Chapter 10 Date

Zhou Yuan suddenly turned his head and saw a thin space blanket descending over his head like a wide net.

He dodged to the side, avoiding the incoming blanket, and immediately summoned the Steel Rose Revolver, aiming at the burly shadow that came along with the blanket.

Bang!

In the dark bedroom, a flash of gunfire was fleeting.

Li Xu Tian, holding a sharp knife, fell to the ground as if struck by lightning, trying to push himself up, only to find his body uncontrollable, and within a breath, his hands and feet lost all sensation.

"What era are we in that you're still using a knife?"

Zhou Yuan kicked the sharp knife aside and casually blew the gun smoke away from the muzzle.

"Ever heard the saying,

'Beyond seven steps, a gun is quick; within seven steps, a gun is quicker and more accurate."

Don't be misled by all those movie scenes that frequently depict human outlining or guns being inferior to knives, believing that firearms are weak in real combat. In fact, those are just for show.

In reality, having a gun makes you the boss.

The bedroom wasn't large, and for a trained gunman, there was no such thing as human outlining, even if the enemy had a knife and attempted a surprise attack, the American draw-and-shoot technique would take them down without any discussion.

Unless Li Xu Tian was an extraordinary person with formidable physical characteristics who could dodge bullets or withstand the paralyzing effect of the paralyzing bullet, only then would he have a chance to fight back against Zhou Yuan.

But if Li Xu Tian were, the reward for this mission would definitely not be this meager, and Zhou Yuan would certainly not risk directly entering the bedroom.

Zhou Yuan seldom did anything without certainty; entering directly meant he was fully confident.

"You... you're not a cop?" Li Xu Tian, hit by a paralysis bullet, was now fully paralyzed and found it difficult to speak clearly.

Zhou Yuan ignored him, stepped on the desk to open the leftmost wall cabinet, and took out a safe.

[The password is 4142.]

Click!

Zhou Yuan entered the secret password and opened the safe, which contained a thick notebook.

The room was unlit, but Li Xu Tian's eyes had long adapted to the dark, allowing him to make out the general outline. Seeing Zhou Yuan confidently find the safe, enter the correct password, and open it, he was shocked and incredulous:

"How do you know!"

"I have a magical little gadget."

Zhou Yuan placed both the safe and the diary into his player's backpack, then approached Li Xu Tian.

"I'll ask you a few questions, and I'll make it quick for you if you answer."

"To hell with you!" Li Xu Tian cursed, spewing obscenities.

"Tsk."

Seeing that Li Xu Tian had no intention of cooperating, Zhou Yuan picked up the sharp knife from the ground and ran it across Li Xu Tian's throat.

The cold blade slid across the throat, bringing an immediate choking sensation. Li Xu Tian made a gurgling sound of agony, and it wasn't long before he lay still.

"I'm getting more and more adept at killing..." Zhou Yuan murmured to himself.

With an important character dead, the mission hadn't signaled completion. It likely required reading the content in the notebook. Zhou Yuan decided to look at it back home.

As he walked into the yard, ready to use the Ghost Walker ability to phase through the wall and leave, suddenly, a note popping up from a room next door made him stop in his tracks:

[A group of desperate and helpless little ones are locked in a pitch-dark cellar, praying day and night for someone to rescue them.

As a butcher, it's only natural to keep a few pigs, right?]

"..."

Zhou Yuan stood silent for a moment, then walked over.

This is a storage room, cluttered with a lot of miscellaneous items. When he looked at the ground in the corner of the room, a remark popped up:

["Under the carpet is a hidden door; in a game, you might find a treasure chest or a monster, but unfortunately, this is reality, so you can only discover a bloody secret."]

Zhou Yuan lifted the carpet and a metal cellar door was exposed, without a handle, its edges flush with the floor, seemingly operated by a remote control.

"It should be in the bedroom..."

Zhou Yuan returned to the bedroom and soon found a small remote control by the pillow, and also found Li Xu Tian's mobile phone, unlocking it with the corpse's fingerprint.

Beep.

Back in the storage room, Zhou Yuan pressed the button, and the cellar door opened in response, and he bent down to look.

In the dimly lit, narrow cellar, there were three men and two women, each locked by chains around their neck and limbs, restricting their range of movement. They were thin and haggard, naked, with their skin covered in bruises, clearly suffering from cruel abuse.

In front of the five people was a large bucket, smeared with indescribable remnants of food, looking just like swill, emitting a rancid smell; Li Xu Tian seemed to have really raised them like pigs.

They were asleep, curled up into balls, occasionally trembling, as if they were dreaming about something dreadful.

Zhou Yuan's attention, however, was drawn to something beside them: a pile of bones, with roughly counting, there were over a dozen skulls.

Beneath the bone pile was a dark brown heptagram ritual circle, covered with strange symbols and inscriptions—it wasn't dark brown paint, but blood that had dried who knows how long ago.

"Is this... some kind of religious ceremony?" Zhou Yuan frowned.

["You have suffered a major failure in religious identification! Perhaps you can find the answer in Li Xu Tian's diary."]

"They really write everything in a diary, don't they..."

Zhou Yuan stood up and pulled out the Bow Tie Voice Changer, switched to Jim's voice, and made an emergency call with Li Xu Tian's phone.

"A homicide occurred at Feng Nan Village, number 31, with five people illegally abducted, come quickly."

·

·

By three o'clock in the early morning, Zhou Yuan dragged his exhausted body back home, took a bath, changed into pajamas, and began flipping through Li Xu Tian's diary.

[March 24, Year 101.

I've killed someone.

Wang Jian Wei owed me three thousand yuan, I went to his place to collect the debt, and he has the nerve to tell me he has no money—damn it, I clearly saw him entering the bathhouse last night!

We argued, and he even dared to shove me. I lost my mind... And by the time I came to my senses, Wang Jian Wei was already strangled to death by me.

Damn it, damn it, Wang Jian Wei is an idiot, my life is over, and I'm an idiot too, why was I so impulsive!]

Zhou Yuan's expression slightly changed; the content of the diary wasn't surprising, it was just about Li Xu Tian killing someone in a fit of rage. What really concerned him was the date of this diary entry.

—March 24, Year 101.

That was the date his parents died.

On the night of March 24, Year 101, his parents were beaten to death with a blunt object, and then their bodies were thrown in an unfinished building, only to be found by a homeless person two days later. There were no surveillance cameras in that area, and the police investigated for a long time without any clue, so the case became unsolved and remains unsolved to this day.

To be honest, Zhou Yuan had no feelings for his gambler parents. Even now, with Transcendent power, he did not wish to avenge them.

What accompanied his growth was continuous domestic violence, scolding, and arguing... Those two bastards would come home after losing money and take it out on him, beating him black and blue, leaving him covered in bruises, even landing him in the ICU once.

The happiness that was within reach for other children was an unattainable luxury for him, having never felt the warmth of family, his heart naturally only grew cold.

So when he learned of his parents' death that year, the emotion that surged in his heart was not sadness, but an indescribable excitement and relief—good riddance!

Perhaps the only right thing those gambling dogs ever did was to buy this house after winning several million, while housing prices were low. This house in Xinhu has tremendous potential for appreciation.

"March 24... is it a coincidence?"

Zhou Yuan pondered for a moment and stopped dwelling on the date, continuing to read the next page of the diary.