This actor is full of tricks.

Lin Jue's first habit when he arrives in an unfamiliar environment is to examine all the details. After looking at the overall layout of the room, his gaze fell on the sofa opposite him.

There used to be a TV stand there, but now the old CRT TV is lying on the ground, the table is scattered in pieces, and there are broken pieces of furniture everywhere. Not only here, but some furniture is also in pieces, and pots and pans in the kitchen are also scattered everywhere.

It was damaged by external force; it seems someone had vandalized this house before.

Lin Jue walked over to the television and bent down to pick up a picture frame that had fallen to the side.

This is a black and white portrait of a deceased woman. The woman in the photo has a kind face and is likely the grandmother of the cat-faced girl.

So it seems that the cat-faced girl didn't smash her own house, because no one would smash her grandmother's portrait. That means someone else broke into the cat-faced girl's house and committed this violence.

"Did they break in and smash things before she became the cat-faced girl, or after?"

If the incident occurred before the cat-faced girl appeared, then the people who broke in might be the very people the cat-faced girl was about to kill. If it occurred afterward, then it might be the victims' family members breaking in to vent their grief.

But no matter what, the portrait should not be smashed, as it is the only memento of the deceased loved one.

Lin Jue blew the dust off the portrait and hung it back on the wall.

Next to the TV stand, there were several metal basins filled with cheap, moldy cat food.

It's obvious that many cats used to live here.

He looked away, his nose twitching. The stench wasn't coming from the living room, but from a room on the side.

The door was ajar, and the stench was seeping out through the cracks.

Lin Jue slowly approached the door, then pushed it open.

Before me was a bedroom. The room was small, and I could see the entire layout at a glance. There was a bunk bed against the wall, a carved wardrobe at the back, and an old-fashioned sewing machine on the other side. A handwritten note with a few lines of text was pasted on the wall next to the sewing machine.

Alterating trouser hems costs 2 yuan.

[Clothes mending costs 2-5 yuan]

Handwashing clothes costs 2-5 yuan.

This is a price list explaining how the cat-faced girl and her grandmother make a living by selling items listed here.

Lin Jue sighed silently. He seemed to have rarely seen services that cost 2 yuan. He looked away and searched the room for the source of the stench, finally fixing his gaze on the carved wardrobe.

The stench was coming from the wardrobe, and you could also see a lot of dried, murky stains on the cement floor near the wardrobe.

This is a mixture of corpse oil and blood, which is everywhere in that school, but unlike other mixtures, this one also contains mottled animal hair.

What kind of corpse was hidden inside the wardrobe?
Lin Jue took two steps forward and suddenly pulled open the wardrobe door. When he saw the scene in front of him, his pupils trembled slightly.

The area beneath the wardrobe was filled with the corpses of cats, long since decomposed, with bite marks visible on some intact fur. Judging from their size, the marks were not those of human mouths, but rather those of cats.

Moreover, it wasn't just one cat that had these bite marks; they were found on almost every cat with relatively intact fur. Lin Jue even saw flesh and blood mixed with fur in the mouths of some of the cats.

This made him wonder if the cats were biting each other to cause this situation, but why would these cats kill their own companions?

Was it because there was no food that they killed each other? But there were no signs of gnawing on the corpses, and there was clearly so much cat food in the living room.

Lin Jue couldn't understand it. Could it be that they were infected with some kind of virus, or was someone deliberately provoking these cats to go berserk and bite their companions?
He closed the wardrobe door again and began searching the rest of the room. Finally, he found a photo in the pillow of the lower bunk of the bunk bed.

The photo shows a girl in a school uniform and an old lady. The old lady is the same one in the portrait outside, so the young girl must have looked like the cat-faced girl in her previous life.

The girl was very pretty. Even though she was wearing the simplest school uniform, it couldn't hide her delicate face. Lin Jue stared at the girl's face, feeling like he had seen her somewhere before.

"It's the home of the deceased on the 5th floor!" Lin Jue remembered. When he was searching the deceased's home on the 5th floor, he found a stack of poverty subsidy application forms. Each application form had a photo of the applicant, and one of them was this girl's.

He put the photo back in its place, climbed out the window, quickly returned to the 5th floor, found the stack of documents on the bedside table, and extracted the girl's information.

The girl's name is Wang Qingya. She is 16 years old and studies in Class 3 of Grade 11 at Jiangda Affiliated High School. Both her parents have passed away. She has lived with her maternal grandmother since she was a child. The two of them barely make a living by altering trousers and mending clothes for people around them.

Even though her own life is so difficult, she still feeds stray cats, which shows that Wang Qingya is a very kind-hearted person.

"The deceased was a community worker responsible for this poverty relief program; he was known for his bullying and abusive behavior."

Lin Jue sorted through all the clues in his mind, and a conjecture gradually rose in his heart: Could it be that this staff member had been suppressing, no, or rather embezzling Wang Qingya's poverty subsidy, which is why he was targeted by the other party?

Looking at the luxurious decor of the room, he felt it was very likely. To verify his guess, he returned to the character's house and began rummaging through drawers and cabinets looking for things.

The character I'm playing this time also applied for poverty relief, and if the relief is issued, there will definitely be proof of receipt.

A dozen minutes later, he found a small iron box under a pile of garbage. Inside the box was a rural commercial bank passbook and a thick stack of receipts.

The passbook showed a balance of 17 yuan. Starting in 2020, there was a monthly deposit of 400 yuan, but until August of last year, the deposit of 400 yuan stopped.

According to the receipt, the 600 yuan was a monthly poverty subsidy, which started just last August, and there have been no further receipts since.

"I was right." Lin Jue put the things away, feeling a mix of emotions.

For many people, 400 yuan is just the price of a piece of clothing or a pair of shoes, but for those struggling to make ends meet, it could be a month's living expenses.

The recycling price of a pound of cardboard is about 5 cents. 400 yuan is a full 800 pounds of cardboard. Lin Jue doesn't even know if the character he plays can collect that much cardboard in a month.

For Wang Qingya and her granddaughter, that meant altering 200 pairs of pants! How many pairs of pants can a small family workshop in a neighborhood alter in a month? 50 pairs would be considered a lot.

However, the money was intercepted by community staff, and the interruption has lasted for a full 14 months, from last August until now. (End of Chapter)