Time ticked away second by second. The three of them waited for ten minutes, but there was still no movement upstairs.
Just to be safe, they waited an extra five minutes, yet still, nothing happened.
Fifteen minutes had passed in total. If there really were a ghost on this ship, and if that ghost had accidentally knocked the microphone onto the floor to make that noise, fifteen minutes would have been enough time for it to parkour back and forth across the vessel five times over.
“What’s going on?” Ji Xun asked.
The other two couldn’t answer him. Huo Ranyin went up to the second floor alone from the kitchen, taking a quick glance from inside the Western restaurant toward the hallway where the bodyguards were posted. He then came back down and relayed what he had seen:
“All the bodyguards are out, gathered in the hallway, but there’s no sign that they intend to come down.”
What was the meaning of this?
Had the noise they made been useful, but not entirely useful?
The three fell into deep thought.
After a brief silence, Huo Ranyin spoke: “It makes no sense for them to move.”
“Hmm?”
“Since he’s already thought of a way to contact the outside world, all he has to do is wait for the rainstorm to stop and then reach out to the outside. Once contact is made, what can’t be handled? He could even directly call in a hundred men wielding a hundred submachine guns to sweep every single corner of this ship. Under these circumstances, why would he panic and send people down to investigate just because he heard a little noise?” Huo Ranyin continued, “If he makes a move, it gives us an opportunity; if he stays put, he maintains his security.”
This analysis made a lot of sense and completely aligned with Mr. Liu’s cautious nature—after all, this was a man who, to prevent enemies from getting guns, dumped every last stored firearm into the ocean.
Unfortunately, actions that served Mr. Liu’s interests inevitably conflicted with theirs.
Once Mr. Liu dragged things out and established contact with the outside, their situation would become extremely dire.
“We have to force Mr. Liu to come down,” Ji Xun said. Just as he was about to continue analyzing, someone else spoke up.
“The guests.”
Meng Fushan looked at Huo Ranyin and said:
“The nerves of all the guests who were forced into their rooms are already on the brink of collapsing. If our next move targets them—say, throwing something to break their windows—they will definitely pound on their doors and scream for help with all their might. We put pressure on the guests, and the guests put pressure on Mr. Liu. Now that the immediate threat to survival is no longer acute, other issues will resurface: such as Mr. Liu’s reputation and the word-of-mouth standing of this sinful ship.”
Meng Fushan was, of course, entirely correct as well.
However, hadn’t Meng Fushan usually hated speaking in long, detailed paragraphs? Why had he suddenly—
Ji Xun, having been cut off, looked back and forth between Meng Fushan and Huo Ranyin twice, and realized:
Meng Fushan was displeased that Huo Ranyin looked down on him.
So he was actively joining the conversation to prove himself, even willing to break his usual habits just a bit.
All in all, a man’s competitive streak is truly a terrifying thing…
Ji Xun lamented internally, having no choice but to follow up on Meng Fushan’s words: “You both make sense… Let’s do it that way!”
Thus, their next task became disturbing the guests on the second floor. Without needing a second thought, the other two focused their eyes on the gun in Ji Xun’s hand.
As long as a gun was used to shatter a pane of glass, the disturbing effect on the guests would instantly crank up to 100%.
They studied the layout of the rooms from below, steering clear of the crew members’ quarters. Then Ji Xun narrowed his eyes and fired:
“Bang—clatter—”
The initial gunshot was almost silent; this gun—and likely all the guns here—were equipped with silencers. The immediately following sound of glass shattering into a clattering mess, however, sounded exceptionally jarring even in the storm-raging night.
The French window Ji Xun had picked—no, not just that single window, but the rooms behind several French windows to its left and right—were all startled by the noise.
Without having to wait long, Ji Xun and the others clearly heard the chaos erupting from above.
First came a voice shouting: “My window broke!—”
That was the ponytail boss’s voice. Huo Ranyin recognized it and told the other two.
“It’s a gun! It’s a gun! I saw the bullet!” The ponytail boss was screaming at the top of his lungs, his strained voice like a violin string stretched to its absolute limit, where even the slightest, most insignificant force—a single feather dropping on it—made one fear it would snap instantly. “The ghost is shooting at my room! He wants to kill me!”
“Mr. Liu! The ghost is right here! The ghost is right here!”
His voice pierced through the curtain of rain in the dark night, carrying far and wide for a long, long time.
Yet aside from his voice, the surroundings were silent. The bosses and crew members who had just been startled by the sound of shattering glass had now, ironically, gone completely quiet. Surrounded by heavy rain and crashing waves, like the weakest of animals, they only dared to curl up beneath the eaves that could still shelter them from the storm, shivering in silence.
As long as the ghost… as long as the killer… doesn’t notice me, then I am safe.
At least safe for now.
That was probably what they were thinking.
This worked out fine; terrifying the bosses wasn’t the intention of Ji Xun’s group anyway. By setting aside the distracting factors, they could focus even more on observing the reactions of Mr. Liu and his bodyguards.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
The ponytail boss was pounding on his door.
“I want to get out!”
He roared and screamed like a madman.
“Not allowed—”
A voice finally joined the wind and rain. Huo Ranyin heard it and relayed it to the other two.
“You guys come inside!”
“Not allowed—”
“Someone wants to kill me, did you hear that?! The ghost wants to kill me! The ghost is lurking right inside this room, they’re going to take me out, you have to protect me!”
“Not allowed—”
“All you say is ‘not allowed’! Not allowed what?! It’s my door, I can open it! No, it’s not a ghost who wants to kill me—the one who wants to kill me is clearly YOU—”
Then, suddenly, they heard half a wail of weeping, and half a scream of agony.
Followed only by the sound of wind, thunder, and rain.
Not a single human voice remained.
This was something the three of them hadn’t prepared for.
What happened to that screaming, crying ponytail boss upstairs? A single conjecture surfaced in the minds of all three, leaving them feeling as uncomfortable as if they had swallowed a heavy iron weight whole.
“I’ll go up and take a look,” Meng Fushan suddenly said, slipping into the shadows the moment he finished speaking.
Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin waited in place for a bit. Not too long—about two or three minutes—before Meng Fushan returned. His expression was somewhat heavy, though not tense.
He said simply: “The ponytail boss was shot. The bullet hit his leg. Basic bandaging and blood stanching have been performed; as far as it looks right now, his life isn’t in danger.”
The worst-case scenario had been ruled out—at least no one else had died.
Both Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin breathed a sigh of relief.
“But this also means—” Meng Fushan continued, “there is nothing more we can do. No matter what we do, it’s impossible for Mr. Liu to send anyone down to check. He’s set on hunkering down in the second-floor hallway until the storm ends.”
As long as Mr. Liu refused to budge, they were completely out of options.
The weapons in their hands were not enough to face eight armed bodyguards head-on in an open space.
Silence enveloped them for a moment.
Could they really only drag this out according to Mr. Liu’s wishes?
Ji Xun looked up at the pitch-black, rain-drenched sky. How much longer could this downpour, pouring like the Ganges flowing from the heavens, possibly last?
“There’s only one way left now,” Huo Ranyin suddenly said.
What way? Just as Ji Xun was pondering the question, he noticed a shift in Meng Fushan’s gaze, realizing that Meng Fushan had already grasped what Huo Ranyin’s solution was.
From the moment Huo Ranyin spoke to the moment Meng Fushan understood, had even a single second passed?
Hey, do you two really need to be this in sync? It feels weird!
Ji Xun protested silently in his heart, though naturally, he didn’t say it out loud—such a protest would make him seem a bit unreasonably needy… In fact, he felt he understood Huo Ranyin’s meaning too; it was just that his brain hadn’t quite decoded it yet…
Ji Xun noticed the two of them looking at him.
Two sets of burning gazes fixed upon him like fire.
“What’s wrong with… you two?” Ji Xun asked.
“There’s one more way,” Huo Ranyin said.
“Very simple,” Meng Fushan added.
“Your specialty,” Huo Ranyin said.
“Something you’ve played at countless times from your school days until now,” Meng Fushan said.
“Solve the case,” both of them said in unison, only to show mutual distaste for having overlapped with each other’s voice.
“…”
“Obviously,” Huo Ranyin said, “the person who placed the signal jammer on the ship is the same killer who subsequently committed one murder after another. We don’t know who the killer is, but we can be certain that the killer is currently staying in one of the rooms on the second floor. As long as we solve the case, we find the killer, which leads us to the signal jammer, allowing us to contact the police before Mr. Liu does.”
“Meow meow meow meow meow.”
“Playing dumb like a cat won’t work either.”
“…Stop joking around, you two.” Ji Xun was completely at a loss for words to complain. “Is this something that can just be solved on a whim? There are no trace evidence inspectors here, no technical analysis, no scientific equipment available to help us make determinations. Time is so tight, and there are so many—aside from Mr. Liu, everyone on the second floor is a suspect!”
“Are 21 suspects really that many?” Huo Ranyin asked him back. “The suspicion on some of them can easily be ruled out.”
“Even if you put it that way…”
“Earlier when we discussed clearing out the bodyguards, you were also making excuses and beating around the bush,” Huo Ranyin pointed out blidly.
“Can ‘making excuses and beating around the bush’ even be used like that?..”
“Can you not do it?” Huo Ranyin asked directly.
“I—” Ji Xun took a deep breath. “Can do it!”
“Very good.”
Huo Ranyin finally flashed Ji Xun a smile.
__
Author’s Note:
A long-awaited little theater skit—
Criminal Police Captain · Smart · Pragmatic · Adapts to Circumstances
While solving the case:
【Adds Ji Xun to the chat group · Reconciled】
After solving the case:
【Removes Ji Xun from the chat group · Time to settle accounts】
