Fantasy Game: Infinite City

"That's all I know."

"Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Wei."

In Wei Mingchen's room, Ha Jin had just finished asking some questions about the dead Cao Yuan, but Wei Mingchen didn't know what happened to Cao Yuan, so he couldn't provide any useful information. After asking questions, Ha Jin left Wei Mingchen's room.

After Ha Jin left, Wei Mingchen sat on the sofa and began to think. Cao Yuan’s death seemed a little strange.

According to the information that Wei Mingchen and Cao Yuan had previously investigated, apart from the book that originally recorded the ritual methods found in Ha Jin's place, the two did not make any other discoveries. Wei Mingchen also did not think that Cao Yuan would find any particularly important clues in such a short time after separating from him, so why Cao Yuan was killed was a very strange thing.

Wei Mingchen began to recall carefully what Cao Yuan had said before he and Cao Yuan separated. After careful recollection, Wei Mingchen found a piece of information in his memory that might be related to this matter.

Wei Mingchen remembered that before they separated, Cao Yuan once said that he seemed to have seen a person on the first floor of the manor owner's building. The face was very familiar, but he was not sure who it was. Based on this information, Wei Mingchen began to sort out what had happened since he entered the manor. In his impression, it seemed that neither he nor Cao Yuan had a deep impression of anyone.

“Could it be…?!”

Wei Mingchen suddenly remembered that if something happened before the incident, or if the time was moved forward a little, before the five players met, if there was something that could leave a deeper impression on Cao Yuan and Wei Mingchen, then the first three players who were eliminated because of entering the locked greenhouse in the garden should be the only possibilities.

An idea that was not completely impossible appeared in Wei Mingchen's mind, that is, what Cao Yuan said before his death, that the familiar face he saw might be one of the three people.

Wei Mingchen opened the system panel of the Infinite City and confirmed that there were indeed four players. Moreover, all four of them had proof of their alibi when Cao Yuan was killed. However, the system's elimination notice could not be false, so Cao Yuan must have been killed by another player. Combining this information, Wei Mingchen made a bold guess that, except for Cao Yuan and himself, some of the remaining three people might not be players but NPCs in the dungeon, and the person who killed Cao Yuan should be a real player whom they had not met.

Wei Mingchen recalled the circumstances of their meeting. Not to mention himself and Cao Yuan, the remaining three people were Pei Zuocheng, Su Wen, and the woman who did not say her name. Based on their actions and micro-expressions at the time, Wei Mingchen first ruled out Pei Zuocheng.

After meeting other players, Pei Zuocheng first observed the layout of the room, and then the other people in the room. When Magnus, the owner of the manor, was talking about the ins and outs of the ceremony, Pei Zuocheng's attention was always on the other people in the room. From this point, it can be confirmed that Pei Zuocheng should also be a player, because the system of Infinite City will automatically record important texts and players do not need to record them themselves. Pei Zuocheng's behavior was out of vigilance against other players.

The remaining Su Wen and the only woman who did not reveal her name became Wei Mingchen's main suspects.

However, after thinking about it, Wei Mingchen quickly ruled out Su Wen's suspicion. Although she was the last person to attend the meeting, when the five of them were discussing after Magnus left, she was able to accurately tell the specific situation in the carriage before going to the manor, which only players knew, so she should also be a player.

On the other hand, the only woman who did not say her name hardly spoke a word, whether when Magnus was narrating what happened or when the five people were discussing after Magnus left. Even if she spoke, it was all about irrelevant things. This made Wei Mingchen suspect that she might be the NPC hidden among the players.

And now, Wei Mingchen plans to confront the woman face to face. If his guess can be confirmed, he can also look for the player hiding in the manor in advance, who is likely to be the murderer of Cao Yuan. If he is proved wrong, he can also try to win over the other party and make him his helper. After all, there are only four people left, and 2V1V1 can greatly increase his chances of passing the level.

Thinking of this, Wei Mingchen immediately left his room, came to the woman's guest room door, and knocked on her door.

"Tuk-tuk-tuk."

"Who?"

"I am Wei Mingchen."

"Click."

The door was opened a crack, and the woman's face appeared behind the door. Wei Mingchen noticed that she was wearing a bathrobe, her hair was wet, and there was some soap foam remaining. There was also a faint sound of water in the room, and it seemed that she was just halfway through taking a shower.

"I have something important to discuss with you. Can I go in and talk?"

"wait for me."

The woman closed the door, and after a few minutes, she reopened it and invited Wei Mingchen into the room.

Wei Mingchen noticed that the woman was still wearing the same bathrobe, but her hair had been wiped and the remaining foam was gone. The woman stood barefoot on the carpet next to the sofa, with her hands on her chest. Wei Mingchen glanced behind her and found that the door of the bathroom behind her was not closed tightly, and the bathtub inside was full of water and a lot of foam. This made Wei Mingchen think more deeply that the woman in front of him might not be a player.

Generally speaking, because dungeons are full of uncertainties, battles may occur at any time. Even in dungeons that do not require much fighting, most players will not do things that will make themselves defenseless, such as taking a bath or sleeping, unless it is required by the mission. Even so, they basically just find a water source to rinse off, or lean against a random place to take a nap. For things like taking a bubble bath in the bathtub, basically no player will do this.

However, despite the confrontation, Wei Mingchen did not intend to directly ask the woman whether she was a player, but adopted another approach.

"Do you remember what Magnus said before?"

Wei Mingchen deliberately picked the most meaningless part of what Magnus said and asked. The woman didn't listen to what Magnus said seriously, but was thinking about other things. If she was a player, she would open the Infinite City system and search for the text recorded at that time. Although the panel screen of the system can only be seen by the person himself, it can be observed from the action whether the person in front of him is using the Infinite City system.

The woman in front of Wei Mingchen suddenly looked at the open space in front of her and moved her fingers a few times. Wei Mingchen immediately opened his system panel and operated it according to the amplitude of the woman's finger movements. It turned out that when the woman stopped moving, the previous text records appeared in front of him, which were also the text locations of the things he asked.

"So what's the problem with this one?"

"I think it's very likely to help us find a solution to the ritual. I was wondering, should we join forces?"

"Forget it. I have no intention of forming an alliance."

"Don't you want to think about it again? After all, nothing is absolute."

"Then I'll think about it. If I decide to form an alliance, I'll come to you."

"no problem."

Wei Mingchen now confirmed that the woman in front of him was also a player, which proved that his guess was wrong. From the woman's previous performance, she did not seem to want to form an alliance with others, so taking advantage of this, Wei Mingchen proposed an alliance. Using this as an excuse, he left the woman's room without revealing that some of the five people meeting were not players.

"It seems that I was wrong before. Who could it be between Su Wen and Pei Zuocheng?"

From Wei Mingchen's perspective, whether he can clear this dungeon is actually not important, because his guild's game points are enough to enter the next round of competition. If he can clear the dungeon this time, it will only be icing on the cake. So Wei Mingchen temporarily gave up the idea of ​​continuing the dungeon. He wanted to find the player who killed Cao Yuan first. Although the method of disguising as an NPC has appeared in previous competitions, the player this time is obviously much more sophisticated. Not only did he not leave any evidence, but no one knew his location from beginning to end. If the truth can be found out, it may be useful for future competitions.

Thinking of this, Wei Mingchen left here and prepared to test the remaining Pei Zuocheng and Su Wen.

"squeak..."

Not long after Wei Mingchen left, the woman's door was pushed open a crack. The woman was quietly looking outside the door. After confirming that there was no one around, she closed the door again and locked it.

She quickly walked back to the bathroom, rolled up the sleeves of her bathrobe, took out an iron box from the foamy bathtub, wiped the water off it with the towel beside her, and sat on the edge of the bathtub to study it.

"Click."

While rotating and observing, she touched a certain position on the iron box. After a click, the mechanism turned, and the iron box began to rotate on its own like a Rubik's Cube. After a few seconds, it opened outward from the center of one side, revealing the contents inside. A dark crystal, a key chain, a part of a key that seemed to be able to be combined with other things.

“Why did you let me find these things?”

The woman looked very confused, not knowing what to do. She took out the things in the box, put them on the towel rack beside her, and began to change her clothes. After changing into clean clothes, she took those things and the iron box, returned to the sofa in the living room, and began to study these things.

At the same time, in Su Wen's guest room.

Su Wen didn't care much about the fact that some players were killed. After all, it was not a rare thing. She was thinking about how to continue the mission of the copy. After her own investigation, apart from getting the drawings of the ceremony from Magnus, there was nothing special found in the manor. Without clues, the mission became difficult.

“Is there something wrong with my thinking?”

Su Wen opened the system map and began to observe the scope of the task. Currently, No. 175 Paulson Street, which is the location of the entire manor, has been clearly shown on the map. There seems to be nothing to investigate in the manor at present.

But then, Su Wen noticed that the range of activities given by this copy was not just the range of the manor. The location that had been marked on the map, that is, the range of the entire manor, only occupied one third of the entire copy's range.

If you regard the map of the current copy as a square, and then use two lines to divide it into three triangular areas of equal size, then the range displayed on the map is only the middle triangle, and the upper and lower positions are still obscured by the vision fog.

"Isn't the clue within the manor?"

While thinking, Su Wen's fingers unconsciously slid across the light curtain of the map, and she discovered other information. Outside the square area, there was another movable range, but this location displayed as a diamond-shaped area was not connected to other maps. In other words, it was a place that could not be reached by normal means. It was located on the west side of the square area.

Just as Su Wen was curious, he saw through the window in front of him that two figures had climbed out of the side window of another building in the manor, diagonally opposite his guest room window. Su Wen immediately closed the system panel and observed carefully, and found that they were two people, one big and one small. An adult was carrying a child on his back, climbing down using the protrusions on the building. The person's movements were accurate and fast, and he soon descended from the third or fourth floor to the ground.

"It's them?"

Su Wen recognized the face of the kid. It should be the Jerome mentioned by Magnus and Ha Jin. Su Wen had seen him once before he knew who he was. At that time, he was accompanied by a guy with a black robe and no facial features. The guy in front of him, although wearing a similar outfit to Ha Jin, could be judged from his body shape and the way he walked that he was the guy without facial features.

"He's kidnapping the kid? No, the kid is taking him. What are they going to do?"

Su Wen observed that the child was lying on the man's back and pointed in a direction. That location was the back garden of the manor. Unlike the front garden, a small garden maze was built here. Following the child's guidance, the guy walked into the garden maze and quickly reached the end. Su Wen noticed that the guy jumped lightly and crossed the several-meter-high wall and entered the farmland outside the wall on that side, where tall crops were planted.

Su Wen felt that something was fishy, ​​so she immediately left her room and followed them, hoping that she might find something useful. Her intuition told her that the kid Jeremy and the guy next to him might be the key to solving the problem.