“Saying ‘the killer is right among us’ is far too much of an evasion of the critical issues, isn’t it?” A boss present at the scene suddenly let out a cold sneer.
“What do you mean?” Everyone looked toward the speaker. At this time, every person’s statement carried a weight distinctly different from normal times.
The boss who spoke was short in height—to put it politely. In fact, he visually appeared to be only a little over 1.5 meters tall; no matter when one looked at it, this height was somewhat eye-catching.
Yet although the boss’s height was short, his tone was grand.
“The way I see this murder case, it has nothing to do with us bosses at all. Either your bodyguards and crew members did it, or your Boss Jiang and Boss Wu did it, or—Mr. Liu, perhaps you did it; that’s not impossible either!”
The bosses who could get on board were all respectable figures with status and renown. Setting aside their level of education for the moment, after weathering the stormy seas of business for so long, what kinds of methods hadn’t they seen or used? With a ‘fellow insider’ taking the lead, their overheated brains immediately cooled down, instantly grasping the other party’s point. A third boss present chimed in:
“This brother speaks the truth. We only come aboard two or three times a year. Aside from knowing you, Mr. Liu, who knows any Boss Jiang or Boss Wu? As for that dead Boss Lin, we haven’t even spoken a word to him—why kill him?! If someone had a grudge against him, where wouldn’t be a good place to kill him? Why insists on killing your man on your own turf!”
After this man finished speaking, the short boss raised his hand again, pointing at the bodyguard who was taking photos of the corpse to preserve evidence, and sneered:
“We don’t even deserve to own cell phones—those are contraband items locked in rooms by you, Mr. Liu. Destroying all surveillance and the ship’s navigation in a single night—how could that be possible? Any thinking person knows it’s nothing more than internal moles planning for a long time. Mr. Liu, whether the events on your ship are private revenge playing the ghost or a struggle for profit to eliminate rivals, just don’t drag us innocent people into it. We came here to seek pleasure and enjoy ourselves, not to witness your internal conflicts.”
Boss Jiang couldn’t keep his composure.
With the mask on his face slapped off, he didn’t intend to put it back on either, simply choosing to speak with his bare face exposed. When it didn’t involve ghosts, his mind was still normal: “You indeed don’t know the ship’s structure, but those eight escaped women know this ship like the back of their hands. As long as you followed their directions, you could do the same.”
“Why on earth should we listen to them?”
“The ancients said it long ago: ‘Even heroes find it hard to pass the barrier of a beauty.’ This gentle, tender land has been a hero’s grave since ancient times,” Boss Wu said nearby in a sinister tone.
“Then what about the signal jammers?” The short boss countered sharply. There were only three bosses present—two from the third-floor presidential suites; he was the only one who had come up from the second floor. Although he was isolated and outnumbered, he was bold enough to speak, and his words were razor-sharp: “The women on the ship couldn’t hide signal jammers, and we couldn’t bring signal jammers on board either, right? Those women could destroy equipment, but if they escaped by sea on lifeboats, there had to be someone with normal eyesight to guide them. Among your crew members, there might very well be a group with problems. The killer might not be a single person!”
The third boss looked at this short boss with newfound respect: “Brother, I wonder what your honorable surname and grand name are? How should we address you?”
The short boss pointed at his own height: “Is there any need to ask? My surname is Short—Boss Short.”
Even though the situation at the scene was very grave, the person asking couldn’t help chuckling: “That might not be appropriate…”
Boss Short: “Do you know me? Do I know you? Since no one knows anyone, isn’t it better to go with whatever is convenient? Right now everyone is wearing the same model of mask on their face; we can’t recognize faces and can’t call out names, but as long as someone calls ‘Boss Short,’ you know who is being called, and I know I’m being called—isn’t that enough?”
Society framed far too much collective aesthetic standards; individuals living within could only accept them passively. Those in line with society became labels for boasting and invisible shackles, while those out of line served as inferior traits and sources of distress.
Once arriving in a place where nobody knew anybody, one could instead avoid categorizing things as good or bad, simply facing the unchangeable physical appearance directly.
“That’s good too. You can call me Boss Radish.” ‘Boss Radish’ raised both of his hands, and only then did everyone notice that the tips of his ten fingers were swollen with edema, looking remarkably like ten small radishes growing on his hands. “In medicine, it’s called clubbed fingers—a lung issue. Among us who came up here, those who escape the kidneys can’t escape the liver; those who escape the liver can’t escape the heart. Thanks to Mr. Liu, we managed to escape one catastrophe with great difficulty, and look—a new catastrophe has come again. This Reaper’s scythe is a calamity in human fate—unavoidable, yet one has no choice but to try to escape.”
These words were spoken with both skill and deep meaning, leaving everyone feeling somewhat sorrowful and solemn, which softened the confrontational atmosphere from earlier quite a bit.
The Deck Master spoke up at this time. He was a physically powerful, muscular man: “The signal jammers didn’t need to be brought aboard from off the ship. There were originally two units kept on board, only they were usually placed beneath the deck and stored separately.”
“Mr. Liu’s preparations are truly thorough,” the silver mask praised at this time. “Taking away cell phones wasn’t enough; you even had to keep these things. It shows every aspect was guarded against.”
Before this incident, what could Mr. Liu be guarding against? Nothing other than guarding against the bosses present.
Boss Short and Boss Radish flashed subtle, cold smiles.
This fellow… Mr. Liu cast a glance at the silver mask. He was forced to speak at this moment, but talking empty talk was meaningless; if something was hard to explain, it was better not to explain, as repeatedly deflecting responsibility would only sink them into a quagmire of repeated suspicion. He said simply: “What you say makes sense. Looking at the motive and the method of operation, the probability of an internal problem on our side is indeed higher. The very beginning of this case stems from last night’s sabotage to the ship. I couldn’t hear the commotion below on the top floor—you were on the lower floors, did you not hear any commotion at all last night?”
“After last night’s party, we drank too much alcohol and slept deeply…” Boss Short pondered. “No, actually we didn’t drink that much, but it felt much heavier than usual intoxication. Mr. Liu, did you use high-proof alcohol?”
Mr. Liu looked at the head chef. For the food and catering on board, the head chef was the person primarily responsible.
The head chef stepped forward: “Same as in the past, all kinds of alcohol were served, with both high and low proof.”
“Moreover, important places like the Captain’s quarters and the monitoring room should have had people on duty guarding them.” Mr. Liu looked at the Captain and the First Mate again. “What happened?”
The First Mate hastily said: “I was on duty last night, but strangely enough, I have no memory of it.”
The security guard responsible for the monitoring room nodded along as well.
“The food was drugged,” Meng Fushan said suddenly. Ever since he woke up the next day, he had been suspecting this matter. “The drug was likely put into the banquet’s alcohol and the staff meals.”
“Sleeping pills?” the silver mask asked.
“Dinner was eaten around seven or eight o’clock, yet up until eleven or twelve, we still remained awake. That doesn’t fit the characteristics of sleeping pills,” Meng Fushan said. “I remember I had many chaotic dreams last night… Thinking back now, those might not have been chaotic dreams, but hallucinations. It was some kind of hallucinogenic drug that makes one unable to distinguish reality from illusion.”
When it came to drugging the food, everyone’s first reaction was the head chef and the kitchen assistant.
The two had pale, sickly expressions and could only make timid explanations: “It wasn’t us, Mr. Liu! The ingredients are all stored in fixed cold storage rooms, and those women definitely knew that. What’s more, they were originally supposed to participate in part of the maid duties…”
“Drugging directly on the meal boxes works as well; staff meals are packed using uniform disposable plastic boxes,” Meng Fushan added further ideas to the conjecture. “And the ship’s security check is only targeted at metal items and electronic equipment, without controlling drugs. If the dosage for hallucination is low, bringing it aboard as regular medication is entirely feasible.”
The silver mask chuckled softly: “It seems this killer doesn’t plan on indiscriminate murder, otherwise poisoning last night would have been enough.”
If it wasn’t indiscriminate, then it was targeted.
Boss Jiang and Boss Wu, who had just calmed down, couldn’t hold steady again: “Then isn’t it coming for us?!” Having said that, their gazes immediately turned toward their own bodyguards. They had brought bodyguards when boarding the ship; it was just that earlier they had handed their bodyguards over to Mr. Liu, letting all the bodyguards go search the ship together to find the signal jammers.
Thinking deeper into it, was the reason Old Lin met with disaster precisely because he didn’t have bodyguards around, leaving his side empty and vulnerable?
Boss Jiang immediately said: “Mr. Liu, you must leave my bodyguards with me.”
Boss Wu followed right behind, and he even put forward a suggestion: “The three of us will stay together, and let the two bodyguards belonging to me and Old Jiang protect the three of us, while the rest continue patrolling the ship.”
“Enough!” Mr. Liu gave a low bark. “Don’t throw yourselves into panic and make yourselves a laughingstock!”
The two looked over and saw that Boss Short and the silver mask indeed had their arms crossed over their chests, wearing expressions of watching a good show. They couldn’t help shutting their mouths in embarrassment, though they made up their minds to discuss it properly with Mr. Liu in private.
Mr. Liu naturally could see the dissatisfaction of the ‘distinguished guests.’ He made a decisive promise: “I understand everyone’s worries. Please rest assured—since everyone has doubts, from here on out all crew members will be under unified management and act collectively, never letting them be left alone—thereby guaranteeing everyone’s safety. But right now, the most urgent matter is still to investigate and clarify the case. What do you all think?”
This was also proper and necessary.
The three bosses watched silently as Mr. Liu dispatched two bodyguards to carry the corpse away to be sent to the morgue. There were no measures for testing fingerprints or DNA on the ship, but keeping the corpse meant it could be examined once they reached shore.
Meng Fushan recalled the woman who died innocently last time—when she died, she was thrown directly into the sea.
Perhaps because the corpse was gone, their courage grew; coupled with the speculation that “the crew members might all be bad guys,” all three bosses actively joined the scene inspection, examining those door locks.
The first thing to figure out was how the killer entered the room.
“Do the rooms here have master keys as well?” Boss Short had seen the security guards use public keycards to open vacant rooms during their search.
“You don’t need a key; knocking on the door works too,” the silver mask said. “Didn’t we open the door and let them in just by hearing a knock? Assuming the person outside the door at the time claimed to be searching the room, Boss Lin surely wouldn’t suspect anything and would open the door directly to let them in.”
“So it was entering the door under the guise of searching around, then quietly circling behind his back to launch a surprise attack, and strangling him to death with a rope?” Boss Radish proposed the possibility. “Boss Lin isn’t young anymore; he certainly wasn’t a match for the physically strong crew members.”
“Perhaps that is the truth,” the silver mask smiled. “Three average minds working together surpass a master strategist.”
Boss Short and Boss Radish felt quite pleased, for a moment truly finding the fun of being detectives.
Mr. Liu did not interrupt their excitement. His gaze fell heavily upon the door: “Even if the person was killed like this, how did the killer lock the room door from the inside after leaving the room?”
“Using fishing line or something?” Boss Short said. “Isn’t that how it’s always played out in movies and TV shows?”
The Deck Master and First Mate went down to fetch fishing line. Boss Short tried tying it around the deadbolt lock, but because it was curved, it couldn’t hold. Not discouraged, he found some tape, stuck it on top, and pulled along the bottom of the door crack.
Sure enough, it locked.
This… could the locked room be considered solved?
The several bosses looked at each other—it seemed solved, but solving it also seemed completely useless?
Something so simple—requiring no specific props and placing no requirements whatsoever on the perpetrator’s own qualities—could be done by anyone, so naturally it couldn’t bring new clues to lock down the killer.
“Uh, could it be some psychological suspense method to make everyone mistakenly think he left from the hallway, when in reality he did the exact opposite and walked off from the deck…” Boss Radish also felt it was too simple with insufficient sense of achievement. He took the line and ran over to pull the deck lock once; this one was rather hard to manage—it was an airtight door designed to prevent water leakage, so the line got stuck by that ring of rubber, making it hard to exert force.
In fact, in Meng Fushan’s view, this was complete nonsense. The risk of knocking on the door in the hallway and being seen was not much different from the risk of locking the door and leaving; why bother walking off from the deck? The distance between the ship’s floors was high, and the exterior deck was smooth—was the killer really that agile? Could he scale walls and leap across roofs!
However, since everyone accompanied Boss Radish on the deck to study it, he also followed them out onto the deck, searching all around to see if he could discover anything new.
He looked toward the two unoccupied, empty decks on the left side.
This ship had five special rooms. The hard furnishings in the rooms of Boss Lin, Boss Jiang, and Boss Wu all possessed their own personal styles and preferences, and the soft furnishings were different everywhere, being extremely personalized. However, those two empty rooms were as if no one had ever lived in them—just empty, standard decor.
If no one lived in them, why keep two empty rooms?
Meng Fushan’s thoughts drifted a bit far, his mind becoming somewhat scattered.
Right at this moment, abruptly, a familiar heavy splash sound of a falling object echoed from the sea surface!
Everyone was startled.
The silver mask immediately said: “Let’s go down and take a look—maybe something happened!”
All at once, no one could care about anything else. Mr. Liu immediately picked two security guards, ordering them to guard this room and watch the scene so no one would tamper with it, and then ran together with everyone else in the direction where the sound came from.
They ran down to the second floor. If something really happened at this moment, it could only happen among the few bosses who hadn’t come upstairs.
They knocked on doors and called out one by one, and in the end, only four bosses came out.
There was still one boss…
The security guard used a master card to swipe open this boss’s room. There was no one inside the door, and the door leading to the deck was open. Without even stepping out onto the deck, that glaring, deep red stain imprinted on the deck already explained this boss’s encounter.
Everyone lost their voices.
Meng Fushan instinctively looked toward Mr. Liu and the others, seeing Mr. Liu’s abnormal expression, Boss Jiang’s ghastly face, and Boss Wu’s trembling.
With expressions and body language they couldn’t control, they made it clear:
This was another way of dying intimately tied to the story from forty years ago!
