The partition door swung open, and the dust-blocking curtain rose without a hint of wind, reflecting a stark image in Xing Hechou's suddenly enlarged pupils. Four bodies were stacked neatly like building blocks on the upper level of the partition. From bottom to top were Fushen Pingyuan's wife, son, mother, and daughter. All the corpses had their eyes wide open—dull, lifeless, bloodshot, and bulging—staring uniformly toward the area outside the partition. Their faces were swollen and purplish-blue, their skin dotted with blood specks.

That unexplained crying had ceased the moment the partition door was pulled open, yet Xing Hechou felt the chills coursing through his body intensify. He wanted to yell and scream to remind his teammates to abandon the mission. However, his body was uncontrollable, and his brain also abruptly slowed down. Before any thoughts could surface, they were overwhelmed by a heavy, drowsy sensation.

As his eyes slowly closed, Xing Hechou once again felt himself being dragged away by a brute force, as if lifted high into the sky. And once again, the voice of a Japanese man called into his ear, "Fushen! Can you hear me speaking?"

The heavy numbness faded rapidly. Upon reopening his eyes, Xing Hechou was startled to find himself sitting on a wooden chair in an empty space, surrounded by darkness. Directly in front of the chair, two giant, overlapping elliptical screens glowed.

"Hey~"

A slightly frivolous voice called from behind. As Xing Hechou turned around, he saw Li Ang sitting leisurely on another wooden chair, casually waving at him. Liu Wu Dai sat not far beside Li Ang, with an empty chair next to her. Farther back, a huge mountain, apparently made of wooden chair fragments, was vaguely visible, with a part of it illuminated by the light from the screens.

Xing Hechou hesitated. "Where is this? Where is Feng Dao?"

"Look at the screen. This should be Fushen Pingyuan's mind," Li Ang said calmly. "Little Brother Dao should be controlling Fushen Pingyuan's body now."

Xing Hechou turned to the screens. They displayed a green field under a night sky, with lush hills in the distance. At the foot of the hills, there seemed to be a residential area that looked like a village.

Wanli Fengdao's voice echoed in the space around them. "Uh... What's going on?"

"Now it's your turn to be Gundam," Li Ang spoke toward the screen. "Can you take a look at your current state? See if you're still Fushen Pingyuan."

"Uh... Okay."

Wanli Fengdao looked down and found his body much shorter, roughly that of an eight or nine-year-old child, dressed in a shirt and shorts. He was standing in the middle of the field, his shoes already tainted with mud. By the moonlight reflected in the field's water canal, Wanli Fengdao saw his own face, which seemed to bear the contours of Fushen Pingyuan.

"Is this what he looked like as a child?" Wanli Fengdao hesitated. "Are we inside his memories?"

"It might be a memory, or you might be truly controlling the past Fushen Pingyuan," Li Ang suggested. "Pick up a relatively sharp stone from the canal and cut a small, long-lasting scar on the back of your wrist."

"Harm myself?"

Understanding Li Ang's rationale, Wanli Fengdao considered that, given the phenomena they had experienced, they seemed to be involved in the Fushen Family's abnormal deaths, and this type of transportation might continue. If they now inflicted a wound on the young Fushen Pingyuan, then if they could transport to the future next time, they could verify by the presence of the scar whether they were "watching memories" or "truly manipulating the past Fushen Pingyuan."

Without further ado, Wanli Fengdao found a stone in the canal. After washing it with clean water, he used its sharp edge to cut a two-centimeter-long incision on the back of his wrist. He then tore a strip of cloth from his white shirt and wrapped it twice around the wound.

After inspecting the bandaged wound, Wanli Fengdao asked, "Done. What do we do next?"

"Hmm... Judging from the growth of the rice in the field, it should be around mid-May to mid-June," Li Ang said slowly. "If Fushen Pingyuan is indeed nine years old now, then we are right in the blank period of the diary. Is this abnormal event tasking us to investigate and uncover the truth behind the Fushen Family's deaths?"

Liu Wu Dai said, "The son, daughter, wife, and mother of the Fushen Family—all four victims—had relatively shallow circular indentations on their necks, as well as scratch marks from fingernails. Their eyes bulged out, their faces were swollen with a blue and purple hue, the skin showed petechial hemorrhages, and there were patchy hemorrhages in the pupils. They must have been strangled to death, and it was a homicide."

"Circular indentations?" Wanli Fengdao carefully recalled the scene and indeed remembered that image. Puzzled, he said, "Why couldn't it have been a collective suicide by hanging?"

"Because the marks are very unique," Li Ang explained. "Both strangulation and hanging leave marks on the neck. Some brainless criminals will strangle the victim and then stage the scene to look like the victim hanged themselves, but the marks left by the two methods of death are distinctly different.

"The characteristic of the ligature mark from hanging is that the indentation is deeper in the middle of the neck, shallower on the sides, slanted, and there is a lifting of the body.

"The characteristics of strangulation, however, are horizontal, even, encircling, and closed, usually without any lifting of the body.

"Moreover, in a strangulation victim, the deep tissues in the neck show signs of damage from the struggle, such as muscle bleeding and fractures at the site of the ligature mark, which are very difficult to occur in cases of hanging.

"That is to say, it is extremely difficult for a criminal to confuse the two methods of death."

Li Ang paused for a moment, thought about the scene, and continued, "In cases of strangulation, if the ligature is soft, then the mark will be shallow and not distinct. If the ligature is thin and hard, then the mark will be deeper, forming a narrow, dark-brown, leather-like line. The horizontal ligature marks encircling the necks of the four members of the Fushen Family were shallow and indistinct, uninterrupted, and showed uneven, faint striations. They were likely strangled with a wide piece of cloth—a wide piece of cloth will wrinkle as it tightens, thus producing irregular, faint marks.

"This strangulation here is most likely a homicide, not a collective act of strangling themselves.

"In cases of self-strangulation, the victim typically lies face-up. In front of the neck or on the side of the neck, they tie a noose and finally pull on the ligature with both hands or use objects like a Metal Stick or a screwdriver to aid the ligature.

"But in that case, there would be marks from the knot on the front of the neck.

"Yet there were no knot marks on the necks of the four members of the Fushen Family; instead, there were wounds caused by fingernail scratches. This means they did not die by self-strangulation."

Wanli Fengdao was speechless. After several experiences, he was no longer surprised by Li Ang's proficient mastery of criminal investigation techniques. It was no surprise that he could learn anything.

He thought carefully and asked, "Then is it possible that they used heavy objects, such as bricks or stones, to hang on the ligature, lay face-up on a bed or a support like a table, and extended their heads over the edge to strangle themselves while suspended? In that case, there would also be no knot marks, and fingernail scratches might appear."

Li Ang smiled and said, "If it was self-strangulation while suspended, the mark on the back of the neck would be shallower, as the weight of the hanging object would be concentrated mainly at the front of the neck.

"Yet the marks on the necks of all four Fushen Family members were very even, with occasional interruptions.

"Based on this, the four victims could only have been strangled to death by someone else."

Xing Hechou frowned and asked, "Could the murderer be Fushen Pingyuan?"

"It's hard to say, but it is highly likely," Li Ang spread his hands and said indifferently. "Did you notice the order in which the bodies were placed? At the bottom was Fushen Pingyuan's wife, Fushen Rihui. Above her was their son, Fushen Boji; then Fushen Pingyuan's mother, Fushen Miyoshi; and on the very top, his daughter, Weimen Xingzi.

"If we assume that a criminal took advantage of Fushen Pingyuan's absence, broke into the house, and silently carried out the assassination, then the primary target should have been the adult male, Fushen Boji, who had some ability to resist, not Fushen Rihui, who was fifty years old.

"If it was Fushen Pingyuan himself, then the logic becomes simple. He would first kill his wife in the bedroom, stow the body away, then go to his son's room to strangle him. Afterwards, he would move to his mother's bedroom and strangle his visually impaired mother, Fushen Miyoshi.

"After stacking the bodies, he would then call his daughter, asking her to bring his granddaughter for a visit, and finally strangle his daughter.

"The specially made soundproof windows and the tightly shut doors were all to prevent family members from shouting during their struggle and attracting neighbors' attention. If so, it's a long-premeditated family-annihilating tragedy.

"Of course, all of these are just speculations, and many questions remain unexplained..."

Li Ang's brows were tightly knit. Suddenly, his tone of voice changed dramatically. He yelled at Wanli Fengdao, "Run! There's something coming up behind you!"

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