sneak peek

Downstairs of Building A of Shuntong Apartment Building.

"You, you mean, Aunt Zhang is, a bad person?" For the first time in his life, the landlord stood among the police, stammering nervously.

Huang Jiade took out two photos, "Recognize them, are they the Aunt Zhang and her son you mentioned?"

The landlord nodded vigorously, "Yes, yes, yes, they have lived here for seven years, and they will not admit their mistakes. What happened to them? Although Aunt Zhang has a weird temper, she still takes good care of the people in the building. Her son is very filial and polite to others..."

Mo Wang interrupted the landlord, "Are they at home now?"

"This... I don't know. I think I should be here. Aunt Zhang was ill a few years ago, and she hardly went out. She has been lying at home recuperating."

"And what about her son?"

The landlord frowned and thought for a while, "It seems that I haven't seen him for a week, but I don't watch him 24 hours a day. I don't monitor or anything. It's possible that he came back but I didn't see it."

The landlord took them upstairs and stopped at the corridor on the third floor, some of them didn't dare to go on.

Mo Wang signaled to the landlord with his eyes, asking him to help knock on the door.

The landlord was unwilling, but the corridors were blocked by the police, and he couldn't escape, so he had to bite the bullet and knock on the door of 304.

"Aunt Zhang! Is Aunt Zhang here?"

There is no response inside.

"Aunt Zhang, it's me, Old He!"

Still no response.

After looking at each other, Mo Wang and Meng Ning walked over and pried open the door.

As soon as the door was opened, there was a foul smell, and the group couldn't help frowning and covering their noses.

The landlord's face changed, "This, this, this, what does it smell like? My God, can my house be rented out again?"

Li Zi stopped the landlord from letting him in, "The police are handling the case, you go to the corridor and wait."

The landlord refused to leave, and looked around at the door, scratching with his hands, like a monkey in a hurry.

This is a house with one bedroom and one living room. The furniture looks old and worn out, but the living room is tidy.There are two photo frames on the cabinet next to the door, one of which is the same as the playground photo in Mo Wang’s father’s wallet; the other is a group photo of Nian and Zhang Li, and the background looks like a playground, Zhang Li hugged Nian's arm tightly and smiled happily. The two looked more like siblings than mother and son.

Mo Wang walked in the direction where the smell came out, pushed open the bedroom door, and the stench suddenly doubled in intensity.

Meng Ning tugged at the hem of Mo Wang's clothes, "I can't do it anymore, I'm going to vomit."

The stench also made Mo Wang feel uncomfortable in his stomach. This was not the stench of corpses, but a mixture of human stench, feces, urine and other inexplicable smells.

In a sense, it is hundreds of times more uncomfortable than the smell of corpses.

Mo Wang walked into the bedroom, and there was an old man lying on the bed, his face was so haggard that he couldn't recognize who she was, only from the small mole between his eyebrows, he could tell that this was Zhang Li, that is, Li Li, his father former lover.

She was alive, breathing very weakly, and did not respond to calls.The sheets and quilt were covered with excrement and urine. It must have been left unattended for several days, and I couldn't get up to go to the toilet by myself, so I became incontinent directly on the bed.

There is a cabinet with the size of a bookshelf next to the bed, which is filled with various medicines like cosmetics, with various curative effects, as if opening a self-service pharmacy at home.For a while, Mo Wang couldn't figure out what kind of disease she had.

There were all kinds of sundries piled up under the bed, including magazines of unknown ages, dirty clothes, corpses of dead rats, and leftover lunch boxes.There were several empty food boxes next to the pillow, and there were two buns left in one of them. It seemed that this was Zhang Li's food during this time.A cockroach seemed to be frightened by Mo Wang, crawled out of the bun, crawled along Zhang Li's face to the head of the bed, and got under the pillow.

"Little Momo! What's going on inside?!" Meng Ning shouted outside.

"Call an ambulance." Looking at the face of the person on the bed, Mo Wang thought, how did she end up in this situation?

"Did you find anything inside?" Jia De said to Mo Wang who had just walked out of the bedroom.

Mo Wang: "It seems that Nian hasn't come back for several days. Before he left, he put down his food and left his mother to fend for himself inside."

Meng Ning: "So...the taste in here is..."

Mo Wang sighed, "She's not dead yet, that smell is...you wouldn't want to know."

Meng Ning glanced at the bedroom and walked away silently.

Jia De put his hands on his hips, wondering in the living room: "Do the two of them, mother and son, really live here? There is only one room here? Could it be that the son is in his 20s and still sleeps with his mother?"

Li Zi: "Maybe it's for the convenience of taking care of my mother? Look at the medicine in that cabinet. She must be very sick."

Jiade spread his hands, "How can I say that I have to have my own room? Could it be because I'm poor that I can't afford to rent two bedrooms and one living room?"

Meng Ning pointed to an earphone packaging box in the corner, "The market price of this earphone is more than 1W, do you think it is poor?"

Jiade recalled his 99 yuan earphones, and suddenly felt that his life was very miserable.

Meng Ning casually flipped through the magazines on the coffee table, "Tell me, will this idea come back here?"

Mo Wang said with certainty: "No."

Jia De agreed, "There are almost no personal belongings here, and if he still plans to come back, how can he let his mother fend for herself here like this."

Li Zi was a little discouraged, "What should I do? I finally chased him here, but I still can't catch him?"

Meng Ning rolled up his sleeves, "Anyway, he has lived here for 7 years. I don't believe he didn't leave any clues. And the landlord said that he saw him a week ago. We searched the place and we will definitely Found something."

Mo Wang shook his phone, "Uncle Cheng said there might be clues, I'll go there first, come back later?"

Meng Ning trampled to death a cockroach crawling out from under the sofa, and responded casually, "Okay, call us if there is something to do."

Mo Wang quickly walked downstairs, got into the car, looked around to make sure no one was paying attention to him, and then stretched out his hand from his coat pocket.

In his hand he held tightly a medicine bottle, which he had just snatched from the bedroom.The medicine bottle looks very ordinary, and it seems inconspicuous mixed in a pile of medicines.But Mo Wang still saw the sticker on it at a glance, which read: Look at me.

It was obviously left behind by Nian.

He opened the lid of the medicine bottle. There was nothing inside, but something was written on the back of the label from the translucent wall of the medicine bottle.He tore off the label, opened the back, and wrote a coordinate on it, and a sentence: Shhh!You have to come by yourself, otherwise Captain Gu will shoot you.

Nian was threatening that if other people were found following him, Gu would shoot and hurt himself.

Mo Wang knew that he should tell others about his discovery, and he also understood that he should not go to the place guided by the coordinates by himself.He should plan an action with everyone to save Gu Yexi.If they deploy well, they may not be discovered by Nian; if they act quickly, they may be able to rescue Gu before he hurts himself.

But these are all possibilities, he cannot gamble with Gu's life.He has already seen in the video left by Nian how "instructions" can grab people's minds.

He took out his mobile phone and searched for the coordinates. It was a wilderness far away from the urban area.He looked at the map carefully, recorded the route in his mind, turned off his cell phone, started the car, and said to himself: Gu, I'm here.

After the car drove out of the urban area, Mo Wang's eyelids kept twitching, and both sides twitched at the same time, which made his eyes hurt and even his head hurt.He blinked suddenly, and suddenly found a person standing in front of him.

He stopped the car abruptly, the man was wearing the clothes Gu Yexi wore when he disappeared, but upon closer inspection, it was not Gu Yexi.

Mo Wang rushed forward, grabbed the man by the collar, and asked viciously, "Where is he?!"

The man stared blankly and did not speak.

Mo Wang froze for a moment, and let him go.Obviously this person was controlled by Nian with "commands", and stood here to guide him.

Mo Wang fumbled in the pocket on his body, there was a mobile phone in it, and a video call was in progress.

"Hey, you are finally here." Nian said with a smile in the video.

"Where's Gu?" Mo Wang blurted out.

"Don't worry, I'm still alive, but it's hard to say later."

"What's the meaning?!"

The camera shakes for a while, and Mo Wang finally sees Gu Yexi, who is sitting on a chair in a daze, with a gun pointed at himself.

"If you don't come quickly, I'll let him shoot for fun."

"I'll be there soon, don't touch him, or I won't let you go!" Mo Wang hurried back into the car with his phone in his hand.

"Since you said that, I would like to try to see how you can not let me go?" Nian didn't take Mo Wang's threats seriously at all.

Mo Wang was full of anger, but at this moment he had to say in a low voice: "Please don't hurt him."

Nian smiled and seemed very satisfied, "Okay, now follow my instructions and drive."

"The previous coordinates..."

"You can go to the coordinates if you want, I don't care, but Gu Yexi and I are not there."

Mo Wang gritted his teeth and started the car, "Say, I'll drive."

"First," Nian said with a sly smile, "get out of the car."

"what?"

"You walk 50 meters into the bushes on the side of the road and you will see a motorcycle."

Cursing in his heart, Mo Wang got out of the car and ran over.

"Except for the mobile phone I gave you, don't bring any electronic products, and don't try to contact other people, otherwise..."

"Got it, where's the key?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Nian said grimly, "the key is in that person's body just now."

"You?!" Mo Wang turned his head and saw that person walking towards him.

"What? Don't want to come? Or are you afraid?"

"Stop joking! Where is the key?" Mo Wang growled.

"Open the trunk at the back of the car." Nian said indifferently.

Mo Wang breathed a sigh of relief, immediately opened the box, and then froze.There were no keys in it, only a knife.

"It's really difficult to do it with bare hands, let me give you a prop."

Mo Wang picked up the knife, a little dazed, what to do?Is it, is it really necessary?No, how is it possible!

The voice of Nian fluctuated from far to near, "Let me help you? That person is a drug bandit or a rapist..."

"No, I won't kill him." Mo Wang threw the knife away.

Nian suddenly smiled, as if he got what he wanted, "Dear brother, I knew you would do this, do you know what the instructions I gave him are?"

Mo Wang was taken aback for a moment, his pupils contracted quickly, and he wanted to pick up the knife, but it was too late, the man picked up the knife, and cut open his stomach without hesitation, blood spilled all over the floor, and the intestines fell out .

"10 minutes, get the key, otherwise, you understand."

Mo Wang looked at the phone screen, but Gu Yexi was still pointing the gun at himself.

Mo Wang gritted his teeth, put the phone aside, and reached into the man's stomach.The man's body was still warm, but he could no longer feel his breath.

He fiddled with it for 5 minutes, blood was all over his hands and body, but he couldn't find anything.

"What's the matter? Is it that difficult to find a key?" Nian's voice sounded, with an obvious smug smile.

Mo Wang ignored him and continued to search.

"Let me give you one last hint. Take off his pants and see if there is a thread behind him? Pull it out and see what it is?"

"You...you bastard!" Mo Wang couldn't help but blurted out.

"What? I said it was in his body, not in his stomach. Have you got the key? Hurry up and drive away, I'm getting impatient."

Mo Wang silently said sorry to the person who had disemboweled him, stretched out his hand to close his eyes, and suddenly caught something at the end of his eyes, and looked closely at the person's ears, as if there was something in it.Mo Wang reached out and touched it, and it turned out to be a very small earphone.

So that’s the case, Mo Wang thought, there is no upgraded version of “instructions”, and Nian just guides them to do things step by step through the earphones.

Mo Wang started the motorcycle and asked, "Where are you going?"

"Keep going."

"and then?"

"Then wait for my order," Nian said unsatisfactorily, "You talk a lot."