The girl was stunned when she heard his words.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it doesn’t make sense.”
Su Fan spoke calmly.
“All the safety precautions you’ve taken are based on the assumption that a brown bear is responsible for the series of disappearances.”
“But that’s nothing more than the police’s theory.”
“You also mentioned that some of the victims’ bodies were found, while others simply vanished.”
“The weather in Washington State is cold, and we’re already approaching the end of December. Brown bears should have entered hibernation by now.”
“Any bear that comes out looking for food at this time of year would be desperately hungry. It would eat practically anything.”
“Bears are omnivores. Ants, honey, berries, and even carrion are all part of their diet.”
“If food is scarce, wouldn’t a bear drag a corpse back to its den instead of leaving it where it was? Why leave the body behind?”
Hearing Su Fan’s explanation, the girl shuddered.
It was a detail she had never considered before.
She had instinctively believed the information provided by the police, overlooking the inconsistencies in their theory.
“If it wasn’t a bear, then what could it be…?”
“I’m only offering another possibility. That doesn’t mean the police’s original theory was completely wrong.”
Once again, Su Fan gave her an answer she hadn’t expected.
“Perhaps a brown bear really is killing people… Perhaps someone is taking advantage of the confusion to commit murders… Or perhaps supernatural forces are at work.”
“Vampires… evil spirits… demons…”
“Or maybe all three.”
“Anything is possible, isn’t it?”
After hearing Su Fan’s further explanation, the girl felt somewhat relieved.
The moment he mentioned supernatural forces, she assumed he was simply brainstorming possibilities with her.
She didn’t believe in ghosts, spirits, or any of that supernatural nonsense.
“Mr. Su Fan, are you saying that not going up the mountain with my friends tonight was actually a good thing?”
“Good and bad are relative. Depending on the circumstances, one can turn into the other. Have you ever heard the saying, A loss may turn out to be a blessing in disguise?”
“I have. It’s about an old man who always interpreted good and bad fortune differently from everyone else.”
The girl nodded, but a few questions surfaced in her mind.
Why had Mr. Su Fan suddenly brought that up?
Just then, the lights in the room began flickering rapidly.
The lights in the hallway outside were doing the same.
Before long, the lights in both their room and the hallway went out completely.
In an instant, everything within their field of vision was swallowed by darkness.
The girl was speechless.
She hadn’t expected the facilities at this inn to be so terrible.
At first, she had thought the electrical problem was limited to her own room. Now, the same thing had happened in the other rooms and the hallway.
Judging by the situation, the power to the entire floor had probably been cut off.
“I wonder when the maintenance staff will arrive…”
Fortunately, the weather seemed fairly pleasant tonight. A little moonlight streamed through the window, preventing the room from becoming completely pitch-black.
By the light of the moon, the girl could just make out Su Fan sitting in the chair opposite her.
“Perhaps my bad luck has rubbed off on you, Mr. Su Fan.”
The landline telephone required electricity to function properly. With the entire floor without power, even if the staff tried to call them back, they wouldn’t be able to receive the call.
Thinking this, the girl rose from her seat and headed toward the door.
“I’ll go check what’s happening outside.”
If the power really had gone out, the emergency lights in the hallway should have come on.
Even now, she still held on to a little hope.
Maybe… just maybe, the power outage was limited to their small section of the building?
With that thought in mind, the girl approached the door.
But in the very next instant, a dark figure suddenly appeared in the doorway!
The figure swiftly clamped a hand over her mouth and raised the other arm.
Caught completely off guard, the girl felt her heart skip a beat.
In the figure’s hand was something gleaming, poised to plunge straight into her chest!
It was a knife!
Fear paralyzed her body, leaving her unable to react. She couldn’t even scream.
In that instant, her thoughts became crystal clear, and she immediately understood what was happening.
The power outage had been deliberately caused by the shadowy figure standing before her.
The goal was to lure the people inside their rooms into the hallway to investigate, then strike and kill them!
But it was already too late.
She was about to die beneath the knife.
Yet, in that split second, a sharp crack rang throughout the entire hallway.
The shadowy figure felt his entire arm go numb, and the weapon slipped from his grasp.
When he looked at his right hand, he saw that the web of skin between his thumb and index finger had split open, and blood was pouring out.
In the next instant, a powerful gust of wind struck him head-on!
The girl felt the figure’s entire body stiffen. The hand covering her mouth loosened and fell away.
After collapsing onto the floor, she slowly raised her head. Only then, under the light of the hallway’s emergency lamps, could she make out what had happened.
The black-haired young man who should have been sitting inside the room had somehow appeared right there.
With one hand, he had seized a figure dressed in a housekeeping uniform by the throat, lifted him into the air, and then slammed him violently onto the floor!
A dull thud that made one’s teeth ache echoed through the hallway.
The man who had been grabbed by the young man was now sprawled on the floor, motionless.
W-What…?
The girl sat there in a daze.
She wanted to say something, but a sudden wave of dizziness swept over her, and she fainted.
Just then, a phone began to ring.
The black-haired young man casually took a phone from his pocket and answered it.
In the otherwise silent hallway, a voice came through from the other end.
“Sir, the power has suddenly gone out here for reasons we don’t yet understand, so we haven’t been able to reach you. But please don’t worry. Our maintenance staff have already arrived.”
“Understood.”
After replying calmly, the young man hung up.
He looked down at the man in the housekeeping uniform, who was lying on the floor in a deep sleep.
This was the same housekeeper who had passed by the room earlier.
At first glance, there seemed to be nothing suspicious about him. However, the housekeeping cart he had been pushing contained a person’s corpse.
Most likely, when the room’s door opened, he realized that he and the girl might have become witnesses. So he had doubled back to eliminate them.
Unfortunately for him, every move he made had been under Su Fan’s surveillance.
With his spiritual sense extended, nothing inside the entire inn could escape his perception—not even the small act of cutting off the power.
As for the blow just now, it had already broken the man’s spine. He would spend the rest of his life confined to a wheelchair.
Su Fan walked over to the unconscious girl and checked her physical condition.
After confirming that she had merely been knocked unconscious by a sedative, he couldn’t help but sigh at how things had turned out.
She had arranged to go camping with her friends, only to be stood up. Since it was already late at night, she had no choice but to find an inn for shelter.
Under normal circumstances, that would have been frustrating enough. But there might actually have been something far more terrifying than a brown bear lurking on the mountain.
Whether it was a vampire or the mysterious bat demon that had disappeared without a trace, either could have taken her life with ease.
She had managed to find a room at an inn with seemingly decent facilities, only to end up in one with electrical problems. That had forced her to knock on the door of the guest staying opposite hers to ask for help.
And in doing so, she had unknowingly landed herself on a serial killer’s list of people who needed to be silenced.
She should have fallen victim to his murderous intentions.
Yet, by sheer coincidence, she had encountered Su Fan.
“Now that’s someone with extraordinary luck.”
