Chapter 31: Rebirth

The moment the viewers in the Live Stream Room saw the change on Sanyao’s panel, they jumped out of bed in excitement. The late hour kept them from making too much noise in real life, so they could only vent their wild screams in the comments section. Icons for donations and likes flooded the entire chat.

“I thought she was dead, but then she pulled a sudden reincarnation out of nowhere.”

“Does this mean logging back in and starting from scratch? They probably won’t catch up to the progress of the neighboring instance. What a shame.”

“No, to be precise, this should be borrowing a corpse to bring back a soul¹. 【Serious】”

“Huh? I looked away for just a second, how did the whole world change?”

“The big boss shut down all three suspects. She sent two to the station and personally watched the other at the hospital, making it impossible for the murder plot to proceed. The Sanyao system was forced to correct the data. The game skipped straight to phase two and restarted.”

“Big boss: ‘Are you a sore loser? I’m just a newbie.'”

“Sorry, my bad, but if you look at it from Brother Q’s perspective, what kind of plot is this? ‘You can’t escape my palm after all, even if I’m dead.'”

·

Qiong Cang stood before the French windows, her gaze fixed unblinkingly on the meticulously manicured garden. The harsh sunlight shone into her eyes, making them sting slightly. Only when a cool breeze slipped through the gap in the glass window and brushed against her face did she finally move her arm.

The forensic technician behind her, seeing her standing there dazed, walked over and asked, “Boss, what’s wrong?”

Qiong Cang raised her hands to press against both sides of her temples, feeling a dull throb in her head. She closed her eyes, let out a breath, and said, “I’m so tired. The game has clearly just started, but I feel like I’ve pulled an all-nighter.”

“Did you stay up late again last night? You told us to go back and get some good rest, but you don’t even take care of yourself.” The young man squeezed the evidence bag in his hand and said with regret, “This is another big case today. Looks like we won’t be getting any rest anytime soon.”

Qiong Cang turned around and looked at the male corpse lying face-up on the floor not far away.

The man wore a white shirt, which had now been cut open to reveal a dense cluster of wounds. Despite such gruesome knife wounds, only a small amount of dark black blood remained on the floor, though quite a bit of fine tissue had splattered around.

His body had already been pixelated. Qiong Cang could only see a white mannequin and a string of text descriptions, so the visual impact wasn’t that intense. The Sanyao system would never let players directly face excessively graphic scenes. In the Live Stream Room, the viewers couldn’t even see the white mannequin; there was only a plain stick figure.

Using guide lines, the system marked the locations and widths of the knife wounds across the mannequin. A line of small text floated beside it and quickly vanished.

【Deceased: Wu Ming. Time of Death: 1:00 AM to 2:00 AM.】

Qiong Cang walked over to Wu Ming’s body and squatted next to the forensic pathologist. The middle-aged man tilted his head slightly, making some room for her as he began his explanation.

“The exact cause of death will have to wait until the autopsy to be confirmed. However, these wounds were all inflicted post-mortem. I haven’t counted exactly how many there are yet.” The pathologist pointed to several areas to show her. “The knife wounds on the deceased are messy and scattered, mostly concentrated on the abdomen and arms. The cuts are uneven, and the blade wasn’t sharp. Take the elbow area, for instance. Judging from the cross-section of the wound, the murderer hacked at it repeatedly from similar angles and then sawed hard, leaving a very deep wound.”

The officer taking notes winced. “How much hatred must that take? It’s like they wanted to grind his bones to dust². Was that really necessary?”

The pathologist shifted to a half-squat to relax his muscles. Hearing this, he said, “The murderer might have harbored intense hatred toward the deceased, leaving so many brutal wounds to vent their anger. But it’s also possible…”

Qiong Cang picked up where he left off. “It’s also possible the murderer originally wanted to dismember the body to divert attention, but underestimated the difficulty of dismemberment and lacked knowledge of human joints, resulting in this situation.”

The pathologist nodded.

“Huh?” the young officer said. “Then it sounds like a crime of passion without enough preparation. But the murderer deliberately left a suggestive note next to Wu Ming. That kind of action makes it feel like a premeditated revenge. Or perhaps, a frame-up?”

The young officer scrolled back through the photos on his camera, saying, “When the murderer was mutilating the body, rigor mortis probably hadn’t set in yet, and the body was posed in a specific position. At the time, the deceased’s right hand was holding a Western-style chef’s knife, which was the murder weapon used to cause the various wounds on his body. The knife was pointed at his own abdomen, and a note was left about half a meter away. These details are very similar to the previous cases. Also, we just confirmed that the deceased, Wu Ming, was also one of the witnesses who testified against Ning Dongdong back then.”

Ning Dongdong was Fan Huai’s alias in this instance.

Qiong Cang remained silent, saying nothing.

“Sigh, this is already the fourth victim. I don’t know when this will end. If we don’t catch the murderer soon, I feel like the media is going to roast us alive.” The young officer grumbled in frustration, then added, “But yesterday, two of our guys were watching Ning Dongdong’s building the entire time. They confirmed he never left his residence from start to finish, so it really couldn’t have been him this time. Could it be a copycat?”

Another crime scene investigator walked over and said, “The murderer clearly arranged the scene like this on purpose, wanting to disguise it as a murder connected to the first three cases. However, the feel of the two is very different. One is meticulous, the other is crude. It doesn’t look like the work of the same murderer at all.”

He tilted his head to look closely at the corpse on the floor. “But if you want to say it’s entirely a copycat, there’s a certain flavor to it that can’t be replicated. Some details we haven’t released to the public yet, but they strangely match up. This isn’t something an ordinary copycat could pull off, right?”

“There are also things that don’t match,” the young officer said. “We didn’t release the contents of the notes to the public. The notes held by the first three victims had the word ‘Lies’ written on them, but the note on Wu Ming has a full sentence.”

Qiong Cang said, “Let me see.”

The young officer replied, “Sure, I’ll go get it from Brother Liu.”

“This should be different from the first three cases. Although it looks somewhat similar, the level of execution is completely different. The crime scenes of the first three cases were cleaned very thoroughly, but this time, a lot of clues were left behind.”

Everyone turned toward the voice. A forensic investigator carrying a kit walked over and said, “The murderer wasn’t very cautious this time, or rather, not professional enough. He climbed in from the back garden, getting mud on his soles, and didn’t take off his shoes after entering the house, leaving a large area of footprints. He must have realized it later and tried to wipe them away, but because he was in a hurry, he didn’t clean them thoroughly. We extracted a complete footprint at the scene. After comparing it with all the shoes in the victim’s house, we confirmed there’s no matching size. It should belong to the murderer.”

The young officer returned with an evidence bag containing a slip of paper, speculating excitedly, “Could it be that Ning Dongdong knew he was being watched and couldn’t move, so he hired a hitman to stage a similar murder to divert our attention?”

Qiong Cang took the evidence bag from him and pinched the thin piece of paper inside through the plastic.

Inside the bag was a note written in red pen, stained with a bit of blood at the top, and stamped with Wu Ming’s thumbprint where the signature should be.

The words on the paper read: “I pointed the tip of the blade at someone else, and plunged it in deep.”

After examining it closely, Qiong Cang handed the item back to the officer. The young guy asked, “Boss, what do you think this sentence means? Is it literal? Does this first-person ‘I’ refer to the murderer or the victim?”

Qiong Cang lifted her eyelids, her gaze sweeping across his face before looking down again.

Receiving no response, the young guy kept babbling, “Boss, why have you been so quiet today? Don’t you usually talk a lot?”

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

The young guy pointed. “Li Yujia? She’s in the yard. She’s pretty shaken up. Sister Wang is taking her detailed statement.”

Qiong Cang looked in that direction and happened to spot a security camera installed in the corner of the wall. She asked, “Has the surveillance footage been retrieved? Did it capture anything?”

The young guy said, “It has. I’ll go get it for you.”

As he was about to turn and leave, Qiong Cang spoke again. “I have a task for you.”

He spun right back. “Tell me, tell me!”

“Since the murderer wanted to frame Ning Dongdong, the note he left and the clues at the scene probably weren’t written at random.” Qiong Cang went to the trouble of explaining a bit more, saying, “Go check for me if the precinct received any reports of knife assaults around ten years ago, right around the time of Ning Dongdong’s murder case, and near that crime scene.”

The young guy nodded. “Got it.”

·

Qiong Cang sat in the car, holding a tablet in her hands. She adjusted her posture, clipping the tablet to the back of the seat, and crossed her arms to watch the video.

The screen was playing the final segment of footage stored from the security cameras installed in Wu Ming’s villa.

Around 10:00 PM on the night of the 28th, Wu Ming returned from outside. Judging by his flushed face and staggering steps, he must have drunk heavily during the evening.

The noise of Wu Ming entering disturbed the other person in the house. Soon, Li Yujia walked out of the second-floor bedroom.

When Li Yujia saw him, she shrieked. She cursed, “Wu Ming, do you have any conscience left at all!”

Wu Ming glanced at her but didn’t respond, stumbling drunkenly upstairs.

Li Yujia continued to scream curses, though her voice carried a raspy sob alongside her anger.

She called Wu Ming ungrateful, and mentioned his mother and the hospital. In the end, she even threatened to call the police.

Wu Ming ignored her the entire time. After climbing the stairs, he walked straight past her and entered the bedroom.

Li Yujia followed him inside and slammed the door shut behind her.

The wooden door was highly soundproof.

Qiong Cang turned the background volume to the maximum, but since no cameras were installed near the bedroom, the audio wasn’t captured clearly, making it impossible to determine what they were arguing about.

After about fifteen minutes, Li Yujia pushed the door open and rushed out in a panic. She grabbed her handbag from the sofa and left the house immediately, without even putting her shoes on properly.

The villa fell completely silent.

Qiong Cang fast-forwarded the surveillance footage.

Another twenty minutes or so passed, and Wu Ming walked out of the bedroom, clutching his head.

Qiong Cang sat up straight.

Huh? I thought our friend here was already dead.

Wu Ming was in bad shape; half an hour hadn’t been enough to sober him up. He almost took a spill on the stairs, but luckily he squatted down in time to stabilize himself.

Holding that position, Wu Ming squatted on the stairs for a long time before taking heavy steps toward the kitchen.

Qiong Cang switched the security camera feed.

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

Once he drank himself into a stupor, Wu Ming began to weep bitterly. He clutched his head with both hands and let out a series of meaningless groans, seemingly in great pain.

Then he picked up his phone, appearing to search for something on it. Perhaps because he couldn’t see clearly, he angrily threw the phone to the ground.

When the surveillance timestamp jumped to 12:30 AM, Wu Ming stood up. With his face smeared with tears, he went ahead and cut the power to the security cameras.

Just like that, the most critical footage was gone.

Qiong Cang: “…”

What use did she have for this surveillance?

·

“If I remember correctly, the surveillance that the boss had high hopes for… she confidently swore it would definitely leave evidence.”

“Holy crap, is this case really this confusing from the Investigator’s perspective?”

“I really thought Li Yujia was the murderer, but she was ruled out right at the start of the investigation phase? With an 80% clue exploration rate, there shouldn’t be such a huge discrepancy.”

“Looking at it this way, this murderer’s imitation isn’t very clever. The media back then said it was identical, and even claimed Fan Huai had stalked the victim before his death but the police failed to act. Turns out the one stalking Wu Ming wasn’t Fan Huai at all. 【pouts】”

“I’m curious. With the help of modern technology, how many days will it take the boss to find the previous clues again? Why does this angle feel even harder?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! Is the boss going to interrogate Brother Q now?”

·

While the audience guessed wildly, Qiong Cang stepped out of the police car and walked toward a pavilion near the villa.

It was very quiet here, right next to a scenic lake. A policewoman sat on a bench with Li Yujia, speaking in hushed tones.

Qiong Cang stepped onto the stone steps. Facing the face that matched the one in the surveillance footage, she said with polite distance, “Hello, Ms. Li.”

Author’s Note:

Some readers mentioned they didn’t quite understand because I don’t like to describe settings in detail =.=# Let me explain it clearly here.

Although He Jueyun is an Inspector whose main job is to monitor whether newcomers violate any rules in the game and to assess their mental state, he was also assigned a specific role script. That means he has to play his character well.

For example, in the first round, he was assigned the identity of 【Investigator】, so he had to help investigate the case. In this round, based on the clues, he deduced that his identity might be the 【Murderer】. Therefore, he has to hide the evidence, wait for the 【Night of Murder】 to begin, and then commit the crime according to the next phase of the script.

What happened in this instance is that Qiong Cang pinned down all the suspects, leaving them unable to play out their scripts.

Since the crime scene couldn’t be reconstructed, the game couldn’t proceed. Therefore, the system forced a data correction. After reconstructing the crime scene, it entered the second phase. This is essentially restarting the game directly from the investigation stage.

Translator’s Notes