American homeless people, surviving in the city

The crackling sound was extremely faint, but in the deathly silence, it sounded exceptionally clear and jarring to Lin Qi's ears.

Lynch was highly focused, thinking rapidly.

What is that sound?

He listened intently, and upon closer inspection, the crackling sound was irregular but rather continuous, unlike the bursts of electric sparks or the crisp, short bursts of firecrackers.

The sound was slightly muffled, yet had a sustained rhythm, somewhat like the sound of firewood burning in a rural stove.

So, something is burning behind this wall?

Lynch wasn't sure if his guess was correct, but it did correspond to another clue he had previously learned:

The sense of crisis he felt was growing stronger at a slow but undeniable pace!

This is most likely because the fire is gradually spreading!

Thinking of this, Lin Qi could no longer sit idly by. He didn't care about the enemies that might be lurking somewhere, and hurriedly began to search for a way to the space behind the wall.

Logically speaking, finding such a passage should not be difficult. In order to facilitate the daily activities of residents, houses usually have doors in places with short paths and obvious locations.

But as Lynch ran down the corridor, he couldn't find the door that should have been there.

At the end of the corridor was a T-shaped intersection. There was indeed a room after turning right, but after entering the room and checking it, Lin Qi was certain that the length of the room after the corner was far shorter than the distance from the point where he sensed danger to the corner of the corridor.

Therefore, after checking repeatedly and confirming that there were no errors, Lynch quickly came to a conclusion.

Behind that wall, the source of the sense of danger was a "space without a door"!

In short, it was a "secret room"!

Is this something I should see in the real world? What game did the owner of this villa go crazy playing?! Why would they design something like this in their home...?

Or are you hiding some... secret?

Lin Qi secretly pondered to himself.

At this point, what drives him is no longer just his duty to eliminate danger, but also his curiosity to find the secret room.

Seeing that he couldn't find the door to the secret room for the time being, Lin Qi went back to the unlit corridor and came to the place closest to the source of danger, where the bloodstains disappeared, and carefully observed the surrounding environment.

The reason for returning here is that after confirming the existence of a secret room, the dimness of this corridor also became suspicious.

Lin Qi guessed that the reason why there were no lights installed in this corridor was probably because the homeowner deliberately used dim lighting to cover up some secrets hidden there, so as to prevent outsiders like him from easily discovering the way to enter the secret room!

Upon closer inspection, an oil painting on the wall caught his attention.

It was a beautiful oil painting. The artist used superb brushstrokes to depict a snow-capped mountain standing under a blue sky, and a temple at the foot of the mountain with a deep red color as the main tone.

The oil painting itself was exquisite, but what truly captivated Lynch's gaze were the unique and bizarre patterns painted on the temple walls.

Those patterns... were remarkably similar to the designs carved on the Bhutanese silver bowl he had previously found!

What is the connection between these two?

...That shouldn't be the case. According to the previous reasoning, the silver bowl should have been brought by the criminal, not a collectible of the deceased's family. But why would the pattern on it appear on an oil painting collected by the family?

I was just looking for areas that needed cleaning, but one mystery after another popped up.

Although he couldn't explain it for the time being, he could clearly sense that there was definitely some connection between the two!

He moved closer to the oil painting and examined it more closely.

Soon, some blurry stains next to the oil painting caught his attention.

These stains are light, a dull yellowish-black, and do not resemble bloodstains or signs of a struggle, but rather dirt left from daily life.

Looking closely at the shapes of these stains, some resemble... handprints?

It appears that this area next to the painting was frequently touched, leaving these marks...

Lin Qi reached out and touched the wall, and his fingertips immediately felt a strange sensation: the wall was covered with wallpaper, but under the wallpaper in that small area next to the oil painting, it seemed to be empty!

Puzzled, he tried touching the oil painting and discovered that it could be easily pushed to the side!

Below the oil painting, there was a hidden button embedded in the wall without any markings—a small brass switch!

Lin Qi immediately understood.

All those marks on the outside are from people frequently pushing the painting aside from this side.

Knowing that there was a secret room behind this wall, he was almost certain that this button was the mechanism to open the door to the secret room!

Faced with this mysterious button, Lin Qi hesitated briefly.

But he quickly realized that in order to eliminate that potential source of danger, he had to go in and take a look!

Lynch pressed the button.

As the small brass button was pressed with a crisp "click," a deafening roar of mechanical activity immediately followed from behind the wall.

A few seconds later, just as Lynch had predicted, with a soft click, the wall next to where the bloodstains had disappeared slowly slid away.

With a screeching sound, a hidden door actually opened right in front of Lin Qi!

Behind the door was not an ordinary room, but a sloping staircase leading downwards, dark and deep inside, with an unpleasant musty smell permeating the air.

The source of that sense of crisis was precisely this secret room!

...There really is a secret room!

Lynch's nerves tightened even more.

His survival instincts were screaming in his head, making him want to get away from this eerie-looking room immediately.

Considering that the sense of danger seemed to be related to a fire that was spreading somewhere, he decided it would be better to go in and check it out.

If the house catches fire while he's cleaning it, the Seattle Police Department might come after him again.

So, Lin Qi took a deep breath and, using the light from his phone's flashlight, stepped towards the back stairs of the hidden door.

The staircase behind the hidden door also seemed to have been recently renovated, just as new as the villa outside, but this section of the staircase was also deliberately decorated to be extremely dark.

Fortunately, the staircase wasn't very long, and soon Lin Qi saw the end of it.

A small basement appeared before us, with faint flickering firelight inside.

He rushed over and ran to the basement door.

The next second, the scene before him was completely beyond his expectations.

Although he had already guessed that the basement hidden by the secret door must hold a secret, he originally thought that it was at most just the homeowner's secret vault.

Unexpectedly, the interior decoration of this basement was so... bizarre.

The room was not lit by electric lights, but by candlesticks lit all around.

In the very center of the room is a pool, and in the middle of the pool stands a statue that is almost as tall as the room itself.

At first glance, the statue looked like a Buddha statue, but it looked extremely strange.

The Buddha's face was neither kind nor fierce, but rather closed-eyed and smiling, exuding a strange and eerie feeling.

Around the room were several desks and bookshelves, with the desks filled with various documents and the bookshelves filled with all kinds of books.

One of the desks, perhaps ignited by a falling spark, is now burning fiercely!