Yu Hanjiang had just told Liu Qiao to find a place as soon as possible, place Li Qingzhao's mark, and lead the teammates out. Liu Qiao used the treetops to leap along. Although she was wearing an Invisibility Cloak, her Lightness Skill Card required her to find a landing spot every few seconds, and her toes still left wobbly marks on the treetops.
Sure enough, as soon as she stepped out of the courtyard, she alerted the Hunters who were lying in ambush there. The group of people stared at the direction of the swaying treetops and quickly chased after her.
Liu Qiao could sense that several people were following her.
A flash of light from the right, the wind behind, and the long shadows cast by the moonlight on the ground.
There are at least three people.
Liu Qiao's heart pounded like a drum, and her breathing became slightly rapid, but her mind remained incredibly calm. She took a deep breath, increased her speed, and had only jumped a few meters when suddenly a huge net descended from the sky in front of her.
Not knowing which Hunter had placed the card, Liu Qiao quickly blocked her path, forcing her to retreat to the right. However, someone was waiting for her there too. A cloaked figure, hidden in the darkness like a shadow, suddenly produced a silver-white crystal ball. In an instant, a blinding silver light illuminated the night sky, and Liu Qiao was shocked to discover that her Invisibility Cloak had failed; she could see her own body.
A deep male voice came from beside my ear, "You think you can get away with this just because you're invisible?"
This white crystal ball can illuminate all invisible targets within its range.
Another woman sneered, "Little girl, Professor Xiao really trusts you. He actually sent you out to find your way alone. He and Yu Hanjiang are safe in the invincible circle. He's sending you to your death."
The middle-aged man said in a rough voice, "Stop talking nonsense, deal with this little girl first. Our people will continue to keep an eye on Xiao Lou. The invincible circle only lasts for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, it will be their death day."
Liu Qiao was surrounded by three people and felt very nervous.
Seeing a sharp sword thrusting towards her, Liu Qiao gritted her teeth and immediately threw out a card.
ugly duckling and white swan.
She turned women into ugly ducklings, and herself into White Swan.
The woman thrust her sword forward, but before it was even halfway through, she found herself suddenly shrinking into a clumsy duck. Enraged, she yelled, "Quack quack quack quack!"
The card "Ugly Duckling" is especially useful in crucial moments. It directly turns the enemy into a duck, and the transformation cannot be actively canceled. After transforming, the enemy cannot attack or be attacked.
The ducks on the ground were still quacking, and I couldn't understand what they were saying, but it certainly wasn't anything nice.
Liu Qiao ignored her, transformed into White Swan Liu Qiao, and gracefully spread her wings and flew away in front of the ugly duckling.
But ugly duckling Cards, after all, have limited range of effect. She could only transform the woman who attacked her at close range into a duckling. She couldn't transform the other two—a cloaked man hidden in the darkness and a middle-aged, burly man whose voice was heard but not seen. The danger wasn't over, so Liu Qiao had no choice but to continue flying forward.
However, she had only flown for a few seconds when a tornado suddenly rushed towards her. The black tornado was fierce and powerful, terrifying Liu Qiao. Wherever it went, even the surrounding houses were instantly destroyed.
The hurricane was like the end of the world; in the blink of an eye, the entire street was left in ruins. That guy's card was definitely strong.
Fortunately, Liu Qiao was very agile when she transformed into a swan. She flapped her wings and moved back and forth, jumping left and right, narrowly missing the tornado's trajectory.
Just as she breathed a sigh of relief, another giant silver net descended from the sky.
Liu Qiao was caught off guard and caught in the net.
There was no other way; to avoid the hurricane, she could only turn right, but a giant net was already waiting for her on the right. The two Hunters ' tacit cooperation forced Liu Qiao into a corner with nowhere to retreat.
Unable to escape the net, White Swan had no choice but to end the transformation.
The giant net tightened more and more, binding her like a dumpling in the blink of an eye, causing her excruciating pain all over her body. The cloaked young man coldly said, "What other tricks do you have up your sleeve? Elsa's freeze, the Queen's Poison Apple, or your Stand, Little Red Riding Hood?"
They actually knew most of the cards Liu Qiao had.
Liu Qiao's face turned deathly pale. Apart from cards like " Telepathic Connection " which can be activated with mental power, most cards require the card to be removed from the card holder for activation.
At this moment, her entire body was tightly bound by a giant net, and she couldn't move her hands at all, which meant that she could no longer use the card.
Seeing that the girl was pale and bound so tightly that she couldn't move, the young man in the black cloak finally emerged from the shadows and chuckled, "Quite a clever girl, but unfortunately you've chosen the wrong teammate. I'll send you to the Nightmare Secret Room now."
He gently raised his right hand, and a black crystal ball appeared in the air in his palm.
A thick black mist swirled around the crystal ball. As the crystal ball continued to rotate, the black mist suddenly surged forth like a ferocious beast unleashed, engulfing Liu Qiao.
Almost instantly, Liu Qiao's entire body was engulfed by the black mist.
A contemptuous smile curled at the corner of the man's lips. "And the boss said these guys were hard to deal with, and this is it?"
He stepped forward, intending to collect Liu Qiao's body.
However, upon reaching the giant net and waiting for the black mist to dissipate, he was shocked to discover that Liu Qiao, who had been trapped in the net, was nowhere to be found.
The man was stunned. "Disappeared, was it directly..."
Was it sent to the Nightmare Secret Room?
The middle-aged man frowned and said in a deep voice, " A Challenger who dies in a normal locked room will leave behind a body. There's no reason for them to just disappear without a trace."
The young man finally realized, "Damn, we've fallen for their trap!"
At this moment, on the west side of the town, in the opposite direction from Liu Qiao, Qu Wanyue activated Li Qingzhao's teleportation array, pulling all the teammates over. Xiao Lou immediately looked at Liu Qiao with concern, "Xiao Liu, are you alright?"
Liu Qiao breathed a slight sigh of relief and smiled, "It's alright, I timed it perfectly. Sister Qu's teleportation array opened just in time. That man in black had many strange crystal balls in his hands; the black crystal balls should be able to kill instantly. However, I still have a witch's antidote under my tongue. If all else fails, I can take the antidote to save myself."
This is also why Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang dared to send Liu Qiao out; Liu Qiao has the most self-rescue skills among his teammates.
Qu Wanyue said, " Captain Yu's strategy of luring the tiger away from the mountain was brilliant. Those people did indeed go after Xiao Liu, which allowed me to escape smoothly and set up the teleportation array for everyone."
Li Qingzhao There are two cards in total.
One card is in Xiao Lou's hands, and the other has always been in Qu Wanyue's hands.
Not long ago, when Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang went to Mass Grave to look for clues left by Shao Qingge, they had Qu Wanyue use Li Qingzhao's mark to teleport them. Of course, the teammates remembered very clearly that Liu Qiao did not have the card Li Qingzhao at all.
So just now, when Yu Hanjiang loudly said, "Xiao Liu has the fastest Lightness Skill, use the treetops to climb over and find a place to place Li Qingzhao's mark to teleport us," Yu Hanjiang couldn't have misremembered. He said this intentionally for Hunter to hear.
Liu Qiao was very clever and immediately understood what Captain Yu meant.
This was a ploy to lure Qu Wanyue away from their prey, creating an opportunity for her. Otherwise, Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang would already be surrounded by the red cloth, and the invincible circle could only last for 10 minutes. Neither of them would be able to get out, and in the end, Hunter would trap them like turtles in a jar, wiping out the entire Long family's backyard.
So, everyone cooperated and put on a show.
Liu Qiao pretended to run away, luring several Hunters away. Qu Wanyue used the Chameleon Card to blend into the floor and, with the Dance King's buff, nimbly crawled out of the courtyard. She and Liu Qiao ran in opposite directions, quickly placing a teleportation array to pull their teammates over.
Hunter thought victory was assured, but at the crucial moment, Liu Qiao was pulled away by Qu Wanyue's teleportation array.
Yu Hanjiang said, "Don't be careless, those people will catch up soon."
Old Mo asked nervously, "What do we do next? The maze keeps spinning, and we haven't found the exit yet. Should we continue to fight them in the maze?"
Xiao Lou said, "Don't worry. In the treasure chest that CEO Shao left us, besides a lot of money, there's also a card."
He took the card out of the card holder.
It is Tao Yuanming.
Back then, just to be on the safe side, Xiao Lou gave Shao Qingge two Tao Yuanming cards to act as a transfer point for teleporting two groups of teammates. Who would have thought that CEO Shao himself would be teleported to the world twenty years ago by the Guardian?
Among the "legacy" left to everyone in the joint tomb of Shao Qingge and Ye Qi is a Tao Yuanming. Thanks to Shao Qingge's cleverness, a card was returned to Xiao Lou in this way.
Xiao Lou found a secluded corner and activated Peach Blossom Spring, saying, " Let's hide while Peach Blossom Spring exists. If I'm not mistaken, as long as we find the killer of Sunken Lake Case, this locked room mystery will be solved. And we've already guessed the killer."
Ten seconds later, the entrance to Peach Blossom Spring opened.
This portal to another dimension is visible only to the card's user; others will pass through it without noticing. Xiao Lou led his teammates into Peach Blossom Spring, and the six of them vanished completely from the streets. The Hunters certainly wouldn't be able to find them anytime soon.
Upon entering Peach Blossom Spring, the teammates immediately asked curiously, " Professor Xiao, who is the murderer?"
Xiao Lou looked at Yu Hanjiang, who whispered, " Zhou Xiaoyun."
A hint of surprise flashed across the faces of his teammates.
Xiao Lou patiently explained to everyone, "We just went to the new house to examine the body. The braid Lin Wanqing used to hang herself was made of hair. Normally, a girl's braid is made by dividing her hair into three sections, laying them flat side by side, then crossing the left side with the middle section, then crossing the right side with the middle section, and repeating this process to create a beautiful braid."
Liu Qiao nodded; that was exactly how she braided her hair.
Yu Hanjiang said, "The braid is the simplest and most common. In ancient times, women often braided stray hairs when putting their hair up. However, the braid that Lin Wanqing hanged just now was not a braid, but was made of five strands of hair crisscrossed and braided. The braiding method was more complicated and, of course, more secure. The strands of hair were interwoven into a net-like structure, which is more like the method used when making bamboo baskets by hand."
If it weren't for Yu Hanjiang's sharp eyes, Xiao Lou would have almost overlooked this detail. After all, it was just a braid made of hair, and you couldn't tell the difference without careful observation. In the dim light, they found the hanged female corpse. Time was limited, so they definitely had to examine the body first. Perhaps only Yu Hanjiang could notice such a detail.
Xiao Lou said, "The vines we saw at the bottom of the cliff were braided in the same way as this braid, so there's a high probability they were made by the same person. And those vines are definitely related to Mass Grave's killer. By process of elimination, that leaves only Zhou Xiaoyun, whom we've been looking for."
The clues in this case were too misleading, causing them to fall into a logical fallacy from the very beginning.
Many young girls were dragged to the bottom of the lake, and their first thought was that the killer was a strong adult male. When they discovered that the bride, Lin Wanqing, had died on her wedding night, they speculated that the killer's motive might be love turned to hate, or a grudge against the bride. The killer mingled among the guests and slipped into the bridal chamber while the groom was toasting everyone, murdering the bride.
like
In retrospect, all of these speculations were wrong.
Yu Hanjiang said, "The murderer didn't necessarily have to use a lot of force to drag those girls into the lake. She could have knocked them unconscious first, then tied them up with vines and dragged them into the lake to drown them."
Xiao Lou said, " On the day Lin Wanqing was murdered, the killer also hid in this pond in the backyard, right?"
Yu Hanjiang nodded. "No one left the guest area, so the murderer must be hiding somewhere else. The pond is located between the guest area and the bridal chamber, and with the cover of the lotus leaves, it is relatively hidden. She can see when the bride is sent into the bridal chamber. Once the maids, matchmakers, and others have all left, she can come out of the water, enter the room, quickly kill the bride, and then dive into the pond to find an opportunity to leave."
If that's the case, then Zhou Xiaoyun is practically a silent, stealthy water ghost.
Liu Qiao frowned, puzzled, and asked, "Why did she kill so many girls without anyone knowing?"
Xiao Lou thought carefully about the clues left by Shao Qingge and said, " CEO Shao's clues say that twenty years ago, Zhou Xiaoyun accidentally saw the true faces of those five bandits. In order to silence them, the five kidnapped the old woman and three children, and only Zhou Xiaoyun escaped."
Yu Hanjiang said, "It seems she was very clever when she was young, which is why she was able to escape in the chaos. Among the children adopted by her grandmother, Uncle Ren can make a rattle drum, Han Ningshuang can make a kite, and Zhou Xiaoyun can weave vines. Maybe her grandmother taught them all these skills. After her grandmother died, Zhou Xiaoyun and Qi Ran lived with Uncle Ren. I wonder what happened that made her so obsessed with red clothes and long hair."
Although we don't know what happened, such a large-scale killing suggests that the killer's mind was completely twisted.
No wonder the killers in the Ghost Case and the Sunken Lake Case exploited each other without interfering with one another. If the killer in the Sunken Lake Case was Zhou Xiaoyun, then all of this makes sense, because Zhou Xiaoyun already knew that Han Ningshuang was using a kite to pretend to be a ghost, and that Qi Ran would lure people to Mass Grave to kill them. She imitated their actions, killing people around Ghost Festival and dragging the bodies into the lake to create the illusion of a "vengeful ghost seeking revenge."
Qi Ran also knew that Zhou Xiaoyun had killed the other missing people in the town, so he did not stop it.
The two thus tacitly used the public opinion of "vengeful ghosts taking lives" to commit murders one after another.
The more Xiao Lou thought about it, the closer his speculation seemed to be to the truth. He looked at Yu Hanjiang and said, "After the famine, Zhou Xiaoyun and Qi Ran left Qingfeng Town with Uncle Ren. Since CEO Shao and the others couldn't follow the three for more than ten years, there's a complete lack of information about what happened to them afterwards. I guess Zhou Xiaoyun might have suffered some kind of torment, related to the red clothes and long hair."
Yu Hanjiang said, "For example, her hair was cut off, or she met someone she loved, but something happened during their wedding, which led to her psychological distortion. After returning to Qingfeng Town, Qi Ran only targeted the relatives of those who killed her mother-in-law twenty years ago, while Zhou Xiaoyun couldn't stand beautiful women with long hair and vented her anger by killing them."
Birds of a feather flock together; these three are truly kindred spirits.
Qin Feng was the only one who did not participate in the killings, probably because he had been separated from them for many years and was not affected by their viciousness.
Xiao Lou sighed softly to herself.
The grandmother who adopted the children twenty years ago was undoubtedly a kind-hearted person. She provided the children with food and clothing, taught them survival skills, and even had her hands and feet cut off to save some of the children, dying in extreme pain.
She probably never imagined that the children she adopted would later grow up completely wicked and become ruthless killers.