Chapter 184: Snow Mountain: “Knock, Knock…”

Chapter 184 Snow Mountain: "Knock, knock..."

Everly had originally thought that subduing a ruthless killer like Hilda would be no easy task.

Unexpectedly, as Everly and Old John approached, Hilda voluntarily dropped the knife, got off Fatima, raised her hands, and turned to face the two in a posture of surrender.

"No need to check the footage—I confess. I killed Samuel." She said in her usual gentle tone, her face splattered with bloodstains.

"..."

Everly ignored her, staying fully on guard. She and Old John each took one side, first twisting the woman's arms behind her back to fully restrain her, then pulling the drawstring from her down jacket hood and binding her hands tightly before leading her aside and keeping her under strict guard.

Meanwhile, under Lucas's direction, the others had split into two groups to perform emergency first aid on the two students lying on the floor. But Hilda's knife work had been vicious—she had slashed both victims' throats and windpipes. With no proper medical supplies, there was no saving them.

Before long, word came that Daniel and Fatima had died, one right after the other.

"What do we do now?"

Everyone looked at the two new corpses on the ground, then at the confessed murderer, then at Everly, who stood expressionless beside the killer—all of them at a loss.

"What are you looking at me for? First, let's find somewhere to put the bodies. Leaving them in the hallway is way too creepy."

It was kind of absurd—apparently, because Everly had pulled out the surveillance footage as a decisive trump card, the group's leader had shifted from Lucas to Everly.

"Where… where do we put them?"

"Just put them in the professor's room. There's already one body in there; two more won't matter."

Everyone thought it over briefly and agreed Everly had a point.

They asked Ella for the key card to the professor's room, unlocked the tightly shut door, and, fighting back their fear, grabbed arms and legs to carry the two new bodies inside, laying them side by side on the floor.

To keep the bodies from decomposing too quickly, the room's window had been left open. The moment they stepped inside, they were hit by a bone-chilling cold, like walking into an ice cellar.

After settling the three bodies, everyone hurriedly closed the door and gathered around Everly again, staring at her with dazed eyes.

"Let's go downstairs. It's freezing here."

"Oh, right."

"It really is cold here."

So the group timidly followed Everly back down to the first-floor lobby.

The fireplace in the lobby was still burning, its warmth enveloping everyone. Their frozen thoughts slowly began to thaw, and one by one, they turned shocked, accusing looks toward the bound Hilda.

"Why..."

The hardest hit of all was Hilda's boyfriend, Jones. He was dazed, clutching his head, still unable to wrap his head around the fact that "his girlfriend was a murderer who had killed three people."

"Why… heh, because they deserved it."

At this moment, the calmest one was actually Hilda herself.

As if all her long-held wishes had been fulfilled and she had no regrets, she lifted her chin, leaned back against the sofa, and began telling a sorrowful story in a gentle yet cold voice.

"My full name is Hilda Verast, but few people know that this was the result of taking my stepfather's surname after my mother remarried. Before that, I had a different surname—Bruppes."

"Bruppes? Does that mean you and Hanna…" Ella beside her let out a gasp.

"Yes, that's right. Hanna and I were sisters."

At the mention of her sister, a gentle yet sorrowful smile crossed Hilda's face. The contrast between that smile and the dried blood on her face was striking, and for a moment, the woman paradoxically seemed both saintly and sinister.

Before their parents divorced, Hilda and her younger sister Hanna had been very close. Even after both parents remarried, the two stayed in regular contact, though the distance meant they rarely met in person.

It was precisely because of the deep bond between the sisters that when Hilda received the news of Hanna's suicide, she came up with the idea of uncovering the truth and avenging her sister.

Three people were responsible for Hanna's death: Professor Samuel, her boyfriend Daniel, and her best friend Fatima.

The whole story was pretty clichéd.

Hanna was a student with extraordinary talent in botany.

She'd been fascinated by the living rock cactus since childhood. It was a beautiful cushion-shaped plant that, due to its low natural reproduction rate and lack of effective artificial propagation methods, had stayed endangered.

Hanna hoped to build on existing methods to develop a more efficient propagation technique that was less harmful to the plants. To that end, she chose Samuel—a botany professor who specialized in cushion-shaped plants—as her graduate advisor.

But what she didn't know was that this professor, renowned in academic circles, was in truth a beast in human form with zero professional ethics.

Hanna, who had no prominent family background, was forced by the professor. He threatened her with a sex tape, but Hanna refused to give in and insisted on going to the police.

That's when her boyfriend Daniel stopped her.

He wrapped his arms around her waist, kissed her cheek tenderly, told her it was all over, and urged her to endure it for the sake of their futures.

Daniel was working on an important research project under Samuel at the time. If the project were suspended because of Hanna's situation, Daniel's career would suffer too.

Hanna loved Daniel deeply, and for his sake, she swallowed the whole thing. But from then on, her mental state deteriorated, and she started showing signs of depression. Only her beloved living rock cactus cultivation work brought her any solace.

After countless attempts, Hanna finally succeeded in improving the existing grafting method, promising to take the artificial cultivation of living rock cacti to a whole new level. She shared this news with her boyfriend Daniel, never expecting him to immediately leak it to Samuel.

That despicable man brazenly stole his own student's research. Moreover, to completely eliminate Hanna—an uncooperative and troublesome "time bomb"—he struck a deal with Daniel and Fatima, offering co-authorship on the paper as a reward.

Through constant belittlement and cold-shouldering, Daniel drove Hanna into severe depression, nearly pushing her to the brink of a mental breakdown. Fatima, as her best friend and roommate, conveniently placed a bottle of sleeping pills on her desk at just the right moment.

And so a life quietly slipped away...

"From then on, I kept investigating. Not long ago, I finally confirmed the three culprits and learned they had booked rooms at this inn, planning to do field research here during the Christmas holiday."

Hilda decided to kill all three of them during their trip.

But the inn was small, with few rooms. When Hilda called to make a reservation, all the available rooms were already booked.

"So that's why you suddenly agreed to date me…" The red-haired man, Jones, froze for a moment upon hearing this, then a dejected smile spread across his face.

Indeed, in the past, no matter how hard he pursued Hilda, she'd always been indifferent and uninterested. Until that day, when he happened to share his snowboarding plans with a colleague at the next table, and Hilda just happened to overhear. She showed great interest, joined the conversation, and shortly afterward became his girlfriend.

"I'm sorry, Jones. I used you for my revenge… In all of this, you're the most innocent one."

Jones smiled bitterly and asked, "Did you ever love me?"

He was met with silence.

...

Afterward, Hilda gave a detailed account of how she committed the murders.

Including how she deliberately locked her room card inside her room to trick someone into revealing where the front desk's master key was, how she drugged her roommate Jones, stole the master key and the boning knife from the kitchen, snuck into Samuel's bedroom late at night, used ether and muscle relaxants bought on the black market to subdue him, and dissected him alive, and how she later snuck into the kitchen to burn the bloodstained clothes…

“No wonder Samuel showed no signs of struggle—you used a muscle relaxant on him... And opening the window was to let out the smell of ether, right?” Lucas pressed.

“That’s not all. I also wanted to confuse the time of death. Removing the internal organs served that purpose too, because the books say that evisceration can alter body temperature readings.” Hilda replied matter-of-factly.

Ever since she successfully avenged her sister, she seemed indifferent to everything, caring about nothing at all.

Everly later brought out a computer and played the footage from the second-floor hallway camera, confirming that everything was exactly as Hilda had described—that she had committed the entire crime by herself.

And with that, the serial murder case at the snowy mountain lodge was finally solved.

Though everyone sympathized with Hilda, believing that those men deserved to die at her hands, they also didn’t want to end up as her next victims. So, after some discussion, they decided to lock her in a windowless storage room that could be locked from the outside, providing her meals three times a day but not allowing her to leave.

Hilda didn’t object and willingly walked into the storage room.

As everything drew to a close, Lucas approached Everly with a conflicted expression and asked pointedly, “You knew this would happen all along, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about? I’m not some prophet.” Everly didn’t even look up, her fingers tapping away as she focused on Temple Run, dismissing him casually.

“...”

Clearly unsatisfied with the answer, Lucas wasn’t about to give up.

He opened his mouth to press Everly further when suddenly, a series of knocks came from outside.

Everyone in the hall turned their heads at the same time toward the closed lodge door.

“Was that the wind?”

“Yeah, probably. The rescue team said they wouldn’t be here for another week...”

Before they could finish, another “knock, knock” rang out, crisp and clear, echoing through the now-silent room.

“Someone really is knocking... Maybe the rescue team arrived early!” Minnie, the girl at the front desk, jumped up from the sofa and hurried toward the door.

“Wait.”

Everly was quick to react, grabbing Minnie’s arm.

“What’s wrong?”

“Something’s off.” Lucas also sensed something was wrong, a look of alert flashing across his face. “The road up the mountain is completely blocked by snow. In only a day, with the rescue team understaffed, they wouldn’t have had time to clear the path. Plus, with the wind and snow outside, helicopters can’t get close. Whether by land or air, there’s no way the rescue team could get here that fast...”

He trailed off, but everyone understood.

If it wasn’t the rescue team, then who could be knocking on the door of this isolated, snowbound lodge?

At that thought, they all recoiled, fear spreading across their faces.

In the silence, as if refusing to be ignored, another distinct knock sounded from outside.

“Knock, knock...”