Hell's Handbook

Chapter 151: Missing Floor

The photo looked weird, but Su Jin didn’t pay it too much attention. This probably wasn’t going to be the weirdest thing he was going to come across in such a Challenge.

Everyone searched the rooms very carefully and it didn’t take long for them to finish searching the first story. All 13 of them gathered back together again to exchange notes on what they found.

“The room in the south is the kitchen. I found a lot of bloodstains and some unwashed dishes.” Chu Yi had a plate in hand and the bloodstains on it were also blackened like the ones found inside the first room they were in.

“The room in the west is the bathroom. It’s filled with bloodstains as well and it’s a complete mess, but there’s nothing else unusual about it.” Kano Mai had been in charge of searching that room.

“There’s a room meant solely for clothing in the southwest. The room is filled with both men and women’s clothing, but the large majority are for children. Strangely enough, there are clothes for both boys and girls,” said Xiang Nan with a puzzled look on his face.

Su Jin frowned at this information. Based on the photo he saw in the living room, this was supposed to be a family of three: father, mother and daughter. He mumbled to himself, “Well, the child isn’t very old yet, so she could wear clothing for either gender if the parents wanted to.”

Besides the information from these three, the rest did not have anything of note to report. In fact, most of them had not found anything unusual at all in their rooms.

“A murder definitely happened here, but the first story was not where it happened.” Situ Jin was a trained police investigator, so he followed the bloodstains on the floor and quickly pointed to the staircase. He walked over to the staircase and said grimly, “Based on the direction of the bloodstains, the murder scene should be upstairs. There’s only one trail of blood and beside it are footsteps, one larger than the other. Judging from what we saw in the coffin earlier, the wife killed the husband, then dragged the body downstairs along with her daughter.”

Situ Jin’s observations were very astute, but he did not say anymore after that. He knew his place well and just left the decisions to the two strategists of the group.

Su Jin and Xiang Nan exchanged glances and Su Jin said, “Let’s not waste time here, continue with the second floor! We need more information!”

The group went up to the second story and searched the place, but this floor didn’t even give them any clues. The entire floor was nothing but guest rooms, so they were all neat and tidy. The bloodstains went past the second story, so Situ Jin concluded that this floor wasn’t the scene of the crime either.

The third story was next. This was where the family lived. There was one master bedroom, one children’s bedroom and one servant’s bedroom.

They quickly came back together again. Xiang Nan said, “I searched the servant’s bedroom and it’s quite strange. It seems like more than one person had lived in it before.”

“What do you mean?” asked Su Jin.

“I’m not sure how to explain it either. Based on the size of the bed and the room, it’s impossible for more than one person to have lived there at one time,” said Xiang Nan.

“Situ, could you go in and have a look?” Su Jin had begun to trust Situ Jin in this aspect since he had professional investigative training. He was the most qualified to make a judgment in this situation.

A couple of minutes later, Situ Jin and Xiang Nan walked out of the servant’s room again and Situ Jin said, “He’s right. More than one person lived there before.”

“Did the owner of the house force more than one person to live in that tiny room?” asked one of them.

Situ Jin shook his head. “There are a number of everyday items inside that seem to come from different places and it’s obvious that the users of these items have different living habits.”

“Take the slippers for example. This tiny room has proper shelves installed for slippers in three different places: one end of the bed, under the table and behind the door. I don’t think a servant would be in the mood to display their slippers like this.”

“Therefore, I feel that there were at least three servants who went through this room. At least three servants worked here before. We also found servant uniforms in different sizes inside the closet, so I think we can confirm our guess. Based on the size of the clothing, two of them were quite large sized, so it would really be impossible for more than one person to live in the room at one time. In short, this family changed servants quite frequently.”

Su Jin nodded quietly at Situ Jin’s detailed analysis and the other group members began to look a little more admiringly at Situ Jin now.

Situ Jin went on, “The children’s bedroom is a little strange too. There are two children’s beds in the room, which means that…this family has more than one child.”

That was something Su Jin was prepared to hear. The room full of clothing on the first floor had clothes for both boys and girls after all. He had guessed that they were all for just one child, but he did not eliminate the possibility that this family could have had two children.

“The master bedroom is very clean and it looks like it had been tidied up before this. There’s nothing else unusual about it.” Kano Mai and a few other owners had searched the master bedroom together but they didn’t find anything of note.

“Let’s go up!” said Su Jin.

The fourth story turned out to be a library. The entire floor was covered in bookshelves with books of all sorts on them.

“How…how are we supposed to search a place like that?” exclaimed one of them. There were probably a few thousand books in this place, so if they were to look at the books one by one, they wouldn’t be able to finish looking through them even if they were given an entire week to do so, never mind less than an hour.

“Comb the shelves for any diaries, notebooks or books with special markings on them,” instructed Su Jin. He too, knew that it was impossible to look through every single book given such a short time.

Everyone immediately got to work and it was a lot easier to complete the search of the shelves since they knew what they were looking for. They found three diaries in no time and handed them over to Su Jin.

“Let’s go up!” Su Jin passed one of the diaries to Xiang Nan and flipped through the other two himself while the group went upstairs. They had used up quite a bit of time already, so they had to move more quickly.

The fifth story was even more surprising because there was absolutely nothing on this floor. The entire floor was covered in dust except for the space right in the middle. There was a rectangle shaped area that was not covered in any dust.

Everyone had looks of despair on their faces. They had been hoping that the little girl’s body was somewhere on one of these floors, yet they found nothing after combing through four floors and the highest floor had no rooms nor furniture. Where could the little girl’s body be?

“That’s where the coffin was placed initially,” pointed out Park Donggeun.

Su Jin told everyone not to move and said to Chu Yi, “Can you find a way to blow away all the dust on this floor?”

Chu Yi nodded. He gathered his internal energy and thrust his hand out. Wind flew out from his palm, which stirred up all the dust on the floor. Everyone quickly covered their nose and mouth with their hands.

Su Jin covered his nose and mouth as well, but kept his eyes on the floor. The rest were also stunned when they looked down at the floor. The entire place was covered in blood.

“It’s the murder scene!” said Xiang Nan.

Situ Jin squatted down and touched the floor with his fingers, then shook his head and said, “Nope. This isn’t where the murder occurred either.”

“How can that be? This is the highest floor,” said Park Donggeun.

Su Jin narrowed his eyes as he looked around, then looked up at the roof. “Situ is right. This is not the scene of the murder. The murder happened on the sixth floor!”

“The sixth floor? But the house only has five floors.” Chu Yi looked confused too.

“Is that so? Are you sure?” Su Jin laughed.

Xiang Nan’s eyes lit up and he said, “Mr. Su is right. The murder occurred on the sixth floor. The missing sixth floor.”

This confused everyone even further. They were clearly on the highest floor right now. What were these two talking about?

Su Jin explained, “Earlier on, I guessed that this was a six story house based on the height of each of the floors below. Don’t you think the ceiling of this fifth floor is a little higher than usual?”

Everyone raised their heads and nodded in agreement. Kano Mai asked, “The sixth floor has been torn down?”

“It hasn’t been torn down. Just…hidden,” said Su Jin quietly. A silver beam shot out from his eyes as he allowed his psychokinesis to scan the area above their heads.

He smiled and walked towards one side of the floor. Everyone watched in amazement as he started ascending, as though he were walking on invisible stairs.

All of them became hopeful again, since there was actually a hidden sixth story. They thought they had hit a dead end, but it turned out that the ghost had played a prank on them.

Su Jin’s psychokinesis revealed the hidden sixth floor to him in its entirety, so he was able to see everything in it. This was certainly the scene of the crime, since it was covered with bloodstains and it looked like the victim had struggled very violently here.

He suddenly felt a chill down his spine, as though a sinister pair of eyes were staring at him. It made him shiver and all his hair stood on end.

As he carefully searched the sixth floor, the people downstairs could see everything clearly since Su Jin seemed to be floating in the air above them.

At the same time, the more he searched, the grimmer his expression became. The sixth story was a complete mess and this was definitely the scene of the murder, since some of the blood found on the other floors had seeped through the floor from here. But the little girl’s body was nowhere to be found. This floor was just as empty as the one below it.

He walked down again and shook his head. “Her body isn’t upstairs either.”

Despair filled everyone’s hearts again. They thought that things would change after Su Jin found the sixth floor, only for their hopes to be dashed.

“What are we going to do? Time is already almost up! We…we’re all going to die!” One of them was a middle-aged lady and she started panicking because she realized that they only had about ten more minutes to go.

The more timid ones among them were already trembling in fear, while those who were bolder frowned from the uneasiness they felt inside.

Su Jin remained silent as he continued looking through the diaries in his hand. The frown on his face slowly smoothened out as he read the entries. Perhaps…they weren’t actually all too far from the little girl’s body!