Chapter 277: Chapter 275: The Masked Person

She went back upstairs with Shen Yanzhou.

Once they were upstairs, Su Miaoyi was still touching her mouth.

It still hurt a little.

Shen Yanzhou followed her to her side of the apartment. After closing the door, he asked, "Did you see something?"

Su Miaoyi nodded. "I saw a red, ghost-faced mask."

"Did the person in the ghost-faced mask kill someone?" Shen Yanzhou asked.

"I didn’t see the person in the mask kill anyone, but I saw them use a needle to sew a mouth shut." Su Miaoyi touched her lips again.

The feeling of a needle piercing through, the thread being pulled through her flesh, was agonizing.

Although the pain in her mouth was gone, she still felt deeply unsettled.

"The victim’s mouth was sewn shut?" Shen Yanzhou asked.

Su Miaoyi nodded.

"Should you tell Zhuang Yanzheng?" Shen Yanzhou reminded her.

Su Miaoyi fell silent for a moment, then looked at him and said, "This is all I saw. Nothing else."

There was no information that could directly identify a location or a person, so she wasn’t in a hurry to tell Zhuang Yanzheng.

The vision she saw was very brief.

It only lasted a few seconds.

The scene was dark. All she could see was a red, ghost-faced mask, and the person wearing it sewing her mouth shut.

She could feel that her hands and feet were tied.

And... the inside of her mouth hurt terribly, too.

’That pain... it felt like my tongue had been cut, too.’

"You were standing outside for a long time, and you only saw this little bit?" Shen Yanzhou was a bit puzzled.

Usually, at this time, she would see much more.

"I was standing outside for a long time?" Su Miaoyi asked.

"You were already standing outside when I got back. I stood with you for about ten minutes," Shen Yanzhou said.

Su Miaoyi processed what he said.

She had unconsciously gone downstairs again and stood outside, facing southwest.

She had only seen that small fragment after standing there for a while, but what she’d seen was far too little.

She didn’t say anything more, and Shen Yanzhou didn’t ask any further questions.

Seeing that she was all right, Shen Yanzhou returned to his side of the apartment.

Su Miaoyi kept replaying the brief scene she had witnessed.

The ghost-faced mask... there had been tears in her eyes at the time.

So the vision was a bit blurry.

But she had also seen the needle and thread.

It was just ordinary household needle and thread.

And the masked person’s hands.

They were wearing gloves—black rubber gloves.

The room was so dark that the black of the gloves almost melted into the night.

She couldn’t get a clear look at the shape of the hands.

She only had the impression that the hands were large, like a man’s.

And she felt the victim was a woman.

After sorting through the details, Su Miaoyi told Zhuang Yanzheng about it.

The two of them analyzed it over the phone for a while.

The vision truly contained no extra information, and further analysis yielded nothing.

After hanging up, Su Miaoyi thought for a while longer before washing up and going to bed.

...

「Deep in the night, the sky was full of stars, the chirping of insects faded, and everything fell silent.」

Suddenly, the soft sound of footsteps came from outside the house.

A faint CREAK came from the wooden staircase.

Once, twice...

The master of the room didn’t seem to hear a thing, still sleeping soundly.

The footsteps faded. A moment later, the dog in the yard started barking.

It was barking ferociously.

The people in the house woke up.

The woman nudged the man. "Why does Dahuang keep barking?"

The man rolled over and said impatiently, "It barks at any little noise. It’ll stop in a minute."

But the barking didn’t stop.

Annoyed by the sound, the woman kicked the man again. "Go out and see what’s wrong! Make it stop barking."

The man didn’t move.

After a moment, the woman kicked him again.

The man sat up in irritation, paused on the bed for a moment, then turned on the light to look outside.

The woman, finding the light too bright, pulled the thin blanket over her eyes and went back to sleep.

The man saw the dog in the yard barking incessantly toward a corner of the courtyard wall.

He got out of bed, left the room, and grabbed a stick from beside the door on his way out.

Once outside, the dog barked even more ferociously at the corner.

The man, holding the stick, shouted toward the corner, hoping to scare away what he assumed was a cat or some other small animal.

After shouting, he tapped a nearby branch with his stick. "Go on! Shoo!"

Just as he finished shouting, another sound came from the gate, and the dog started barking toward it.

With a look of annoyance, the man walked over to the gate.

But he had only taken a few steps when he was suddenly struck on the back of the head with a club, and he collapsed to the ground instantly.

As he lay on the ground, still semi-conscious, he saw the person standing behind him, dressed in a black robe and wearing a ghost-faced mask.

His eyes widened, his body twitched a couple of times, and he tried to scream but no sound came out. Then his eyes closed.

The person in the ghost-faced mask tied him up with a rope, then walked toward the house.

The masked figure stood at the door, knocking softly, again and again.

The dog’s barking grew louder.

Woken by the noise again, the woman inside started screaming toward the yard, "Are you useless?! You’ve been out there forever, and it’s still barking its head off! Your whole family is garbage, it runs in your blood! You can’t even handle one dog! I’ll have it butchered for meat tomorrow! All it does is bark, bark, bark!"

She got up as she spoke. "Are you dead out there?! What the hell are you doing?! Marrying into your family was the worst damn luck of my life! I’d have been better off marrying an idiot than you! You’re so useless you don’t even make a peep!"

"Just beat it to death already! Bark, bark, bark—it won’t even let a person sleep!"

Muttering, she walked out of the house. The moment she stepped outside, she sensed someone beside her. She whipped her head around and saw a ghost-faced mask.

She opened her mouth to scream.

But no sound came out. The masked figure clamped a hand over her mouth, wrapped an arm around her neck, and dragged her directly into the room.

She thrashed about wildly, her legs kicking frantically.

But the masked figure’s strength was too great; she couldn’t break free.

After being dragged into the house, her mouth and nose were covered with immense force, and her neck was still being choked.

Gradually, her strength faded. Her flailing arms dropped to her sides, and her kicking legs fell still.

She slowly closed her eyes.

When she woke up again, the room was pitch black.

Her hands and feet were bound. Her mouth was full of blood, and when she tried to speak, she couldn’t form words, only muffled groans of "Ahhh... ahhh..."

The masked person watched her, then seized her lips in a tight, forceful grip.

The woman’s "Ahhh..." sounds were choked off in her throat.

Tears streamed down her face. She wanted to beg the person in front of her, but she couldn’t make a sound.

She tried to shake her head, but her mouth was held in such a powerful grasp that her head couldn’t move. All she could do was watch as the person in front of her took a pre-threaded needle and, bit by bit, pierced it through her lips, sewing her mouth shut until she fainted from the agony.

The dog’s barking continued.

A long time later, the masked person walked out of the house.

The dog was still barking at him, yanking its iron chain so hard that it CLANKED loudly.

He watched it for a moment, then tossed a piece of meat next to it...

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