I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 407 - 407 406. Home of Happiness_1

Chapter 407: 406. Home of Happiness_1 Chapter 407: 406. Home of Happiness_1 Happy Home Apartments was actually far from happy.

It was decrepit, aging, and long neglected, yet it was packed to the brim with residents to the point of overcrowding.

“We’ve never had such a person living here.”

The apartment manager, likely a middle-aged man hired for the job, shook his head after looking at Flora’s photo.

“Could we take a look at the empty rooms here?”

Cui Siter produced a low-denomination banknote and handed it to the manager.

“No problem, follow me.”

The moment the manager took the money, a smile spread across his face; he led Cui Siter and the others upstairs to a vacant room on the top floor.

“I figure you’re not going to rent, so I’ll just be straight with you—someone died in this room a while back. I’m not too clear on the details, but since then, the people who’ve lived here have been having a lot of problems, so eventually, it was left vacant.”

After giving a brief introduction, the manager opened the door.

Lu Ban saw a dilapidated but relatively clean room that seemed to have been repainted recently, different from the other rooms they had passed on the way up.

The room was tiny, with only a bed, a desk, and a chair, not even a wardrobe, but at least it had a door that could isolate it from the outside world.

The windowsill was bathed in sunlight, casting dazzling golden hues on the bedsheet. On the windowsill sat a somewhat damaged bottle, empty.

“Strange, was there a bottle here before?”

The manager picked up the bottle, preventing it from falling to the ground should the wind blow it over.

Cui Siter stood frozen in his tracks, staring at the windowsill, seeing the smoke from the factory outside, watching the curtain flutter in the breeze—he felt as if he could see that young girl smiling at him.

This was the very room from his dreams!

Exactly the same!

It was the same one!

Cui Siter walked into the room as if he had been there countless times before; he sat on the bed, right where he had been in his dream.

Everything felt like a reenactment.

“Something happened here before? Who died? Is there a record of it?”

Cui Siter asked hastily.

“I-I’ll check.”

The manager, intimidated by Cui Siter’s demeanor, forgot to ask for money and staggered downstairs, and Shia followed him. After a while, she came back with a thick file.

“Room 404, the previous tenant was a textile factory worker named John…”

“Not him.”

Cui Siter immediately denied it, taking the file to check the previous records of the room.

Fortunately, the apartment’s management was relatively formal; each room’s record was on its own page, showing the traces of tenant turnover.

It was just that the records contained only textual information, lacking photos for comparison.

Soon, Cui Siter came across an entry.

“Tenant’s name, Liz, moved in May of the 25th year, died in an accident in October…”

Cui Siter had found a record of death.

It was now the spring of the 26th year; the incident had happened a year before.

“Strange, why is there only one person?”

Shia remembered that there should have been two people in Cui Siter’s dream.

Yet, the rental record only mentioned one person.

“That’s pretty normal around here. As long as a name is registered, anyone can move in. It doesn’t matter whether one person or two live here, as long as they don’t disturb the others.”

The manager casually remarked.

“Some people rent an apartment and sublet their bed to someone else. They’ll even rent out the space under the bed. It’s no big deal.”

“This sub-landlord is a bit over the top.”

Lu Ban probably knew that these people couldn’t afford enough money on their own, so they had to find someone to “split the bill,” just like the many group rentals in big cities nowadays.

Many people work hard, only for all their earnings to become rent paid to the landlord.

There will always be rent collectors, no matter the era.

He remarked.

“Now that we have the name, we can go investigate the police archives.”

Shia said, glancing at the paint in the room.

“When was this paint applied?”

The color of the paint wasn’t the same as the one on the victim; it wasn’t as colorful and vivid.

“It must have been after the incident. The manager at the time is gone, no one knows where, but I heard it was pretty serious around here. There were even gang members injured, and there have always been problems with the pipes in this apartment.”

The manager recalled as he spoke.

“Gang members lived here too?”

Shia found it a bit inconceivable. Naturally, there were no gangs in Night Country, but according to Shia’s understanding, these should be some kind of loosely disciplined military organizations, which should have their own gathering places to live, not in such messy apartments.

“Yes, of course, but most apartments don’t really welcome those guys, as they tend to bring trouble. The gang that came here that time, I remember, was the Catania Family,”

“The Catania Family?”

Cui Siter felt as if something was connecting everything together in the dark.

“Are you saying the Catania Family came here and got injured when the accident in this room happened?”

“I think so, but I’m not certain.”

The manager became uncertain under Cui Siter’s questioning.

“But there were definitely injuries at that time because the people next door were from the gang.”

He pointed to the tenant record.

It recorded, “Tuck, moved in November of ’23, left in October of ’25.”

It was October as well!

“Oh, I remember now, I saw it in the newspapers at the time. Two gangs clashed, and quite a number of people died.”

The manager seemed to have just remembered.

“Because of this, the big shots in Abandoned Capital even cracked down on the gangs for a while, but they only wiped out the insignificant ones; the real players were unaffected.”

“Thank you for the explanation.”

Cui Siter handed a banknote to the manager and then looked at Lu Ban and Shia.

“We need to figure out where this Tuck went, how this Liz person died, and what the Catania Family was doing here at that time.”

“Then we should go to the police station first.”

Lu Ban suggested.

“Indeed.”

Cui Siter took one last look at the room, thinking as he descended the stairs.

“If that girl is Flora, she wouldn’t have changed so much in just one year’s time, so the girl in my dream must be Liz. But how did the pendant end up with Flora?”

“Or could it be, that the main perspective of my dream was Flora, and the gaze I felt in the basement was the lingering will of Flora after her death due to extraordinary powers, and she has taken residence in me, trying to tell me the answer?”

“At least it’s certain, the murderer didn’t pick their targets at random. Flora, Doctor Howes, the deceased of the Catania Family, these people are connected. If we can figure out the connections, we will know who killed them, and…”

“The murderer’s next target…”

Cui Siter thought of the upcoming charity banquet, where the members of the Catania Family would all be present.