an invasion by villains.

After a while, Flexible Fatty looked around nervously and whispered, “So, two men broke into this villa, first eliminating the male and female owners, then imprisoning their two daughters, and finally killing them.”

“Do you remember the water stains left by the female ghost after she passed? And the woman’s hair found in the bathtub of the bathroom?” Nuan-Jie said grimly. “That ghost was likely drowned in the bathtub.”

“As for Xie Yu, who was scared to death and then dragged away and abused, that was also the female ghost’s revenge. It explains why she put the intruder’s shoes on him.”

“Because she imagined Xie Yu as the one who had once tormented her.”

During the time the group analyzed the truth of the case, the day had already broken. This time, no one urged Flexible Fatty to cook; they just grabbed some small breads and snacks to fill their stomachs.

It was not that they felt sorry for this Flexible Fatty, but simply that they did not have much time left.

Jiang Cheng had already noticed that the daytime in this world was becoming shorter, while the night grew increasingly longer.

According to his estimate, with just two more nights, the daytime in this world would completely disappear.

“What will happen after daytime disappears?” Flexible Fatty asked, his eyes wide like bulbs, and he swallowed hard.

Jiang Cheng turned around and patted Flexible Fatty’s shoulder to comfort him, saying, “Don’t worry.”

Flexible Fatty’s pale cheeks turned slightly flush.

Jiang Cheng continued, “At worst, the ghosts will come out and kill without restraint.”

Fatty: “???”

The group walked down the corridor on the second floor. They needed to use this relatively safe daylight to complete a second search of the villa.