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Chapter 50 Wasted
Gu Mian remembered the woman the landlord mentioned; she had opened the door when he and Qing Huan came to investigate yesterday.

However, she had half her face hidden behind the door yesterday, so the two of them did not notice anything unusual about her face.

The disfigured woman was just across the street; they were only a few steps away.

Gu Mian stood at the door and knocked. Before long, footsteps came from inside, and then the door creaked open.

A face peeked out from behind the door, looking at them.

Upon seeing this face, Yuwen Hao gasped; it was a face that was extremely difficult to describe.

One half is relatively normal, but the other half is incredibly ugly.

The burned half of his face drooped down, his skin loose and rough like that of an eighty or ninety-year-old, and looked dirty as if it could never be washed clean.

This face looks very incongruous; one eye and one corner of the mouth droop downwards, and the features are completely asymmetrical.

The woman seemed to have heard the commotion from the landlord's side and guessed that they would come. Without asking any questions, she simply pulled the door open and took a step back, saying, "Come in."

Gu Mian didn't stand on ceremony and stepped inside.

The other three followed closely behind.

The house wasn't big. As soon as you entered, there was a somewhat eerie living room. In one corner of the living room, there was a shrine with a deity that Gu Mian couldn't name. It looked rather sinister.

Next to the shrine was a row of old sofas, and Gu Mian sat down.

The woman made no attempt to greet them, but went straight to the point: "You came to see me because of Zhong Min?"

This must be the name of the woman who was burned to death.

The landlord never dared to mention her name from beginning to end, but the disfigured woman didn't care at all and said it directly.

Since she was so straightforward, Gu Mian didn't want to beat around the bush. He nodded and said, "My friends were haunted by some evil spirits. After investigating for a while, they finally found out about this woman. I heard from the landlord that you were nearby when she died."

The woman nodded blankly: "I am nearby, but I advise you not to get involved with this woman. She is very vengeful. If she targets you, you will die no matter what."

"Were you very close to her when she was alive?"

The woman paused for a moment, then said, "No... I don't know her."

Yuwen Hao's expression was off: "Then why do you seem to know her so well?"

The woman lowered her head slightly and stopped speaking.

“Since you don’t want to talk about this, let’s change the subject,” Gu Mian said. “I learned from the landlord that on the night of the fire, you weren’t very close to the fire source, so you should have been able to run out on your own when you noticed the fire, but you didn’t.”

The expressions of Yuwen Hao and the other two became slightly strange as they looked at the woman in front of them whose face was half-disfigured.

"At that time... I was asleep."

"When did you wake up?"

"...I heard Zhong Min screaming. She had locked herself in a small storage room right next to me... She was screaming for help inside, and by then the fire had already reached my side..."

He then asked, "Can't she get out by herself?"

"She locked the door from the inside, but she didn't have the key." "Do you have a key on you?"

"..."

Yuwen Hao frowned as he looked at Gu Mian and lowered his voice: "You suspect that this woman is related to that fire?"

Gu Mian shook her head slightly.

The others found it strange; this woman was too eccentric. Despite being a victim of the fire years ago, she exuded an eerie aura.

At this moment, Gu Mian looked at the woman and said, "Since you were on night shift at the warehouse, you must have the warehouse key with you. I think after you woke up, you didn't run out immediately, but went to rescue people, right?"

Everyone else was slightly taken aback upon hearing this.

Judging from the current situation, her attempt to save the person was clearly unsuccessful.

"I guess after you woke up, you heard cries for help, so you used your key to open the door, trying to escape with Zhong Min, but something went wrong, resulting in Zhong Min dying in the fire, and you also getting burned."

"Furthermore, based on your description of Zhong Min, she definitely did something to you, either while you were alive or after you died."

"She's probably resenting you for not rescuing her, and she's haunting you even after becoming a vengeful ghost."

Therefore, the curses that the landlord heard from Zhong Min back then were most likely not directed at anyone else, but at the woman who abandoned her and ran away.

Qinghuan looked puzzled: "Then why is she still alive?"

This should also be the key to this instance.

After listening to Gu Mian's words, the woman fell silent. After a long while, she raised her face and revealed a strange smile as if she had been relieved.

"You guessed right, I did want to save people at the time, but what Zhong Min did was far more outrageous than you can imagine."

“We didn’t know each other at all at that time. I was woken up by the fire and heard her shouting for help behind the door. So I took out my key, opened the door, and escaped with her.”

"Everything was going smoothly. We were covering our noses and trying to get outside through the warehouse when a burning shelf fell over and hit her right in the face."

"I wanted to pull her out to run with me, but the frame was too heavy; I couldn't move her at all."

"The fire was already huge. She grabbed my hand and begged me not to abandon her and to let me save her, but if we stayed any longer, I would die with her."

"I had no choice but to tell her I was going out to find someone to rescue her, but she grabbed my leg so tightly that I couldn't move at all!"

"She said she didn't trust me, and if I couldn't get her out, we'd both die there together."

"At that moment, several bolts of burning cloth on the shelf came crashing down on me. She was holding on tightly, and I had no way to dodge, so I was hit by them..."

She touched her face as she spoke.

“My hair and clothes were on fire, and my face was in a lot of pain. I didn’t care about anything else, so I kicked her several times until she let go, and then I ran outside.”

I missed updating in the middle of the night.

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(End of this chapter)