In the previous underground maze instance, all the room doors had numbered combination locks from 0 to 9, but in the real basement, the door locks are not electronic combination locks and cannot be opened with the code "6712".
There are 14 rooms on both sides of the corridor, all of which are locked and require a key to open.
The Master Key can open any non-password lock, but it's a reward card for a perfect completion of the Red Heart 3 Escape Room. Long, Qu, and Mo didn't get this card because they didn't achieve a perfect completion of the original Heart Room. Yu Hanjiang's card only has one use left, and Ye Qi's has three, which combined isn't enough to open 14 doors.
Ye Qi scratched his head and said, "We don't have enough uses on the key card, should we just break down the door?"
Yu Hanjiang said, "Everyone step back, I'll open the door."
This simple door lock, even without a key or card Yu Hanjiang could also find a way to open it. He walked to the door of room 101, found a wire, inserted it into the keyhole, and while listening intently, he rotated it left and right. After fiddling with it for a while, everyone heard a soft "click"—the lock had actually opened!
Ye Qi gave a thumbs up: "Great! Captain Yu can pick locks; he can open all 14 doors."
Yu Hanjiang said calmly, "Everyone, hurry up and search the first room carefully."
As he spoke, he pushed open the door to room 101 and went inside first, with his teammates immediately following.
The scene inside the room surprised everyone slightly—
In the nearly 10-square-meter empty room, there was a metal bed and a simple bedside table. Next to it was an iron stand for IV drips, which gleamed with a glaring cold light under the illumination of the luminous pearl lamp. The bed had a thin foam mattress and was covered with the white sheets most commonly found in hotels.
Ye Qi whispered, "Is this a hospital room?"
Qu Wanyue looked around and said, "Judging from the layout, this should be a hospital room. A single room is to prevent the people they bring in from communicating and exposing secrets to each other."
Old Mo sighed, his voice hoarse, "How can I rest properly after surgery in such a rudimentary ward? There's not even air conditioning. It's alright in the summer, but in autumn and winter, the basement is so cold, I'm afraid I'll get all sorts of health problems from the cold." He's 66 years old, and the low temperature in the basement makes his hands and feet icy cold, and his joints ache when he walks. It's hard to imagine that someone so weak after surgery would sleep in such a cold ward.
Long Sen frowned and said, "When we had surgery at the hospital, at least the wards we stayed in had air conditioning and TVs, and the environment was very clean. This place is really terrifying... It feels like the set of a horror movie about a hospital!"
Ye Qi wholeheartedly agreed: "In such a poor environment, it's not surprising at all that postoperative infections and complications occur!"
Yu Hanjiang remained silent, his expression unusually cold. After quickly searching the room and finding no clues, he withdrew and opened the next door.
The wards across the street, numbered 102, and subsequently 201, 202, 301, 302… were all uniformly furnished. They were simple, damp, and cold, and apart from the different room numbers, the furnishings inside were identical.
Yu Hanjiang instructed everyone to put away the luminous pearl, and then sprayed the "luminol reagent" used to detect bloodstains into each ward. Fluorescent spots appeared in two of the wards, indicating that bloodstains had been present in these places, but had been hastily cleaned up.
In room 101, there were patches of blood on the bed and the surrounding floor, likely from post-operative wounds.
To Yu Hanjiang's surprise, several clear footprints appeared on the floor of room 201 under the influence of luminol!
The teammates looked at the messy footprints glowing green in the pitch-black room, and their hair stood on end!
The sudden appearance of so many fluorescent footprints in the dark, cold space really did resemble a scene from a horror movie.
Ye Qi was so frightened that he hid behind Lao Mo, only sticking his head out to look at the ground.
Yu Hanjiang explained, "The reagent I just sprayed is a luminescent ammonia compound that reacts with blood to produce fluorescence. The bloody footprints in this room are because the soles of the feet of several people walking in the room were stained with a lot of blood."
Everyone has heard that the police use special reagents to test blood when investigating cases, but this is the first time they have seen a glowing reaction at the scene. Ye Qi asked curiously, " Captain Yu, can you tell how many people were there from the footprints?"
Yu Hanjiang lowered his head and observed carefully for a moment. A scene gradually emerged in his mind. He closed his eyes and simulated the incident, saying, "Judging from the size of the footprints, there were three people in this room at the time. Two of them were men over 1.8 meters tall, and the other was a woman under 1.6 meters tall. The woman got off the bed, and her footprints were messy, with her toes pointing towards the door. She probably wanted to rush out, but was stopped by the other two. The three of them argued, and the woman was eventually forcibly pushed back onto the hospital bed."
The footprints only extended around the hospital bed, not towards the door. Clearly, the girl's escape attempt had failed…
Qu Wanyue felt a sharp pain in her heart as she thought about her fate: "She lost so much blood, did the surgery fail, or did something happen and she couldn't survive? She wanted to run away, but these people wouldn't let her, so they simply... disposed of her?"
Long Sen shuddered: "Just kill them here to silence them?"
Yu Hanjiang nodded with a stern face: "Of the five bodies we found, one was indeed a woman."
Everyone: "..."
Silence fell in the room.
It seems everyone can see the tragedy that once occurred in this house—
A girl, less than 1.6 meters tall, struggled to escape in the dark, blood-soaked hospital room, only to be grabbed and forced back onto the bed by two tall men. She was weak from recent surgery and had no strength to resist. All the two men needed to do was inject her with a lethal drug, and she would be left alone on the bed, helplessly waiting to die.
Looking at the messy footprints on the ground, everyone felt increasingly distressed. Yu Hanjiang took out his phone and snapped a few photos of the scene before calmly saying, "Let's go, continue searching for evidence."
What has already happened cannot be changed. All they can do is gather clues as quickly as possible to find the real culprit.
Yu Hanjiang led his teammates deeper into the corridor.
Upon opening the door to room 401, a pungent odor immediately hit me... it was the smell of disinfectant.
The room contained two wheeled, movable beds, next to a glass cabinet that looked like a hospital medicine cabinet, but was currently empty. Each bed had a cardiac monitor. Yu Hanjiang relayed the information he saw to Xiao Lou via Telepathic Connection. Xiao Lou thought for a moment and said, "This should be the anesthesia room."
Finding no useful clues in the anesthesia room, Yu Hanjiang led his teammates to continue searching room 402 across the street. Room 402 had the same layout as room 401, and was also an anesthesia room.
Further inside, room 501 was set up as a temporary office. The environment was slightly better than the other places. There were two desks with power outlets underneath. There should have been two computers here, but they took them with them when they left, leaving no data behind.
Room 502 resembles a meeting room, with an office desk and chair, and another table opposite it, which is likely where confidentiality agreements are signed and deposits are paid.
As soon as the door to room 601 opened, Yu Hanjiang could tell without Xiao Lou saying anything that it was an operating room—there was an operating table in the middle of the room, a surgical cart full of instruments next to it, a surgical chandelier that could be extended at will on the ceiling, and an old electrocardiogram monitor.
No clues were left in the operating room, but the makeshift operating room only fueled everyone's anger!
Surgical procedures must be performed in a sterile environment. The operating rooms of a proper hospital are clean, tidy, and bright, with a dedicated handwashing area outside the operating room. All medical staff must wear sterile surgical gowns when entering the operating room.
However, the operating room in front of us looks more like a place where pigs and cattle are slaughtered in a farmers' market!
The floor was only paved with a single layer of cement, and it was riddled with holes and chipped corners—it was worse than a bare-bones apartment. The walls were even worse; the white paint had peeled off, and the walls were cracked and bulging due to water leaks…
Performing surgery in such an environment? What do they take people for?
Yu Hanjiang clenched his fist lightly and said in a deep voice, "Keep searching!"
Room 602 was a waste disposal room with two large trash cans, clearly used for storing medical waste. These two large trash cans had already been emptied, and no obvious clues were found. Although these people were cold-blooded and ruthless, they weren't stupid; they cleaned up the scene thoroughly during their retreat!
Only the innermost 701 and 702 are left.
As the five people walked to the door, perhaps because the basement was too cold, a chill couldn't help but rise in their hearts.
Yu Hanjiang opened the door to room 701.
The scene that appeared before them sent chills down their spines—
Inside, several empty beds were arranged side by side. They were all simple metal beds, some even rusted, and the air reeked of a foul, rotten smell. Yu Hanjiang sprayed luminol reagent, used for detecting bloodstains, into the room and found numerous dense fluorescent spots, including on the beds.
These places once contained large amounts of mixed bloodstains, but they were hastily washed away and are not visible on the surface. They can only be detected by using a special luminescent ammonia detector for bloodstains.
Everyone stared in terror at the dappled light.
Ye Qi asked blankly, "Is this also a hospital room? Aren't the beds too close together?"
"This isn't a hospital ward," Yu Hanjiang said expressionlessly. "This is the morgue."
Everyone: "......"
The morgue, these empty metal beds are all used to store corpses!
The strong stench in the air was likely the putrid smell of blood from the corpse.
Perhaps this is the true primary crime scene. Those whose surgeries failed, or who might have revealed secrets, were dismembered here...
The thought of that bloody and brutal scene made everyone feel nauseous. Long Sen immediately put his arm around Qu Wanyue's shoulder and gently patted her back to prevent her from vomiting. Ye Qi suppressed his urge to vomit and said angrily, "These people are simply inhuman!"
Thinking of the photos of dismembered bodies that Yu Hanjiang showed everyone, Lao Mo felt a throbbing pain in his temples: " The dismembered bodies that Captain Yu found must have been disposed of here..."
Qu Wanyue was the most observant of the four teammates. Following Lao Mo's words, she raised a question: "The body was dumped in the garbage dump in the early morning of the 31st, but it's impossible that all five people were killed on the 31st. Killing five people at the same time would be too much of a commotion. Some of them may have died a long time ago... Was the body just kept in the morgue, or was it stored somewhere else?"
Yu Hanjiang also considered this point. The forensic doctor also confirmed that the five people died at different times. So, were the bodies of those who were killed previously simply kept in this morgue 701, or somewhere else?
There's also 702.
Yu Hanjiang turned around and opened the door to room 702. As soon as he pushed the door open, an extremely strong blast of cold air hit them. Lao Mo, Ye Qi, and Qu Wanyue were so cold that they sneezed several times in a row. Yu Hanjiang and Long Sen were in good health, but they also felt the coldness seeping into their necks.
Everyone took out their luminous pearls and looked closely...
The entire room was filled with a row of freezers.
Ye Qi's eyes widened, and he asked in a trembling voice, "Could it be that those who were killed before were frozen in the freezer?"
Yu Hanjiang said with a grim face, "I'm afraid so. When they rented the place, they said they were in the beef and mutton business, so it's not surprising that they bought a freezer. The residents of the community probably never imagined that the freezer didn't contain beef and mutton at all... but human corpses!"
Slaughterhouse.
A living slaughterhouse!
The entire basement has 14 rooms, including 6 wards, 2 anesthesia rooms, 1 operating room, 1 garbage disposal room, 1 office, a consultation room, a morgue, and a freezer for storing corpses. It's practically like a butcher's professional killing assembly line.
The knife used to chop someone up was gone, and the bloodstains had been cleaned up.
However, their evacuation lasted no more than three days, and the bloodstains at the scene, though cleaned up, were still easily detected by the luminescent ammonia. The iron bed, equipment, and freezer in the room, though silent, clearly told Yu Hanjiang the truth.
The basement of Unit 1, Building 13, Antai Garden, is a human slaughterhouse transformed by a mysterious organ transplant organization.
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