Chapter 868: Searching for People

Therefore, the Monkey King Mask Man naturally also saw Jiang Ran and the others.

The Monkey King Mask Man had actually woken up before Jiang Ran and the others arrived, but after waking up, he faced the questioning from Lin Yu and the others without saying a single word.

Like a mute, completely devoid of his previous strange and mischievous demeanor.

Finally, after Jiang Ran and the others arrived, he finally spoke one sentence:

"I'm innocent."

The Silver-Haired Guy was furious, and kicked the Monkey King Mask Man hard in the stomach: "When you were chasing us with that fire axe earlier, why didn't you say you were innocent then?"

The Monkey King Mask Man fell silent again.

Lin Yu said, "This man has an accomplice, but we don't know where he's run off to now."

When Jiang Ran heard this, he asked, "Hey, where's your accomplice?"

The Monkey King Mask Man chuckled: "Who knows? Maybe seeing so many of you, he got scared and hid himself away, afraid you might hurt him."

Lin Yu and the others were all left speechless.

Jiang Ran said at this point, "Alright, enough of this. Let's take this man downstairs first. We have other things to do."

Immediately after, everyone went downstairs together.

They arrived at the first floor.

At Huang Kaiyu and Huo Yun's location.

When they saw Huo Yun's corpse by the bookshelf, Lin Yu and the others were extremely shocked.

Because they never expected that there would be a dead person on the first floor of the library?

And what's more, when did he die?

"It's him! He's the one who kidnapped me!"

Among Lin Yu's group, the Pimply Guy suddenly pointed excitedly at Huo Yun lying in the pool of blood.

"Kidnapped? What do you mean?"

Jiang Ran was confused.

The Pimply Guy then recounted what had happened to him.

Jiang Ran listened, deeply shocked: "So Huo Yun pretended to strike up a conversation with you, saying your friend's phone was lost, and had you confirm it. Then while your attention was diverted, someone snuck up from behind and knocked you out?"

The Pimply Guy nodded.

Jiang Ran: "You're sure you didn't misidentify him?"

The Pimply Guy: "There's no way I misidentified him! It was definitely this man!"

"It's just that I have no idea who the person who attacked me from behind was."

Jiang Ran cast a suspicious look toward Huang Kaiyu:

"Huang Kaiyu, I remember that your previous testimony stated that you and Huo Yun were good friends who loved reading, so the two of you were in the library late at night reading, right?"

"Then suddenly someone rushed out and stabbed Huo Yun to death."

"But now, someone is accusing Huo Yun of kidnapping. Where were you at that time?"

Huang Kaiyu's expression remained relatively calm as he said, "I don't know anything about any kidnapping."

Lin Yu added from the side: "Before my girlfriend and I got into trouble, we came to the library to look around, and that's when we saw him tied up. We tried to rescue him, but suddenly someone wearing stockings over their face and holding a knife rushed out to stop us... Of course, whether there was a second accomplice, I wouldn't know..."

Everyone present understood the implication behind Lin Yu's words - that Huang Kaiyu could very well have been an accomplice to the kidnapping.

"Just check their bodies for black stockings and we'll know the truth."

Lin Yu said.

Jiang Ran had Xue Kai and Zhang Wei step forward to search them.

But they didn't find any so-called black stockings on Huang Kaiyu.

Seeing this, Lin Yu said, "Search Huo Yun's body then!"

Zeng Yan stopped him: "You can't do that! You have to wait for the police to arrive. This is a crime scene!"

Lin Yu had no choice but to drop it.

However.

Lin Yu said to Jiang Ran, "I still have several friends in the vicinity. I notified them to gather at the apartment building, but no one in the group chat replied to me."

"So, I was wondering if we could go look for them before the police arrive?"

Jiang Ran heard this and asked, "They didn't reply to your messages? Did you try calling?"

Lin Yu said, "They didn't reply to my messages in the group. Before you all arrived, we also called these people from the third floor. All of us who had phones tried calling, but not a single one of them picked up."

Yang Qi spoke up at this point: "Let's hope nothing's happened to them, but given the current situation, the odds of them being fine aren't high."

As the assistant manager, Jiang Ran was currently the highest-ranking person present in the apartment.

Therefore, he made the assignments.

Xue Kai, Zhang Wei, and Zeng Yan would stay behind to watch over the deceased Huo Yun, Huang Kaiyu, and the bound Monkey King Mask Man.

Everyone else would go with him to search for people!

The closest place to the library was the shooting range.

So, the group headed to the shooting range first.

Someone suggested that everyone split up, search the various areas of the shooting range, and then move on to the next location to save time.

But Lin Yu and the others thought about how their group of fourteen had come to tour the place, and it was precisely because they had split up that they encountered all these things. So they advised Jiang Ran not to split up and to search together instead. Even if it took a bit longer, that was fine. A minute or two wouldn't make a difference. If they ran into danger again with fewer people, things would be harder to handle.

And so they searched the shooting range together.

They searched the entire shooting range, and finally checked the men's and women's restrooms.

In the restroom, they found the deceased Purple-Haired Guy. Jiang Ran and the others also noticed that the Purple-Haired Guy's manner of death was somewhat similar to Huo Yun's - both had lost the vital lower part of their male anatomy.

Lin Yu, Zheng Zihan, the Pimply Guy, and the others had only heard the Silver-Haired Guy and the Pink Long-Haired Girl describe the Purple-Haired Guy's death but hadn't witnessed it with their own eyes. Now that they saw it firsthand, each of them gasped sharply and covered their mouths.

After the shooting range, the next stop was the gym.

They searched the gym thoroughly and found traces of use from the night.

However, they didn't find anyone. In the end, it was in the women's restroom that they found someone.

Jiang Ran and the others had originally felt pretty disheartened after not finding anyone in the gym. But as they approached the restroom, they distinctly smelled an extremely thick, pungent stench of blood.

So, they felt they finally had a lead, though this lead spelled trouble.

The group stood at the entrance of the women's restroom.

Looking inside, they discovered two corpses.

One was the body of a young man, and the other was the body of a middle-aged man estimated to be in his forties.

The moment Lin Yu and the others saw the young man, they became very agitated - clearly he was one of their group of fourteen.

As for this middle-aged man...

Zheng Zihan, who had hardly spoken until now, said, "Isn't this the uncle who was hitting on a girl at the welcome party?"

The Silver-Haired Guy and the others stared closely at the dead middle-aged man's face.

They found that it did indeed seem to be him.

"Since he's here, then his girlfriend..."

Zheng Zihan and the others stepped through the doorway, carefully stepping over the bodies. Then, with a casual turn of the head, the scene appeared in their field of vision - inside an open stall, a disheveled girl was sitting on the toilet.

Her whole body was limp, face tilted upward, limbs dangling limply.