Chapter 307 - 306: The Mastermind Behind the Serial Murder Case Becomes Clear

Chapter 307: Chapter 306: The Mastermind Behind the Serial Murder Case Becomes Clear

The members of the Resistance bound us all, leaving our hands and feet completely immobile. Adrian and Stella, however, only had their hands tied since they were just children.

"Mom, there’s something wrong with that girl," Stella whispered in my ear. "She’s very smart. She appeared in the lower cabins a long time ago. She was looking for us, and after confirming we were there, she actually managed to escape..."

I froze for a moment, looking at Stella. "What do you mean?"

"Mom, the lower cabins where we were kept have a lot of mechanisms and traps. Someone who isn’t familiar with them wouldn’t be able to make it out alive. Before you guys showed up, I heard footsteps. She came down to the cabin, saw us, and then turned around to leave. Those footsteps belonged to Gigi."

Stella and Adrian could determine a person’s height, weight, and even approximate age just from the sound of their footsteps.

"Then why weren’t there any traps when we went down there?" I asked quietly.

"Because Adrian and I also wanted to go out and find you, Mom. We found and disarmed those traps and mechanisms beforehand."

Before Stella and Adrian had disarmed the traps, Gigi was already able to successfully find them, leave safely, and then lure me down there. Her goal had been to let me meet the two little ones and take them away.

But what was her ultimate purpose?

This time, it was Gigi again who had led us down to the cabins, discovering the Resistance’s secrets and finding Owen Foster... So far, she hadn’t shown any signs of malice.

"Gigi, who exactly are you?" I turned to look at her crouched in the corner.

She stared back at me innocently, seeming not to understand. I sighed and said no more.

"It’s already chaos out there! That lunatic is selling food and water at exorbitant prices, inciting a riot! He’s stirring up class conflict between the rich and the poor!" From outside the door, we all heard Owen Foster’s argumentative voice.

The lunatic he spoke of had to be the masked man.

"The rich can casually toss out millions, even tens of millions, just for a single meal, while the poor can’t even scrape together a few hundred or a few thousand. This has made their psychology increasingly twisted, intensifying their resentment toward the wealthy. The people out there are slaughtering each other! At this rate, hardly anyone on this ship will make it out alive."

Owen was furious. Evidently, his ideologies clashed completely with those of the masked man. He didn’t want massive casualties; he only wanted to make the Genetics Organization’s affairs public, exposing them to the world. But the masked man wanted to incite opposition and create a massacre. His goal was to have the rich and the poor slaughter each other.

"The evil of human nature breeds and sprouts in the dark. Once it appears, it must be thoroughly eradicated. This is nipping it in the bud. None of those who die on this ship are innocent." The masked man’s voice changer emitted an eerie, distorted sound.

His rhetoric that the victims were also perpetrators was identical to that of the mastermind behind the serial killings. I could now basically confirm that this masked man was indeed the mastermind—the creator of both the serial murders and the killing game. I had to admit, he was truly brilliant.

"If all these people die, who will spread the truth? The power of capital is boundless! We gathered these thousand-plus people so they could spread the word, break through the information barriers, and shatter the echo chambers! Not for you to slaughter them at will!" Owen’s voice was agitated, dripping with anger.

It was obvious he was genuinely enraged.

"The benevolence of a soft heart accomplishes nothing great..." the masked man mocked eerily. "You’ve seen far too little of human nature. These people, so easily swayed by profit, will only be driven by greed once they leave, holding us back. Only those who survive to the end, who still retain kindness in their hearts, will have the chance to remain unmoved by greed and focus solely on exposing all of this."

The masked man believed that keeping those who would stop at nothing—even murder—for profit would only ruin their plans. If let go, those people would just jump out and claim nothing happened on the ship except the Resistance slaughtering everyone.

Clearly, the masked man understood human nature far better. But he was too bloodthirsty. Whether it was the serial killings, the death game, or this cruise ship of death... it all proved one thing: he was completely insane.

"Enough already. The suspects for the CEO of the Astraeus Group have been narrowed down to eleven people. Once their hand injuries heal, we’ll be able to identify him, eliminate him right in front of the Genetics Organization, and then abandon ship. Just stop this," Owen continued to argue with the masked man.

I exchanged a glance with Zeke Shaw. It seemed the Resistance wasn’t as united as they appeared. Some advocated for slaughter, while others pushed for exposure. Owen Foster was the one championing the latter.

"My dad... he’s actually not a bad guy," Felix Foster whispered, defending Owen.

"Heh..." Killian Lancaster sneered. "Not bad? If he isn’t bad, why did he lock us all up in here?"

"You’re not dead, are you?" Lucas Grant frowned, unexpectedly taking Felix’s side.

"Stop arguing," Ace commanded, lowering his voice to silence them.

The room fell silent for a moment before we saw a hand reach in, followed slowly by a head. It was actually Simon, the murderer. He had squeezed in through the gap in the door of the back storage room.

With our hands and feet bound, we all stared at him warily. We had kept him tied up previously precisely because we feared his retaliation. Madeline Quinn was even more terrified, shrinking back to hide behind Zeke.

But Simon didn’t seem to care about the rest of them. Instead, he looked around the room, smiling eerily. Pointing toward the door, he chuckled. "The killer... the serial killer is right outside... He created all of this. He created the slaughter... He brought together everyone he thinks deserves to die... The rich. He thinks all rich people deserve to die."

He walked up to me with a grin, seemingly showing off his knowledge of the serial killer’s secret. "He’s not alone! He didn’t do it by himself. He’s just a piece of trash, provoking me... Hahaha!"

Julian Fletcher glared at Simon vigilantly and tried to shield me, but Simon completely ignored him, casually shoving him aside. His eyes were intensely focused on me, boasting and reporting as if he truly considered me a kindred spirit.

He seemed delighted. Whenever he killed, he did it all by himself, whereas the serial killer relied on external forces.

"Do you know what it means when a bloodthirsty person doesn’t do the deed themselves, but instead schemes for others to kill?" Simon smiled, lifting his clothes to point at his congenitally deformed legs and torso. "It means they’re disabled. Or weak.

"I won. I’ve fundamentally beaten him. He must be just like me—either crippled or fragile."

Simon was analyzing the identity of the serial killer. I furrowed my brows, looking at him. What he said was... correct.

The serial killer had orchestrated everything, seeming to only make the victims slaughter each other without ever actually getting his own hands dirty.

Except for "Cecilia Caldwell"...

Recalling the scene of her death, I drew in a sharp breath. In my daze, I remembered seeing a birthmark, intentionally scratching his arm, and... his unathletic, perhaps even frail, physique.

Even to kill me, he needed to do it while I was half-anesthetized... That meant this killer might not even be able to overpower me while I was fully awake. He was an incredibly weak existence.

Could it be the masked man? He was bundled up tightly, but it was clear that he was much thinner and shorter than the men around him. Who on earth was he?

"If I kill him, I’ll go down in history. I will be the true winner," Simon said with a laugh, looking as though he was about to charge out and murder the masked man to expose his true face.

"If you go out there like this, you’ll definitely die," I said cautiously, taking a deep breath. "You want to kill him? He has too many people helping him. You need our help too. That’s the only way it’ll be fair."

I coaxed him in a low voice. Sure enough, Simon felt my words made sense.

"Untie our ropes, and we’ll help you..." I lifted my hands, which were bound behind my back, gesturing for him to free us.

Excitedly, Simon obliged, genuinely believing we were going to help him commit murder.

"In a little while, we’ll have Adrian lure him in. Then we’ll subdue him together and see who this heavily disguised person really is." I exchanged a glance with Zeke.

An unspoken understanding passed between all of us.