Chapter 93.1
(Call me gege; the combination checklist for the pair of murderers)
Once Gu Liang uttered those words, Yang Ye’s palm stretched forward to cover his mouth.
Gu Liang: ?
Yang Ye: “Why do you always have to be so smart?”
Gu Liang stared at Yang Ye, not making a single noise, wanting to see what he was going to do next.
Yang Ye: “Don’t speak first.”
Gu Liang was confused, but he cooperated with him by nodding his head.
Yang Ye: “If you think I’m handsome, blink your eyes.”
Gu Liang: “……”
— Why was this man so childish?
Yang Ye: “You’re not the murderer, nor are you a ‘good person’ with side tasks, you don’t need to lie. Come on, Liang Liang, be more honest.”
Amused by antics, Gu Liang eventually cooperated and blinked his eyes in the end.
Yang Ye continued to ask: “Among all the men you have met, am I the most handsome?”
Gu Liang blinked. However, upon seeing that he was not satisfied, he blinked again with greater resolution.
Satisfied, Yang Ye released the hold he had over him, and pulled him upstairs by the hand.
The wooden staircase issued several creaking noises.
Gu Liang slanted his head to glance at Yang Ye: “How childish do you have to be to ask me to call you ge ge, and yet you actually have the nerve to be my older brother?”
Yang Ye said: “If you’re willing to call me ge ge, it doesn’t matter if you call me childish a few times.”
Gu Liang thought about it, “Oh, do you want to hear— ‘Ge ge, be more mature, can you stop being so childish?’, something like that?”
Yang Ye turned back again, pinning Gu Liang to the wall once more with an audible thump. “Call me that again.”
A certain person was probably getting addicted to the “wall slamming”.
Gu Liang hugged his chest and raised his chin to gaze at Yang Ye. Without a single emotion on his visage, he stated, “I see that you’re not going to allow me to climb up these stairs today?”
Yang Ye pinched Gu Liang’s face. Noticing that he did not stop him, he kneaded him harder before he started bringing him upstairs again. “Ge ge is trying to get you to relax. If you keep having your mental state stretched taut, you’re more liable to miss out on vital clues. It’s a prolonged battle this time around.”
Gu Liang maintained his emotionless expression. “Oh.”
“Fine, let’s go back to the case—” Yang Ye surveyed his surroundings before he murmured in a low voice: “Are you suspecting Recluse w.a.n.g as well?”
“It’s just a preliminary suspicion, a detailed a.n.a.lysis is still required. Come on, let’s do a targeted discussion first.”
Gu Liang brought Yang Ye back to his own guest room before he said: “Although the deceased is a ghost this time around, we have already found clues that explicate the fact that after a ghost has been illuminated by a rhinoceros horn, they are no different from humans apart from the fact that special methods are required to murder them.
“After the deceased died, and under the influence of the rhinoceros horn incense, her corpse did not disappear for the time being. Hence, we can still make deductions about them as if they were normal humans.
“Correspondingly, under the effects of the rhinoceros horns, we can a.s.sume that Proprietress Ling is human, and continue deducing as such. Given these circ.u.mstances, the various wounds on her corpse can be a.n.a.lysed accordingly.
“For example, when Zhao Meili, the character that Li Xiao Yu was portraying, stabbed Proprietress Ling’s back with a knife, there was blood.
“And because Zhao Meili heard some noise from the courtyard, she lost her head due to fear, and she threw the knife at the main lobby.”
Gu Liang gave a pause before he continued to state: “When she was explaining this matter previously, she wasn’t very specific in her details. I’ll ask her again later when we’re overturning the pebble stones together.”
Yang Ye nodded, “Mn. I remember her reply. When she went to the main lobby for the second time, which was also 2 o’ clock in the afternoon, Chef Huang saw her going out of her third-floor room entrance before proceeding to go downstairs quietly. After he departed from the main lobby, Zhao Meili was right behind him since she was going to the lobby again.
“Proprietress Ling, who was supposed to be dead, was not in the lobby. But the knife was still there so Li Xiao Yu took it away, brought it back to her room, and cleaned it. When the free exploration began, the other players that were searching the guest rooms first, were the ones who found Li Xiao Yu’s knife.”
Gu Liang asked Yang Ye: “Yes, which means that the knife should have blood. Right, Yang Ye, have you seen the corpse?”
Yang Ye replied: “You’re intending to ask if I saw the abrasion and fall wounds on the corpse, right? I saw them.”
“Yes.”
Gu Liang pushed open the window in his own room and stood in front of it quietly. After a brief moment, he remarked, “Proprietress Ling was probably facing the window like this in order for the shot to hit her directly.”
“But there are no traces of blood in the room.”
Gu Liang frowned as he pondered deeply before he replied: “Actually, I thought of two more possibilities. For instance, she was quite powerful and she didn’t die right then and there, so she subconsciously chose to jump out of the window to avoid the second shot, and then she ran all the way to the forest.
“Because Chef Huang previously mentioned that he deliberately led Proprietress Ling to my room, but he didn’t care about what occurred afterwards. If he wasn’t lying, and he really is one of the murderers, then Proprietress Ling running to the forest on her own is within the realm of possibility.
“The fall damage can be explained; after all, this is the third floor, even with the rice straw reducing the impact, it’s still possible for green and blue bruises to appear on her body as a result of the fall.
“But if that is the case, who cleaned up the bloodstains that Proprietress Ling left behind in my room?
“Furthermore, if Proprietress Ling ran into the forest on her own, there should be a lot of bloodstains along the way. Even if the murderer wanted to clean up the aftermath, there will still be omissions, to say nothing of the fact there is shrubbery everywhere, and it would be incredibly difficult for them to clean up all the bloodstains.
“Hence, we can actually eliminate this possibility.
“That being said, only one possibility should remain— Proprietress Ling died on the spot. The murderer wrapped her in something like a large coat, or they stuffed her into a weaved sack, before they threw her onto the rice straw heap from the third floor, then cleaned up the bloodstains in the room, went to the back of the stilted building, bringing her corpse away… No, to be more accurate, they might have dragged the weaved sack and left.
“Lastly, the real murderer abandoned the corpse in the forest, and then they buried the weaved sack or the large coat inside the forest, or they tied it to a rock and sank it in the lake, before they returned to the inn.
“Because the other areas have been sealed off, the corresponding evinced object can no longer be found, but judging from the fact that there are no bloodstains along the way, this is probably the sequence of events. Only this can explain why Proprietress Ling’s body had so many abrasions and fall wounds.”
After hearing Gu Liang’s speech, Yang Ye nodded his head: “My thoughts are the same as yours. Actually, now that the crime has been restored back to its original state, it’s easier to investigate the murderer.”
Pus.h.i.+ng open his notebook, Yang Ye flipped to a blank page and picked up his pen to start the sorting process.
“The first combination of murderers, was supposed to be Waitress Jing and Vagrant Qian. From the letter, we can distinguish the fact that they’ve been planning this matter for a very long time. But in our current a.n.a.lysis, Waitress Jing probably wrote a letter with her left hand, handing the task of ‘leading Proprietress Ling to the room, and opening the window’ to Chef Huang instead, while she went to the opposite bank to kill Vagrant Qian.”
Yang Ye pondered briefly before he added: “Previously we said that she killed the vagrant for the sake of silencing him. Honestly speaking, from what we can perceive now, there’s an even greater possibility, where she did it to prevent future troubles.”
Gu Liang sat on the edge of the table as he said: “Mn, agreed. Vagrant Qian was a Taoist, whereas Waitress Jing was a ghost; they’re situated on two different sides. For both sides, the fact that a Taoist Priest actually colluded with a ghost is actually a risky endeavour.
“Against Waitress Jing, the excuse that Vagrant Qian might have used was that he wasn’t a Taoist Priest who eliminated ghosts on sight. Proprietress Ling was the murderer who killed his disciple, which is why he wanted to kill Proprietress Ling, but he didn’t want to kill the other ghosts.
“However, in Waitress Jing’s eyes, the risks she was taking for this was far too great. What if the Taoist Priest turned around and killed her after he was done Proprietress Ling?
“Furthermore, through the conversation with Chef Huang, we know that he and Waitress Jing are both small ghosts who were subdued by the powerful Proprietress Ling. But we look at it from another perspective, they were actually receiving Proprietress Ling’s protection. Once Proprietress Ling dies, it would be easy for the Taoist Priest to deal with them.
“Therefore, Waitress Jing pretended to design a plan to kill Proprietress Ling with Vagrant Qian, and it was a plan that required cooperation on both their parts to succeed. But Waitress Jing had other intentions; the tasks that one of the murderers had to do, she gave them to Chef Huang—
“Afterwards, she went to the opposite bank of the lake to kill Vagrant, before she shot Proprietress Ling to death… It’s equivalent to killing two birds with one stone: by making use of Vagrant Qian’s plan, Proprietress Ling was killed, and it also allowed her to eliminate Vagrant Qian, nipping the problem of a Taoist Priest possibly killing her in its bud.”
“That’s right.” Yang Ye stated, “That Vagrant Qian was an alcoholic, and he was also under the belief that Waitress Jing was really cooperating with him, which is why he relaxed his vigilance. When Waitress Jing went to look for him, she persuaded him to drink more plum wine to make him black-out, before Waitress Jing took the chance to kill him. It’s plausible.
“If that’s the case, the first killer combination is actually Waitress Jing and Chef Huang in reality.
“But in fact, there’s an issue with this combination.
Yang Ye wrote “Issue One” and “Issue Two” on the paper. After he was done dotting the colons, he looked at Gu Liang and said: “The first issue is, how did Chef Huang manage to guarantee that Proprietress Ling would coincidentally stand in front of the window directly and wait for her chest to get shot if he only told Proprietress Ling to flip through your luggage and whatnot, like what he said?
Gu Liang took a moment to recall Ming Yue’s pretext before he said: “According to Chef Huang’s words, he didn’t have strong murderous intentions towards Proprietress Ling. He received a letter which told him to bring Proprietress Ling to an empty guest room and that he didn’t need to care about the rest, so he stopped caring about what would happen after. While he scorned Proprietress Ling’s strength, he was actually quite afraid of her, which also means that he was afraid that she might not die, and find out about the fact he wanted to harm her instead.
“Therefore, it’s true that Chef Huang couldn’t guarantee this event. Time-wise, he couldn’t even be certain about Proprietress Ling’s specific actions. The att.i.tude he had towards this plan was merely to give it a try, to see if it can successfully kill Proprietress Ling.”
Yang Ye: “If that is the situation, then Proprietress Ling must have coincidentally walked up to your window and glanced outside as she was searching for the item in your room. And Waitress Jing, who was the opposite bank, had to be on constant lookout through the scope after she was done killing the vagrant, and she managed to grasp this rare opportunity which flashes and pa.s.ses in an instant, thereby firing the fatal shot and killing Proprietress Ling.
“However, not only is this way too coincidental, the requirements it asks of the sniper is absurdly high. It’s quite unlikely that our current Waitress Jing also used to be a mercenary while she was still living.
Yang Ye ruminated for a moment, frowning as he continued, “And frankly speaking, this gives rise to another issue in reality. There are a total of three problems now.”
After Yang Ye finished writing down all the contents in “Issue One”, he marked down a question mark at the side, and then he added the two words “Issue Three”. Yang Ye left the section for Issue Three empty for the time being. As he started to jot down the contents for the Issue Two behind the colon mark, he recited the written words.
“The paper message that Chef Huang received told him to lead Proprietress Ling over between 2:30 and 4 o’ clock. But Chef Huang was afraid of arousing suspicion so he didn’t dare to be overly deliberate and he could only find an issue with your room to give Proprietress Ling a reason to search it.”
Gu Liang nodded, “According to his words, Proprietress Ling was settling the accounts at the counter back then, and in addition to the fact that Waitress Jing might be tidying up the place from 1 to 2 in the afternoon, it was highly likely that Proprietress Ling would only go to my room after 2 o’ clock in the afternoon. He has a half-hour discrepancy.”
Behind the lenses, Yang Ye narrowed his eyes. “If it was truly as what Chef Huang declared, he has no way of guaranteeing that Proprietress Ling will definitely be in your room after 2:30. Moreover, the reason that he gave Proprietress Ling doesn’t make up a reason for why Proprietress Ling had to go to your empty room at that specific timing either.”
Gu Liang looked towards Yang Ye, his eyes brightening. “Mn, I understand the ‘issue’ you’re talking about. Chef Huang told Proprietress Ling about the problem in my room in the afternoon. If there are no unforeseen circ.u.mstances, Proprietress Ling going to my room to search it right after 2 o’ clock is completely possible.
“But an unforeseen incident did happen— At 1:30 in the afternoon, Zhao Meili stabbed Proprietress Ling with a knife. Logically speaking, Proprietress Ling should go and look for Zhao Meili first to ask her what is going on in concrete terms to settle the debt, or she should go back to her room to deal with her wound at least and recuperate. Techniques to Capture Ghosts wrote that after a ghost is illuminated by the rhinoceros horn, they can get injured, but the rate of recovery is dependent on the situation.”
Yang Ye propped up his gla.s.ses, saying: “Yes, therefore, speaking in the strictest sense, I don’t believe that Proprietress Ling would run to your room again to search for the item after she was stabbed by a knife at 1:30 in the afternoon, and then stand in front of the window of your room after 2:30, waiting for the fatal shot from the gun.”
“That being said, the third issue is—”
Lowering his head, Yang Ye continued to hold a pen and write. He opened his mouth to say: “Waitress Jing was the person who recommended us to go out and explore. You looked for her because you wanted the fis.h.i.+ng equipment, which is why she knew you were fis.h.i.+ng the entire time. If she wanted to kill the vagrant, she should have used something like the Incense Absorbing Amulet to conceal her physical body. But she didn’t, she allowed you to see her, which means that even if she has more than enough reason to kill the vagrant after our a.n.a.lysis, we should be able to eliminate this possibility.”
Gu Liang sidled up to Yang Ye and sat down, looking through the three issues he had penned down once more. He gave the final conclusion: “With the first issue, Waitress Jing coincidentally using one shot to kill Proprietress Ling, the degree of coincidence that it requires is too large, but it’s not enough to eliminate her suspicion. As for the third issue you were talking about, you can actually doubt if she’s trying to reverse the psychology, and it’s not enough to completely eliminate her.
“But if you combine them together with the second issue, these three issues actually become the three biggest points of suspicion if she’s really the murderer. When you look at them in totality, certainly, we can essentially eliminate her suspicion.
“Therefore, the possibility of Waitress Jing and Chef Huang being the two murderers can also be eliminated.
“It’s just that if this is truly the case, we have returned to this question once more—”
Gu Liang gazed at Yang Ye, “If Waitress Jing didn’t have the intention to kill Vagrant Qian, this indicates that she was utterly committed to cooperating with Vagrant Qian to kill Proprietress Ling. If so, the plan that she and Vagrant Qian conceived, should be Vagrant Qian executing the shot, while the person bringing Proprietress Ling to the window can only be Waitress Jing herself.
“If that’s the case, the left-handed letter that Chef Huang received, who sent it?”