174: Chapter 174 Wang Lan's death was gruesome.

A very short, sharp scream stuck in the throat.

Su Qingxue's legs went uncontrollably weak, and her body listed to one side, almost collapsing straight onto the blood-stained sandy ground.

Lin Fan was quick-witted and fast-handed, grabbing her arm and hauling her straight up.

The forceful pull made Su Qingxue's shoulder ache, but this pain barely helped her regain a shred of sanity.

Su Qingxue wasn't as delicate as Liu Feifei and Song Ya, and her mental fortitude was much better than theirs, but upon seeing the scene before her, her pupils still contracted violently.

"Don't look, take a deep breath." Lin Fan's voice was steady without the slightest fluctuation, his arm supporting her like an iron pillar.

However, Su Qingxue simply couldn't do it.

The scene before her completely shattered all the perceptions she had built up over the past twenty-odd years.

No matter how bloody the power struggles of Shengtang Group were, they were merely changes of numbers in bank accounts.

No matter how treacherous the Deserted Island was, it was nothing more than accumulating one corpse after another.

But right now, this was a truly real hell.

The sandy ground behind the rocks had been completely soaked through with dark red blood.

Flies and unknown black flying insects circled in mid-air, making a nauseating buzzing sound.

Two bodies were just casually tossed into the mud.

To be precise, they were remains.

The one on the left had its limbs rigidly twisted.

Its head had suffered devastating trauma, half of its face had completely collapsed, the skull was shattered, and fluid mixed with brain gray matter flowed all over the ground.

The face could no longer be recognized, and even the eyeballs were gone.

But the body's silhouette, the tattered windbreaker, and the Rolex Submariner on its wrist—though caked in muddy water—could still be outlined.

That was Zhang Tao.

Su Qingxue felt a numbness spread across her scalp.

Not long ago on the beach, Wang Lan had wept tears of blood, saying that Zhang Tao had encountered beasts in the deep mountain woods, and was pounced on and bitten to death.

She herself had narrowly escaped with her life to report the news.

But now, how could Zhang Tao's corpse appear on the beach?

And in a place so close to them!

The tragic state of the corpse was by no means the result of beasts gnawing on it.

The skull fragmentation caused by blunt objects repeatedly smashing it clearly pointed to human action.

The truth was that Wang Lan had used a stone to smash Zhang Tao's head to pieces alive.

"Lin Fan, it's too terrifying..." Su Qingxue's voice was shaking, her fingers digging desperately into the muscles of Lin Fan's forearm.

Lin Fan did not respond.

His gaze did not linger too long on Zhang Tao, instead falling on the even more unsightly pile of things to the right.

That was the real reason Su Qingxue had almost collapsed earlier, and the reason she had been scared to the point of stumbling over her words.

Less than two steps away from Zhang Tao's corpse lay a second body.

The brutality of the scene directly rivaled a meat grinder.

That body presented a shattered state that completely violated human anatomy.

The limbs and torso had been severed, with the muscle fibers and blood vessels at the fracture points exposed to the air.

Both arms were tossed two meters away.

Both legs were folded beneath the abdomen at a bizarre angle.

Head and neck separated, that skull rolled into the pooled water of a sand pit, its long black hair clumped together by blood clots, looking like a wad of soaked, dirty kelp.

Most terrifyingly, the ribs had been pried open from the outside, as if a door had been forced open by brutal strength.

The interior of the chest cavity was completely empty.

In the position of the heart, there was only a dark red hollow and a few broken remnants of blood vessels.

The liver was gone too.

Su Qingxue's stomach spasmed frantically.

She desperately forced herself not to vomit, her teeth biting through her lips as the taste of blood spread throughout her mouth.

She stared fixedly at that skull.

Muddy water concealed most of the features, but that familiar professional suit was torn into tattered strips hanging on the mutilated torso.

Twenty-odd minutes ago, she had watched this woman kneel on the beach, crying and begging to lead the way to find the tents.

Now, this woman had turned into a pile of spare parts on the ground.

She had calculated everything, yet she could never have calculated that she would end up in such a state.

Lin Fan crouched beside the corpse.

He did not touch the severed limbs, instead staring at the cross-section of the fracture points.

The tearing direction of the muscle fibers was uneven, but the cross-sections of the bones were extremely neat.

Especially the cross-section of the upper arm humerus; the cut was smooth without any jagged marks left by gnawing.

Beast teeth and claws could not achieve this extent.

Even those mutated giant beasts on the island would pull off skin and flesh together when tearing at prey, and the bones were mostly twisted or bitten apart, with terribly rough fracture points.

The method of limb separation on the corpse before him had only one explanation.

A knife.

And not an ordinary pocketknife; something capable of cutting through the humerus in a single stroke had to be at least a heavy blade on the level of a machete.

Lin Fan stood up, his gaze sweeping over Wang Lan's remains.

That tent.

His previous judgment that Wang Lan was lying was because the timing was too coincidental and there were too many loopholes.

But now it seemed the tent might be real.

Wang Lan's method of death illustrated one thing: on this island, besides them, there were other people.

And there might be more than one; those people had weapons, the ability to kill, and even more so, the willingness to kill.

But why did Zhang Tao appear here? Could those people be trying to create the illusion that the two had killed each other?

But judging by the blood, it was clear that Zhang Tao had died earlier.

As for Wang Lan, a living person, she had been dead for no more than five minutes, without even managing to let out a scream.

That is to say, the killer was nearby.

Lin Fan gripped his crossbow tightly and turned his head to look around.

The beach was barren, with a wide field of vision.

To the right was a row of weathered cliff faces, and to the left were large expanses of reefs exposed after the ebb tide.

Behind them was the woods.

Su Qingxue could no longer stand.

She leaned against that reef, her legs shaking uncontrollably.

It wasn't the shaking of fear, but rather the body's stress response before forced shutdown, with the muscles refusing to obey commands.

Her lips were devoid of color, and whatever red brought out by the sea breeze on her face had entirely faded, leaving only a wax-like whiteness.

Lin Fan glanced at her.

Taking her into the woods to look for the tent was impossible now.

Leaving aside the fact that Su Qingxue was in no state to even walk steadily, judging by the sheer brutality of that corpse just now, the killer's combat capability and cruelty far exceeded expectations.

If he went in alone holding the crossbow, there was still room to maneuver.

Dragging along a collapsed woman was tantamount to delivering a hostage to the doorstep.

"Let's go back first."

Su Qingxue could no longer walk, so Lin Fan carried her on his back as they headed back, moving quickly.

The uphill road was difficult to walk. With lots of loose stones and a steep slope, Lin Fan steadied the crossbow with one hand while supporting Su Qingxue's legs with the other.

Her body pressed against his back, and the rapid undulations of her chest were transmitted over.

As they neared the cave entrance, Song Ya was the first to hear the footsteps.

She poked her head out from behind the pile of stones, and seeing Lin Fan carrying Su Qingxue on his back, her expression changed drastically.

"What happened to President Su!"