Escape the Library

When Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce returned to the inn, the classmates had already picked a lot of mushrooms and wild fruits, Qin Miao also dug up a lot of bamboo shoots, and Jiang Pingce put the firewood into the kitchen. Yue Xingwen glanced at the classmates and asked, "Who can cook?"

Qin Miao raised her hand: "I'll come."

There is a well at the back of the inn. Liu Zhaoqing went to get a bucket of water and put it in the kitchen. Seeing Qin Miao skillfully scooping a spoonful of water into the pot to wash the pot, Liu Zhaoqing was surprised: "Junior sister can cook?"

Qin Miao replied casually while washing the pot, "I cook when my parents are not at home."

Qin Lu said next to her: "My sister is very good at cooking, but unfortunately the conditions here are limited and there are not so many materials."

Liu Zhaoqing smiled and said: "It's much better than the public elective course, at least it has salt!" He rolled up his sleeves and washed the dishes beside him, took out a few sharp scalpels in his right hand, and said, "This kitchen knife has blood on it, maybe it's murder. Left. I'll cut the vegetables for you with a clean scalpel."

Several people were busy in the kitchen, and Yue Xingwen couldn't cook, so he asked Jiang Pingce to sit in the restaurant and analyze the case.

Half an hour later, a few dishes were served, and Qin Lu distributed clean chopsticks to everyone.

Everyone was hungry all day, and they ate a blissful meal at once. Qin Miao's dishes are quite delicious, but Yue Xingwen didn't expect that this cold-looking girl would have such good cooking skills.

Everyone chatted and ate, the table was full of mushrooms and bamboo shoots, and the vegetarian dishes with clear soup and little water made everyone's mentality become very "Buddhist" - the requirements in the library should not be too high, and it would be good to be full.

At dusk, everyone who had eaten dinner gathered in the restaurant again.

Yue Xingwen also sorted out his thoughts and told his classmates his guess: "I have a bold guess - this place may be an inn for 'immersive script killing'."

Ke Shaobin was stunned when he heard this, and asked in a low voice, "What is script killing?"

Qin Miao, who was sitting next to him, explained lightly: "Script Killing, also called Murder Mystery, is a role-playing game. Everyone plays various roles according to a murder script, without knowing each other's identities. Find the murderer. If it is an ancient immersive script killing, everyone’s mobile phones will usually be confiscated, and everyone will be asked to change into ancient clothes and play the role of ancients, so that players can experience the excitement of ancient murders immersively.”

Ke Shaobin understood, pushed his glasses seriously, and said, "In other words, in order to play this script-killing game, players need to live here for a day or two, wear ancient clothes, and play different roles. This is storage. The reason why there are a lot of ancient clothes in the room and the upstairs room. Since the player came from out of town, there may be travel plans after the script kill, so he brought a suitcase, which can explain the luggage we found in the attic?"

Liu Zhaoqing touched the back of his head: "So, the ancient content we dreamed of was actually a script?"

Everyone turned their attention to Yue Xingwen.

Yue Xingwen nodded: "Yes, the most difficult part of this course is the setting of 'play within a play'. We divide all the clues into two parts to understand. The modern part, the murderer runs an inn to kill; the ancient part, It is a script written by the murderer. Since the heroines in both worlds are surnamed Su, it is safe to guess that ancient scripts may allude to some events in reality, that is, scripts adapted from reality.”

He wrote the clues that he and Jiang Pingce had just sorted out on two sheets of paper, spread it out on the table, and patiently analyzed: "The world we live in is the real world, and serial murders have occurred. The inn has a strange structure, and it is obvious that Elaborately, the murderer used 'script killing' as a gimmick to attract some young people who liked this kind of game to come to the inn to stay, secretly kill some girls, dress them in bride's clothes, and hide the corpses in the storage room."

Jiang Pingce added: "Inn No. 7, there are seven seats in the storage room, seven ghost brides, the murderer is obviously obsessed with the number 'seven'. But there is a doubt in the real world, we have not yet figured out-- The women buried in the tombs outside the woods are treated completely differently from the six dead people hidden in the storage room."

Yue Xingwen nodded and said: "Also, the words 'The Tomb of the Beloved Wife Su Wanxin' are engraved on the tombstone. It is very likely that the buried woman was not killed by the murderer, but died of other events and was buried by her husband who loved her deeply. here."

He paused and concluded: "That is to say, the woman found in the tomb cannot be directly classified into the '7 dead' and '7 ghost brides', she is obviously a special existence. I am more inclined, seven We haven't found all the bodies yet."

Qin Miao thought about it carefully and agreed: "It makes sense. Judging from the layout of the inn and various storage rooms, the murderer has a collection addiction and serious obsessive-compulsive disorder. Since there are 7 chairs in the storage room, then It should correspond to 7 corpses, he has no reason to only tie the corpses of 6 women to it, leaving a seat free."

Gao Xiaoxin looked blank: "If there is one more corpse, where would it be?"

Everyone fell into contemplation, and always felt that their backs were hairy, as if they were being stared at by a pair of eyes.

Yue Xingwen suddenly said: "If there is an attic, will there be a basement?"

Gao Yongqiang's eyes lit up: "Yes! The basement can't be seen from the outside, and it doesn't affect the height of the building. We didn't take this part into account when we measured this building."

Everyone looked at each other and got up quickly.

Jiang Pingce said, "Find them separately."

Everyone squatted down and started from the corner, knocking the floor tiles one by one.

After a while, Qin Miao's voice came from inside the restaurant: "There is looseness here."

Yue Xingwen walked into the restaurant three or two steps, only to see Qin Miao squatting under the dining table, and took a brick to the side. After the square brick was taken away, a hole of about one square meter was revealed, and there was a downward ladder.

Liu Zhaoqing complained in a low voice, "How many secret rooms does this inn have?"

Qin Miao squatted under the table, looked up at Yue Xingwen after hearing the voice, and said, "I'll explore the way first."

She swiftly climbed down the ladder, Qin Lu took the candle and followed her sister. Soon, Qin Miao's voice came from the ground: "The space here is very large, come down and have a look."

The crowd lined up to climb into the basement.

The basement has hundreds of square meters and is divided into two rooms and two halls. The master bedroom has a large bed, and the living room has a matching sofa and table. The innermost room is used as a study, and the bookcases on three walls are full of various books. , Yue Xingwen took a cursory glance, except for some famous works, the remaining 60% are books related to feng shui, gossip, and ancient folk anecdotes.

There is also a small kitchen with no stove or refrigerator, just a simple countertop and a few cabinets.

What makes Yue Xingwen care is that the three walls of the master bedroom are all covered with photos, which are densely connected and seamlessly connected, and they are simply used as wallpapers.

All the pictures are of the same girl.

The girl looks sweet and has a dimple at the corner of her mouth when she smiles. She has long black hair, red lips and white teeth. Her appearance is not inferior to that of popular actresses in the entertainment industry. Moreover, she is very good at taking pictures and makes all kinds of funny movements in front of the camera. The first impression is very lively and lovely, like a pistachio.

Yue Xingwen stopped in front of a photo. This photo was different from the daily photos next to it. It was the largest photo in the whole house. The girl was wearing a white wedding dress, with a crown on her head, smiling. Happy face.

He took out the diamond ring found in the coffin today from his pocket and compared it with the diamond ring on the girl's finger.

Jiang Pingce asked, "Is it Su Wanxin?"

Yue Xingwen nodded: "It's her, the same diamond ring."

Everyone looked at each other.

Qin Miao walked over to look at the diamond ring and said, "I wear the diamond ring on my hand, it seems that the two are already married."

Yue Xingwen looked back at everyone and said, "This is where the murderer lives."

Everyone: "..."

Xingwen's words gave everyone goosebumps all over their bodies.

In the photos of the room, the girl's smile is bright and sweet, but with such a gloomy and dark basement, everyone only feels that the back is hairy, as if the girl is smiling at them.

The murderer actually lives in the basement!

Liu Zhaoqing remembered that everyone had a lively meal in the restaurant just now, and couldn't help but said: "The laughter of the players when they ate in the restaurant, and the voices of the players gathered at the round table and discussed in the meeting, didn't the murderer hear it clearly?! "

Jiang Pingce said coldly: "He lives in the basement, and the door opens right below the round table. It is impossible for players to think that there is a murderer hidden under their feet. In the middle of the night, he can crawl out and commit the crime, no matter what the gods or ghosts are. Sleep."

Gao Xiaoxin rubbed her cold arm and her lips were pale: "It's terrifying! He really worked so hard to kill people!"

The basement for living and eavesdropping, the storage room for clothes and corpses on the second floor, and the storage room on the roof—such complex designs are indeed painstaking efforts.

Yue Xingwen said: "Everyone is looking for clues in the basement."

Everyone split up and searched in the empty basement.

After a while, Ke Shaobin excitedly ran to Yue Xingwen: "I found several boxes of instant noodles and mustard greens in the kitchen cabinet. It should be the murderer who hoarded them and planned to eat them when he lived here!"

Yue Xingwen patted Ke Shaobin on the shoulder: "Put the instant noodles up, and you won't have to worry about the meals in the next few days."

Liu Zhaoqing also came over and said, "I found a lot of sleeping pills in the drawer. I don't know if he took it himself or added it to his meals to stun those players."

Qin Lu said: "I found a lot of cigarette butts in the trash can. The murderer loves smoking."

The clues in the basement are all related to the murderer's personal habits, and some moldy clothes and shoes were also found. It can be judged that the murderer is a 180-foot-tall male with a strong build. No clues related to the deceased were harvested, and no body was found.

Yue Xingwen stood in the middle of the living room and analyzed: "The heroine Su Wanxin passed away for some unknown reason. The man who loved her so much put her in a coffin, buried her outside the woods, erected a monument for her, and built this nearby. Inn."

"When he built the inn, he had a plan to kill, so he designed secret spaces such as basements and attics. He used the name of "Script Killing" to attract some people to the inn, choose their targets, and take advantage of the players. Crawled out of the basement and committed crimes when they weren't paying attention."

"There are a lot of ancient books related to feng shui, gossip, and folklore on his bookshelf. Obviously, he has a lot of research on feng shui." Yue Xingwen paused and said, "I need to draw a map of the whole scene to verify my guesswork."

Everyone climbed back to the restaurant from the basement, and Yue Xingwen took Jiang Pingce and Gao Yongqiang to redraw the scene map.

When looking for the tombstone today, Yue Xingwen remembered a mechanical voice prompting in his ear: "You have come to the edge of the examination room." This means that the examination room is a closed space, just like a copy in the game, there will always be boundaries.

What he wants to draw this time is a map of the entire examination room. To the east was the tombstone; to the west was the woods behind the pond; to the north there was a continuous mountain range, on which of course they could not go up, but they could see the outline of the mountain clearly.

Yue Xingwen simply draws ponds, inns, mountains, woods, tombstones on the map...

He narrowed his eyes slightly, looked at the three tall trees in front of the inn, a flash of light suddenly flashed in his mind, and said, "Although I don't know much about Feng Shui, I think this place is surrounded by mountains and rivers, with lush trees, and the environment is really good. Look at the three trees over there."

Everyone followed his gaze, and Yue Xingwen asked, "What do you think that looks like?"

Jiang Pingce was silent for a moment, then suddenly said in a low voice, "Like offering incense to the owner of the tomb?"

Yue Xingwen nodded: "Yeah. The three straight and neat trees are like three incense sticks inserted on the grave. The location of the inn and the location of the pond are also like a kind of tribute - those killed brides are offerings."

Everyone: "..."

Yue Xingwen said: "I understand the murderer's motive. His beloved Su Wanxin died, and he is looking for a sacrifice for his deceased wife. Those books on the bookshelf may have superstitious sayings such as 'saving the dead'."

Yue Xingwen paused and summed up all the current clues: "In reality, the logic of the murder line in the inn is basically straightened out, and the murderer's residence in the basement has also been found. The current doubts, the first, seven seats The chair is empty, and the body is missing; 2. What is the meaning of the digital code found in the rag doll."

"In the line of dreamland, we have deduced that dreamland is a script of script killing, which may insinuate some of the murderer's experiences. It is a pure ancient world, and the main line is that Miss Su's family was sent to Zhao's house to celebrate, and in the end, Miss Su died. In the plot There are clues such as the guard, the man in the middle, the woman in pink, the rag doll, etc. The current plot is not complete, and we need to continue to rely on dream clues to supplement it. Everyone pay attention tonight, if you have a dream after falling asleep, you must observe carefully. "

Sometimes ancient, sometimes modern, it is easy to make people confused, but after sorting out Yue Xingwen like this, everyone's mind finally becomes clear - the drama within the drama.

The ancient line is a script of script killing. The modern line, is the real murder.

The script written by the murderer alludes to his own experience. Through the complete ancient line, the relationship between the murderer and Miss Su, and the real cause of death of Miss Su can be deduced.

The modern line can deduce the motive and method of the murderer and find all the victims.

After the two lines are all pushed, the murderer's entire mental journey can be connected.

This is the "solving the death puzzle" required by the exam!