The Mystery of the Inner Demon

Chapter 56 Prophecy
When I opened the door, Chen Liangdi was lying on the sofa with an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the coffee table.

Chen Liangdi's face was calm, even with a smile on her face, and she seemed to have passed away peacefully.

The room was tidy, as if specially prepared for departure.

"It looks like suicide." Qi Fei sighed somewhat, thinking of the old lady's longing for her son.

"Neighbors in the building have known each other for years and are very familiar with each other's living habits. The resident living across from Chen Liangdi noticed that the elderly woman hadn't gotten up early to go for a walk and wasn't answering her phone, so they called the police," said the first officer to arrive at the scene. "We had someone pry open the door and found she was already deceased."

"Do you remember the agreement I made with Chen Liangdi? I promised her that I would help her hold a funeral ceremony for her husband and son for free during the Qingming Festival this year. It's only January now, and someone who had made plans for April suddenly committed suicide. It's too abnormal." Zhong Kui said.

Qi Fei looked around the furnishings in the room. The timing of Chen Liangdi's death was indeed too strange.

"The computer host is still hot." Zhong Kui's calm voice coming from the bedroom broke Qi Fei's depressed mood, and he immediately walked towards where she was.

In this nostalgic bedroom, Chen Liangdi still vividly remembers the scene of missing her son. Unexpectedly, when she came here again today, the old lady had passed away.

"Bastard! I should have known that Chen Liangdi was targeted by the murderer. I should have sent someone to guard Room 202, so that nothing would happen to her!" Qi Fei said in annoyance.

"Put away your savior complex. The person is dead, but the computer is still hot. It seems that the computer shuts down later than people!" Zhong Kui said.

Qi Fei knew the problem as soon as he heard it: "Don't touch this computer first." He said to Zhong Kui while putting on gloves and restarting the computer.

After a long wait, the computer desktop finally appeared with the retro boot screen.

The words on the desktop had changed. Instead of the last sentence, "Mom, I'm back," it had become, "Mom, come with me."

It seems that Chen Liangdi, who firmly believed that her son's ghost had returned, chose to commit suicide after seeing this sentence.

Qi Fei stared at this sentence for a long time, turned around, and through the bedroom door he could see the portrait of Chen Liangdi's son on the living room wall. It was facing Chen Liangdi's body. The young face in the black and white photo was looking at her with a smile, which was indescribably creepy.

Now that Chen Liangdi is dead, most of the clues about "Daddy-Long-Legs" have been lost.

"Oh no, Xiaoyou." Qi Fei thought that the murderer was probably trying to silence the witnesses. "I have to talk to Captain Liu to strengthen the security of the hotel."

"Are you sure the murderer did this to silence the witness?" Zhong Kui asked from the side. "If that was the case, he wouldn't have given Xiaoyou cefuroxime in the first place. He would have used a more toxic drug instead, killing two birds with one stone. Both the adult and the child would have died, and there wouldn't have been any clues like the so-called Daddy-Long-Legs."

Qi Fei was silent. At the beginning, in the Yue Fengsheng case, he thought the motive for murder was very clear, that is, Yue Fengsheng was drunk and caused trouble and offended someone. However, as the investigation deepened, things seemed to be far more complicated than he thought.

……

A new corpse arrived in the autopsy room, and several people gathered around Chen Liangdi's body to discuss.

Only Zhong Kui was exceptionally quiet. He sat in a corner of the dissection room, slowly flipping through Xiaoyou's sketchbook.

"The cause of death is very clear..." Xiao Tao began with the same familiar words he had used when facing Yue Fengsheng's body. "An overdose of sleeping pills. Furthermore, the autopsy showed no damage to the mouth or nose, and the drugs were evenly distributed throughout the body. The deceased likely took the drugs on his own, and we can basically rule out the possibility of them being force-fed."

"We know that Chen Liangdi has serious sleep problems, and sleeping pills are a common medicine at home. Judging from the purchase records, the sleeping pills found at the scene were indeed purchased by Chen Liangdi herself." Wu Shanqiu said on the side.

"Well, news has also come from the physical evidence department. Apart from Chen Liangdi and Zhong Kui's fingerprints, no third person's fingerprints were found on the computer." Qi Fei said disappointedly.

"How could someone so confident as to come and go freely in someone else's house leave clues for you so easily?" Zhong Kui's voice came from behind them. She showed them one of Xiaoyou's drawings: a stick figure with gray hair and a mass of black lines in a room.

Qi Fei knew that this was what they had confirmed with Xiaoyou last time in the hotel. Xiaoyou said that the gray-haired stick figure was Chen Liangdi.

"What is this painting about?" Wu Shanqiu looked at the childish painting style, puzzled.

"It's a prophecy." Zhong Kui said expressionlessly.

"What do you mean?" Qi Fei couldn't help but ask.

Zhong Kui didn't answer, but just turned the sketchbook sideways.

The gray-haired stickman who was originally standing now lay sideways, and the lines were crooked to begin with, and now it looked more like a ghost standing next to Chen Liangdi.

"Although the child's graffiti strokes are messy, the starting and ending strokes are still very clear. This painting should be viewed horizontally," said Zhong Kui.

As he was speaking, Qi Fei's phone rang again. He picked up the call with an incredulous expression on his face: "What? The police are dispatched to Guiyue Apartment again? Who's dead?"

As he said that, he immediately turned on the speakerphone.

"It's not a dead person, it's a fire. There's a fire downstairs. The fire is not big and has been brought under control. It was arson. The suspect has been apprehended. He is a resident of the building." said the person on the other end of the phone.

Soon, several people rushed to Guiyue Apartment.

The fire has been put out, but a large area of ​​the apartment's exterior has been blackened.

Late in the evening, a lot of people gathered downstairs of the apartment building, some of whom were holding up their mobile phones to take pictures or even broadcast live.

Guiyue Apartment, which has recently experienced frequent incidents, has begun to attract more and more attention.

Qi Fei avoided the crowd and found the arsonist. He saw a woman in her fifties standing in the corner in fear and trepidation. Her face was blackened and she looked frightened.

Qi Fei was no stranger to this person—he was the one who discovered that Chen Liangdi did not go out and call the police—Zhao Xiaozhen, the hostess of Room 202, who lived opposite Chen.

"Did you set the fire? What happened?" Qi Fei asked, looking at the embarrassed Zhao Xiaozhen.

"Everyone says that our Guiyue Apartment is a haunted house. I'll burn some paper money to pray for the deceased to be reincarnated so that they won't bother us old neighbors anymore!" Zhao Xiaozhen clasped her hands together with a pious look on her face, not seeming to be joking.

Zhong Kui smiled when he saw it, and walked up to him and said, "Look for me for this job!"

Zhao Xiaozhen was stunned by her words. She looked at Qi Fei and then at Zhong Kui.

"Are you the policewoman who can tell fortunes?"

Qi Fei was unhappy when he heard this and quickly distanced himself from the matter: "She is just our consultant, not a police officer. We police officers don't act like this."

"However, I think the number of people you have saved is a bit too many." Zhong Kui had a smile on his face, but his eyes were cold.

(End of this chapter)