Chapter 184: A Childhood Sweetheart Plus a Heaven-sent Girl, How Do You Fight That?

A murder mystery game takes quite a while to finish.

Several hours, in fact.

For all those hours, you have to stay immersed, meticulously sifting through evidence and clues to deduce the killer.

It’s by no means easy.

Sometimes, the killer has such a huge advantage that they can easily lead everyone in circles. When that happens, the Game Master might even have to deliberately spotlight the killer just to draw more attention to them.

Even so, the killer still ends up winning most of the time.

This was the first game where the GM hadn’t given a single deliberate hint, yet the players still managed to solve the mystery on their own by synthesizing all the clues.

The Game Master shot Chen Mo an admiring glance.

"Chen Mo, was it? I’ve rarely met anyone as good as you at these games. Want to play again sometime?" Although Lin Ranhai had lost, he didn’t seem to mind at all, smiling as he spoke to Chen Mo.

"We’ll see if I have time. It also depends on whether Yuqing enjoys it," Chen Mo said, smiling as he looked at Su Yuqing.

He rarely brought Su Yuqing into the conversation so directly in front of others. This time, it was intentional.

He wanted to see how Lin Ranhai would react if he acted particularly close with Su Yuqing.

After all, the guy had seemed perfectly calm and composed up to this point.

Even after losing the game, he was all smiles.

But the more emotionally one-note a person was, the more suspicious Chen Mo grew.

People like that were usually putting on a facade.

Only when something happened that pushed past their self-control would a hint of their true self slip through the cracks.

As he watched Chen Mo’s obvious display of closeness with Su Yuqing, although Lin Ranhai showed no outward reaction, Chen Mo still caught a subtle shift in his micro-expressions.

The corners of his eyes and mouth had twitched faintly.

An ordinary person wouldn’t have noticed, but Chen Mo was no ordinary person.

’So, Lin Ranhai actually does have designs on Su Yuqing.’

When she heard Chen Mo mention her name and everyone turned to look, Su Yuqing’s cheeks instantly flushed red.

At her reaction, the shifts in Lin Ranhai’s micro-expressions grew even more pronounced.

’If his first reaction could have been a coincidence, this one couldn’t. He’s definitely our guy.’

Based on his observations, Chen Mo had now locked onto Lin Ranhai.

Now that he had a target, the follow-up investigation would be much simpler.

He would task Blade with investigating Lin Ranhai’s movements for the entire day of Su Yuqing’s incident.

The police had limited resources; they rarely focused on suspects who weren’t easy to pin down and had minimal apparent contact with the victim.

If they were to investigate everyone at that level of connection, the sheer number of people would be unimaginable.

If they had to pour all their resources into a full background check on everyone who’d met the victim a couple of times, the police department would never get anything else done.

Suspects at this level were typically only investigated in depth if the victim’s family insisted they were suspicious and poured their own energy into it.

As Chen Mo used Su Yuqing to provoke Lin Ranhai’s hidden emotions, he was also, in fact, affecting the mood of another person present.

Chu Mengyao.

Seeing how Chen Mo consulted Su Yuqing’s feelings and mood before making a decision, Chu Mengyao knew she had lost.

’Chen Mo is already at the point where he hangs on her every word. What do I have to compete with that?’

Instantly, her expression fell.

And at that moment, only one person noticed her change in mood: Su Yuqing.

After all, Su Yuqing wasn’t paying attention to anyone else there. Ever since she’d seen how close Chu Mengyao was with Chen Mo, she had been watching her.

The more she looked, the more she felt that Chu Mengyao was quite charming herself.

And the more she looked, the more her heart began to race with anxiety.

Logically, she knew she had no right, as if she were his girlfriend, to restrict Chen Mo’s social life.

But seeing him so close to another girl, she couldn’t stop the ache in her heart.

But right now, she saw dejection in Chu Mengyao’s eyes.

Someone else might not have understood the reason for the dejection in her eyes.

But Su Yuqing’s perception was sharp enough to grasp the reason.

Before, she had only been guessing about Chen Mo’s relationship with the other girl.

But now she was certain of one thing.

She didn’t know if Chen Mo liked this girl or not, but this girl was definitely in love with Chen Mo.

At that thought, she couldn’t help but feel a pang of pain herself.

She had just experienced this exact same pain—the kind you feel when the boy you like is close with another girl.

So naturally, she could empathize with Chu Mengyao’s feelings at that moment.

Soon, the game ended and the group started heading to dinner. Su Yuqing deliberately fell into step beside Chu Mengyao and started a quiet conversation with her.

Su Yuqing had studied various aspects of psychology since she was a child, so she understood Chu Mengyao’s state of mind perfectly well.

Unconsciously, the two of them walked slower and slower, falling a good distance behind the others.

The volume of their conversation, which had been deliberately hushed, was now much more normal.

"How did you two meet?" Chu Mengyao asked Su Yuqing curiously.

If they’d only met as classmates, then based on what Su Yuqing had just told her, she and Chen Mo barely interacted. So how had they suddenly become so close?

"We have a bit of history from our childhood," Su Yuqing said honestly.

"Childhood? How young?" As Chen Mo’s childhood friend, Chu Mengyao immediately felt a surge of competitiveness.

"Around six or seven, I think," Su Yuqing said, recalling.

"That early?" Chu Mengyao recalled that she hadn’t really gotten to know Chen Mo and started playing with him until after she turned nine.

She was instantly stunned, feeling as though she had lost yet another round.

"We didn’t play together for very long back then. My family moved away, and we never saw each other again after that," Su Yuqing continued honestly, seeing Chu Mengyao’s expression fall once more.

But instead of offering any comfort, these words only made Chu Mengyao feel that this was precisely why their bond was so profound.

’The separation and regret of childhood, followed by a reunion and a chance to make up for it in adulthood.’

’The emotional impact of that was far more powerful than simply being companions who grew up together.’

As the saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

While that saying usually described newlyweds, it was just as applicable to a man and a woman in a budding romance.

’Spending all your time together might lead to taking each other for granted, or even growing tired of one another. But after being apart for a while, a reunion is filled with nothing but appreciation and affection.’

Now, Chu Mengyao was more convinced than ever that Chen Mo and Su Yuqing were an unbreakable pair.

’How could she possibly compete? The other girl was both the childhood friend *and* the fated reunion.’

She said nothing more. Instead, she watched Chen Mo walking ahead of the group and let out a small, resigned smile.