Live Action Murder Mystery

Chapter 71.1

(I like you, I will always cherish you.)

Gu Liang and Yang Ye were listening to Meng Qian Cheng’s explanation seriously when there was a sudden commotion in the corridor.

“Fuck, bats!” That was Li Xiao Yu’s voice coming from the corridor.

Frowning, Gu Liang strode up to the door to swiftly pull Li Xiao Yu into the servant’s room and glanced out into the corridor in one simultaneous movement. As he had anticipated, he saw a colony of bats that looked like a black mass of clouds pressing down from the ceiling as they chased after Su Lan, Sister Mei, and Chief Mei.

The appearance of the trio who were running was extremely wretched: their hair was scattered, their clothes were damaged from various angles which was clearly the work of the bats’ teeth and claws as those mammals almost dug into their flesh.

“All three of you come in, I’ll close the door immediately.” Gu Liang said.

“I don’t think a door can stop them.”

As Chief Mei was running, he was nearly yelling as he spoke: “Blame me! I was knocking on the ceiling just now and it’s highly likely that I disturbed the bats upstairs! After they slowly gathered and attacked a piece of floorboard, they continued to drill down from the sixth floor! This is really—”

Yang Ye thought of something and he took a step forward instead.

Gu Liang grabbed his hand subconsciously. “What are you doing?”

When Yang Ye raised his hand, Gu Liang came to the unexpected realisation that he had interlaced his fingers together with Yang Ye’s.

Yang Ye grinned as he spoke close to his ear: “That’s right, you can hold my hand whenever there’s an issue, you don’t need to be shy.”

“Yang Ye—”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon. Nothing will happen.”

Yang Ye held onto Gu Liang’s hand and brought him further into the room before he released his hand. Then, he walked into the corridor with large strides.

The group of three had already ran over by then, and they immediately darted into Servant A’s room.

All of them ran in very quickly, one after another, thereby squeezing Gu Liang further into the room.

Being as anxious as he was, Gu Liang only managed to walk into the corridor after pushing them away with much difficulty.

And it was at that moment where he saw a mysterious scene.

Just like how Yang Ye managed to learn the harpsichord without a teacher, he seemed to have taught himself the ability to command the bats.

He placed his index finger in front of his mouth horizontally and whistled a few notes. In response, the originally aggressive bats that were preparing to rip into the human flesh came to an abrupt stop.

Moving his finger away from his lips, Yang Ye proceeded to wave his hand, asking those bats to scatter and leave.

And it was like they were obeying to Yang Ye’s command because they returned to the sixth floor, which was the place they were supposed to stay in.

When they returned back to Servant A’s room afterwards, the gazes that everyone regarded Yang Ye with were deep with meaning.

It was especially so for Sister Mei as she raised up a book, saying: “We found this in Servant C’s room. Before we were being chased by the bats, I was reading this. And the servant wrote inside— ‘Duke Dahl loves raising blood bats. These bats are similar to him: they drink human blood, are great in strength, and they are a lot stronger than lower tier vampires. These bats only listen to the Duke’s commands and they are a formidable weapon. He trains them in preparation of using them against the werewolves.’”

After reading those words out loud, Sister Mei looked towards Yang Ye, “So, you really are Duke Dahl.”

“Don’t forget, all of you answered incorrectly when you were voting.”

Yang Ye said: “Frankly speaking, it’s rather pointless for me to continue hiding my identity. At any rate, all of you are already aware that I’m a vampire. My side task has failed and I admit to it. But I’m not Dahl; I’m Earl William. Have any of you found any clues that are related to me?”

“Ah that…. that we did.” Sister Mei furrowed her brows as she flipped to one of the earlier pages and read out the words written on top.

It was still written by Servant C.

“I heard the steward say that Earl William would be arriving within the next two days. I saw him years ago, and he was truly handsome. While there has always been hearsay that he likes Princess Rose, I have to make myself look prettier. What if I can gain his good graces?”

“Yes. That Earl William is me. What was the date when Servant C wrote that entry?” Yang Ye asked.

“7 November.” Sister Mei replied.

Yang Ye said, “Then it can’t be wrong. She said that I would be arriving in the next two days, and according to the time 300 years ago, I did arrive at the ancient castle on the morning of November 8. Following closely, I travelled over here.”

Chief Mei took a step forward and asked him: “Why do you know how to command the bats then? Did Duke Dahl teach you the skill because you had a good relationship with him?”

“I don’t know. My story doesn’t talk about it.” Yang Ye said.

Su Lan could not resist asking a question as well. “Is your story completely devoid of any details pertaining to me as well? You don’t like me?”

Was she trying to mean something? Or was she trying to mean something?

Eyebrows raised, Yang Ye answered in a resolute and decisive manner. “None. My story bears no relation to you, whether it is inside or outside the script.”

Su Lan no longer spoke.

Yang Ye held Gu Liang’s hand and walked outwards.

After looking at the empty but slightly messy corridor, Yang Ye looked over his shoulder and said: “Let’s continue with our respective investigations, shall we? My story might be related to the final task in the third segment, so there’s no need for further discussion. We still need to look for the murderer who killed Aimeili right now.”

* * *

At 5 o’ clock exactly.

In the centralised discussion room.

The system started its broadcast punctually.

“Everyone, welcome to the second segment of 《 Folding Ancient Castle 》.

“The time for discussion is one hour. After the hour has passed, please cast your votes for the murderer who killed Aimeili.

“One-on-one discussions are still not allowed in this segment.

“After the voting is completed at 6 o’ clock, everyone will be ushering in the new and formal script enactment.”

* * *

Chief Mei was the first to stand up.

“Me, Magnate Rong and Sister Mei, mainly focused on the fifth floor. I’ll give the summary.”

“We went to check the corpse first. There was a very deep wound on the corpse’s chest, but the wound opening is quite small on the surface.”

Having said that, Chief Mei raised a silver cross. “I found this cross in Servant A’s room. I gave it a try, and the size of the cross is a good fit with the wound opening on Aimeili’s chest.

“I also pushed the cross into the wound on Aimeili’s body, and discovered that the weapon could enter and reach into the depths of her heart.”

Gu Liang asked him: “You mean to say, someone impaled that cross into her chest completely?”

— That was certainly possible. The cross was not big, its length and width was roughly the size of a young lady’s finger.

“Yes. You’ve asked a very crucial question. You’ll understand why I said that after I’m done with my summary.”

Chief Mei said, “Let’s look at another evinced object.”

Chief Mei raised the box containing the silver crosses and flipped it over, allowing everyone to see the back of the box.

There was a simple description on the back of the box: “The bodies of vampires are undying bodies; they will not die even if their heart is injured, unless special objects are used. For instance, a silver cross touching their heart.

“Silver crosses are divine tools that can kill vampires. Penetrating the heart of the vampire with a silver cross will not result in immediate death, the vampire’s heart needs to continue being in contact with the silver cross for a certain amount of time before they die. The time till death is dependent on the strength of the vampire in question. Under the circumstances where the silver cross is in continuous contact with their heart, it will typically take 3 to 5 hours before death occurs.”

After showing the box, Chief Mei placed it down and continued with his summary.

“Now that we have understood the situation, let’s talk about the timeline next.

“The Duke was preparing to host an official wedding ceremony with Aimeili on 8 November, Aimeili died on 7 November.

“Hence, the timeline of every person on the 7th of November is extremely important.

“On that day, the servants on the fifth floor were staring at Aimeili’s room. Some of them wanted to see when it was convenient for her so they could find her to let her try on her dress, while the likes of Servant A were doing it for the sake of finding a chance to kill her.

“Therefore, through the careful search of each and every room, we found a few isolated phrases in the records that the various servants made and pieced them together, which allowed us to completely restore the timeline for 7 November and collate a list of suspects.”

As Chief Mei was giving an account, Gu Liang was recording down the information on his notebook.

As a whole, the timeline was extremely cohesive indeed.

At 12 noon of November 7, the Duke was the earliest to go to Aimeili’s room, and he left after an hour.

At 3 o’ clock in the afternoon, the Princess went to look for Aimeili under the pretext of afternoon tea, and went into her room.

When the Princess left, it was already 5 in the evening.

Servant C saw the Princess leaving, so she went to Aimeili’s room with her wedding dress for a fitting, and she left with the wedding dress again 20 minute later.

At 6 o’ clock in the evening, the Princess made another trip to her room, but she only stayed for half an hour before leaving.

At 7 o’ clock in the evening, the Eastern Magician arrived. He had drawn a new sunflower painting and he was giving Aimeili the painting.

He only stayed for 10 minutes before he left swiftly.

At 7:30 in the evening, Servant A went into Aimeili’s room.

She was there to help Aimeili dress up.

Because there was a dinner banquet at 8:30, the Duke specifically instructed the servants to dress his wife up beautifully.

When he spoke to this point, Chief Mei emphasised, “Servant A is extremely suspicious. I’ll let all of you inspect Servant B’s diary. From her perspective, the recorded Servant A had exhibited a lot of suspicious behaviour.”

Gu Liang was the first to have a look at the diary.

It wrote: “I was met with a peculiar matter today. The Duke told us to apply cosmetics on our Lady. But people have been looking for the Lady for the entire afternoon, and she only had the time after the Eastern Magician left around 7:10. I had prepared the cosmetics and was planning to go over when Servant A said that she would complete this task because she wanted to help me.

“It was rather strange; I am usually responsible for putting makeup on the Lady. Servant A holds great dislike towards the Lady, and she is usually unwilling to serve her. I found it odd, so I stayed outside the door to observe for some time.

“Servant A went into the Lady’s room around 7:30. After half an hour approximately, she exited. Her expression was peculiar, she seemed rather happy but a little sorrowful at the same time. How strange.”

After all the players read the diary in quick succession, Chief Mei continued by saying: “And correspondingly, Servant A went into Aimeili’s room around 7:30, and exited at 8. I will continue speaking about the rest.

“At 8:30 at night, Aimeili showed herself as she attended the night banquet.

“This is the crucial point that I was referring to in the face of Actor Ming’s question.

“We suspect that by this time, Aimeili already had a silver cross stabbed into her chest.

“Since the entire cross was inserted into her chest, you could say that it was wrapped up in her heart. Therefore, when she was wearing her formal dress, it could not be seen on the surface.”

Yang Ye chose to speak at this moment: “From the evidence that you have found, who was the earliest to discover her corpse?”

“10:30 at night.”

Chief Mei stated, “After Servant C did the wedding dress fitting for Aimeili at 5:20 in the evening, she went to look for the seamstress to have it altered. The dress was done altering by nighttime, so Servant C went to look for Aimeili again in order to let her try the wedding dress once more to ensure that everything would be absolutely perfect for the wedding ceremony. In the end, she discovered Aimeili lying in her coffin, completely dead.”

Yang Ye questioned: “What time did the night banquet end?”

Chief Mei said: “At 9:30, Aimeili said that she wanted to go back to her room so the Duke allowed her to return. There was supposed to be a ball at night. The servants felt regretful because they wanted to relax and let loose at the ball. However, because of a single sentence from Aimeili, the Duke cancelled the ball in the end.”

Yang Ye: “Which means that her time of death is between 9:30 to 10:30.”

“Yes.” Chief Mei said, “The duration required for the silver cross to affect death is 3 to 5 hours. And from the clues we presently have, Aimeili’s only possible cause of death is the cross, and there are no other possibilities. That being the case, her heart must have been impaled by the cross when she went for the banquet.”

Upon hearing that, Gu Liang could not help but frown: “But that’s very strange. Her heart had been impaled with a cross and yet she pretended to know nothing and continued to attend the night banquet normally?”

Chief Mei said, “When we were on the fifth floor, some of us had a discussion about this. We concluded that perhaps she always wanted to die because it was only in death that she could escape from the Duke’s demonic claws, but it was the Duke who refused to let her die so she shouldn’t be aware of the methods that could lead to her death at all.

“It was only when the perpetrator stabbed her heart with the cross that she realised that the silver cross could cause her death. Hence, she simply allowed herself to die instead of asking for help or taking the cross out.”

Gu Liang’s eyebrows scrunched. “Is it possible that she committed suicide?”

“We can wait until the vote casting to see if she shows up as an murder suspect for that point.”

Yang Ye contemplated for a long moment before he added, “But this possibility is a lot smaller. The Princess’s diary mentioned that she wanted to use the silver cross to kill Aimeili, but she didn’t dare to touch the cross because she was scared of hurting herself. Similarly, the clue in Servant A’s room also expressed that she had found a method that allows her to touch the silver cross without getting hurt, which is why she dared to use the item to kill Aimeili.”

Gu Liang said: “Mn, I agree with this point. If a vampire touches a cross with their hands, it’s possible that they will become injured and lose their strength, so it’s more likely that Aimeili has no way of holding the cross to kill herself.”

But Gu Liang still found it strange.

— What kind of circumstances did she have to be in that would make her act as if she was fine and appear at the banquet normally and eat with everyone else, even though there was a cross stabbing her chest?

— Did the Duke completely fail to notice her strangeness?

At this moment, Yang Ye stood up and said: “I’ll talk about what Actor Ming and I found as we were investigating the other floors then.”

Without further ado, Yang Ye did a simple introduction of the things that he and Gu Liang had found, with Li Xiao Yu and the others occasionally adding the details.

Yang Ye then said: “Therefore, we’re still unsure about this matter. It seems like the system doesn’t plan to make it difficult for us during the second segment.

“The deceased is Aimeili, her time of death is between 9:30 to 10:30.

“The time required for the silver cross to kill a vampire is 3 to 5 hours.

“Therefore, according to the shortest time of 3 hours to infer, the cross in her chest was impaled between 6:30 to 7:30.

“If we go by the longest duration of 5 hours, the cross in her chest was impaled between 4:30 to 5:30.

“Consequently, the murder suspects are locked on the people who have been to her room between 4:30 to 7:30.”

Yang Ye glanced at the timeline he had previously recorded before he said: “From what we can see, only the Duke can be eliminated. The rest are all suspects.

“But if we add another delimiter, this will change.

“Since ‘the time till death after the silver cross has been inflicted is dependent on the strength of the vampire in question, Aimeili’s fairly recent transition into a vampire and her constant refusal to drink human blood makes it easy to imagine that her strength wasn’t great. Under the circumstances where the evidence is limited, let’s assume that the silver cross being in her chest for 3 hours is enough to cause her death.

“That being the case, the people who went to her room between 6:30 to 7:30 hold the greatest suspicion.

“These two people are Eastern Magician and Servant A respectively.

“Besides the timeline, these two people hold the greatest suspicion and the weapon used to commit the crime lines up too. They’re the only ones who have crosses in their rooms.”

Yang Ye said: “I think we can cast our votes in the manner with which we conducted our first segment tasks. As a matter of fact, these segment tasks are held by the system for the sake of helping us break down the plot so it’ll be easier for us to complete the final task. Hence, even if we vote wrongly, the remaining option will be the real murderer who killed Aimeili.”

Li Xiao Yu opened her mouth, “That is true, but what if we can obtain more rewards at the end if we vote correctly? Since we have the time, we can continue discussing this.”

Li Xiao Yu looked towards Gu Liang: “Who do you think it is?”