Chapter 31 An Unexpected Situation (1/2)

I glanced at Shi Yitong and nodded gravely. “A little bit girly.”

Shi Yitong threw a pillow at me. “Go to hell!”

I laughed and caught the pillow, but Shi Yitong still tried to kick me under the blanket.

“Okay, okay, we should sleep now!” I shouted.

We joked for a while before sleeping. However, I never expected that we would be awakened by a huge explosion at six o’clock in the morning.

“What’s going on?” Shi Yitong sat up on the bed faster than I did. His eyes were still closed, and his hair was a mess.

“It seems like something broke,” I wasn’t fully awake yet and I mumbled. “None of our business, let’s go back to sleep.”

Just when Shi Yitong and I were about to head back to sleep, we heard a scream coming from downstairs followed by a loud buzzing sound.

“What’s happening?” Shi Yitong couldn’t sleep anymore; he jumped out of bed. “Gu Yu, let’s go and take a look.”

When we rushed out of the room, we met Su Xiaoyun in the corridor; she had apparently come out of her room for the same reason.

“What happened?” Shi Yitong asked.

“I don’t know, let’s go downstairs and see.” Su Xiaoyun took the lead and walked downstairs.

We were surprised by what we saw when we reached the first floor. Many people were standing in a circle in the hallway of the first floor, whom I believed to be hotel guests. They were chattering with each other while pointing their fingers at the center.

“Why did this happen? Had I known beforehand, I would never have stayed here.”

“You’re right, this is dangerous.”

We looked at each other before squeezing our way through the crowd. What we found in the middle of the commotion was a chaotic scene.

Let me briefly introduce the layout of this small hostel. This was a three-floor hostel. It had no elevator and only stairs. At each floor, the area next to the stairway was used as a living room. And the place we were at currently was the living room of the first floor.

The living room on the first floor was the largest one, though it only had a long couch, a small wooden table and a landscape painting hanging on the wall. There used to be a potted plant and a vase placed on the table, but now the plant and the vase were smashed on the ground, and there were shards of shattered glass all over the place. What’s more, the couch looked like it was cut countlessly by a sharp blade. The cotton sponges were destroyed inside out. It looked terrible.

“What happened? Did someone rob this place?” Shi Yitong squeezed in and said in surprise.

“I don’t think this was done by a thief,” Someone in the crowd said. “Look, if it was a thief, how come the painting is still here?”

I looked in the direction where the man pointed at and found that the only thing unscathed in the entire living room was the landscape painting on the wall. Not only was it unscathed, but it was still in the exact same position.

“So this might be a prank,” Someone said worriedly. “Who would play a prank like this? Is there a child here?”

“No, I don’t think that a child could do something like this…”

Su Xiaoyun, who stood nearby and remained silent from the beginning, suddenly poked my shoulder. I looked back at her and saw her skeptical face.

“Gu Yu, don’t you feel this is strange?”

“What is?” I was puzzled.

“That painting.” Su Xiaoyun pointed at the painting behind me.

“Well… a little,” I answered. “Because everything was deliberately broken except for that painting.”

“I’m not talking about that.” Su Xiaoyun shook her head.”Don’t you think… that painting looks weird?”

“The painting?” I shook my head perplexedly and didn’t understand what she wanted to say.

“I don’t know.” Su Xiaoyun put a finger under her chin and muttered, “I spent some time looking at it yesterday because I was quite fond of it. But now I feel that this painting is different from yesterday.”

“What has changed?” Shi Yitong came over.

“I don’t know either…”

At this moment, someone familiar came in through the back door. It was the hostel owner Xu Yingchen. When Xu Yingchen saw the crowd, he was surprised, and then he quickly squeezed in through the crowd.

“What is going on here… ” Xu Yingchen murmured.

“So you don’t know what happened either?” Shi Yitong asked.

Xu Yingchen shook his head in confusion. “No, I have no idea. Is this a prank? Who would do something like this? I don’t remember a child being a guest in the hostel.”

“Mister, can you check the cameras?” Someone in the crowd asked.

“Ah, this…” Xu Yingchen scratched his head, feeling embarrassed. “We don’t have any surveillance cameras here.”