Ji Xun’s foot stopped just short of the curtains.
The wind was howling outside, but the curtains were not blown entirely wide open because two panels were clipped together. This helped block the violent gusts to some degree, keeping this veil that concealed the truth right where it belonged.
Ji Xun was in no hurry to reach out and pull the curtains aside.
He stood there, thought for a moment, and said, “Where should I begin…”
Outside were wind and rain; all around were residents with their doors and windows shut tight. A quiet voice like his wasn’t likely to be overheard by anyone on either side.
“For a detective novel, what happened on this ship has more than enough classic elements. An isolated island, a nursery rhyme murder, a locked room, and a poisoning that looks like a random killing.
Or perhaps… it’s a little too rich.
I’ve been thinking all along: why was the first murder a locked room? The setup for that locked room was so simple it barely requires explanation. What actually needs investigating is why there had to be a locked room in the first place.
When tied to the second case, it becomes quite clear: the killer was trying to create the terrifying atmosphere of a nursery rhyme murder by staging similar scenes, instilling panic in everyone so that the third murder could be executed smoothly.
That’s right—the killer foresaw the third murder from the very start. The ‘ghost story’ was widely circulated; the crew knew it, Mr. Liu’s group knew it, and even the ordinary bosses knew it through the women sharing it among themselves. Therefore, it was bound to be brought up in conversation. And with two people dead in succession and no killer in sight, terrified people—upon suddenly learning the killer was executing victims according to a ‘ghost story’ that included poisonings—would naturally be too scared to eat normal meals. They would turn to sealed instant food instead. But doing so fell right into the killer’s trap, didn’t it?
—The killer had prepared the poisoned instant noodles for them well in advance.”
All around was only the sound of the wind; no voice came from the killer.
Yet beneath the curtain, a pair of feet had clearly appeared. The killer’s feet, having shown up at some unknown moment.
The killer—the owner of the room—stood quietly inside, listening to Ji Xun speak.
The wind was too fierce, and the rain kept splashing against him, bringing a chill.
Ji Xun wrapped his coat tighter around himself, organized his thoughts, and continued.
He spoke casually, as if chatting with a friend, even though his ‘friend’ was far too silent:
“By that point, Boss Lin was dead, leaving only Boss Jiang and Boss Wu.
The killer wanted to murder two enemies at once as much as possible, which was why he chose a low dosage of poison. That way, it would act slowly, and people eating one after another wouldn’t be scared away from their own noodles by the previous person’s sudden death.
So, when were those poisoned instant noodles placed into the victims’ hands?
After Boss Lin’s death, everyone lost the opportunity to move about alone. A bucket of instant noodles is bulky—it’s very difficult to swap one right under a companion’s nose. Before that, Boss Jiang and Boss Wu had been staying inside their rooms the entire time, meaning the conditions for a swap didn’t exist then either.
As for the previous night, although everyone was groggy from being drugged with hallucinogens, as long as the room doors were deadbolted from the inside, even a master key couldn’t open the suite. Furthermore, the premise of hallucinogens working required consuming food; what if Boss Jiang and Boss Wu hadn’t eaten? I’m sure the killer wouldn’t take such a risk that might raise suspicions.
Taking all this into account, the instant noodles must have been placed inside before that night. Pampered bosses wouldn’t eat instant noodles unless absolutely necessary, so the killer wasn’t worried that these poisoned foods would be consumed early and mess up his murder sequence.
However, there were surveillance cameras everywhere on the ship back then.
The only person who could walk into the rooms without drawing attention was the housekeeping staff—the ones whose job was to replace room supplies in the first place—
Currently, among the people trapped on the ship, there is no housekeeping staff. From this, we can deduce two possibilities: One, the killer and the housekeeper were accomplices. Two, the killer used some method to manipulate an unwitting housekeeper.”
At this point, Ji Xun paused.
A monologue felt a bit too boring, so Ji Xun tried to get some interaction out of his ‘friend.’
“Do you have anything to say? For example, about the housekeeper?”
The curtains rustled in the wind, looking almost like the ‘friend’s’ smile. When the wind died down and the curtains fell, that smile seemed to fade along with it, followed by a muffled voice coming from inside.
“The housekeeper is innocent.”
“That’s really… appreciated.” Ji Xun was surprised.
It was naturally surprising for a killer to help a detective rule out a wrong answer.
Though if viewed from a friend’s perspective, perhaps it was just a customary way to save everyone time.
“Hmm—makes sense. If the housekeeper were an accomplice, the production dates on the instant noodles for the other bosses could have been identical,” Ji Xun nodded and continued, “Back to the method. The order in which an unwitting housekeeper placed the noodles would be unpredictable, but you—seeking revenge based on events from forty years ago—wanted to kill specific individuals. On the surface, that seems hard to pull off, but with the help of your accomplices, reversing your line of thinking makes it very simple.
Your accomplices are those women who lost their eyes. They moved freely in and out of the rooms of every visiting boss, aside from the core internal bosses. Coming and going at any time, they wouldn’t raise any suspicion.
All you needed to do was poison the entire batch of instant noodles brought by the housekeeper, then have those women move through the innocent bosses’ rooms, discard the poisoned noodles, and replace them with unpoisoned ones.
As for the crew members and Mr. Liu’s group, no instant noodles were placed in their rooms—we know this because their noodles were distributed uniformly during mealtime—so there was no danger to them.
People subconsciously focus on where a crime takes place while ignoring everything else. Subtracting from the total quantity actually makes it far more discreet, doesn’t it?”
Ji Xun offered a neat conclusion and pressed on:
“By this point, the third case is fully explained. From it, we can infer that the killer must be a crew member capable of handling the ship’s supply distributions; otherwise, there would be no way to bring an entire crate of poisoned instant noodles aboard.
Now, let’s talk about the second case.
The crew members, including the killer, were all present at Boss Lin’s crime scene when the second case took place, meaning he had no alibi-free window to commit the crime. In other words, he either had an accomplice or set up some kind of mechanism.
I went to inspect that crime scene; the environment there was very simple.
A deck, bloodstains, and a missing person.
Rather than the method, what baffled me most about the second case was actually the motive.
When I realized the killer was seeking revenge on specific individuals, I wondered: why would a killer who refrained from slaughtering innocent people during the mass hallucination choose an upper-deck boss on the second floor as the second link in his murder chain?
The deceased boss was named Ni, only in his nineties or so, and was not an original member of the ship’s crew.
Could he be a descendant of someone on the ship? Or someone related?
I couldn’t find any useful clues in his luggage, but in the room’s mirror, I saw myself.
Myself, still wearing a boss’s clothing and a silver mask.
Wasn’t I, in a sense, a ‘boss’?
Yet I was clearly not a real boss.”
Accompanying Ji Xun’s eerie narration, the wind once again let out a bizarre howl.
The curtains flapped against those feet like bat wings.
Dark, sturdy feet—gripping the floor firmly like tree roots.
“I snuck onto the ship halfway by replacing a boss of similar build. Because everyone was wearing masks, no one knew who anyone was.
I began to suspect that this missing Boss Ni wasn’t Boss Ni at all.
He was merely a middle-aged man with no distinct physical features once masked. He last appeared around 8:20 AM, dispersing back to his room as instructed by Mr. Liu, and was never seen again afterward.
According to the statements from the kitchen assistant and the head chef, he wasn’t among those present during the search either.
He was being impersonated; the real him must have been kept down below in the sealed hold!
Using the information gap between those on the ship and those below, the killer fabricated a missing person out of thin air. He then used the bloodstains on the deck and the sound of a ‘heavy object falling into the water’ to create the illusion that someone had died in the second case.
Among these three conditions, impersonation was simple—the killer could do it himself. The crew members arrived at the main hall at staggered times from the bosses, so he could easily play Boss Ni first before playing himself.
The bloodstains were also simple. In the first case, after killing Boss Lin, the killer intentionally cut off his tongue. While this appeared to be meant to make the atmosphere more eerie, Boss Lin’s blood could actually be collected to set up the scene in advance. Adding an anticoagulant like sodium citrate—which is extremely easy to get since it’s a common food additive—would keep the blood at the crime scene fresh.
Finally, the splash in the water—this was the linchpin.
The timing of that sound determined when this meticulously arranged scene would be discovered by others.
How was that timing controlled?
It’s easy to see that while expecting the ‘ghost story’ to facilitate the third case smoothly, the killer surely also hoped to use the second case to clear himself of some suspicion.
Therefore, the best time for it to happen was naturally when the crew members were all gathered around Boss Liu, giving the killer a solid alibi.”
Solving a mystery without anyone chiming in was somewhat lonely.
Yet, seeing those motionless feet through the curtain gave Ji Xun a measure of comfort.
Whether as a killer or as a friend, across a single curtain, the other person was listening intently to his explanation.
“Speaking of which, all the reasons why the first case required a locked room are finally clear as well.
A locked room means a deadbolted door, which means Mr. Liu and the others had to break their way in. That door wasn’t easy to break down—Mr. Liu needed tools and had to apply sustained force. This gave the killer a window of time and space to act before entering the room.
Marked by the deadbolt, the killer activated the delay device while everyone was focused on the door. After a certain period, something would drop into the sea.
It didn’t need to be in Boss Ni’s room; anywhere would do, as long as there was the ‘sound of splash.’
Throughout the entire plan, choosing Boss Ni as the target to impersonate wasn’t something the killer planned from the start. Because the patrols on the ship were arranged by Mr. Liu, if he timed it wrong, the bloodstains would be discovered early by the search party.
So he chose the room he himself was assigned to search.
When he and his search partner left, he quietly poured the blood onto the deck. The blood droplets showed a fall from about one meter high. Aside from someone being stabbed in the kidney, it could also be formed by someone holding a bottle opening near their waist and pouring it onto the ground.
No one would remember who the masked bosses from that morning were; even Mr. Liu only found out the man’s surname was Ni after checking the records on site.
And the two people who searched Boss Ni’s room—”
Ji Xun paused.
The truth was about to be unveiled. He stared at those feet. They remained as solid as a rock.
Was the owner of those feet waiting for this exact moment as well?
“The kitchen assistant, and the head chef.
On top of that, this killer was able to see someone suspected to be a police officer jump down to the first floor. Since the kitchen assistant didn’t live in the same row as this suspected police officer, that leaves only one option. You knew that your ghost accomplice didn’t actually exist on the ship. That’s why, when Mr. Liu used Ah Tang as bait to fish out the culprit, you were so proactive—trying to gain Mr. Liu’s trust ahead of everyone else…”
Ji Xun finally reached out and pulled back the curtain.
The clips holding the curtain together had been removed at some point.
The curtain—which had refused to yield no matter how fiercely it flapped in the wild wind—became as docile as a lamb under Ji Xun’s hand.
He pulled back the curtain as if raising the final stage curtain on the truth. The darkness surged upward, spitting out a thick, imposing figure.
He stood behind the curtain like a tower.
He was the head chef, Ben!
“Perhaps,” Ji Xun looked at the man, the words in his mouth rolling over his tongue, grinding past his teeth, before finally floating out into the wild wind, lingering precariously, “I should call you Uncle.”
