Chapter 75
(Gun and Fugitives; The complete loss of a mirror image)
After going past the sunflowers and walking 500 more metres, the players reached one of the newly opened areas in the scenario— a road on the western periphery.
There was a silver-grey car parked on the road.
It was the only object on the otherwise wide and empty street.
Gu Liang thought of something and he asked Chief Mei: “In the first segment, when we were voting for the chef’s murderer, everyone talked about their timelines. Back then, you said that you drove here at 8:30 in the morning. This is your car?”
Chief Mei’s expression was slightly strange. “It’s mine, yes.”
After saying those words, he could not resist walking up to the car to pull open the door.
Strangely enough, he managed to open the car door without using his car key.
Chief Mei furrowed his eyebrows unconsciously. “I had a.s.sumed that this car would be gone. It’s 11 November today and we arrived here on 9 November. The vegetable field from that day, has already turned into a sunflower garden now. Our map is changing. What kind of world have we come to exactly?”
Yang Ye walked over to the co-driver’s seat and he managed to pull open the car door easily as well. “No matter what kind of world it is, this clue should be derived from the actual reality; it’s just that some of them came from 300 years ago, while others came from the present moment. Let’s check it over first.”
Yang Ye slid into the co-driver seat while Gu Liang opened the back door and slid into the car as well.
After entering the back seat, Gu Liang glanced out of the window, and he happened to see Chief Mei and Sister Mei looking at each other outside. The gaze that they exchanged was clearly deep with meaning.
After shooting them a swift glimpse, Gu Liang retracted his line of sight and directed it towards the backseat. There were various kinds of weapons like knives and guns, alongside a compa.s.s. There were even some grotesquely shaped stick-like objects.
When he pulled apart the upholstery of the backrest, he found there were numerous spell books inside.
Before Gu Liang could inspect them carefully, he heard Li Xiao Yu’s shriek: “Corpses! Lady Rong’s and Butler Hao’s corpses! In the back trunk!”
Once Li Xiao Yu’s voice landed, Gu Liang and Yang Ye got out of the car simultaneously and strode towards the back trunk together.
When the hatch to the back trunk was opened, a malodour diffused outwards instantaneously.
This was an odour that was being emitted by the two corpses after they were stored there for around 3 days.
Since there was a gunshot wound in Butler Hao’s chest, he probably died after being shot. His corpse did not look that terrible.
Whereas Lady Rong’s corpse was comparatively miserable.
There was not a single patch of skin on Lady Rong’s corpse that was complete.
Staring from the s.p.a.ce between her brows, knife wounds covered her entire body.
It was like someone had used a knife to draw some kind of array on her body, dragging the knife along the bone of her nose, the contours of her cheeks…. going all the way down to etch a strange symbol.
Her cheek, torso, abdomen and the fabrics above had been lacerated, and the blood staining said areas had turned black completely, which made it look excessively horrible.
The most severe of her wounds was on her wrist.
— There was an extremely deep slash there.
Under the circ.u.mstances where the corpses was rotting rapidly, the decomposing flesh around the wound on her wrist had already fallen off, thus revealing a ghastly white bone, but that area seemed to bleed the least instead.
It was like someone had deliberately slashed the vein in her wrist in an attempt to extract her blood.
Li Xiao Yu never had the tolerance for looking at corpses with such wretched states of death, so she ran away immediately.
When she was at least 30 metres away, she said: “When you’re done investigating… Please close the hatch of the back trunk.”
Even if Li Xiao Yu did not say that, the other players would have done it all the same.
After checking the corpses, everyone closed the back trunk unanimously.
A moment later, Yang Ye slid back into the car and took out a few guns before he stepped off again. He said: “When I was serving in the military and prior to my eye injury which resulted in irreverserible damage to my vision, my marksmans.h.i.+p has always been decent.”
Having said that, Yang Ye looked towards Chief Mei and Sister Mei. “But between the two of you, someone’s marksmans.h.i.+p is evidently better than mine.”
Swiftly and with ease, Yang Ye unloaded the installed silencer and loaded bullets in the gun with great familiarity before he said: “This is a sniper rifle. During actual combat, there are actually very few instances where a sniper uses a silencer, because the installed silencer on the sniper rifle will affect the trajectory of the bullet as it leaves the barrel. And if they fail to land the shot, it will expose their objective and they will be sniped by the enemy instead.
“However, they don’t need to worry about this if they were using a sniper rifle to a.s.sa.s.sinate a normal person outside of the battlefield. The silencer is used for the sake of reducing the decibel, so that it won’t attract the attention of the other guests in the ancient castle.
“This suggests that… the skill of the sniper is extremely high.
“Lady Rong and Butler Hao died a few nights ago. The fact that the person could accurately shoot Butler Hao’s heart and take his life in one shot, despite having poor night vision and a silencer installed on their sniper rifle, means that the perpetrator is very professional. This isn’t something a normal person can accomplish. That being said, who is that individual between the two of you?”
Sister Mei and Chief Mei did not make a sound.
After hearing Yang Ye’s words, Li Xiao Yu stared at the both of them in shock. Meanwhile, Su Lan slipped into the driver’s seat and began the next step of their search.
Gu Liang also stared at the pair as he said: “When we were casting our votes at that start, the system asked us who killed them. We voted for Chief Mei but our answer was wrong. Afterwards, we thought that the murderer should be Sister Mei. However, Sister Mei was a woman, how did she manage to kill two people? Now that we’ve seen the gun, we can explain everything.
“However—”
Gu Liang paused momentarily before he continued, “If we only selected Sister Mei then, I reckon our answer would still be wrong. Lady Rong’s body is full of knife wounds but there are no bullet wounds. Only Butler Hao was shot.
“Therefore, I surmise that the original situation should be as such— someone stabbed Lady Rong and drained her blood to achieve some kind of unknown motive. During the process, Butler Hao came over. He probably wanted to save Lady Rong. Then, the other sniper hiding in the dark used their gun to kill Butler Hao to prevent him from ruining their objective.”
Gu Liang looked at Sister Mei and Chief Mei with a sense of oppression in his gaze. “That being said, between the two of you, who was the one who stabbed Lady Rong? And who was the sniper that killed Butler Hao? What is the story that both of you are hiding?”
Neither of the two opened their mouths.
Su Lan walked over from the car while holding a few pieces of newspaper. She stated, “Both of them are fugitives, notoriously known for tomb robbing, and they’re the sort who carry numerous lives on their back.”
Gu Liang received the newspaper to take a look. There was a published order of arrest on the newspaper, and while it did not have their photographs, it stated their character profiles, which made it apparent that it was Chief Mei and Sister Mei.
It wrote, they were a male and female who formed a group to rob tombs. The female between them had a background of an international mercenary while the male was proficient in the Five Elements and metaphysics.
When Chief Mei saw the situation reaching this point, he revealed some helplessness on his visage. “Cough… since we’ve reached this point, I can only come clean. Sister Mei… is indeed the sniper. We collaborated to commit the crime. The situation was similar to Actor Ming’s deduction.
“But this was our side task, and for the sake of earning the reward, we concealed it.”
During this period of time, Li Xiao Yu was moving the remaining evidence out of the car ceaselessly.
When Gu Liang saw that pile of familiar-looking spell books, a certain cognitive a.s.sociation emerged in his mind abruptly.
Subsequently, he asked Chief Mei: “Are you related to the Eastern Magician?”
Chief Mei said: “Yes. He’s the founder of the Sect I came from, he can be considered as my founding ancestor.”
* * *
After a brief moment of recollection, Chief Mei started talking about his story.
“The Eastern Magician, who is also my founding ancestor, was regarded as a great hero because he killed the evil demon who heralded from the west, and saved hundreds and thousands of people.
“Truth to be told, when I became aware of the fact that he was the one who killed Aimeili after finis.h.i.+ng the second segment’s task, I thought that this entire matter was ironic.
“You can’t say that he’s done anything wrong, but the greatest honour in his life, and even the position he held later… All of it was paid for with a woman’s life.”
When he spoke to this point, he shook his head and sighed helplessly. Then, Chief Mei continued to narrate.
“As early as 300 years ago, my founding ancestor Eastern Magician had died. I would frequently look for the things he left behind and I had a keen interest in the vampire story because I also wanted to know how he killed the vampire. But every time I asked my Master, my Master would say that he didn’t know. It seemed like everyone was hiding the story and they didn’t want anyone to know the truth.
“Later on, well, I had a wicked thought. If I stayed together with my Masters, I would only be calculating fates for people and I wouldn’t earn much money. Incidentally, I chanced upon Sister Mei and we clicked together easily, so we went down the tomb robbing route. Additionally, I rebelled against my Masters and ran away, which meant that I no longer had any a.s.sociations with my Sect.
“But I still had a vested interest in Duke Dahl’s story, so I kept paying attention to any rumours related to it.
“Based on the information I received from my numerous inquiries everywhere and cross-referencing it to the few isolated phrases that the Eastern Magician left behind, I made a judgement that— Duke Dahl did not die, he was only sealed.
“Moreover, in the rumours, Duke Dahl’s ancient castle could connect the two s.p.a.ce-times, but that was under the precondition that the seal was removed and he was allowed his freedom.
“As all of you can see, both of us are wanted criminals. If we are both caught, we can’t run away from the death penalty.
“Hence, both of us decided that before the police could catch us, we would travel to this ancient castle to try and see if we could run to 300 years past through the ancient castle’s s.p.a.ce-time travel.
“Actually, apart from evading our arrest warrants, we were both thinking, if we could control the opening of the s.p.a.ce-time tunnel and freely travel between 300 years ago and the present, we could take the past antiques and bring it to reality to sell it. And when we’re being chased by the police, we can flee into 300 years past again, wouldn’t that be great? We would have a lifetime’s worth of glory, splendour, wealth and fame, and we wouldn’t have to worry about our lives being in danger.
“Being caught by the police means that we only have a dead road ahead. While it was quite risky to undo the seal and allow the Duke to live, we would have a lifetime of riches once we stepped across this danger.
“Thus, we decided to take the risk out of desperation in the end. We unravelled the Duke’s seal and proceeded to allow him to open the s.p.a.ce-time tunnel.
“Through my many years of investigation, I learnt that the place to undo the seal was the vegetable field.
“One of the conditions to open the seal was: the fresh blood of a young lady who was stained with the ancient castle’s air.
“Lady Rong has always resided in the ancient castle, her body would definitely have the air of the ancient castle. I heard that Sc.u.mbag Yu had dumped her because she was against doing anything before marriage, so she had to be a young lady.
“This was the reason why I killed Lady Rong.
“Initially, we looked for Designer Mei and gave her some money in an attempt to borrow her hands to kill her. But she failed.
“The police could catch us at any given time. We decided not to wait any longer and acted personally.
“On the night of November 8, Lady Rong ran to the vegetable field by herself. I happened to catch hold of her and tried to use her blood to activate that unusual spell array and undo the Duke’s seal.
“We didn’t intend to kill the Butler. If there was no contingency, we didn’t want to use the gun either.
“After all, once we fired the bullet, it would still create a sound even with a silencer, which would easily provoke trouble. Moreover, if the bullet casing landed in the police’s hands, it wouldn’t be difficult for the police to trace it back to us.
“However, the Butler arrived just as we were killing Lady Rong. He opened his mouth, wanting to call for help, and Sister Mei, who was shadowing and lying in wait, could only use the silenced sniper rifle to kill him before he could make a sound.
“The rest is what you have already seen, we moved the corpses to the back trunk. We were planning to hide the corpses first and then camp out nearby to observe the situation to see if another s.p.a.ce-time had opened. But who could have known that I would black out in the next instant?
“When I woke up again, it was the morning of 9 November. Both us traversed through the fog, and then found an incredibly lost young lady.”
As he said that, Chief Mei glanced at Mother Ai, “That’s you.”
“After seeing you, I tried to go up to greet you and you started to call me your fiancé for no apparent reason. But I really didn’t know who you were.
“Although I wasn’t familiar with the lady I just met, I pretended to be her fiancé first since she was already calling me her fiancé. Moreover, I would have another false ident.i.ty if we were to meet other people. It was also from that moment where Sister Mei and I moved separately, pretending that we didn’t know each other, all for the sake of the side task.
“You know about the timeline that occurred afterwards. This is the complete story of me and Sister Mei. Of course, I’m not Designer Mei’s superior, and she’s not her older sister either. Those were our false ident.i.ties. Before we arrived at the ancient castle, we had already thought this through: if we needed to blend into the ancient castle in order to wait for an opportunity to kill Lady Rong, we would work under the guise of these ident.i.ties.”
After hearing Chief Mei’s long speech, Gu Liang took out the small notebook that he was bringing on his person. He clamped the pen cap between his lips and pulled it open before he jotted down some notes on the paper. Then, he capped the pen again and told Chief Mei: “Which means to say that you were lying prior to this. You previously said that you drove over to the ancient castle at 8:30 on 9 November, and as you were walking into the vegetable field at 9:40, you encountered Mother Ai.
“But in reality, you were already in the ancient castle by November 8. What was the specific time of your arrival? Furthermore, you stated that after you killed her, you suddenly lost consciousness, and when you woke up, it was the morning of the second day. At what time, and where did you wake up?”
Chief Mei replied: “On 8 November, around 11:50 at night, I stopped my car at its current position. As we were travelling here, we pa.s.sed by the southern road and saw that a commercial car had flipped over, and even saw three corpses, which should belong to Sc.u.mbag Yu, Designer Mei, and Confidant Ai, of whom all of you mentioned.
“Both of us were originally planning to lie in wait at the back of the ancient castle, and then wait for an opportunity to sneak in and commit the murder on the second day. We didn’t expect that at 12 midnight, Lady Rong would come to the vegetable field by herself. The opportunity could not be missed; thus, I infiltrated the vegetable field while holding a knife and killed her.
“The morning after… it should be 8 o’ clock. Sister Mei and I both woke up in the vegetable field at 8 o’ clock. But she stayed hidden while I went forward to greet Mother Ai.”
Gu Liang asked Li Xiao Yu: “You woke up at 8 o’ clock, right? It’s just that when you woke up ,you were already in the vegetable field and you stayed here for a full 40 minutes.”
Li Xiao Yu thought about it before she answered: “Rather than saying I woke up at 8 o’ clock, it can only be said that when I had the consciousness to take out my card to have a look, the time displayed was 8 o’ clock. As for what happened before 8, I have a rough and hazy memory that I was sent here by a driver before I started wandering around the vegetable field alone. Everything around me was fogged up and I couldn’t see anything clearly.”
Gu Liang tossed her another question. “But you can’t be certain about the fact that you were brought here by a car. When you regained consciousness, you were already in the vegetable field, and the time was 8 o’ clock, right?”
“Mn. That’s right.” Li Xiao Yu nodded her head.
Gu Liang regarded Su Lan next. “Is it convenient for you to say your actual timeline on the morning of November 9?”
Although Su Lan’s brows scrunched together unconsciously for a moment, she still replied: “I woke up at 8 o’ clock as well. The location I woke up at wasn’t the vegetable field, but in the vicinity of the garden dining room. In relation to 300 years ago, or perhaps the current world we’re residing in, it’s where the rose garden is situated.
“It was very close to the main hall. After I woke up, I headed straight for the west side door, walked into the main hall, and entered the back kitchen.
“For reasons unknown to me, I immediately went to suck the chef’s blood the moment I saw him.
“Vampires can’t suck all the blood dry immediately. I reached the back kitchen at 8:10 and I only finished draining his blood at 8:40. Afterwards, I left him in the kitchen and left through the west side door again.”
Thinking back about it, Su Lan said: “At 8:50, I reached the vegetable field. I saw the back figure of a woman from afar, and now that I think about it, it should be Sister Mei. I had to make a time differential, lest I was discovered by Sister Mei. Hence, I only chose to cut across the vegetable field and make my way towards the main entrance of the ancient castle from the outer periphery 10 minutes after her departure.”
“Yes. The person you saw was indeed me.”
Sister Mei finally decided to speak up, and she said: “Like what Chief Mei mentioned, after we woke up together, I chose to hide first while he went to strike a conversation with Mother Ai. Both of us were planning to see what would result from his approach before we decided on our next course of action.
“Neither of us expected that he would be directly recognised by Mother Ai as her fiancé. At 8:40, they talked briefly before they walked towards the main entrance from the outer periphery of the ancient castle. I didn’t want to b.u.mp into them either, so I lingered behind for 10 minutes. I left at 8:50, reached the main entrance at 9, b.u.mped into Magnate Rong, and then walked into the main hall with him.”
With all that has been said, Gu Liang was finally clear about everyone’s timeline regarding the 9th of November.
At 9 o’ clock, Mother Ai and Chief Mei reached the main hall first; 10 minutes later, Magnate Rong and Su Lan arrived; another 10 minutes later, Su Lan, acting as Traveller Meng, walked in.
Every group had a ten-minute interval between them and it turns out that the true reason lied here.
At this moment, Li Xiao Yu could not help but ask Gu Liang: “Why are you so fixated on the time of 8 o’ clock?”
Gu Liang said: “Because Yang Ye and I woke up at 8 o’ clock as well, which leads me to the notion that this timing is very important.
“At the very beginning, the plot was limited to the ancient castle. We thought that the places where the wall paintings were placed was where the time-s.p.a.ce overlap existed.
“But that doesn’t seem to be the case right now.
“Perhaps, from the moment we woke up at 8 o’ clock, we had already entered some kind of fantasy realm.”
Yang Ye sidled up to Gu Liang and patted his shoulders. “Chief Mei previously mentioned that when he was driving over on the night of November 8, he witnessed the scene of a car accident and three corpses on the southern road. That should be the other area of the map that system recently opened. Should we go over and have a look?”
“Sure.”
Gu Liang glanced at Chief Mei, “We’ll be troubling you to show us the way then.”
* * *
After walking for approximately 10 minutes, Chief Mei came to a stop.
He looked towards Sister Mei and said: “This should be the place, right? When I was driving last night, you were in the co-driver seat, you should have seen it too.”
“Mn, I caught a rough glimpse of it. It’s just that the car was flipped over on your side, so I didn’t manage to see how many corpses there were.”
Sister Mei surveyed their surroundings and she could not resist frowning as well. “It should be here, it can’t be wrong. But the three corpses have disappeared.”
Similarly, Gu Liang was looking around their surroundings.
On the wide and flat road, there were plane trees planted on both sides. Further north was a huge steel door, and going through the steel doors would lead to the park that the ancient castle was situated in.
The steel doors were facing the main entrance of the ancient castle.
Despite the thick vegetation of plane trees, they could still manage to see Sc.u.mbag Yu’s red sports car.
However, it could not be denied that there was nothing on the road.
Not only were the three corpses missing, even the commercial car was gone.
Hence, all the players were done searching through the two newly opened exploration areas.
— The western road had the car which explicated Sister Mei and Chief Mei’s story; the southern road was empty as it could be, and they could not discern anything.
After departing from the southern road, the six players walked up to the large steel doors.
The steel doors were open. Everyone walked into the steel door and walked for another 5 minutes before they turned back and returned to the ancient castle’s main entrance.
Then, they pushed open the doors and entered. Nothing inside the door had changed for the time being.
After entering the main lobby, Su Lan was the first to speak: “Where should we check first?”
Gu Liang replied: “Even though it’s nearly impossible to unravel what kind of world we are residing in, Yang Ye was right in saying that this ancient castle is separated into two sections. The first section is 300 years prior, while the other is our current time. The clues we found in these places are definitely real.
“The second to the fifth floors are mainly there to tell the story of the past. For the past two days, however, we were mostly moving around the sixth floor, so I think we can start investigating from the sixth floor. Personally, I want to check the deceased Magnate Rong’s room first. You can do whatever you wish.”
“Who smashed the mirrors on the sixth floor? Is no one going to admit to it?” Su Lan opened her mouth to ask.
Gu Liang walked towards the elevator expressionlessly, not uttering a word.
“This side task is clearly trying to pit people.”
Su Lan continued, “My side task has been exposed. Yang Ye is a vampire, his complexion makes it undeniable, to say nothing of how he’s the only unknown figure, which ensures that he will be easily exposed as well. Sister Mei and Chief Mei are the same, they can’t hide the fact that they’re wanted criminals.”
Su Lan stared at Gu Liang: “That leaves only you. Why did you smash the mirrors?”
“There’s no reason for me to do that.” Gu Liang said, “Furthermore, that took place on 9 November. I don’t think that it bears any relation to Magnate Rong and that mysterious man.”
Gu Liang still wanted to hide his side task for the time being.
Unless everyone had other mental a.s.sociations due to the broken mirrors which proceeded to affect their overall reasoning, only then would he reveal the truth.
* * *
After they stepped off the elevator on the sixth floor, everyone went to Magnate Rong’s first.
The door was not locked and they could open it directly.
The room was kept neat and tidily, there were no traces of conflict.
The desk still had the flipped open book, and when everyone approached it, they realised that the parchment was densely packed with written words.
“That is great, I can finally marry her.”
“November 11 will definitely be the happiest day of my life.”
“It is just that…. I discovered another me has appeared.”
“How could this be?”
“Although it should be said that…. he likes another person, they are going to marry soon as well.”
“But what if? He is another me, what if he wants to s.n.a.t.c.h away the beloved?”
“No way! I have to kill him!”
When Yang Ye was done reading this page, he could already feel his suspicions rising unceasingly.
— Tch, was this ancient castle jinxing him? Why was it making him the suspected murderer for two rounds consecutively?
Sure enough, Chief Mei immediately reacted and he said: “If this diary was written by Magnate Rong… It’s very obvious then. From what we know, the two couples who are going to get married tonight at 8 o’ clock are Magnate Rong and Mother Ai, and the Unknown Figure and Actor Ming. He’s definitely trying to say that he wants to kill the Unknown Figure. But the person who is currently dead is him. This implies—”
Chief Mei peered at Yang Ye: “Did he try to kill you, but you retaliated against him?”
Despite being accused, Yang Ye’s expression was calm. “You can have such a suspicion, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t leave my room once the entire afternoon. However… I met the other deceased. He came and looked for me.”
Gu Liang looked at Yang Ye immediately. “When did you meet him?”
“Around 3:30 in the afternoon.”
Yang Ye said, “I was sleeping until 3:30 and I saw him in my room when I woke up. I don’t know how he entered my room either. Afterwards, he told me some strange words.”
Yang Ye thought back about it, saying: “They went along the lines of…. I give both of you my heartfelt blessings. Your happy future is another ending for me.”
“I told him to leave but he kept talking to himself. I could not be bothered to acknowledge him so I went into the bathroom and locked the door to take a shower. When I came out after showering for half an hour, he was already gone.”
Chief Mei questioned him: “A mysterious person appeared in your room and you went to take a shower?”
Yang Ye answered in calm tones: “I’m a vampire, yes? No one can kill me. What am I supposed to be afraid of?”
* * *
After they came out of Magnate Rong’s room, the players scattered and began their own investigations.
Gu Liang followed Yang Ye to investigate the other rooms.
After searching through several rooms and returning to the corridor, Gu Liang was called to a stop by Li Xiao Yu.
The pair followed Li Xiao Yu into Gu Liang’s room.
However, they only saw Li Xiao Yu closing the door mysteriously before she took out a bed sheet that had specks of blood.
Gu Liang thought in his mind— Oh, could it be that he could no longer conceal the fact that he had been bitten by Yang Ye and turned into a vampire?
Contrary to his expectations, what Li Xiao Yu proceeded to say was: “This, I get it. If someone sees this later, it will definitely be quite embarra.s.sing for both of you. I’ll help both of you hide it?”
She, what kind of misconception was she having?
An ominous premonition arose in Gu Liang’s heart.
Subsequently, Li Xiao Yu said: “It’s fine! In any case, the system has already broadcasted it. I heard everything. You don’t need to feel embarra.s.sed in front of me.”
Gu Liang: “……”
With due haste, Li Xiao Yu turned around and opened the bathroom door. “Right, is there a was.h.i.+ng machine here?”
“Xiao Yu! Be careful of the bats!” Gu Liang said strictly.
In the instant where Li Xiao Yu opened the door, Yang Ye leapt forward first, entering the bathroom before Li Xiao Yu could step in.
Gu Liang reached the bathroom entrance shortly after. At this moment, he made a strange realisation— the bats inside the bathroom had unexpectedly disappeared.
Additionally, what astonished them more was that— He, Yang Ye and Li Xiao Yu were standing in front of the mirror simultaneously, but the mirror was utterly empty, and not a single human figure could be seen.