Chapter 31: Rebirth

Chapter 31: Rebirth

The audience in the live stream room jumped out of bed in excitement the moment they saw the change in the SanYao panel. The late-night silence kept them from making too much noise, so they resorted to howling in the comment section. Icons for rewards and likes flooded the entire comment area.

"I thought she was dead, but then came an unexpected move like a surprise resurrection."

"It's like logging back in, starting everything from zero? They probably won't be able to catch up with the progress of the neighboring scenario, what a pity."

"No, to be precise, this should be a reincarnation. [Serious]"

"Ah? I didn't watch for just a moment, how did the world completely change?"

"The top player has apprehended three suspects, sent two to the police, and is personally monitoring one in the hospital, causing the murder plot to fail. The SanYao system then forcibly corrected the data. The game has jumped to the second stage and restarted."

"Top player: Are you even playing fair? I'm just a newbie."

"I'm sorry, I was wrong, but thinking from Qiong Cang's perspective, what kind of plot is this? 'You can't escape my grasp, even if I'm dead.'"

·

Qiong Cang stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, her gaze fixed on the meticulously manicured garden. The glaring sunlight made her eyes slightly sore. When the cool breeze passed through the gap in the glass window and hit her face, she finally moved her arm slightly.

The technical investigator behind her saw her standing in a daze and walked over asking, "Boss, what's wrong?"

Qiong Cang pressed her temples, feeling a faint ache in her head. She closed her eyes, exhaled, and said, "I'm so tired. The game has only just begun, but it feels like I've pulled an all-nighter."

"You stayed up last night again, didn't you? You told us to rest well, but you're not taking your own advice." The young man held an evidence bag in his hand and said with regret, "Today's case is a big one again; I guess we won't be able to rest for a while."

Qiong Cang turned around and looked at the male corpse lying on the ground not far away.

The man was wearing a white shirt, which had been cut open, revealing dense wounds. Despite the gruesome knife wounds, only a small amount of dark blood was left on the ground, with tiny bits of flesh splattered around.

His body had been mosaic-processed, so Qiong Cang could only see a white mannequin and a string of text descriptions, which didn't have such a strong visual impact. The SanYao system wouldn't allow players to directly face overly bloody scenes; in the live stream room, the audience couldn't even see the white mannequin, only a simple stick figure.

The system used auxiliary lines to mark the knife wounds and their width on the mannequin. A line of text floated nearby and quickly disappeared.

"Deceased: Wu Ming. Time of Death: Between 1 AM and 2 AM."

Qiong Cang walked towards Wu Ming's body and crouched next to the forensic officer. The middle-aged man tilted his head slightly to make room for her and began explaining.

"The exact cause of death will be confirmed after the autopsy. But these wounds were all inflicted post-mortem. I haven't counted exactly how many there are." The forensic officer pointed to several areas to show her, saying, "The knife wounds on the deceased's body are chaotic and scattered, mostly concentrated on the abdomen and arms. The knife cuts are not clean, and the blade wasn't sharp. For example, at the elbow, the cross-section of the wound shows that the murderer chopped and sawed at the same angle multiple times, leaving a very deep wound."

The disciplinary officer recording the details hissed and said, "How much hatred is that? It's like they wanted to obliterate him."

The forensic officer changed his posture to relax his muscles and said, "The murderer might have harbored intense hatred towards the deceased, leaving many cruel wounds to vent their anger. But it's also possible..."

Qiong Cang continued his thought, "It's also possible that the murderer intended to dismember the body to mislead us but misjudged the difficulty and lacked knowledge about human joints, resulting in this situation."

The forensic officer nodded.

"Ah?" The young officer said, "That sounds like a crime of passion without enough preparation. But the murderer left a directed note near Wu Ming, which feels like premeditated revenge. Or is it a set-up?"

The police officer flipped through the photos in his camera and said, "While mutilating the body, the deceased hadn't entered rigor mortis yet, and the body was posed in a specific position. At that time, the deceased's right hand held a Western-style kitchen knife, which was the weapon that caused the various wounds on his body. He had aimed the knife at his own abdomen and left a note half a meter away. These details are very similar to the previous cases. Additionally, we've just confirmed that the deceased, Wu Ming, was one of the witnesses who testified against Dongdong Ning."

Dongdong Ning was Fan Huai's alias in this scenario.

Qiong Cang remained silent, not saying a word.

"Sigh, this is the fourth person already; who knows when it will end. If we don't catch the murderer soon, it feels like the media will make us look bad." The police officer lamented, "But yesterday, two of our officers were guarding Fan Huai's residence, confirming that he never left his apartment, so it really couldn't have been him this time. Could it be a copycat?"

Another crime scene investigator walked over and said, "The killer clearly staged the scene to make it look like it was connected to the previous three cases. But the feeling is very different. One is meticulous, the other is rough. It doesn’t feel like the work of the same killer."

He tilted his head to take a closer look at the body on the floor and continued, "But if you insist it’s all a copycat crime, there’s something that can’t be replicated. Some details haven’t been made public yet, but they strangely match. This isn’t something an ordinary copycat could pull off, right?"

"There are also discrepancies," the young officer said. "The content of the note hasn’t been made public. The notes found with the previous three victims had the word 'lie' written on them, but the note found with Wu Ming has a sentence."

Qiong Cang said, "Let me see."

"Sure, I’ll get it from Brother Liu," the young officer replied.

"This should be different from the first three cases. Although it looks somewhat similar, the level of craftsmanship is completely different. The first three cases were meticulously cleaned, but this time, many clues were left behind."

Everyone turned to look in the direction of the voice. The forensic officer approached with a case in hand and said, "The killer in this case wasn’t careful—or at least, not very experienced. He climbed in through the back garden, stepped on mud, and didn’t take off his shoes inside, leaving large shoeprints. Later, he seemed to realize and tried to wipe them off, but in his haste, didn’t clean them properly. We found a clear footprint. We compared it with all the shoes in the victim’s house, and none of them matched the size. It should be the murderer’s."

The young officer returned with an evidence bag containing the note, excitedly speculating, "Could it be that Ning Dongdong, knowing she was under surveillance and couldn’t leave, hired someone to commit the murder? Maybe they tried to frame it as a similar case to divert our attention?"

Qiong Cang took the evidence bag from him and pinched the thin note inside the plastic.

Inside the bag was a note written in red ink, with a bit of blood on the top and Wu Ming’s fingerprint at the bottom.

The note read: "I aimed the blade at someone else and stabbed deeply."

After examining it carefully, Qiong Cang handed it back to the officer. The young officer asked, "Boss, what do you think this means? Is the first-person 'I' referring to the murderer or the victim?"

Qiong Cang lifted her eyelids to glance at him and then lowered her gaze again.

When she didn’t respond, the young officer kept talking, "Boss, why have you been so quiet today? You’re usually pretty talkative."

Qiong Cang asked, "Where is the victim’s family?"

The young officer pointed, "Li Yujia? She’s in the courtyard, shocked. Sister Wang is taking her detailed statement."

Qiong Cang looked in the direction he indicated and noticed the cameras installed in the corner. She asked, "Have the surveillance videos been retrieved? Did they capture anything?"

The young officer replied, "Yes, I’ll show them to you."

As he was about to turn away, Qiong Cang spoke again, "I’m assigning you a task."

He immediately came back, "Tell me!"

"Since the killer is trying to frame Ning Dongdong, the note he left and the clues at the scene probably weren’t written randomly," Qiong Cang explained with some effort. "Go and check if, around ten years ago, close to the time of the murder incident involving Ning Dongdong, the department received any reports of knife-related incidents near the crime scene."

The young officer nodded, "Got it."

·

Qiong Cang settled into the car, her tablet resting in her hands. She adjusted her position, placing the tablet on the back of the seat, and watched the video on it with her arms crossed.

The screen was playing the last segment of video stored in the cameras installed in Wu Ming’s villa.

At around 10 PM on the 28th, Wu Ming came home from somewhere. His flushed face and unsteady walk suggested he’d been drinking heavily that evening.

Wu Ming’s entrance disturbed someone else in the house. Soon after, Li Yujia emerged from the upstairs bedroom.

Seeing him, she let out a sharp cry, "Wu Ming, do you even have a shred of conscience left?"

Wu Ming glanced at her without responding and continued upstairs, drunk.

Li Yujia kept cursing, her voice a mix of anger and a hoarse sob.

She scolded Wu Ming for being ungrateful and brought up his mother and the hospital. In the end, she even said she would call the police.

Wu Ming ignored her completely. After reaching the top of the stairs, he walked straight past her and into the bedroom.

Li Yujia followed him in and slammed the door shut.

The soundproofing of the wooden door was very effective.

Qiong Cang maxed out the background audio, but since there were no cameras installed near the bedroom, she couldn’t clearly pick up the sound and had no idea what the two were arguing about.

About fifteen minutes later, Li Yujia burst out of the room in a panic. She grabbed the handbag on the sofa and rushed out of the house without properly putting on her shoes.

The villa was quiet.

Qiong Cang fast-forwarded the surveillance video.

About twenty minutes later, Wu Ming, holding his head, walked out of the bedroom.

Qiong Cang sat up straight.

Hey? She thought he was already dead.

Wu Ming was in bad shape; half an hour hadn’t been enough for him to sober up. He almost tripped while walking down the stairs but managed to stabilize himself by crouching down in time.

Wu Ming remained crouched there for a while before finally staggering toward the kitchen.

Qiong Cang switched the camera view.

After entering the kitchen, Wu Ming took a bottle of red wine out of the fridge and continued drinking at the table.

As he became more intoxicated, Wu Ming began to sob uncontrollably. He held his head with both hands and let out a series of meaningless groans, seemingly in great pain.

Then he picked up his phone, as if searching for something. Likely because he couldn’t see clearly, he angrily threw the phone to the ground.

Around 12:30, Wu Ming got up, his face streaked with tears, and deliberately cut the power to the surveillance cameras.

The most crucial footage was gone.

Qiong Cang: “……”

What good are these cameras anyway?

·

“If I recall, the boss was really counting on the surveillance… She was sure it would provide solid evidence.”

“Wow, from the investigators' point of view, is this case really that confusing?”

“I really thought Li Yujia was the killer. But she was ruled out early in the investigation. With 80% of the clues explored, there shouldn’t have been that much discrepancy.”

“From this angle, the murderer’s imitation wasn’t very convincing. The media was saying it was an exact copy, and that Fan Huai had stalked the victim before his death, but the police didn’t act. As it turns out, the one who stalked Wu Ming wasn’t Fan Huai.” [sneer]

“I’m curious. With modern technology, how many days will it take the boss to retrieve the previous clues? It feels like this angle just got harder.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! Do you think the boss will interrogate Brother Q next?”

·

As the audience speculated wildly, Qiong Cang had already stepped out of the police car and was making her way to a pavilion near the villa.

The area was peaceful, with a scenic lake nearby. The female police officer was sitting on a bench, having a hushed conversation with Li Yujia.

Qiong Cang ascended the stone steps and greeted Li Yujia with a polite but distant nod, "Hello, Ms. Li."

Author's Note:

Some people didn't understand because I don't like to describe the game mechanics in too much detail =。=# Let me clarify.

Although He Jueyun is an overseer, his primary responsibility is to monitor whether newcomers violate any rules during the game and to assess their mental state within the game world. However, he is also assigned a specific character role, and he must play it convincingly.

For instance, in the first round, he played the role of an investigator and helped solve the case. This time, based on the clues, he realized his role was likely that of the murderer. So, he must hide the evidence, wait for Murder Night to begin, and then follow the script to carry out the murder.

In this scenario, Qiong Cang managed to hold down all the suspects, preventing them from following their scripts.

Because the crime scene couldn't be reconstructed, the game couldn't continue. As a result, the system forced a data correction, reconstructed the crime scene, and moved into the second phase. In essence, the game reset, starting over from the investigation phase.