Chapter 65
(Six Corpses, Three Murderers; Travelling across three hundred years to meet you.)
After the system broadcast ended, the first thing Yang Ye did was return back to Butler Hao’s room and open his closet. Then, without any reservations, he proceeded to take off his clothes in front of Gu Liang.
Since Gu Liang was facing Yang Ye at that moment, he was caught off guard completely, and he saw Yang Ye’s firm but not overly exaggerated abdominal muscles.
Gu Liang stiffened before he immediately lowered his face, choosing to stare at the keys in his hands. “… What are you doing?”
“Changing my clothes.”
Yang Ye looked at him smilingly before he pretended that he had not seen anything, “If I wear the evening finery that clearly belongs to a gentleman from the middle ages, anyone would know that I’m a vampire.”
Yang Ye changed into the butler’s clothes in an efficient manner and placed his previous clothes inside the closet before he pulled out a few more sets of the butler’s clothing. “I’ll place these in Sc.u.mbag Yu’s room, we’ll observe the situation first before deciding if I can continue acting as Sc.u.mbag Yu.”
“Sure.”
Nodding, Gu Liang considered the words that the system previously announced before he said: “The system mentioned an extremely crucial detail just now, our current scenario includes Actor Ming who has stayed over two nights, the mysterious guests who have just arrived at the ancient castle, and Magnate Rong who had just returned from his business talks.
“This symbolises that from last night up until now, I’m the only inhabitant on the sixth floor. Therefore, we have to take the opportunity to smash all the mirrors before all the other players come wandering over.”
“All the bats will attack you, so just leave the rest of the rooms to me. You should stay by the elevator and keep a lookout, and watch which floor the elevator stops on to give me cues. I’ll meet you at the elevator entrance in a short while.”
As Yang Ye said that, he took the butler’s keys from Gu Liang’s hand, and swiftly departed with several sets of clothes.
Gu Liang walked over to the elevator entrance quickly and waited.
The elevator display was still on the first floor.
Gu Liang became well-aware of the situation in his heart— If there were no unforeseen circ.u.mstances, this meant that apart from him, after the other guests had left in succession, which was followed by Magnate Rong’s departure, and Butler Hao and Lady Rong’s trip to the vegetable garden, no one had returned to the sixth floor again.
Honestly speaking, Gu Liang knew that his blunt smas.h.i.+ng of the mirrors posed some risks.
However, under the circ.u.mstances where the received information was limited, he could only use this simple and crude method before working his way out.
Otherwise, if someone suddenly entered Sc.u.mbag Yu’s room and immediately saw the mirror situation, it could be said that his and Yang Ye’s side tasks would be directly met with failure.
Of course, that person might also suspect if he and Yang Ye were the cause of the broken mirror shards inside the rooms’ dustbins, but they still had some leeway for lies in that scenario.
Apart from the rooms utilised by the eight characters in the previous script and the storage room, there were still four more rooms on this floor that were unused.
He saw Yang Ye making his way into Sc.u.mbag Yu’s room first before he stepped into Lady Rong and Magnate Rong’s room. Finally, he used the key to open the last seven rooms, entered, smashed the mirrors, walked out again and locked the doors. Everything was done in one breath.
Throughout the process, Gu Liang felt a strange sensation in his mouth.
Subsequently, he realised that he had grown sharpened incisors.
It seems like 9 o’ clock had arrived, and he had turned into a vampire as well.
Gu Liang recalled the ancient castle’s blueprints: a portion of the first level and the second floor to fifth floor had not been opened prior to this.
He did not know what the mirror situation was like in those areas.
But there were none in the main lobby.
With regards to the main hall, however, there were mirrors in the toilets on the terrace and the chef’s resting lounge had a huge mirror.
He had seen that mirror he went on stage to perform that night, which had been placed there since the resting lounge was acting as a temporary backstage make-up room for the singers.
Gu Liang thought, regardless of whether he was in his vampiric or human state later, he had to avoid being in certain places with other people.
Because he was not certain if the person he was being in the mirror with was a human or a vampire.
Yang Ye was the same.
Yang Ye quickly returned after smas.h.i.+ng all the mirrors.
Gu Liang noted that time on the card was 9:20.
Since the elevator did not move at all, it was apparent that no one had gone up or down during this period of time.
Gu Liang turned towards Yang Ye: “Do you have any plans for what we should do after?”
“Spend the next 15 minutes eating our breakfast as quickly as possible, going to the back kitchen to inspect the corpse, before checking the other places.” Yang Ye said, “Liang Liang, you don’t have a good stomach, you need to eat your breakfast on time.”
“Sure. But before we eat breakfast, we should make a simple organisation of the incidents that have occurred thus far.”
Gu Liang asked Yang Ye: “As of right now, what and who is your character exactly? Do you have any information on your end? Are you related to Sc.u.mbag Yu in any way?”
“How about this, come along with me first, I discovered a little something just now.”
Yang Ye turned around, bringing Gu Liang towards Magnate Rong’s room.
As they were going there, Yang Ye told Gu Liang about the information related to his character.
“The information that I received told me that I am Earl William. My native place seems to be undergoing a great war between vampires and werewolves, and I was defeated. Hence, I ran away. I came to this ancient castle from those distant parts for the sake of finding Duke Dahl.
“Duke Dahl and I are both vampires, and I heard that he has a daughter called Princess Rose, who is also a vampire. But when I arrived here, I didn’t see either of them.
“Prior to this, I received a message from Duke Dahl via magical means, stating that he and the Princess had gone out. He told me to go to the sixth floor of the ancient castle directly, find a room to reside in and wait for his return, and that he’d host a welcoming party for me later.
“Consequently, I stayed in the room indicated by the card, and the room was completely empty. I randomly lied down on the ground. When I woke up later, I didn’t expect that I would be on your bed.”
“The room was completely empty?” Gu Liang found it strange.
“Yes. Duke Dahl said that since he had just hosted a banquet in the other parts of the ancient castle, it was in an utter mess and he didn’t manage to clean it up in time, so he told me to go to the sixth floor.”
Yang Ye continued, “Vampires typically sleep in coffins, so sleeping on the hard floor doesn’t mean much. Mn… Hold on—”
Yang Ye recalled the experience he had last night briefly before he said: “I’m certain that there wasn’t any furniture in the room I stayed in last night. But there were paintings on the wall, the sort of oil painting that is directly painted on the walls. En… I’m not an expert in this aspect by any means, but they should be drawn with oil painting materials. That painting is identical to the one you have at the head of the bed in your room.”
Gu Liang’s eyebrows furrowed together subconsciously. He mulled over it before he tossed out another question: “Then, what did the ancient castle look like when you arrived last night?”
Yang Ye replied: “In terms of its external appearance, it was similar to this ancient castle, but the interiors were completely different. For example, the first-floor main lobby of our ancient castle was decked out in jade and gold in glorious splendour, but the ancient castle I stepped into last night was exceeding dim and dark by comparison. The floors and walls were all constructed out of deep-coloured rocks and they were not painted. It looked rather grimdark in general, as though vampires were genuinely incapable of being in the light.”
Gu Liang: “According to the general plot last night, that personage by the name of Duke Dahl, he’s the owner of this ancient castle, and he has been existing since three hundred years ago? The person who messaged you was him, right?”
“Yes, it’s him.”
Yang Ye nodded his head, “Which is why there weren’t any electric lights when I walked into the ancient castle last night, but there were torches on the walls. And naturally, there was no lift in the main lobby, and I used the stairway to get to the sixth floor. The spiral staircase was made out of stone, which was located in the centre of the main lobby. Judging from my circ.u.mstances, it’s highly likely that I was 300 years past last night.”
Gu Liang questioned him, “Therefore, your story isn’t related to Sc.u.mbag Yu in the slightest? And the system happened to make you act as the character of the Earl, and this Earl existed 300 years ago? Afterwards, you arrived at this ancient castle as the Earl and you might have time travelled?”
Yang Ye nodded. “Yes. That does seem to be the case from our present outlook. Moreover, I keep getting the sense that Magnate Rong isn’t that simple.”
Gu Liang frowned in reply. “Certainly. He and I were the only survivors in this ancient castle. He’s also the current owner of this ancient castle. He is definitely aware of more secrets pertaining to this ancient castle.”
Yang Ye uttered, “For the same reasons, I took more time to inspect his room when I was inside smas.h.i.+ng his mirror just now. There was a notebook on his desk, and there are traces of a page being torn away. It suggests that he wrote something prior to this, except the page he had written on was torn away by him. We can use a pencil to shade in the next page to see the contents.”
“Why didn’t you shade it just now?” Gu Liang queried.
“For one, I didn’t know if other people would arrive at any given time, so I had to destroy the mirror first before doing anything else.”
Yang Ye shot a smile at Gu Liang, stretching a hand out to ruffle his hair: “Secondly, which is also the most crucial point, be it the investigation or something else, nothing is more important than you eating breakfast.”
Gu Liang: “……”
The pair had already arrived at the entrance of Magnate Rong’s room by that point in their conversation.
Casting Yang Ye a sidelong glance, Gu Liang retrieved the key from his hand to open the door before entering the room first.
There were no bats inside Magnate Rong’s room.
Gu Liang walked to the front of the desk, feeling a.s.sured, and as antic.i.p.ated, there was an open notebook on the desk with obvious markings on the flipped open page.
The notebook happened to have a pencil too.
Gu Liang picked up the pencil and shaded in the pen markings carefully.
The contents on the previous page that had been ripped away emerged without suspense.
— There were four words: “KILL ALL OF THEM”.
“Kill, All, Of, Them…” Gu Liang read those four words out slowly. He looked at Yang Ye: “What do you think these few words mean?”
At that moment, Gu Liang was sitting in front of the desk.
He was holding a pen, a notebook in front of him, and there was a lamp light on his right hand side.
The lamp was using a bulb that emitted a soft yellow light which was not harmful to the eyes. Now that it was s.h.i.+ning on Gu Liang’s visage, it made him appear particularly warm, gentle, and attractive.
He essentially resembled an obedient student doing their homework, and because he had just encountered a question he did not know how to solve, he had turned towards his teacher to ask for help.
“Yang Ye?” Gu Liang prodded him with a sentence.
Yang Ye coughed in reply, returning to his senses. He said: “When we voted out the real murderer and accomplice yesterday, that was just a task in the game. Lady Rong was the murderer we had to find as players. But inside the scripted story, especially where Magnate Rong’s story is concerned, Lady Rong isn’t the murderer.
“In Magnate Rong’s eyes, we are the people who have acted against his daughter, and we’re the murderers who ought to be locked up. His daughter only killed an evil spirit, and the butler was only helping him protect the family’s reputation.”
When Gu Liang heard the pa.s.sage of words that Yang Ye spoke, he was a little surprised in actuality.
Because he could sense that Yang Ye was clearly in a trance just now, and he had no way of knowing what kind of strange things Yang Ye was imagining in his mind.
But when you ask him a question, he’s actually capable of answering properly.
From the look of things, if this flippant person tried to solve the case seriously from the beginning to the end, wouldn’t our effectiveness be higher?
Despite Gu Liang’s spurning, he grasped the implications behind Yang Ye’s words very quickly.
After the voting for the previous segment ended, and before they left the centralised discussion room, everyone had received the detailed original case from the real murderer’s perspective.
Truth to be told, Gu Liang had originally suspected that Butler Hao might have been the accomplice because he held some affections for Lady Rong prior to the voting segment.
It was only after he read the whole story that he understood that Butler Hao’s character behaviour had been spurred by – or perhaps what his actions were incited by – the single-minded goal of protecting the Rong Family, where he did not want any harmful rumours to spread out from the ancient castle. It had never been because he loved and adored Lady Rong.
And who had cultivated his loyal, responsible, and diligent att.i.tude? The previous butler was the likely contender.
To take the deduction a step further, the belief that the butler had to protect the Rong Family could not be disa.s.sociated from Magnate Rong’s person in the slightest.
With how much the butlers defended the Rong Family’s honourable reputation, why would Magnate Rong be any different or less defensive?
For the sake of the Rong Family reputation, Magnate Rong would never put in less effort, he would only do more than the butlers.
A moment later, Gu Liang said: “Therefore, the ‘them’ from the ‘kill all of them’ on this torn paper, should be referring to Sc.u.mbag Yu, Designer Mei, and Confidant Ai. It’s true that the three of them died last night.”
Yang Ye nodded: “The dolls in the ancient castle coming to life, Lady Rong almost marrying an evil spirit, and the death of the bridegroom… All these matters, from Magnate Rong’s perspective, are things that can never be disseminated. Or else the Rong Family’s reputation would be damaged, and Lady Rong’s happiness might be ruined as well.
“Even though the skies had already darkened and everyone wanted to leave on the second day, Magnate Rong only allowed Actor Ming to stay. He instructed the commercial car to send the other guests away, deceiving and making them believe that their ride would bring them back to the city area. But in reality, he wanted to have them killed. It’s possible that the paper where he wrote “kill all of them” was a direct order given to the driver of said commercial car.”
Having said that, Yang Ye paused before he added, “Of course, this is just a deduction, but I feel that the possibility is incredibly high.
“And thus, the three characters Sc.u.mbag Yu, Designer Mei, and Confidant Ai have died. However, in consideration of the players’ distribution and scheduling, the system still allowed us to continue acting. Therefore, if we meet Su Lan and Li Xiao Yu again later, they should have new characters as well.”
After a moment of contemplation, Yang Ye propped up his gla.s.ses and added: “The question that we are confronted with right now is: how did Lady Rong and Butler Hao die?”
A detail came to mind. Gu Liang asked Yang Ye: “Do you still remember the instance where Old Man Meng asked Designer Mei about her motivation to kill during the centralised discussion? Designer Mei expressed that she was a paid murderer. If that’s the case…”
“Mn, that’s possible.” Yang Ye understood Gu Liang’s insinuation very quickly, and continued his train of thought. He said, “At that time, perhaps the person who truly wanted to kill Lady Rong was also residing inside the ancient castle. They either arrived late, or they were concealed inside the ancient castle the entire time.
“In any case, they decided to take matters into their own hands when they saw Designer Mei fail.”
“The possible sequence of events is that… After Lady Rong realised that the Doll was protecting her in truth, she felt a little sad, so she went to the vegetable field where she burnt the Doll to reminiscence. The butler was not a.s.sured so he chose to follow her. However, both of them were killed in the vegetable field in the end.”
Gu Liang: “Consequently, this means that the murderer who killed Lady Rong and Butler Hao might be among the players we will meet downstairs later.”
“Yes. With regards to what this script wants us to do, we can only counter every move accordingly.”
Yang Ye patted Gu Liang’s shoulder, “Okay. let’s go and eat breakfast first, good student.”
“Student?”
“When you were holding a pen in all seriousness, you looked like a good student.”
“So what were you imagining just now?”
“Imagining all the times where you looked cute!”
“I… Forget it.”
Gu Liang knew he should not have asked.
* * *
When the elevator doors opened after its descent, the main lobby in front of them still maintained its grand opulence.
However, a lot of strange objects had appeared— like a half-melted white candle, a stained red skirt, one red high heel, and there was even an extremely ancient loom.
If these objects were coordinated with a dark room and pitch-black walls, or perhaps seen under bizarre lighting, they would be rather frightening, since it seemed like something straight out of a haunted house.
But when they were placed in the bright main lobby, and on considerably expensive marble floors, they merely appeared inharmonious and slightly odd.
“These items…” Gu Liang scrutinised them for a moment before he thought of something and said, “It’s like the butler’s room, numerous strange and antiquated objects have appeared.”
Yang Ye told him: “I’ve seen these items in the ancient castle I went into last night, and the placements are more or less the same. I was even remarking that this ancient castle was quite messy then, and I was wondering what had happened before the Duke and Princess left.”
Gu Liang’s pupils dilated as if he seemed to realise something. In a low voice, he uttered. “Therefore, you’re not the only one who time travelled. These bats, mouse corpses, and these objects, should have travelled across 300 years with you. No… Not only these objects, there are other vampires, they should have travelled across as well.”
“Mn.” Yang Ye nodded, “The original owner of this ancient castle is Duke Dahl. His daughter is Princess Rose. It’s possible that both of them are here too.”
As they were communicating in low voices, the pair lightened their footsteps and slowly traversed through the main lobby while avoiding those strange objects to make their way towards the main hall.
The doors to the main hall were closed. Before opening the door, Gu Liang leaned against the door, pressing his ears against the door to have a listen. Then, he turned towards Yang Ye and mouthed: “There are people inside, quite a few.”
Therefore, it was possible that apart from himself and Yang Ye, all the other players had decided to investigate the chef’s corpse after they had heard the system broadcast.
Gu Liang thought about it before pulling Yang Ye into a corner.
Yang Ye was pulled to one of the lobby corners by his wrist, and when Gu Liang looked over his shoulder, he noted that no one had exited. Hence, following his general momentum, he pushed Yang Ye into the wall corner and placed his hand on the wall. Unexpectedly, they fell into a “kabedon” positioning.
Yang Ye was extremely cooperative throughout the entire process, as though he was completely powerless to resist against Gu Liang.
Turning his head back, Gu Liang was on the verge of saying something when he saw Yang Ye looking at him with a ruffian-like grin hanging on his parted lips.
Gu Liang: “What’s up with your expression?”
Yang Ye asked him in a gentle tone. “Are you trying to kiss me back now because I kissed you in the morning?”
Gu Liang: “……”
Yang Ye: “Come on, I won’t reject it.”
Gu Liang narrowed his eyes, giving him an ice-cold stare. Then, he kneed Yang Ye’s leg without using much strength, and it was evident that his action was very light.
Hence, after Yang Ye was nudged in such a manner, he raised his hand to hold Gu Liang’s lower jaw, and said in a righteous-sounding voice: “Are you seducing me?”
Gu Liang slapped his hand away, exerting a lot of strength this time around. “Can you be serious!”
“Sure thing, wife!”
Gritting the molars of his teeth, Gu Liang suppressed the rising urge to kick his leg viciously as he said: “There are mirrors in the chefs’ resting lounge and restrooms, make sure you avoid those areas later.”
Yang Ye pondered briefly before he spoke in a serious tone: “If we combine the information from my script and what we’ve discovered thus far, only two vampires have travelled across with me if our previous deductions weren’t wrong. Or perhaps it’s better to say, there are at least two vampires because there might be other vampires that I’m not aware of. Hence, with me included, there are three vampires present at least.
“Additionally, there are ‘new visitors’ in this script, and it’s highly probable that they are responsible for the deaths of Lady Rong and Butler Hao. Lastly, since Magnate Rong has returned back to the ancient castle in the morning after his business negotiations, the human Magnate Rong is with us as well.”
Gu Liang: “And what are you trying to suggest?”
“What I’m trying to suggest is that, regardless of whether they are humans or vampires, all the other players in this script might have received the same task— concealing their own ident.i.ties. Of course, I don’t think all the players have received side tasks. At the very least, however, they might possess contextual clues like— mirrors can expose vampires, vampires will kill humans and whatnot.”
“I understand.” Gu Liang nodded, “Under the circ.u.mstances where we’re uncertain who the vampires are, normal people won’t stand in the mirror with other people either, lest the vampires discover that they’re humans and kill them. Hence, everyone will avoid being in the mirror together in reality. We don’t need to get too hung up over the mirror problem.”
“Yes. But it’s also correct for us to smash the mirrors, since it saves us from the possibility of someone suddenly charging in.”
Yang Ye said, “Now that the mirrors in all the other rooms have been smashed, it can prevent a lot of unexpected situations. The only problem is that since all the mirrors are broken, it will be more difficult for us to differentiate who the vampires and humans are.
“Furthermore, the bats in the rooms haven’t been dealt with. How we’re going to handle that later requires more consideration. We have to be extremely careful with every step.”
Yang Ye originally wanted to bring his Gu Liang Liang to eat their breakfast after he was done saying those words.
However, he noted that Gu Liang was extremely stern, as though he had sunk into deep contemplation again.
“Gu Liang? Are there other problems?” Yang Ye asked.
Gu Liang said: “I suddenly discovered an incredibly huge problem.”
“Hm?” Yang Ye stared at him.
Gu Liang asked him: “I have to ask, apart from the mirrors, are there any other methods to distinguish vampires on your end? For example, are vampires afraid of sunlight or something?”
Yang Ye shook his head: “Not from my current purview. While I have more information concerning the Duke and the Princess on my end, it would be better if we make our judgements based on the plot and our brain holes. I’ll tell you about them in length later.”
Gu Liang: “To conclude, when we meet the other players later, there will be humans and vampires. Like you, those vampires have travelled across, and they will find a chance to change into human clothes in this ancient castle to pretend to be human. But humans will have no way of pretending to be a vampire.”
Similarly, Yang Ye gave it some thought and then replied: “That should be the case, yes. Other players — I’m referring to the players with normal ident.i.ties here — should have received explicit story explanations, or some hints at the very least, that some vampires have dressed up as humans to mix into the group in this ancient castle.
“Only vampires will act as humans, never the reverse, or else we will have no way of playing this game.”
Everyone appeared to be normal humans, but there were vampires hidden inside.
Normal players were also aware of this condition, but they did not know who was a vampire specifically.
And between the vampires, they would have no way of mutually identifying each other. They would only know that among the group of humans, their own kind existed, but they would be clueless about who their kin were.
It was only when the set-up followed such conventions that the game would become comparatively reasonable, or else the normal humans could not play at all.
Gu Liang: “Mn. Agreed.”
“Yang Ye: “What are you worrying about?”
Gu Liang: “In the morning… there were too many confusing matters, my mind was in a slight mess. Truthfully speaking, I received three side tasks, and I haven’t had the time to tell you about them in detail.”
Having reached this point, Gu Liang told Yang Ye about his transformation period, which dictated that he would switch between being a human and vampire at certain time intervals.
Additionally, beyond his transformation period, he also told Yang Ye about the two side tasks which required him to conceal his ident.i.ty as a vampire in front of humans, while also concealing his ident.i.ty as a human in front of vampires.
Gu Liang said: “Apart from those two, my third task states that I have to help you conceal your ident.i.ty.”
After hearing those words, Yang Ye did not contemplate for long before he spat out a vulgar word soundlessly. “This system is truly shady. Had it been a less intelligent player, they would fail their tasks directly.”
Gu Liang: “Yes. There’s a trap in my tasks. I can’t complete all three of my tasks concurrently. I have to pick a side.”
— This was the dubious part of the system, the side tasks could not be completed in its entirety, since something needed to be abandoned.
If Gu Liang followed the task prompts stupidly, the story developments might be like this:
— After distinguis.h.i.+ng who was a human and a vampire with Yang Ye’s given information, Gu Liang would divulge the fact that he was a vampire to the vampires he met; and when he encountered the humans, he would also reveal himself as a human.
Then, if there was a task that required everyone to vote for the player who was neither human nor vampire because of their transformation period during the centralised discussion, Gu Liang would be directly exposed once everyone compared their information.
In a situation where the game had just begun and everyone was mystified, the tasks had arrived.
Despite being under trying circ.u.mstances where the information was incredibly limited, they had to do their tasks, guess the plot and the given settings. As if that was not enough, even the game rules in the scenario was also dependent on the player’s conjecture now.
Needless to say, the difficulty had increased by another star again.
“We’re done here. I’m clear about the situation, and I’ll continue observing before I choose which task to complete. Let’s go into the dining hall to meet the other players.” Gu Liang took out his card to check the time, it was already 9:40 right now.
Upon returning to the entrance of the main hall, Gu Liang and Yang Ye exchanged glances before they pushed open the main doors together.
The first thing that entered their eyes was a corpse, and it was a corpse with very distinctive characteristics.
— He was wearing a chef’s hat, his white kitchen uniform had been undone, and it could be observed that he was essentially a dried corpse.
And there were two distinct holes on the position above his collar bone, with some blood surrounding the wound.
He was sucked dry by a vampire.
There was no need to doubt this conclusion.
It was at this moment where Gu Liang realised that Yang Ye’s previous conjectures were all correct— the normal humans in the player group must have received clues regarding the vampires, and they were aware that there were vampires among the humans.
However, this clue was not inscribed in their card plots directly; instead, they were allowed to reach that deduction through this corpse.
“Yang Ye! Gu Liang! I was just wondering where the both of you went! This is great, we meet again, I have big thighs to hug!”
— It was Li Xiao Yu’s voice.
The translator has something to say:
This chapter was part of my previous ma.s.s queue, so it was uploaded as per usual. Additionally, to reiterate what I said on CG Discord: I will be taking a short one week break from translating due to real life commitments and slight burnout (because I don’t know what ‘moderation’ is even if it slaps me in the face), and updates will resume proper next Tuesday!
I ask for your understanding and tolerance ><
(Also, it’s my birthday today, so enjoy this chapter~!)