Chapter 56.2

Dong Wan, who was standing in the corridor, heard the entire conversation that was happening in the room.

She heaved a sigh, avoiding the corpse as she stepped into the room. Then, she said: “Yes, he did use the spell on me.”

Three months ago, Lady Rong was dumped by Sc.u.mbag Yu.

Lady Rong had secretly followed Sc.u.mbag Yu to a bar and saw him flirting with other women. Broken-hearted and frustrated, she had consumed a lot of alcohol.

There was a bridge just outside the bar. As she was stumbling along the bridge, the thought of suicide arose in her heart, and she nearly jumped off the bridge. However, she survived in the end because Boyfriend Feng saved her.

Later, Boyfriend Feng frequently accompanied her and encouraged her, thus helping her walk out of the haze caused by her heartache.

And on a certain night where the full moon hung in the skies, Boyfriend Feng asked Lady Rong to go out with him, and the pair strolled along the bridge where they met.

The moonlight reflected on the water surface, everything was tranquil.

It was on this night where Boyfriend Feng recited the spell to Lady Rong, and confessed.

It was also after this night where Lady Rong decided to marry him.

In the present moment, Dong Wan told everyone about the story between Lady Rong and Boyfriend Feng.

Su Lan turned her head to look at her, asking, “Since that’s the case, could this be your motivation to kill? After you discovered the spell, you realised that you didn’t love him in truth, and you were only under the fetters of the spell. You thought that you could get rid of the spell once you killed him.”

Dong Wan shook her head. “That’s not it. Even if the spell didn’t exist, I would have chosen to marry him all the same.”

“Why?” Su Lan queried.

“Because he saved me. I was at the lowest point of my life back then. Although he was very poor, had never experienced all aspects of society, and was not gentleman-like in the least… None of these traits conformed with Lady Rong’s original standards for choosing a spouse. Moreover, he was neither considerate nor did he understand how to take care of people. In spite of those qualities, it could not be denied that he was honest and reliable, and he had given me a lot of help.”

Dong Wan stopped in front of Meng Qian Cheng and took the paper, unfolding it for everyone to see. “Furthermore, it was written on the paper that even if I knew of this spell, I would still stay with him regardless. Once the spell takes effect, I will not stop loving him no matter what happens. Therefore, with or without the spell, the thought of killing him would never occur to me. I don’t possess any murderous intentions towards him.”

“Are you certain? Are you also unaware of the fact that he has hooked up with other women?”

Meng Qian Cheng had dismantled the entire bed, which allowed him to find a diary and a photo alb.u.m.

There were numerous photographs of Boyfriend Feng hugging different women in the photo alb.u.m, making it evident that he was a sc.u.mbag through and through.

Yang Ye flipped open the diary to skim through it. “The most recent entry was written on 7 November, which was yesterday.”

Gu Liang moved over to Yang Ye’s side as Yang Ye read the diary out loud.

“Last night was the engagement dinner for me and Lady Rong, I saw a lot of pretty ladies again. So what if Actor Ming is handsome? You would get sprayed to death by his fans if you entered a relations.h.i.+p with him. So what if Sc.u.mbag Yu is rich? His infamous reputation is well-known; no woman would believe that he’s being true.

“But I’m not the same, I look incredibly honest and reliable, all of them would feel that I’m worthy of being entrusted with their hearts. Hei hei, under the influence of the spell, Lady Rong will never leave me. I can still use the same method to deceive several ladies…”

After roughly flipping through the diary, Yang Ye concluded, “The contents in front are more or less the same. It’s a record of him toying with the hearts of ladies. Tch, Sc.u.mbag Yu philandered around in the light, whereas people like him, the so-called ‘honest person’, fooled around in the dark, and they’re far scarier.”

Yang Ye continued to say: “Therefore, Boyfriend Feng’s character design is probably that of a person who pretends to be honest to deceive the ladies. Quite a number of ladies have the habit of drinking their sorrows away at the bar, so he would hide in the vicinity to dupe them. In their inebriated state, these ladies would a.s.sume that he wasn’t trying to take advantage of their precarious positions, and that he was genuinely trying to console them. Hence, they would take the bait, believing that he was an honest person, and not the sort who fell for charms of a woman.”

Gu Liang nodded. “I understand. He utilises this kind of method to deceive a number of ladies. However, he was merely playing around with the past few ladies, and he did not take it a step further. This lasted until he met Lady Rong, of whom he decided to marry because her family was way too rich. Perhaps he was afraid that he wouldn’t get a chance like this again if he missed out on this opportunity.”

Having spoken to this point, Gu Liang glanced at Dong Wan. He asked: “Were you completely unaware of this matter?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t know about this at all.”

The baffled expression on Dong Wan’s visage did not seem like a pretence, “I didn’t know he had such a character design. From my perspective, he was like ak2026; blockhead, who was incompatible with the upper-cla.s.s society that I resided in, yet honest and reliable. I never expected thatk2026;”

Li Xiao Yu had walked into the room by this time. However, she did not dare to look at the corpse lying in the room, so she had walked in with her back facing the corpse.

She opened her mouth to remark, “But by virtue of the spell’s existence… Lady Rong’s awareness or lack thereof, is of no consequence in truth. Because the spell has already stated it, no matter what happens, she will love him all the same. She shouldn’t have any murderous intentions towards Boyfriend Feng.”

“Huh, that much is true. Hence, we can’t make any conjectures at the present moment.”

Meng Qian Cheng scratched his head, “We only have half an hour to inspect the scene of the crime, let’s continue looking for other clues.”

* * *

Half an hour later, the inspection of the crime scene concluded, and Boyfriend Feng’s room was thus sealed off.

During the crime scene investigation just now, Li Xiao Yu had not gone into the room at the start due to her fears.

With regards to her behaviour, Gu Liang had never found it strange. After all, during the crime scene investigation for the Painted Exteriors scenario, she had been puking in the courtyard from beginning to end.

Additionally, despite the fears in her heart, Li Xiao Yu had gone into the room in the end, and actively contributed to the case discussion.

And while Dong Wan had stayed out of the room at the beginning, she had joined them after Meng Qian Cheng questioned her, and her latter degree of partic.i.p.ation could be considered as high.

The only person who neither entered the room nor partic.i.p.ated in the discussion from start to end was Butler Hao.

Presently, as he watched everyone exit the crime scene one by one, he only asked: “Where are we going next?”

The once Scientist Li, who had become Butler Hao in the current instance, was more NPC-like in performance than the NPCs the whole time.

Gu Liang scrutinised him briefly before he directed his gaze at Meng Qian Cheng. “Detective, what do you say?”

Meng Qian Cheng replied, “Didn’t you mention the dolls just now? Let’s look at the dolls first.”

Thus, after leaving Boyfriend Feng’s room, everyone went to Actor Ming, Confidant Ai, Lady Rong, Butler Hao, Designer Mei, and Magnate Rong’s room first.

Every player’s room only had one doll. Although the facial features, hair and outfits were different, they shared common characteristics— they were missing their right arms, and there was a stab wound on their chest.

The doll in the detective’s room was no exception.

The last room that everyone checked was Sc.u.mbag Yu’s, who was played by Yang Ye.

By that time, everyone scarcely had any expectations left, believing that the doll in Sc.u.mbag Yu’s closet would be in the same condition.

Upon pulling open the closet door, however, they discovered that— apart from the s.h.i.+rts that he had hung up in his closet, there was nothing else.

Which also meant that there was no doll in the closet of Sc.u.mbag Yu’s room.

Meng Qian Cheng could not resist asking: “Yang Ye, where’s the doll that’s supposed to be in your room?”

Yang Ye pushed his hands. “I don’t know. I never touched it.”

Meng Qian Cheng questioned Gu Liang again. “What do you think?”

Gu Liang did not utter a word, only making a trip to the bathroom. Subsequently, he walked out and headed for the balcony.

Shortly after he returned back to the room from the balcony, Gu Liang searched the places like the mattress, pillow and headboard once but he did not find a single trace of the doll, nor did he discover any other clues.

In a timely manner, Li Xiao Yu suggested: “Since the rooms are so big, shall we split up and search? I feel that while we have checked the closets of every player, we didn’t check the other areas of the room, and perhaps we might find the doll there?”

Meng Qian Cheng nodded in agreement. “Mn, that’s a good idea. We’re still unclear about the character stories, we ought to search carefully.”

“You can search the rooms. I’ll go downstairs first to have a look.” Gu Liang gazed at Yang Ye, “Together?”

“Let’s go.” Yang Ye grinned, moving out of the room together with Gu Liang to head for the elevator so they could get to the first floor.

The main entrance of the ancient castle was facing south. Walking left after entering the main doors would lead to the elevator, which also meant that the elevator was situated in the west.

And if you travelled through the huge lobby from the ancient castle’s main doors, it would lead to the main hall where the wedding was hosted.

The doors leading to the main hall from the lobby was its main entrance, and since the main entrance was also facing south, it faced the main doors of the ancient castle directly as well.

Apart from the main entrance, the other three sides of the main hall had a side door.

You could get to the back gardens and open-air dining room from the west side door.

Although Gu Liang had traversed through the west side door, he had merely done so for the sake of getting to the open-air dining room. Hence, he did not know how big the back gardens were, peach forest included.

However, it was quite evident that Yang Ye would be very clear about its dimensions, and he planned to carefully ask Yang Ye what had occurred in that peach forest earlier in the afternoon.

The northern door of the main hall led to the back kitchen.

Whereas the east side door of the main hall led to the restrooms.

The restrooms were not located indoors. There was a large terrace just outside the east side door, and the restroom was situated beside the terrace.

Gu Liang came to a halt in the main hall, and saw Yang Ye heading for the eastern terrace directly.

After giving a pause, Gu Liang followed in his footsteps.

Turning his head back, Yang Ye glanced at him and smiled. “You want to inspect that area first, right? We understand each other well.”

Gu Liang did not deny it, saying: “I simply wanted to investigate the case in accordance with the strange incidents in chronological order.”

From Gu Liang’s perspective, the first strange incident that occurred in the ancient castle was the power outage.

When Gu Liang was called to the backstage to change into his performance outfit last night, his point of observation from the backstage happened to allow him to see the east side door.

When Su Lan went to the restroom, she had used the east side door.

Later, the power outage occurred, and the butler had moved in the same direction when he was tasked to fix the circuit breaker.

Just as they stepped onto the terrace, several small black figures scurried past Gu Liang at a swift pace.

Gu Liang retracted his leg, following those black figures with narrowed eyes. He commented, “This terrace has quite a number of mice.”

“Tsk, it’s making me doubt the cleanliness of the food we ate here.”

Yang Ye walked onto the terrace and stopped in front of a wall facing outwards. “The circuit breaker is here.”

Upon hearing those words, Gu Liang strode to Yang Ye’s side to study the electric panel together.

The circuit breaker was currently locked, and the butler should have locked it after he was done fixing the circuit breaker last night.

However, the keys were placed on top of the circuit breaker box, which indicate that anyone could open the box.

Once Yang Ye took down the keys and opened the circuit box, his eyebrows scrunched together instantaneously.

He leaned closer to take a sniff, and then asked Gu Liang: “Do you smell something sweet?”

“Yes. It smells like cream cake.”

Gu Liang scanned the interiors carefully, “Look over there, there’s still some specks of white cream.”

At that instant, there was a blur of black shadow as a mouse scuttled over, jumping up the circuit breaker box directly.

In response, Yang Ye casually waved his hand, causing the mouse to flee.

Yang Ye closed the circuit breaker box again.

After a moment of contemplation, Gu Liang said: “I know how the power outage occurred. It should be related to Su Lan.”

Yang Ye replied: ”Before your performance last night, she told us she was going to the restroom. You saw it too?”

“Precisely so.” Gu Liang nodded his head. “The phenomenon that occurred just now proves that the mice in this ancient castle are fond of desserts. Someone knew of this fact, so they smeared the dessert on the electrical wire to lure the mice into biting it. Su Lan had excused herself from the banquet once, and from the moment she appeared at the scene, I found the bag she was holding to be rather eye-catching.”

Yang Ye nodded. “Under normal circ.u.mstances, the ladies might bring a small bag along for decorative purposes when attending evening parties and dances, but the bag that Su Lan brought along was a little too big, which is atypical behaviour. It’s not convenient for dancing or social interaction either.”

After thinking about it briefly, Yang Ye continued to say: “When Su Lan went to the restroom last night, the main courses was not served yet, and only the snacks and beverages were offered. I reckon she must have secretly hidden a small snack, and borrowed the excuse of going to the restroom to come here to do her set-up, before she returned to the main hall.

“According to that logic, she should be making use of the power outage to kill someone. The person who breaks the circuit breaker is the murderer. But during the power outage, she was not at the terrace personally. Therefore, the real reason why she designed such a set-up was to create an alibi for herself.

“But that’s the problem we’re currently confronted with; she didn’t do anything during the power outage. From the looks of it, it’s like nothing had occurred.

“Furthermore, apart from the snack, what other items could she have stored in that eye-catching, wine red bag of hers?”

“I did kill someone during the power outage. I originally concealed a dagger in my bag.”

The person who uttered those words was Su Lan.

Turning his head back, Gu Liang saw her stepping on the terrace with her high heels. She parted her lips and said: “As the designer and Lady Rong’s friend, I’ve visited this ancient castle before. When I was eating a snack at the terrace, I accidentally dropped a piece of cream cake which attracted a lot of mice. This gave me the inspiration. Hence, as I was going to the restroom last night, I took the chance to open the circuit breaker box and smeared the cream inside.

“The plan wasn’t absolutely foolproof, and I didn’t harbour any hopes that it would succeed on the first try either. It was only a tentative experiment. To my surprise, I succeeded; the sweet treat attracted the mice and they actually broke the electrical wire. Thus, I took advantage of the power outage and retrieved the dagger from my bag to stab Lady Rong who was seated on my left.

“Before I sat down last night, I was constantly observing everyone as they entered the banquet, and thought of a way to sit beside Lady Rong so it would be easier to kill her. I constantly paid attention to her position, which then allowed me to stab her in a precise manner the instant the power outage occurred. I was certain that my dagger impaled her heart. Subsequently, I threw the blade under the table, using the floor dragging table cloth to conceal the dagger.

“After disposing of the blade, I sat back down and took a wet tissue from my bag to wipe my hands, and I even specifically used the table napkin to cover both of my hands to prepare for any unexpected circ.u.mstances. All that was left for me to do was wait for the butler to repair the circuit, and allow everyone to discover Lady Rong collapsed in the pool of her own blood.

“Since I was sitting beside Lady Rong, it was very normal if the blood had splashed onto my person, so I didn’t mind if there was blood on my body. During the power outage, everyone besides the butler was in the main hall, and anyone could be the murderer who killed her. There wouldn’t be particular suspicions held against me. Hence, I only needed to sit there and wait for the repair of the circuit breaker.

“I did not expect that… after the butler was done fixing the circuit breaker, there would be no blood on my hands or body. Lady Rong was not dead either.”

As she was saying all those words, Su Lan walked up to Yang Ye on her high heels, step by step. She stated: “Truth to be told, I’m currently suspecting that you’re the real murderer in this case.”

T/N: Extra update for Christmas~! Hope you’re enjoying your holidays despite… y’know :’))