CH 14

What is it? Lin Yi asked. 

Qin Zhou tilted his head to look at him. “A vase.”

“A vase?” Lin Yi was a little confused. It obviously had hands, how could it be a vase?

Suddenly he stopped, and then stared incredulously at Qin Zhou. “It can’t be…”

Qin Zhou nodded and said, “It’s exactly what you’re thinking.” 

Lin Yi couldn’t sit still on the bed anymore and ran to the curtain. Qin Zhou moved aside to give him space. Lin Yi lifted a corner of the curtain and looked out.

Outside was a small bungalow. The bungalow wasn’t made in the same style as the dorm building. It looked more like a converted circus.

Under the eaves of the bungalow, there was even a shabby banner, the words on it just vaguely recognizable: ‘The Mystery House Vase Girl — 20 Yuan per peek’.

What is a Vase Girl? It’s made by raising a newborn child in a vase, using special food to make her whole body soft so that the baby will grow to fit in the vase, leaving only the head outside.

The bungalow was already worn down and dialpitated. The vase inside could be seen through the bungalow’s windows. The vase was half a person tall and the thing that Lin Yi fought with last night was inside, its head is at the mouth of the vase.

Lin Yi’s eyesight was very good, He could see farther and clearer than Qin Zhou.

The vase was not in perfect condition, a hole had been smashed at the bottom. The ragged edges of the hole looked as though it’sbeen made by fingernails.

The person — no, maybe it was no longer a person — in the vase slid out of the mouth of the bottle. Having been raised in the vase, its body had adapted to this container. The vase was like a mold, binding, restricting its body. Now, it had grown into the same shape as the vase. 

At this point, it came crawling out.

However, it can only use its nails, poking them into the ground, to drive its body forward. It rummages through the bungalow. Lin Yi saw it take something with it’s hand and then it headed back to the vase.

However, it didn’t go back immediately. Suddenly, it turned its head and stared at Lin Yi peeking at it from behind the window.

“Get over here!” 

Qin Zhou had also been watching and when he saw it looking towards Lin Yi, he pulled Lin Yi aside.

Although that rule of death, that one shouldn’t let himself be seen, was temporarily invalid, it was still best not to be seen if possible.

Qin Zhoul pulled Lin Yi back, causing him to stumble, his chin landing on Qin Zhou’s shoulder. His lips, injured from this morning, hurt again. However, t this moment, he cared not about the pain nor that he was so close to Qin Zhou.

Before the curtains closed the window once again, he watched the vase girl gesture frantically with its only free arm. 

Ktf megajlc yibmxfv Olc Tl’r nlrlbc jcv Ebbw 304 yfmjwf ffglis delfa.

Coafg jktlif….

“Olaaif ufcler? Lbk ibcu jgf sbe ublcu ab rajs ilxf atlr?” Hlc Itbe jrxfv, “Pr la yfmjerf ws fwygjmf lr rb kjgw jcv sbe mjc’a yfjg ab ifjnf?”

Olc Tl: “!” 

Ycis atfc vlv Olc Tl gfjma. Lf tegglfvis rafqqfv yjmx, mgfjalcu vlrajcmf yfakffc atfw.

The atmosphere was weird and awkward for a while. Lin Yi pretended to be calm and said, “Senior, you’re in good shape. Have you considered going out to sea?”

Qin Zhou: “…”

Every time Qin Zhou wanted to say something disturbing like that, he was blocked by Lin Yi. Qin Zhou gave up and turned to the main topic. “What do you think?” 

Lin Yi took out the note that he put in his pocket yesterday. He unfurled the folded paper and looked down at contents. Room 310 was still missing from the list.

He asked Qin Zhou, “Senior, do you think that the food in Room 310 was already there or was it brought in by the vase girl?”

Qin Zhou asked back, “When it came to you last night, did it come empty-handed?”

Lin Yi thought of those swollen hands and then wrote in another entry to complete all the information. 

Room 310, Wang Duo, Food.

After Lin Yi finished writing. He stared at the note and said, “Senior, the things in the dormitory may have nothing to do with the rules of death but it looks more like our way of dying.”

He pointed to Wang Duo’s information on the paper and said, “If the food was already in Room 310, when the vase girl was designing how it would kill us, because there was already a lot of food in Wang Duo’s room, the vase girl decided it would kill Wang Duo by putting everything in his mouth and stuffing him to death.”

Qin Zhou stared at the information on the paper and suddenly called out, “Little genius.” 

Lin Yi raised his head. “Huh?”

Qin Zhou said, “Murderers can be roughly divided into two types. One kills for fun. For example, the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, his main method of committing crimes was to trick the victim into his car and then to commit the crime. He had his own specific modus operandi. The other type kills for a purpose — for money or for hatred, they have a reason for killing their victims. Unless it’s done in the heat of the moment, this type of murderer often makes a careful plan. They will imagine and reenact the murder countless times in their minds. For such murderers, the way they kill their victims is generally related to the identity of the victim.”

Lin Yi paused, “Senior thinks that the girl in the vase belongs to the second type of murderer.”

Qin Zhou raised his chin. “What exists in each dorm room is a symbol of our identity. So not only does it belong to the second category, it’s also killing for revenge.” 

His train of thought started to run and Lin Yi’s thinking became active. He looked around Room 304 and said, “This dorm building is very likely a staff dorm; for the staff of the Mystery House.”

“They had relied on the vase girl to make money. Something must have happened and the vase girl escaped from the vase. Now it wants revenge on these people…” Lin Yi said, “So the only brand new door in this dorm building is kept shut. It’s to prevent the vase girl from coming in. Our identities in this instance must be employees of the Mystery House.”

As Lin Yi said that, he himself raised a question, “But what about the old dorm manager? If the old dorm manager’s also an employee of the Mystery House then we share a same goal. He also wants to hide from the vase girl. But then why is his rule of death, not allowing Qu Jialiang to leave his room at night?”

Qin Zhou stared at Lin Yi for a bit. Indeed, the little genius wasn’t stupid, but he was still naive when it came to matters of human nature. 

“We’re not employees of the Mystery House, only the old dorm manager is.” Qin Zhou said, “We’re just the bait he uses to attract the hatred of the vase girl.”

Lin Yi thought about it carefully, he felt that what Qin Zhou said was reasonable and could explain Qu Jialiang’s death. but……

“Senior, the old dorm manager mentioned an ‘agreement’. If we are the bait then there would have been no need for the old dorm manager to make an agreement with us. People are easiest to be made use of when they don’t know anything.”

Qin Zhou said, “But what if his agreement was just to better make use of us as bait?” 

Lin Yi thought for a while and said, “But an agreement is generally a consensus between two parties. How can an agreement with only one party be considered an agreement?”

Qin Zhou said, “The registration book.”

Lin Yi immediately remembered that the registration book had some torn pages.

“The part that was torn off is likely to have contained the specifics of the agreement.” Qin Zhou said, “Once we violate it, he will kill us himself to reduce the vase girl’s resentment. In this way, the old dorm manager’s rules of death can just barely be related to the main line, making the 7-7 Rule World more complete.” 

Lin Yi was convinced.

Using Qin Zhou’s explanation, everything made sense. The red dot he saw last night wasn’t his hallucination; it was something that Lin Yi was very familiar with — a pinhole camera.

Because he needed to go to school and he worried that his parents might grow anxious from being unable to see him, he bought a monitoring equipment and installed it at home, so that he could promptly control his parents’ movement.

The same went for the old dorm manager. He wanted to make sure that everyone was in their own room at night. Otherwise, if the vase girl entered the building, it might find him and finish him off. 

So Qu Jialiang, who left Room 309 last night, died at the hands of the old dorm manager.

Lin Yi told Qin Zhou about the surveillance, which proved Qin Zhou’s speculation.

Then he asked Qin Zhou: “Senior, do we now know the main line of the 7-7 Rule World? Can we find the 7-7 Monster for the Replay?”

Looking at the 7-7 Rule World in this way, it’s simple; only that they had put too much importance on the ‘open window’. From the very beginning, they had believed that the window would be dangerous. If they didn’t know these rules of death, even Lin Yi wouldn’t have dared to open the curtain and look out. 

Qin Zhou repeated: “A camera? Are you sure that’s what it was?”

Lin Yi affirmed. “I can’t be wrong.”

Qin Zhou gave him a complicated look and Lin Yi said, “To be honest, I’d been secretly monitored while taking a shower before, so I’m very sensitive to cameras.”

Qin Zhou: “…” 

Qin Zhou said, “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

Without the slightest change in expression, Lin Yi said, “If Senior was an idiot, I wouldn’t team up with you. I really didn’t lie to Senior. I really had been watched through a camera.”

Qin Zhou snorted and then said, “For confirmation, we’re going to need to find that torn paper from the registration book first. The answer we have now is only speculation. Only when we find this thing and see that the agreement really does mean to use us as bait, can we prove that our answer is correct.”

Lin Yi looked up at the lamp above his head. 

Qin Zhou said, “What if it’s stated in the agreement that we can’t dismantle the lamp? Are you going to give your head to the old dorm manager?”

Lin Yi said, “What Senior said makes sense.”

Knowing that Lin Yi was a daring one, Qin Zhou said, “Besides, we haven’t found the 7-7 Monster yet.”

Lin Yi finally fell silent. 

7-7 Whether the Monster was Li Ying or Zhou Lingling, or actually Cheng Yang, Lin Yi couldn’t say so with certainly. He heard Qin Zhou say, “If we make a mistake in identifying who it is, everyone will die, including the person it possessed.”

Lin Yi asked, “You mean the person possessed by the Monster is still alive?”

Qin Zhou said, “If the person isn’t alive, he would be a corpse among us. It would be easy to see through.” After a pause, he said, “Wang Duo was the one who was chosen by Monster in the last Rule World.”

Lin Yi thought of what had happened to Wang Duo and then thought of himself. He couldn’t help but sigh, “Those who are selected by Monsters are both lucky and unlucky.” 

Qin Zhou said with disgust, “How is that lucky?”

Lin Yi rubbed his nose and explained quickly, “Lucky because the person selected would never step on the rules of death.”

Qin Zhou said, “Little genius, if you were chosen by the Monster, could you rest assured handing over your fate to others?”

“If it’s Senior, I’d be more at ease.” Lin Yi thought and said seriously, “If Senior is unfortunately selected, I will try my best to allow Senior to win while lying down.” 

Qin Zhou looked at Lin Yi’s expression. The little genius was considering this problem very seriously.

He felt a bit moved. He then turned his head and said, “Shut your crow's mouth.”

The author has something to say: Time to start the search for the Monster.