When shock exceeds a certain threshold, the brain is unable to react and the body is unable to move for at least a good ten-odd seconds, leaving only the sight seen by both eyes long and stubbornly frozen upon the retina.
When the image on the retina is finally understood by the brain, terror is realized right along with it.
People then lose the ability to control their facial expressions and limbs at the same time—roaring, screaming, strange laughing, weeping—every kind of expression and reaction is made. Amidst a room full of chaotic reactions, the reactions of two people caught Meng Fushan’s attention.
They were the other two bosses who were with Boss Lin. They were the first among this shocked crowd to react, their faces blending into a bizarre expression that was half-crying and half-laughing. Boss Jiang, the one with the pig’s liver face, retreated repeatedly, his voice trembling as he said:
“Clear blue sky, wild barren land… She has returned! She has returned!”
Meng Fushan clapped his hands together lightly.
He acutely realized that these two people already had a predetermined guess regarding the killer in this case. “Clear blue sky, wild barren land” sounded like some divine or ghostly prophecy. And who did “SHE/HE/IT” refer to—was it “he” with the person radical, “she” with the female radical, or “IT” with the deity radical?
Suddenly, Meng Fushan’s gaze turned back toward the balcony door in the room that led out to the deck. The masked boss he had encountered earlier in front of the Game world’s main door was standing right in front of the balcony door.
After the crowd that entered earlier discovered Boss Lin’s corpse, horror had caused everyone to instinctively stay far away from Boss Lin’s body—which also meant staying far away from the balcony door leading to the deck next to Boss Lin’s body.
Except for this person.
What was he standing over there for? Was he checking whether the balcony door was locked or unlocked to infer the killer’s escape route?
Meng Fushan pondered for a good while, finding this person extremely suspicious on one hand, yet unable to refrain from feeling that he might be forcing far-fetched interpretations onto the man’s actions due to his own preconceived guesses—this person’s behavior of standing by the balcony door could also be completely explained as simply failing to react for a moment or just being naturally bold.
The other party abruptly looked over.
The eyes beneath that silver mask gave him a cold, sweeping glance.
Then, this person spoke: “The man is dead. Who killed him?”
The voice is very young, Meng Fushan thought.
“That’s right, Boss Liu, you must give us an explanation!” Someone led the charge, and the remaining bosses also managed to recover from their panic, one by one regaining their usual domineering and imperious demeanor.
“Forget the ship being sabotaged—now someone’s been murdered! What’s next? Are we all going to be buried at the bottom of the sea and die violent deaths one by one?!” This sentence was shouted out purely from anger by the bosses, but when it echoed through the room, the boss who spoke couldn’t help shivering violently. This kind of outburst that should have been absurd nonsense seemed to turn into a terrifying future that wasn’t impossible under the scenario before their eyes.
Hence, their anger became like a prophecy of their future fate, spoken by their own lips and echoing within the cabin.
“Go up and take a look,” Mr. Liu said with a dark, heavy face to the bodyguards.
Under normal circumstances, the impression Mr. Liu gave was amiable and elegant. Though he engaged in this kind of criminal business, his body always seemed draped in a veil of gentle warmth, allowing all the bosses who boarded the ship to feel his spring-breeze-like hospitality.
Until now, the feeling he gave off finally changed; the floating spring breeze settled down, turning into the mud on the ground.
The bodyguards examined the scene as ordered, then said with difficulty, “The man is dead…”
They weren’t particularly afraid of dead bodies, but they didn’t quite understand what Mr. Liu wanted them to look at.
“I know he’s dead,” Mr. Liu suppressed his rage. “How did he die?”
“He was killed by a ghost!” Boss Jiang with the pig’s liver face shrieked frantically once more. “Forty years have passed, and she still came back!”
Boss Liu suddenly turned around, swung his arm wide, and slapped Boss Jiang across the face.
He slapped so hard that the silver mask on Boss Jiang’s face was sent flying. Meng Fushan caught sight of Boss Jiang’s face—it was a square-headed, square-featured face. Although he had been living in comfort and luxury for a long time, one could still tell he had performed hard labor and rough work in his youth. There was also an old scar on his forehead; the wound had long healed, leaving only a five-centimeter brown trace that lay deeply across the center of his forehead like an ancient wrinkle.
“Can a ghost snatch away his soul, and can a ghost cut off his tongue?! Cutting his tongue requires a knife!” Mr. Liu said coldly.
“But… but…” Boss Jiang covered his face. He was both fearful and awed by Mr. Liu, muttering under his breath, ultimately not continuing further.
A flash of disappointment flickered in the eyes of the silver mask leaning against the balcony door.
Meng Fushan noticed that the person standing in front of the balcony door had no intention of walking toward the body.
If it were Huo Ranyin, out of professional requirement, wouldn’t he examine the body immediately?
After a brief weighing of options, he stepped out from the crowd and went to examine the body: “The last time I saw Boss Lin was three and a half hours ago in the first-floor main hall. At that time, three bosses brought their bodyguards down from the elevator to gather with Mr. Liu.”
In a chaotic scene, what everyone feared most was running around like headless flies.
With someone willing to step forward to analyze the situation, the wild, straying thoughts of the crowd found a guiding rein.
Mr. Liu nodded slightly.
“Who else saw Boss Lin after that?” Meng Fushan asked.
“After the gathering in the main hall dispersed, Old Lin went up with us,” Boss Wu with the age spots said gruffly. His nasal passage and throat looked to be in poor condition; whenever he spoke, there was a gurgling sound of phlegm stuck in his nose and throat. “We each entered our own rooms. After that, I stayed inside my room the whole time and didn’t come out.”
“Me too,” Boss Jiang said as well.
Meng Fushan then looked toward the bodyguards who had searched the ship.
The bodyguards spoke up one after another: “We didn’t see Boss Lin during our search.”
“Obviously, Boss Lin died within these three and a half hours. During these three and a half hours, Boss Lin stayed in his room alone, and the killer snuck into Boss Lin’s room…”
Halfway through Meng Fushan’s sentence, he was interrupted. The one who interrupted him was the silver mask by the balcony.
“Snuck in how?” the silver mask said. “The balcony door leading to the deck is locked from the inside and cannot be opened from the outside; the door from the living room to the hallway is also locked from the inside, so even using a keycard from the outside won’t open it. Our being able to come in relied on taking an axe to chop down the door.”
“A locked room!” Boss Jiang yelled out. Looking at his expression, the fear of ghosts in his heart was clearly sprouting again like weeds in the spring breeze. “It was a locked room back then too…!”
This time, the corners of Mr. Liu’s and Boss Wu’s mouths twitched as well.
Clearly, they all felt some shadows from the past.
Meng Fushan kept these scattered words firmly in mind. He was very curious about what on earth could make these bosses so terrified. “Forty years ago,” “ghost,” “SHE/HE/IT”—was it someone murdered by them forty years ago? But over all these years, the blood spilled by these men could irrigate a palace if poured out, and the number of people they had killed or crippled was beyond counting. Was a victim’s revenge or a ghost’s murder really worth them being this terrified?
“There are many ways to create a locked room—mechanical ways, psychological ways. There are no ghosts in this world, only human handiwork. Since it is human handiwork, there must be a motive,” Meng Fushan said. “The vast majority of perpetrators who create a locked room do so to disguise a homicide as a suicide; the rest are either playing the ghost or showing off various techniques. This scene is a very obvious homicide, so the perpetrator’s purpose in creating a locked room…”
Mr. Liu flatly cut off Meng Fushan’s analysis: “Well said, but it’s nothing more than playing the ghost. Everyone worships Mazu when going out to sea; this criminal just wants to use the Mazu statue to create an atmosphere and use mythical legends to cause panic among everyone. Locked room or no locked room, as long as we catch the criminal and question them, every doubt will be resolved.”
A clear attitude of avoiding the events from forty years ago. Just as the one who nitpicks the goods is the true buyer, the words they don’t want to say are probably the most valuable secrets buried deep in their hearts, Meng Fushan thought.
But it didn’t matter; he would find out.
The true locked room wasn’t this chamber, but this massive vessel whose means of communication had been cut off.
A claustrophobic isolated island at sea—the most thrilling stage for a “snowbound manor” serial murder case. What was most similar to the perpetrator’s “playing the ghost” was none other than the so-called “nursery rhyme murders.”
Those few bosses had even chanted the nursery rhyme slogan: Clear blue sky, wild barren land…
In that case, once the criminal was caught, the motive would also be caught—it would inevitably be connected to the events from forty years ago.
“Three and a half hours is quite long. Can a more specific time of death be determined?” The silver mask spoke again, asking lazily with a nasal tone. “I remember in movies, don’t they always ask about alibis first?”
By now, although the bosses hadn’t all gathered here, the crew members and bodyguards had already arrived one after another during the door-chopping process. Among them was a physical therapist who possessed a certain amount of medical knowledge. Mr. Liu’s gaze naturally fell upon him.
“…”
The physical therapist had never done this kind of thing before; this gaze was undoubtedly akin to driving a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner onto an operating table to perform surgery. However, Mr. Liu held tremendous authority, so he had no choice but to bite the bullet and walk forward. The further he walked, the slower he became, and the more guilty he felt. By the time he finally bypassed the corpse and rounded from the back of the corpse to the front, he saw the tongue cupped in Boss Lin’s raised hands, as well as that blood-covered chin, and above the chin on the cheek area, the bulging silver-white mask that seemed to be smiling cold-heartedly.
His barely supported legs instantly went weak, and his whole body slumped toward the corpse. Thus, in his eyes, that bloody, squishy tongue got closer and closer to him, closer and closer—
“Aaaaaah—”
A frantic scream no less intense than a murder burst forth again. So shrill was this scream that let alone those staying in the room, even those outside could probably hear it loud and clear. Perhaps when Boss Lin was killed, he hadn’t screamed as tragically as the physical therapist was screaming right now.
“Alright, you didn’t touch it,” Meng Fushan said impatiently during the gap when the physical therapist paused his screaming to catch his breath. “Do me a favor: open your eyes and shut your mouth.”
One of his hands firmly gripped the physical therapist’s shoulder, holding his body in check and preventing him from actually falling into the corpse’s embrace.
“Yeah, if you fall, you fall, but if you tamper with the corpse—on a small scale, it’s disrespecting the dead; on a large scale, what if you ruin our hopes of catching the killer? Be professional. If you can do it, hurry up and start; if you can’t, don’t force it,” the silver mask chimed in again. There was nothing wrong with the logic of his words, but his tone sounded fanning the flames no matter how one listened to it.
If he hadn’t known that Ji Xun was beneath the deck at this moment and that he himself was far too familiar with Ji Xun, he would have thought Ji Xun had put on another disguise to play double-act with him—the muddier the water, the easier it was to catch fish.
“I’ll examine it with you,” Meng Fushan said to the therapist, dampening the therapist’s lack of expertise while strengthening his own professional stance. “After a body dies, the body temperature changes, dropping at a rate of 0.5° to 1° per hour. Rigor mortis has already set in on the surface, which occurs between 30 minutes to 2 hours after death, so Boss Lin has been dead for at least half an hour. As for the cause of death—”
There were no gloves in the room. Meng Fushan carefully pinched a table napkin to pull Boss Lin’s collar down slightly, revealing the deep, purplish strangulation marks on the deceased’s neck.
“He died of asphyxiation from strangulation.”
After the fright, the physical therapist’s soul—which had flown beyond the heavens—finally settled back down along with his heels.
He gave Meng Fushan two grateful glances, then first darted off to the therapy room to fetch a thermometer and gloves.
By this time, the initial panic had mostly dissipated. During the physical therapist’s break to fetch the supplies, one of the bosses spoke up in praise: “Mr. Liu, you have a talent-filled roster under your command! Even at a time like this, you can still find two people with forensic knowledge.”
“Taking precautions before trouble strikes,” Mr. Liu said modestly on the surface, while in his mind he was also pondering why this man possessed forensic knowledge. But remembering the matter with Chen Jiashu, he quickly felt relieved—if he weren’t a capable and courageous talent, he wouldn’t have let him onto the ship in the first place.
After their conversation ended, the physical therapist rushed back, handed a pair of gloves to Meng Fushan, and personally applied the thermometer to measure the corpse’s temperature.
“A normal human body temperature is between 36.5°C and 37.2°C. Based on the current surface temperature, Boss Lin died between 2 to 3 hours ago,” the therapist said.
“It is currently 11:50,” Mr. Liu looked down at his watch. “2 to 3 hours ago would be 8:50 to 9:50 in the morning. During this period, who has an alibi? This alibi requires a second person to corroborate it.”
However, the scene met with complete silence.
Then, the bosses showed displeased expressions: “We followed your instructions and stayed in our rooms—where would a second person come from to prove we’ve been staying in our rooms the whole time?!”
Including the bosses who were not present, all of them had dispersed from the main hall after 8:20 under Mr. Liu’s instructions and left.
Mr. Liu’s personal bodyguard also spoke up on behalf of all the bodyguards: “When searching for the jammers, we paired up in teams of two, but during the process, it was inevitable to have moments where someone was crawling under a bed, climbing into ventilation ducts, or using the bathroom where they couldn’t monitor the other person.”
“During that period, I took a walk on the deck and smoked for twenty minutes,” Meng Fushan volunteered. “Alone.”
“I stayed in the therapy room the entire time until I was called out to join the ship search,” the physical therapist said.
Among the ship staff, the Captain, First Mate, and physical therapist were similar—they all stayed in their own rooms first before going out to search the ship. The head chef brought a kitchen assistant to prepare food in the kitchen, during which the assistant went to the freezer to organize inventory. The fitness coach and the Deck Master stayed in the gym talking the entire time. Counting the therapist and Meng Fushan, all eight crew members were here.
Among the eight crew members, the only ones who could barely prove their innocence were the fitness coach and the Deck Master who stayed together. Everyone else besides them…
“All had time to commit the murder,” the silver mask said with great interest. “It seems the killer is right among us.”
The gazes that had originally pointed at the corpse immediately turned toward one another.
Ghosts don’t kill people—only humans do.
