Unlimited Cycles of DeathChapter 8

“I found some things.” The always-silent Cheng Guoxu rummaged through the cabinets on the other side under the curtains for a long time. He eventually found a document envelope. Cheng Guoxu brought it over and handed it to Mu Qin, imperceptibly confirming Mu Qin’s position as the leader of their group of three.

Mu Qin took the envelope from Cheng Guoxu and removed some documents from inside. He then discovered that the so-called documents were actually just a few thin sheets of paper stapled together and a stack of cut-up newspapers. Mu Qin set the candle in his hand down on the rotting table on the stage in the church and started flipping through the papers.

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Soon after, he realized these yellowing papers were a record of the orphanage’s staff.

In fact, it was just a few thin pages of resumes. On the resumes were the staffs’ names, genders, ages, dates of birth, and identification numbers. A one-inch identification picture was stuck in the upper-right corner. At the bottom were messy scribbles detailing every staff member’s professional career and family members. 0CEcjm

The resumes were stuck together with a staple, but Mu Qin found that one had been ripped out. He noticed that there was a bit of ripped paper left on the staple.

The tear marks were still fresh as if the paper had just been torn.

Noticing these details, Mu Qin silently raised his head and glanced at Cheng Guoxu. Cheng Guoxu hadn’t left after handing Mu Qin the documents. Instead, he remained standing next to Mu Qin and pretended to look over the papers with him. Thus Mu Qin also didn’t comment. He lowered his head and continued flipping through these documents.

You could tell from these documents that the orphanage had more female staff. There seemed to be only two males in their twenties and thirties, and their levels of education probably weren’t very high.

In the beginning, Mu Qin didn’t think these resumes had any importance until he discovered Han Li’s resume in the stack.

Han Li’s resume was the last of the bunch. The two words, “Han Li,” were clearly written in the box for her name. Mu Qin initially thought it was just someone with the same name, but then he saw Han Li’s one-inch picture glued in the top-right corner. The photo was small and also yellowing. The Han Li in the picture was noticeably much younger than the Han Li that Mu Qin just met. It was likely how she looked when she was around twenty-something years old, but the distinctive traits of her facial features still allowed Mu Qin to recognize her easily.

Han Li’s resume was exactly the same as the rest and was both simple and clear. There was nothing out of the ordinary, but since her resume appeared in this orphanage’s staff records, it proved she had previously worked here. Connected to the information Han Li had provided before during introductions that she was a children’s teacher…

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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Actually, the answer was easy to guess. The first thing Mu Qin thought of was Han Li’s death. Earlier, Xu Fu already speculated, but Han Li’s death was caused by her student after the student slipped her drugs.

Yet Han Li was a middle school teacher, and she taught a bunch of first-year to third-year students. Their ages were all around 12 to 16 years old. A kid in their teens already understood how to slip drugs and kill people, then what was the motive of this child using drugs and killing their own teacher?

This was also easy to guess. Most reasons for the emergence of unresolvable conflict with the teacher, generally kids had a pretty good mental capacity for tolerance. All sorts of reasons like students not doing homework, making the school look bad, etc. caused students to be scolded by teachers frequently. It was impossible that being scolded a bit by a teacher would cause a student to take action and kill ruthlessly. It was uncertain, but Han Li may have used corporal punishment or even worse methods on the students, leading to the student’s hatred and even arousing the student’s killing intent. Y79sR5

From this, you could tell that Han Li didn’t have a particularly good character.

The next conjecture was even more apparent. Han Li had said she used to be a preschool teacher, plus this sheet of employee archive that was saved in the orphanage. This indicated that the so-called job of preschool teacher was likely just being a nanny who took care of the orphans at this orphanage.

Connected to all the bad press associated with Iris Orphanage that suspected and denounced the orphanage’s employees for abusing the children, was Han Li not breathing a word of the truth of her own employment at this orphanage. Mu Qin thought Han Li most likely had committed the wrongdoing of abusing children before. Thus she didn’t dare confess to Mu Qin and the others that she had previously worked at this orphanage.

But then what of it? NChADx

Mu Qin held Han Li’s resume and pondered a little… at the moment, they were all stuck inside this sealed orphanage, enclosed by towering walls, iron doors, etc. They were trapped here and weren’t able to go anywhere, and there was a dreadful killer relentlessly pursuing them.

Under such desperate circumstances, Han Li’s past… wasn’t the least bit relevant to Mu Qin. He was disinclined to care about what Han Li had done before. He only wanted to know how to leave this place.

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Xu Fu said they were already dead. After dying, some mysterious force sent them into this game and this map. v7MstX

Mu Qin always half-believed, half-doubted Xu Fu’s words even though he really had the memory of himself “dying” already. He remembered a big truck barreling towards him head-on, so much so that he could even recall the sound of all his internal organs rupturing.

However, this kind of recollection was just like a dream. Right now, Mu Qin was standing here completely fine and intact, and all four limbs were still attached to his body. He could even hear the sounds of his own heartbeat and breathing. He was clearly alive, truly alive. This situation caused Mu Qin to be somewhat unable to differentiate between dream and reality.

Mu Qin took the documents Cheng Guoxu handed him and continued to flip through them a few times. Then, he once again saw a stack of newspapers pressed under the employees’ resumes.

This stack of newspapers was the same as the newspapers Mu Qin had found earlier, also reporting all kinds of negative news concerning Iris Orphanage, but some had several lines reporting exceedingly vile criminal cases. For example: brP1i8

“Eight-year-old little girl’s body found abandoned in the wild, suspected to have suffered humiliation and abuse before death.”

This headline made Mu Qin unable to stop himself from carefully reading through this news article. It talked about an eight-year-old little girl’s corpse being found, probably dead for many multiple days and already starting to rot. The body was found a few hundred meters away in the woods on the outskirts of Iris Orphanage. Forensics discovered she suffered violence and abuse before death. This girl was a registered orphan at the orphanage. The police surmised she was harmed by some of the employees at the orphanage. After arrogantly spouting dozens of superfluous words, things were wrapped up with the single line, “The police are currently intensifying investigations.”

Mu Qin then flipped to the back of the newspaper but didn’t find a follow-up report. Instead, he saw even more cases. Similarly aged orphans encountered murder through abuse and related information of corpses abandoned in the wild. Counted, Iris Orphanage consecutively murdered approximately five known orphans. It seemed that this was an evil chain of sadistically killing children, but Mu Qin flipped through the newspaper to the end and never saw news of the police solving this case.

Carefully considering the reason, Mu Qin believed because the victims were only fatherless and motherless orphans, society’s level of concern was extremely low, and matters were likely left unresolved in the end. qmNYjD

Reading up to this point, Mu Qin closed the files in his hands. He raised his head and glanced again at Cheng Guoxu, but he suddenly discovered Cheng Guoxu was also looking back at Mu Qin.

Cheng Guoxu’s facial features didn’t look very good. The outer corners of his eyes and lips were always drooping, and it gave people a sense of “extremely unhappy” feeling, especially when he stared at you. That pair of eyes seemed to leak a gloomy and filthy mood.

Cheng Guoxu seemingly did not dare to meet Mu Qin’s gaze for too long. He quickly lowered his head again, resuming his uncommunicative state as he was before. Mu Qin squinted and watched him attentively for a while. In the end, he also didn’t say anything unnecessary to him, rather he randomly tossed the documents in his hands aside and went to find Qiu Zijia.

Presently, Qiu Zijia had already searched through one side of the small chapel. He raised his candle and shook his head at Mu Qin, “There’s nothing in this frickin’ place.” fuR83n

Mu Qin looked back towards the church’s second floor. The second floor of the little church wasn’t sealed off. Instead, it was wide open with a corridor banister. It created a “U” shape and directly faced the stage on the first floor, meaning standing on the first floor’s stage and raising your head, you could immediately see the church’s ceiling.

Mu Qin’s glance swept across the already collapsed section of the stairs to the second floor, “The second floor definitely has something of importance waiting for us to explore. It’s just that we aren’t able to go up at present. It’s best if we can find a ladder or some other tool. Climbing up barehanded will waste too much time.”

“I know where we can find a ladder.” Cheng Guoxu suddenly opened his mouth.

Hearing this, Qiu Zijia immediately asked in bafflement, “How do you know where there would be a ladder?” C0bpaE

This question made Cheng Guoxu subtly draw a blank. After a subtle pause, he replied, “The church’s ceiling is very high, and the positions of the lights are also very high up. If they want to clean the dust on the ceiling or change the light bulbs in the lights, they will definitely use a ladder… maybe the utility room or other places will have one.”

Qiu Zijia nodded after hearing his explanation, “That makes sense. Although this church isn’t big, it is, after all, a holy place. The workers certainly regularly clean. The ladder might even be placed where they keep their cleaning supplies… let’s go outside and take a look.”

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Mu Qin had no objections. The few of them all nodded and one by one walked to the main entrance of the little chapel. Just as they prepared to open the door and go outside, they heard a faint sound transmitted in from outside… a sound of wet footsteps. The kind of sound created by feet stepping on brick stairs. Although it was a storming night and the sound wasn’t distinct, Mu Qin still detected it with his tautly stretched nerves.

Mu Qin immediately stopped Qiu Zijia and Cheng Guoxu, who were beside him and quietly whispered, “Put out the lights, go hide.” xaAUvK

Once he finished speaking, Mu Qin blew out the faintly glowing fire of the candle, and the other two also followed his example. It was already very dark in the church. Once the candles were extinguished, it added to the darkness. It was so pitch-black that you couldn’t see your fingers if you extended your hand. They used the darkness and hunched down, swiftly hiding among the rows of benches of the church. They crouched down and crawled under the chairs.

This was a very critical moment because Mu Qin’s group had just hidden itself when the church doors were pushed open by someone from the outside. As the door opened, the sounds of wind and rain outside of the church also followed in. It roared into the interior of this small chapel, and the frigid and damp air blew towards them. Mu Qin shrank back into the darkness under the chair, grasping in his hand the just extinguished candle that was still emitting warmth.

Mu Qin noiselessly groped the ground with his fingers and gently and quietly placed the burning hot candlestick onto the ground. He did his best not to make a single noise. Just as he was concentrating on doing this, the sound of a woman defending herself transmitted over from the doors that were just opened. The sound was tiny and came intermittently, “I really don’t know… I left this orphanage many years ago… I never did those things!”

BunnyGod: my uni decided to kick us out of the dorms… *sigh* stay safe guys >< TpEYAB