176: Found at the bottom of the closet

The living room was quite messy; besides the square dining table, there were several wooden cabinets piled up—old-fashioned wardrobes and TV cabinets, probably discarded by Chen Bin but he couldn't bear to throw them away.

Ye Lin carefully avoided the cabinets and also pulled open their doors to look inside. There were only some miscellaneous items, nothing of note.

In the corner was a small, two-door refrigerator, a traditional old model.

Ye Lin gently pulled open the refrigerator door, and the yellow light inside shone out, adding a touch of brightness to the living room.

Inside the refrigerator were several unopened bottles of mineral water. Ye Lin quietly checked the date; they were from the beginning of this year.

It seemed Chen Bin had been here at least this year.

Below the refrigerator were a few bottles of beer. Ye Lin checked their production date; they had expired.

In the freezer compartment below, there was a rock-hard piece of meat, frozen solid, impossible to chip away at.

Ye Lin thought that if he didn't find any clues later, he would cut off a piece of the meat for testing to see what it was. If it turned out to be human, that would simplify things.

Besides the refrigerator, there were no other appliances in the living room. It was cluttered with various items: stools, boxes, and some unknown furniture.

It made it difficult for Ye Lin to even find a place to step. Couldn't this guy pile his junk more neatly?

To preserve the original state, Ye Lin didn't move anything. He shifted several times before reaching the kitchen.

The kitchen wasn't big, a characteristic of old-style houses: large bedrooms, small kitchens, and small bathrooms. Modern housing concepts have different ideas, with kitchens needing to be spacious for wives to cook conveniently.

On the stove counter was a gas stove, covered in heavy dust, suggesting it hadn't been used for cooking in a long time.

Above the stove counter was a row of cabinets. Ye Lin opened them to find some incredibly dirty ingredients, whether mushrooms or millet, it was hard to tell.

Below were the dish and chopstick cabinets. There were a few sets of dishes and chopsticks, but they were all very dirty; no one would dare use them.

Next to the dish and chopstick cabinet, another cabinet was partitioned off, over a meter long. Strangely, its door was sealed shut, and Ye Lin couldn't pull it open no matter how hard he tried.

In this already cramped space, partitioning off such a long cabinet that couldn't be opened puzzled Ye Lin.

However, adhering to the principle of not damaging anything in the room, Ye Lin didn't try to force it further. He decided to revisit it if he had the opportunity and conditions later.

This house had two bedrooms and one living room. Old, small, and dilapidated houses like this didn't have distinct master and secondary bedrooms in their design, so both bedrooms were roughly the same size.

The first bedroom had a small bed and two tables; otherwise, it was quite empty.

This bedroom had a small balcony outside. There was a wall between the bedroom and the balcony, with a door leading to the balcony. However, the door was locked, and Ye Lin didn't want to open it for fear of leaving traces.

As for the situation on the balcony, since it was an open-air balcony, he had already observed it from outside during the day. There were only a few withered flowers and nothing else.

On the wall separating the balcony and the bedroom, there was also a window, tightly shut, with a thick poster pasted on the back. No wonder they couldn't see anything from outside.

There wasn't much in this bedroom, but this wall was quite strange.

In Ye Lin's opinion, most people now prefer large floor-to-ceiling windows to make rooms feel brighter.

For a room layout like this, logically, this wall should have been removed to connect the bedroom and the balcony. Then, enclosing the balcony would improve the layout.

Ye Lin stepped back, turned on his phone's flashlight, and shone it up and down. Indeed, this wall had been altered.

Although the structure didn't reveal anything, there was a difference in the wall's color, not compared to the adjacent wall, but to the ceiling and the wall by the bed.

It seemed that after it was altered, the paint was reapplied, but only on the adjacent wall. The opposite wall and the ceiling were left untouched.

So now, of the five surfaces in the room, two were new and three were old. It was hard to say why for now; it could just be that some renovation had been done.

The layout of the second bedroom was similar to the first, also with a bed and two bedside tables. However, by the window, a very trendy bay window was installed, or perhaps it could be called a concrete platform.

Because most bay windows feature a large pane of glass, this one was just a concrete platform with the original small window. Apart from the small window area, there was no scenic view like a typical bay window. Ye Lin couldn't understand the design's intention; perhaps it was a blind imitation.

However, the window on this bay window was also covered with a large poster, blocking all light.

On the bay window was a thin cotton cushion, likely for sitting and reading or something similar.

Ye Lin remembered seeing such bay windows in his previous life, but those bay windows often had a drawer designed underneath the seat for storage, as storage was a very popular topic in his past life.

Chen Bin, he didn't know what he was thinking, just a pure concrete platform, no holes for drawers. What a waste.

Ye Lin continued searching the room for a long time. The bed was a large one, with a big Simmons mattress on it, but no quilt.

Under the bed was a dark expanse, full of spiderwebs. A slight puff of air stirred up a thick layer of dust that choked him.

In the two bedside tables, there were only a few scattered items like lighters and pens, nothing useful.

There was also a wardrobe in the bedroom, an old-fashioned one made of pure wooden planks, of average quality, with a large section of the bottom already eaten away by insects.

Opening the wardrobe, there was nothing inside except a few hangers. Just as Ye Lin was about to close it, something in a corner at the bottom of the wardrobe caught his attention.

It was a very subtle detail, in the dead corner of the wardrobe, where there seemed to be a piece of something.

Ye Lin took out his phone and turned on the flashlight. He had no choice; visibility was too poor, and Night Vision was also struggling to see clearly.

This wardrobe was made of composite board, which, although called wood, was actually very thin, especially at the bottom. It seemed insufficient material was used initially, resulting in several tiny cracks at the bottom.

And in one of these cracks, Ye Lin had vaguely seen something stuck inside.

Under the strong light of his phone, everything became clear. It was a fingernail, looking very inconspicuous. Ye Lin carefully pulled it out.

Ye Lin recognized it at a glance; it was a woman's fingernail, as men's are generally not this long.