Chapter 183: Further Understanding

They soon entered the public discussion phase. The host guided everyone to focus on the anomalies during the concert: the details of the power outage, the malfunctioning instruments, the controversy over the guest list, and other similar incidents.

After playing through the first act, Su Yuqing and the others gradually got into character, starting to feel truly immersed in their roles.

Everyone began considering the significance of their own roles and how to find the murderer.

The culprits, meanwhile, were contemplating how to openly reveal some information about themselves while still keeping their true identities well hidden.

At the end of the first act, the clues were so scarce that even a veteran detective like Chen Mo couldn’t immediately tell who was suspicious.

However, he had already noticed something amiss.

With the start of the second act, Crimson Dawn.

The twelve players split into groups to search for evidence:

Group A (Su/Zhou/Gu/Lu) investigated the concert hall and the secret passage.

This was the main investigation group. Aside from Chen Mo, the other three were first-time players, so they didn’t suspect anyone in their group at all.

They naively assumed the culprit must be one of the four official suspects.

However, since they weren’t suspicious of each other, they didn’t hide information, which made it easier for Chen Mo to gather more clues.

During their search, Chen Mo discovered something was wrong with the mechanical pendulum.

This was one of the culprit’s ploys, and now he had seen right through it.

Seeing Chen Mo lead his small team so efficiently, the host couldn’t help but smile and glance his way.

’I really picked the right person for the sheriff.’

Group B (Shen/Chen/Jiang/Pei) checked the study and the basement, discovering bloodstains in a secret passage.

Group C (Cheng Brothers/Lin/Wen) searched the servants’ quarters, finding a blurry photograph of twins.

Soon, everyone returned to the main hall and began to share clues.

When Lin Ranhai and Luo Yunxi returned to the main hall, they originally planned to conceal the key clue—the photograph of the twins.

But Zhao Yuanyuan, despite this being her first time playing, was exceptionally diligent. She had written down everything they investigated in the small notebook provided by the host.

She announced this key finding, providing Chen Mo with crucial information.

In fact, this is what made the game difficult: the two culprits were in the same group, leaving only two innocents to gather clues from that area.

When the two culprits worked together, they had a high chance of obstructing and disrupting the two innocents’ investigation.

Xiao Yue, who was in their group, was easily misled.

The main reason Zhao Yuanyuan wasn’t fooled was because she didn’t know the other three well, so she mostly acted and took notes on her own. When they tried to talk to her, she would only respond politely without engaging in deep conversation.

Therefore, they didn’t manage to interfere with her successfully.

Of course, the photograph wasn’t the only clue pointing to twins; the character played by Zhou Hao also knew a bit of inside information.

Once all the clues were shared, Chen Mo began to contemplate the key clue: the twins.

All the characters had age information.

Chen Mo discovered that the gardener and the butler, played by Lin Ranhai and Luo Yunxi respectively, were the exact same age. At the same time, there were four red herrings. The painter, played by Lin Yu’an, was also the same age as them.

Additionally, two female characters shared an age, and Jiang Yumian, played by Chu Mengyao, was also their age.

These red herrings were somewhat effective.

But to Chen Mo, they made little difference. After all, while you can’t rely on a presumption of guilt in real detective work, it’s a very effective tactic in a game like this.

He had locked onto Lin Ranhai from the start. Now, by applying the clues to him under the presumption of guilt, everything naturally started falling into place, making the case against him stronger.

Seeing that Chen Mo had gathered most of what he needed, the host began to lead everyone into the final act.

Act Three: Echoes of Rebirth!

Timeline Reconstruction: Players submit their time cards, with authenticity verified by a sheet music cipher (the treble clef corresponds to a DNA double helix).

Memory Fragments: Complete special tasks to obtain memory fragments from other characters (e.g., the fortune teller’s prophecy, the maid’s blueprint of the secret room).

Final Choice: A key witness can either expose the twins or choose to remain silent, influencing which ending branch is triggered.

Obtaining these memory fragments was a way to fill in the gaps and find clues that others might have missed.

It was also a fail-safe in case the group searching the servants’ quarters missed the information about the twins.

During this phase, Lin Ranhai’s intelligence proved to be quite extraordinary.

If it weren’t for Chen Mo, he nearly succeeded in shifting the blame onto his accomplice and Lin Yu’an.

The character Lin Yu’an was playing was taciturn and spoke little, making him an easy target to be framed.

Combined with the fact that his character’s age matched the one played by Luo Yunxi, he could easily be fingered as the other twin.

Furthermore, the discovery of a hidden password to the master’s secret passage within a painting in his art studio only deepened the suspicion against him.

Through his skillful misdirection, he nearly convinced everyone to identify the culprits as one of the real ones and one innocent.

If the group locked onto two innocent people, it would be very difficult for those two to clear their names.

Unless the other ten players were complete Muggles.

But as the game progressed, Lin Ranhai realized that Chen Mo’s skills were terrifyingly sharp.

’He’s practically figured out the truth. If I don’t muddy the waters now, I’m going to be exposed.’

’Now, my only choice is to sacrifice an arm to survive—to muddle through by offering a half-true, half-false solution.’

A lie is most easily believed when it’s mixed with 50% truth. And since Lin Yu’an was already one of the official suspects, Lin Ranhai’s argument became even more convincing.

But unfortunately for him, no matter how desperately Lin Ranhai tried to turn the tide, Chen Mo still spotted the flaw in his logic.

’How could a mere gardener obtain so much information? There were certain details Chen Mo had intentionally kept to himself, like the issue with the mechanical pendulum.’

As long as the four people in his group who knew about it kept quiet, only the culprit himself would know about this trick.

During his deduction, Lin Ranhai had accidentally let that key clue slip.

That was a major slip-up.

It was just that everyone else’s brains were fried by that point, and they hadn’t caught the mistake at all.

Even the accused party, Lin Yu’an, almost believed he was the murderer after listening to Lin Ranhai’s analysis.

After all, he’d never played a game like this before and didn’t know if there was a mechanic where the real culprit might be unaware of their own identity, making it easier for the player to act innocently.

By this point, however, Chen Mo had already deciphered all the core mechanics of the plot.

The crime scene was a locked room mystery. The concert hall’s doors and windows were locked from the inside, and the body was found suspended. However, there was a second space—a secret passage connecting the study to the servants’ corridor. This, combined with the mechanical pendulum in the attic, was used to create the illusion of a time discrepancy, thereby securing an alibi.

Fortunately, there was the dying message left on the sheet music. The incomplete score was actually a cipher. The musical staff corresponded to the manor’s floor plan, and the note durations pointed to the location of the secret room’s mechanism, which could be deciphered using the arrangement of the piano’s black keys.

As for the most crucial "twin gambit": the butler, Cheng Muhan, and the gardener, Cheng Muyun, were twins who used disguises to swap identities.

At the time of the crime, Cheng Muhan created the locked room in the concert hall.

Meanwhile, Cheng Muyun used the mechanical device to fabricate an alibi.

The two shared the butler’s privileges, giving them control over the entire manor’s key system. They could also switch places with each other to establish alibis.

Chen Mo pieced together all the clues. Using Lin Ranhai’s slip of the tongue, combined with the aptitude for mechanics he had previously displayed during the game, he deduced the final culprits.

Everyone was left breathless with admiration after hearing his explanation.

After all, Chen Mo had worked with roughly the same information they all had. That he could deduce so much from it was truly astonishing.

But that wasn’t the main point. The important thing was that through this game, Chen Mo had gained a deeper understanding of Lin Ranhai. The man was extremely cunning and eloquent. At the same time, he also noticed the connection between the young woman, Xiao Yue, and Lin Ranhai.

In the records from his past life, it was Xiao Yue who had provided Lin Ranhai’s alibi.

’But if Xiao Yue is so head over heels in love that she’s just letting Lin Ranhai lead her by the nose, then the testimony she provides might not be so reliable after all!’