Chapter 837: Another Face
Lin Sanjiu felt a chill rush down her spine when a discordant note rang out, jarring her out of her reverie. The [Ability Polishing Agent] fell to the ground, thrusting the warehouse into a limbo of light and dark. The silvery bottle rolled all the way until it was stopped by a foot.
The foot was gray and bloodless, and the skin was wrinkled like a stiffened piece of old leather that had been exposed to the sun for too long.
Using the momentarily chance granted by her [Ability Polishing Agent], Lin Sanjiu trailed her gaze along with the silvery light and looked up. The legs were raw-boned and exhibited an unwholesome pallor while there was a long shadow dragged behind the frail silhouette. Suddenly, she heard a series of bone-popping sounds coming from the figure’s neck. It seemed to her that the thing was trying to straighten its neck but to no avail.
Lin Sanjiu hastily kept the mirror away. When she turned around, she was already holding her [Tornado Whip].
“Who are you?” she shouted, brandishing the whip menacingly, “Speak!”
The head in front of the chest stopped moving, and the cracking ceased to exist. Soon after that, the figure lifted its leg once again and slowly and quietly put it down.
It took another sidestep nearer to Lin Sanjiu.
“Player has discovered the victim,” the pocket dimension’s voice suddenly rang out and spread across the dark, “The body of the victim has appeared.”
‘What?’
Dumbfounded, Lin Sanjiu sent out a gush of Higher Consciousness to stop her [Ability Polishing Agent] from swaying. Then, through the uniformed light, she squinted her eyes and inspected the figure in front.
There was a large patch of stain that looked like dried blood smearing the front of the white vest the figure was wearing. Even without the rack, it could still support itself on the ground albeit in a very crooked way. In a way, it seemed like a marionette controlled by an unseen hand.
Lin Sanjiu examined the figure from head to toe, and then a light bulb went off in her head. She asked as disbelief accented her tone, “This…Is this the warehouse keeper?”
“Exactly,” the pocket dimension replied calmly.
“B-but why is he here?”
“The body of the victim will reappear in the locked room once the player discovers the death of the warehouse keeper. You are the victim’s only hope after so many years. Driven by his desire prior to his death, the corpse won’t stop walking towards you until you expose the truth behind the murder case.”
In other words, the figure in front of her was the warehouse keeper’s corpse that had reappeared at this moment because she had discovered his death.
Lin Sanjiu raised her head to see the dead body raise its legs again. She hastily recoiled a few steps into the darkness where her [Ability Polishing Agent] could not reach. After ascertaining that she was safe for the moment, she raised her voice and asked, “Then? What if it gets to me before I discover the truth?”
“My suggestion is that you’d better not let that happen.”
Perhaps since it was walking sideways, the dead body had an abnormal gait. The silver lining was that it was slow, so it was an easy task for Lin Sanjiu to keep her distance away from it. Letting out a sigh, when the dead body walked another two steps forward, she seized the opportunity and studied it again.
There was one thing wrong about her speculation. Judging from the warehouse keeper who only dressed in undergarments, the pile of broken bones, the windbreaker, and the jeans belonged to the same person. Now, it was apparent that somebody had stripped him of his clothes after he died.
Why though?
‘Hold on. Expose the truth about the murder case?’
“Pocket dimension!” Lin Sanjiu shouted. Without waiting for the pocket dimension to reply, she continued, “What do you mean by exposing the truth about the murder case? Do I have to solve the murder case before I can get out? Wasn’t this a locked room escape game?”
However, the pocket dimension remained silent.
“Hey!” she shouted again even though she was clear that the pocket dimension would not give her an answer. Tension began to mount and set in as she waited in silence. Lin Sanjiu gulped a mouthful of saliva as she continued to wait. After waiting for several minutes, she chided herself inwardly and then moved back a few steps to the side.
Apparently, the murder case was related to the locked room escape pocket dimension.
However, the real question was the crime scene along with the evidence had been destroyed in the wake of the planet’s destruction. Even Sherlock Holmes had to rely on clues and evidence to analyze a certain case. Without those things, how was she supposed to solve the murder case?
As Lin Sanjiu sank into her thoughts, the shuffling continued to haunt her.
Even though it was slow, the dead body continued to inch towards her assiduously. No matter how many times Lin Sanjiu turned her head, she would find that the corpse had gotten even closer to her. Its steps were heavy. The figure had stooped forward, and its posture was cruel. It looked like a swaying shadow under the blast of the [Ability Polishing Agent].
“Mrs. Manas, remind me to wash my eyes after I get back,” Lin Sanjiu said. After that, she made a detour around and walked toward her [Ability Polishing Agent]. When the dead body had first appeared, it had accidentally kicked the silver bottle away. The bottle rolled all the way out of the warehouse and dropped into the grass patch.
The silvery beam outlined each blade of grass and made them look like spears in the dark. Since the [Ability Polishing Agent] did not get pulled back into the warehouse, Lin Sanjiu surmised that the patch of grass was still within the boundary of the pocket dimension.
To make sure that the corpse did not suddenly speed up and launch at her, Lin Sanjiu turned her head. After ascertaining that it was still very far away, she quickly crouched down and picked the [Ability Polishing Agent] up.
When she crouched down to reach out for the [Ability Polishing Agent], the blast of light blinded her for a minute. She squinted to adapt to the sudden glare and slowly got up. However, before she could do anything further, she heard Mrs. Manas screaming in her head, “Look out!”
She peeled her eyes wide and saw a face amidst the silvery light. The light shone upward and cast an eerie outline of the face. She could not tell if that was really a human face or if her mind and her eyes were messing around with her again.
Be that as it may, her reflexes were swift. Before she said anything else, she summoned her [Tornado Whip] and lashed it out towards the face. Then, she shouted, “Who’s there?”
The face was obviously startled as it disappeared from the line of the silvery beam. A massive gust shot out, but before it could land on the face, it was swapped out and rammed into the warehouse behind. For a moment, all the rubbish spiraled up into the air in a whirlwind before raining down again.
‘Not even the wind can get out of the pocket dimension?’
Lin Sanjiu leaped back and turned her head around to see that the dead body had moved one more step closer to her once again.
When she turned her head back to the front, she froze.
“It…it’s you?” A man’s face emerged from the grass in the distance. He seemed rather familiar. “W-what’s going on here?”
There was a tinge of surprise in his iconic lackadaisical voice. He paused halfway through his sentence when his eyes fell on the dead body behind Lin Sanjiu. He raised his trembling arm and pointed behind her. His eyes bulged wide and his mouth opened and closed several times like a stupid goldfish.
“Ryuji?” Lin Sanjiu was even more surprised to see him here. “Why are you here?”
Ryuji quickly calmed himself down and got up to his feet. Staring at the dead body, he took his [Mask] off, and his gloomy face slowly appeared before Lin Sanjiu’s eyes.
“Dali kicked me out of the hotel. She said it’s my fault that her hotel was destroyed, so she wants me to pay for all the damage. I don’t want to stay in a crowded place anyway, so I figured I should spend my night here. Is this a pocket dimension?”
It was only now that Lin Sanjiu remembered telling Dali that her friend would be staying in her hotel.
“Yes, so you’d better move back a little,” Lin Sanjiu urged. She gestured to him to go around to the other side of the warehouse because not only did she have to avoid the dead body, but she also needed to clean up the rubbish. Besides, if she did not add some description, the warehouse might disappear.
As Ryuji walked around the warehouse, he tilted his head and a confused expression dawned on his face. “A pocket dimension? Here? But it can’t be.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been working in the Mokugyo Forum for quite some time and I’ve read through so much information, so I’m very certain,” he replied weakly, “There’s no pocket dimension around here, at least, not for several kilometers. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come here to stay for the night.”
