Chapter 87.1

(Closed Room Murder Mystery?)

Why was Ming Yue saying this?

Were his actions in compliance with the rules?

If the system designed such a complicated game to test the players’ intelligence or perhaps their deduction ability, his self-imploding behaviour would be a clear violation of the system’s original intention when it created the game.

Or was it that…. This game was not testing their intelligence.

After all, there were thousands of ways to test a person’s intelligence.

And if it was really testing something else, was it possible that Ming Yue’s current self-imploding behaviour was a test in itself?

Gu Liang could not comprehend it in spite of his contemplation, and he could only look at Ming Yue with furrowed brows.

However, before he had the time to say more, he heard Yang Ye’s voice.

— “Gu Liang!”

Turning around, Gu Liang looked towards the entrance leading to the second-floor lobby, and immediately saw Yang Ye striding over to him anxiously.

Yang Ye’s current appearance could only be described as extremely wretched.

— There was blood on half of his face. Despite being wounded in his right leg yesterday by Chef Huang and suffering from a heavier injury today, he still insisted on running out. He hopped down the steps with a single foot like he wanted to see Gu Liang as soon as possible.

Without missing a beat, Gu Liang went up the stone steps to support him. “What happened?”

Yang Ye took him into his arms to hug him, releasing a long and drawn-out exhale close to his ear, “It’s enough that you’re alright. The system just announced that the script enactment was over and told us to find the deceased, but you weren’t in the inn. I was terrified.”

Gu Liang came to an understanding. Yang Ye was worried that the deceased was him.

Gu Liang looked over Yang Ye’s shoulder, the remaining players were coming out in succession.

The first was the equally wretched-looking Tourist Jia whose face was coloured in bruises, and Girlfriend Jia who was supporting Tourist Jia.

Next was Waitress Jing who was holding a first-aid kit, and Recluse w.a.n.g was standing beside her quietly.

The last person running over to Gu Liang was Li Xiao Yu who was playing as Zhao Meili.

And the Chef Huang that Ming Yue was portraying was standing behind Gu Liang.

Hence, Gu Liang knew who they were truly missing— Proprietress Ling.

Li Xiao Yu sidled up to Gu Liang and told him: “At around 5 o’ clock, I walked into the lobby and I was planning to go to the lakeside to ask you to come back so we could eat together. When I reached the lobby entrance, I witnessed the entire scuffle and fighting.

“Back then, Tourist Jia had just returned. When he appeared at the main doors of the inn, his nose was bruised, his face was swelling, and there were numerous injuries littered all over his person. He was utterly infuriated; when he saw President Gao at the lobby entrance, he immediately walked over and punched President Gao. Then, the two of them started to fight and they fell off the stone steps together.”

Upon hearing that, Gu Liang merely said, “Xiao Yu, all of you should go and look for the corpse first. I’ll stay in the main lobby and help Yang Ye deal with his wounds, I’ll go and find you in a short while.”

Subsequently, Gu Liang took the first-aid box from Waitress Jing’s hand before he supported Yang Ye into the lobby to sit down on the sofa, which was also where Proprietress Ling would typically sit when she was waiting to receive the guests.

Shortly thereafter, Li Xiao Yu and the rest left in succession to look for Proprietress Ling’s corpse.

Inside the lobby, Gu Liang could not be bothered with anything else. Using the gauze, he cleaned away the blood that was staining half of Yang Ye’s face carefully before he sighed in relief softly.

— Thankfully, it was only a superficial injury. Although he bled a lot and it looked frightening, the wound itself was not big once he cleaned all the blood away. It was merely a little deep, which was probably the result of his forehead knocking into the sharp edge of the stone steps when he was rolling down the stairs.

“Does it hurt?” Gu Liang asked him.

Yang Ye shook his head, smiling as he asked him: “If my face is ruined, will you still like me?”

“What are you rambling about at this time?”

After dabbling some iodine on the cotton ball to help Yang Ye disinfect his wound, he stared into his eyes, “Moreover, are you a.s.suming that I became interested in you because of your face?”

“Of course not.” Yang Ye shook his head resolutely, “Liang Liang isn’t a superficial person like that. Liang Liang chose me because of the person I am, on a spiritual level.”

Gu Liang held his head in a hurry as he chided him in a low voice: “Stop moving.”

Once he dealt with the injury on Yang Ye’s face, Gu Liang turned his gaze towards his leg.

The atmosphere here was incredibly humid so Yang Ye was wearing shorter pants this time around and his calves were exposed. The area that was previously wounded by the knife was still wrapped up in the gauze, but beyond the fact that his wound was trickling blood again, all the skin below his kneecaps had been grazed and bruised by the stone steps.

With a perpetual frown, Gu Liang helped him clean his injuries, disinfected them, then wrapped his entire leg in bandages again. At this moment, he heard Li Xiao Yu’s voice.

“Gu Liang, Yang Ye, can you guys hear me?”

Her voice was coming from the north side of the inn, which was approximately in the direction of the lobby entrance.

There was a row of carved wood windows which were slightly concealed under the wooden staircase.

Gu Liang walked up to the windows, pus.h.i.+ng one of them open at random. Roughly 200 metres out, he saw Li Xiao Yu standing in front of some shrubbery.

Head raised, Li Xiao Yu waved her hands towards the distant Gu Liang who was in the second-floor lobby. “The corpse has been found!”

“I’ll come over immediately.”

After responding, Gu Liang turned around to look at Yang Ye, but he saw that he had already stood up on his own and he was hopping out on one foot.

Gu Liang quickly stopped him. “Maybe it’s better if you stay here.”

“It’s fine, it’s just a superficial injury.” Yang Ye said, “We only have one hour to look for the corpse and inspect the crime scene, you should go and inspect it as soon as possible. You don’t need to care about me. I’ll walk over slowly and join all of you.”

“That works. Pay attention to yourself, alright? I know you have a good physique, but don’t push yourself too much.”

Consequently, Gu Liang saw Tourist Jia sitting alone in the courtyard once he stepped out of the lobby.

Having sensed Gu Liang’s gaze, the once Chief Mei and the Tourist Jia of today, spoke with some disgruntlement: “My injuries are quite heavy too. I can’t move right now, I’ll be resting for some time before searching for the evidence.”

After giving a pause, Tourist Jia told Gu Liang: “Don’t look at me with that gaze. I didn’t hurt him on purpose, I’m injured too, and this was a script requirement, okay?

“Furthermore, when we were climbing up the mountain in the morning, he pushed me off the mountain! I had to f.u.c.king climb for an entire day from the bottom of the mountain before I managed to climb back.”

Gu Liang went silent for a moment before he returned to the lobby to retrieve the first-aid box, went down the stone steps again, and handed it to Tourist Jia. “Deal with your injuries on your own.”

Prior to this, the group of people should have followed the main road and went out of the inn’s main entrance, searching the various places surrounding the inn before they proceeded to find the corpse.

Instead of walking out of the courtyard’s main entrance, Gu Liang went to the back of the stilted building that they were staying in first.

When he reached the back of the building, Gu Liang saw the heaps of rice straw at a glance.

Frankly speaking, there was too much rice straw here.

When Gu Liang had looked down from his third-floor window, he had already sighed about it.

And now that he was right in front of the heap and surveying it from a close distance, the notion that there was way too much rice straw only intensified.

He placed his hands on top and compressed it. Upon careful scrutiny, he felt that the rice straw was slightly messy and it was not as tidy as what he saw last night. But after he sifted through the rice straw meticulously, he did not find any blood traces on top.

The main buildings in the inn were the two stilted buildings that were side by side, and there was a small courtyard in front of them.

Typically, when guests were exiting the inn, they had to go through the courtyard.

Behind the stilted buildings was just a small path that was roughly three-people wide at most.

The small path was blocked by a row of small wooden fences. After flipping across the wooden fence, you would be outside of the inn.

Additionally, the small path was heaped with rice straw and miscellaneous items which lessened the s.p.a.ce for footholds, and typically no one would come here.

In the present moment, Gu Liang had stopped in front of the small path that was heaped with rice straw briefly, before he continued in the direction where Li Xiao Yu and the rest were situated at.

It goes without saying that Gu Liang did not head back to the entrance at courtyard and wind around from the main road. Rather, he stretched his long leg out and stepped past the wooden fence directly and took the straight shortcut.

There was an overgrowth of weeds outside the fence and growing on a downward slope, with bunches of low and short shrubbery a short distance away. Even further out was the fringe of the forest.

Li Xiao Yu had been waving her hands at Gu Liang from the shrubbery just now, but she was no longer here since she had turned around and entered the forest.

This meant that the corpse was inside the forest.

There were two possibilities as to why the corpse was in the forest.

The first being that Proprietress Ling went into the forest on her own accord to meet someone there, and then she was killed.

The second possibility was that the forest was not the first crime scene. Proprietress Ling might have been killed inside the inn before she was brought into the forest from the inn by someone else.

If it was the second possibility, then the probability of the murderer using the inn’s main entrance was nearly negligible because it was too easy for people who were coming and going to see them.

Since that was the case, going to the back of the stilted building, stepping past the rice straw, the low wooden fence and shrubbery to dump the corpse inside the forest was comparatively reasonable.

This was the reason why Gu Liang had decided to use this road when he saw where Li Xiao Yu had discovered the corpse.

As he was walking down the path, Gu Liang examined his surroundings: the weeds were split apart to two sides which he suspected was the result of someone pa.s.sing through prior to this. There were marks that seemed like footsteps and broken blades of weeds on the ground like they had been stepped on.

However, owing to the ma.s.s overgrowth of weeds that essentially covered the entire ground, Gu Liang could not discern the traces too accurately.

It was also hard for him to say that these marks were left behind by humans, because what if there were animals?

Hence, in view of the fact that they did not have a person who had the ability to appraise the marks, Gu Liang could only use his eyes to make a rough judgement but he could not be absolutely certain.

After going past the weeded area, Gu Liang moved towards the shrubbery and saw a small path at the side.

He took out his card to compare the terrain with the map, confirming the fact that this small path could lead to the main route.

Going up using the main road would lead to the main entrance of the inn, going down would lead to the plain water lake where he was fis.h.i.+ng during the day.

As Gu Liang trekked down the road, he pictured the map in his mind, gradually familiarising himself with the terrain.

When he went down the mountain to fish today, he had used the curved and winding road and it took him 30 minutes.

But if he started from the back of the inn, jumped past the wooden fence, went through the weeds and shrubbery, then cut through the forest and directly followed the downward slope to descend the mountain, perhaps it would only require a dozen minutes or so.

Presently, as he went through the shrubbery and took a few steps into the forest, Gu Liang could see the other players and Proprietress Ling’s corpse.

Proprietress Ling’s corpse looked quite devastating and tragic.

Her attire was messed up, there were numerous wounds on her body, some which looked like the result of abrasion or falling, and there were areas that were bruised green and purple.

Gu Liang’s eyebrows furrowed subconsciously.

Li Xiao Yu offered a line of explanation at that moment. “I took off her clothes just now to check her wounds. Her clothes were worn properly before that.”

Waitress Jing, who was standing at the side, proceeded to add: “There are two suspected fatal injuries. The first is the knife wound on her back that entered her lungs directly. The other is on her chest… It looks like a gunshot wound.”

“This should be the bullet, but the bullet looks uncommon.” Recluse w.a.n.g said as she was lying p.r.o.ne on the ground.

Gu Liang looked towards Recluse w.a.n.g, thinking in his heart: This lady was quite audacious as well.

— She was holding a knife and she actually cut open Proprietress Ling’s chest and proceeded to extract a bullet that was slightly odd in shape.

Noticing everyone’s collective gaze, Recluse w.a.n.g explained: “I was a nurse in reality, the sort that frequently goes into the surgery room to a.s.sist the doctors.”

Gu Liang took a step forward, surveying their surroundings but he did not discover anything else.

He took out his card to take a look. Presently, not even half an hour had pa.s.sed.

The corpse was less than 500 metres away from the inn and it was hidden in the forest, which meant that it was very easy for the players to guess where the corpse would have been disposed of. Therefore, logically speaking, finding the corpse and checking the crime scene did not require one hour at all.

— Why did the system give them a full hour for this segment this time around then?