Ancient City.
Players scattered in different areas simultaneously received a message from Miss Qi:
[The bus has departed. Little friends who haven’t boarded yet, please take a taxi back yourselves~]
The two lion dancers were closest to the exit. Their faces changed dramatically after reading the message. They ran out as fast as they could, but the bus was long gone, leaving only two tire tracks on the ground.
Buzzcut cursed.
A teammate beside him spoke: “The boss sent a message telling us to gather at the Haoda Grand Restaurant in the center of the Ancient City.”
He glanced outside, but there were no taxis in sight. The ride-hailing app on his phone kept showing “no available drivers.”
The two rushed to the meeting point. Halfway there, Buzzcut randomly asked a passerby: “What kind of car do you plan to take back after your trip?”
The passerby, who was checking in at a tourist spot, looked at him strangely: “After coming out all this way, why would I be in a hurry to go back? The Ancient City is so much fun.”
They successively asked two or three people, getting similar answers, and the looks they gave them grew increasingly peculiar.
“You’re leaving?”
“Leaving for where?”
The Ancient City wasn’t large, but every corner was almost crammed with people. Passing through a narrow path, densely packed heads peered out from the pigeon houses on both sides, all looking down. Even the two battle-hardened individuals couldn’t help but feel a prickling sensation on their scalps.
“Hurry up,” Buzzcut said, unsure if he was urging himself or his companion.
The steady man had chosen a famous location; it was easy to find by simply asking. When they finally exited the narrow path, he let out a long sigh of relief. Outside the Haoda Grand Restaurant, several figures were gathered. Seeing so many people, the two paused.
The steady man nodded to his teammates and updated them on the situation: “I sent a mass message, thinking a discussion might lead to new ideas.”
Although he called it a discussion, everyone present had their own intentions. Some were there because it was mealtime and mainly wanted a free meal, like Mother Zhou. Others wanted to check the number of surviving players. Some were simply passing by, and Shen Zhiyi was a prime example of this.
Roller Skate Player let out a sigh of relief: “Good, everyone’s here. That means there must be a way out. The game wouldn’t put everyone on the death list just because of one bus.”
After he said that, the atmosphere suddenly solidified. The last-minute player became unsure: “Is… everyone here?” There were at least a dozen people present.
Three seconds later, a cruel fact presented itself: one person was still missing.
The foreigner’s sharp gaze suddenly swept towards the university student: “Where’s your friend?”
The university student naturally replied, “He took the bus.”
“…”
Silence hung in the air for a while, until the twin-tailed girl was the first to speak, winking at the university student: “Can you call and ask where your friend went? Has he already reached the bus station, or…”
A cold voice interrupted: “It’s none of your business, is it?”
Shen Zhiyi’s gray-white eyes were devoid of color, yet they felt quite piercing. These people chose to consume each other on the first night, attempting to reduce the number of surviving players to become the ultimate few winners. This choice was worthy of respect. If necessary, he wouldn’t even mind helping them all walk down the path to destruction.
Having lost face, the twin-tailed girl was about to speak when the steady man shook his head and said to Shen Zhiyi, “I mean no harm. However, leaving alone by car might not be entirely a good thing. There’s no harm in calling to ask.”
His words were polite and unassailable. Whether it was the people at the bus station or in the ancient city, they were clearly not normal. Being alone in a confined space with those things was definitely not safe. After much thought, the university student finally decided to send a text message.
The bus drove smoothly down the road.
The driver had urged them three times to pay the fare. The exact cost was fixed: fifty yuan per ticket.
Zhou Qi’an paid very readily, secretly lamenting that there was nowhere to complain about the driver’s irregular behavior of collecting money while driving. Passengers came over to buy tickets one after another, many quietly complaining that the fare had increased again, including the couple.
Under the driver’s glare, they reluctantly dug into their pockets. A few passengers, like Zhou Qi’an, paid readily and even helped the driver scold the people in front: “If you don’t have money, why take the bus?”
The passengers stared enviously and eagerly at the wallets of some people, including Zhou Qi’an. The talking in the compartment gradually subsided. When passengers returned to their seats, they were almost entirely either buried in their phones or sleeping with their eyes closed.
Zhou Qi’an wasn’t so careless as to fall asleep in this environment. He sighed, “Useless, aren’t they?”
Not a single one of them managed to catch the bus before it departed. Had these experienced players’ past game knowledge been fed to the dogs? They couldn’t even get on the bus, and yet they still thought about infighting.
Like Shen Zhiyi, Zhou Qi’an didn’t have a good impression of the players this time. Although people like Kou Tuo had many small schemes, they at least prioritized the mission, being relatively proactive in things like self-introductions and finding mission clues.
“What about my reward…” Two side quests had passed, and not only were there no rewards, but there wasn’t even a notification sound for quest completion. Wasn’t that a bit much?
“Tickets!” The driver suddenly roared in a hoarse voice, startling Zhou Qi’an.
“What are you pretending to sleep for?”
The driver’s eyes were bloodshot. “Come and buy your ticket!”
The big man in the back row still kept his head down, motionless. The driver’s roar disturbed the others, and the passenger behind him couldn’t help but nudge him: “Brother, wake up.”
With that push, the big man’s body fell straight forward, and due to the bumpy ride, he collapsed onto the floor midway. His eyes were wide open, and his chest showed no rise and fall; he was clearly dead.
“Ah!” The passenger behind him screamed.
The child next to him, seeing this, also cried out in terror. The couple, scared out of their wits, hugged each other, and the other passengers also looked horrified. Zhou Qi’an immediately gripped his cane and looked back, just in time to see the body’s final fall.
The couple said in unison: “Someone’s dead! Stop the car!”
The driver only glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “Highway, can’t stop.” Zhou Qi’an had noticed earlier that this highway had no emergency lanes, but stopping wouldn’t actually affect anything. From beginning to end, he hadn’t seen a second car drive by.
Clearly, the driver had no intention of stopping, continuing to drive on the lonely highway. Adhering to the principle of “less is more,” Zhou Qi’an feigned the same fear as everyone else.
A cold notification sound, however, popped up at that moment:
“Congratulations! You have successfully triggered the first act of ‘The Bell Tolls’: [Bus Murder Case]”
“Plot summary and character identities have been issued. Please check.”
Zhou Qi’an frowned. What was going on?
[Story Background: In a bus driving on the highway, a sudden scream broke the silence in the compartment. Someone died! Screams, fear, tears… filled the entire bus.]
[Your Story: You are a fortune teller. Today, you made a small fortune from the owner of the vegetarian restaurant. On your way home from work, you unexpectedly encountered this murder case.]
[Due to your previous help in finding the thief for the vegetarian restaurant owner, and having no time to commit the crime, you will temporarily become the detective for this case.]
[Search Warrant issued to you.]
[Search Warrant: This warrant allows you to search and question three people. Please use it with caution.]
[The bus will never reach its destination until the murderer is found.]
[Please be careful not to be maliciously murdered.]
“…” Do I have to work even on my way home from work? No more pretending. Zhou Qi’an cursed the game developers in his mind a million times, then smiled, unbuckled his seatbelt, took out his ID, and said, “Please, everyone, don’t panic.”
All the passengers in the compartment immediately seemed to find their backbone and sat back down. The couple excitedly said, “We saw you telling fortunes in the Ancient City. You’re always right. Try to figure out who the murderer is.”
Still trying to figure it out. Zhou Qi’an’s mouth twitched. You should turn into a head of garlic and keep your mouth shut.
“That’s a part-time job, I can only tell one fortune a day.” Zhou Qi’an composed himself and walked towards the corpse. When he had attempted to fake his death to escape his superiors, he had consulted a forensic friend about basic knowledge and read plenty of related books. After many years, what he had learned finally came in handy.
Unbuttoning the deceased’s clothing, Zhou Qi’an tried to find the cause of death. This corpse was much stiffer than expected. The deceased was wearing trendy slippers. Many people wore slippers while touring the Ancient City, some even buying a special pair, so it wasn’t surprising.
However, this pair had a luxury brand logo, and the man also wore a gold chain around his neck, clearly indicating he was wealthy.
As Zhou Qi’an examined the body, he asked, “Does anyone know the deceased?”
The answer was unsurprising; various voices consistently said they didn’t. Removing the slipper, the deceased’s pale left big toe actually had a morgue tag on it. Zhou Qi’an froze. According to the death time on the tag, this person had been dead for almost two years.
He suddenly realized something, then looked at the passengers on the bus: the black-spotted child, the man whose neck was half-severed and just “married” a rice cooker, the old woman with her granddaughter…
Among the various characters, several clearly weren’t human. Zhou Qi’an’s eyelid twitched. Great, all his skills, wasted.
Ghosts in instances could die again. Zhou Qi’an didn’t know what happened after a ghost died, only that their fear of a second death was even deeper. It was as if it meant a true scattering of their soul. Clearly, this deceased had just met their complete demise in their ghost life.
The deceased had too many tattoos, and no wounds had been found yet. The skin was cyanotic, and he was foaming at the mouth, seemingly from poisoning. There was an unfinished drink bottle on the seat.
A passenger anxiously asked, “Have you finished examining? When did he die?”
Zhou Qi’an said indifferently, “He’s not fresh anymore, anyway.”
With such a large morgue tag, are you blind? Leopards, lions, eagles—the deceased had practically tattooed a zoo onto his body.
“Huh?” Zhou Qi’an’s gaze froze when he saw a tattoo on the deceased’s abdomen. It seemed to be an English name, and a woman’s English name at that. Having it tattooed on the ribs like that was interesting.
“C…” Just as Zhou Qi’an was about to examine the tattoos more closely, the visibility in the compartment suddenly became extremely dim. The bus entered a tunnel. The driver hadn’t turned on the lights, and the visibility inside the tunnel was very low. His enhanced eyes weren’t much help either; he couldn’t make out the words on the tattoo.
“I don’t remember a tunnel when we came here.”
No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than an uncontrollable wave of drowsiness washed over him. The bus felt like it had low-temperature air conditioning on, a chilling sensation spreading bit by bit.
Zhou Qi’an stiffened all over, feeling as if he was being maliciously targeted.
His internal alarm immediately blared. This malice was too intense to ignore.
The system had warned him to be careful of malicious murder, and it happened to be when he had just discovered some information that they entered the tunnel.
Zhou Qi’an’s throat constricted; he understood he might have been targeted by the murderer.
Drowsiness and coldness simultaneously permeated his brain and limbs. In this high-pressure environment, Zhou Qi’an couldn’t concentrate at all. Just as he was breaking out in a cold sweat, the car exited the tunnel, and the chilling sensation temporarily dissipated, but the drowsiness did not.
Zhou Qi’an squeezed his eyes shut hard, realizing there was a countdown to solving the case. He didn’t have much time left. If he couldn’t find the murderer quickly, he was very likely to be maliciously murdered.
“The system only gave three search opportunities.” Zhou Qi’an roughly looked back. There were at least fourteen or fifteen passengers on the bus. He had to first narrow down the range of suspects. He finally made out the English name: Cathy.
Taking a deep breath, he caught a faint scent of perfume on the corpse. Earlier, when buying tickets, most were clearly poor, and only a few would wear perfume.
Zhou Qi’an sniffed carefully: it was a floral and fruity scent, with creamy undertones, most likely a women’s perfume. It certainly wasn’t the type a man wearing thick gold chains and slippers would spray on himself.
The suspect was a woman, and she had recently been in contact with the deceased.
The deceased’s ring finger also had a clearly paler band of skin, indicating where a wedding ring had been. If he hadn’t recently divorced, he had taken it off for some reason. There was no one next to his seat, so an extramarital affair was the most likely explanation. In a relatively confined space, people would habitually try to avoid suspicion.
The overtly affectionate couple could be directly ruled out; their actions were very intimate when they got on the bus, with no intention of avoiding the deceased, and the likelihood of the woman having such an intimate relationship with the deceased that she would tattoo his name was very small.
That left only six people. Zhou Qi’an stood up and deliberately walked around the passengers. Miss Qi wore her standard smile, merely observing, with no intention of participating. Miss Qi was a guide-type NPC, so the probability of her committing the crime was low. Zhou Qi’an mainly sniffed the other few people.
“You…” A female passenger recoiled.
Zhou Qi’an: “Yes, that’s right, I’m a pervert.”
“?”
“Just kidding, to lighten the mood.” Zhou Qi’an put on a mask of gentle smile: “Don’t want everyone to be too nervous.”
The passengers’ goodwill and trust in him slightly deepened. Zhou Qi’an quickly twitched his nose twice again. Strange, he didn’t smell anything.
Glancing at the camera hanging around the neck of the male in the couple, he asked, “Can I see what you’ve taken in your camera?”
The man was very cooperative: “Sure, but it’s all travel photos from the ancient city. Are you sure you want to see?”
[Do you want to check the camera, consuming one search opportunity?]
After Zhou Qi’an nodded, the man handed him the camera. As the other person said, they were all landscape photos, with his girlfriend in every single one. The man quietly complained:
“My girlfriend only lets me take photos of her every time we go out. I have to take a dozen shots of one photo to get a satisfactory one.”
Zhou Qi’an quickly browsed.
Time was of the essence, but there were hundreds of photos inside.
Around the fiftieth photo, Zhou Qi’an’s finger on the button paused.
The deceased was standing on the roadside talking on the phone, with many pedestrians on the street. He could barely make out him and a woman passing by. The woman’s figure was almost completely obscured by the man’s robust, tall build. Black hair.
Zhou Qi’an eliminated a brown-haired passenger, leaving four people. Then he eliminated a petite woman, about 1.5 meters tall, whose height difference with the deceased’s female companion in the photo was too significant.
When returning the camera, Zhou Qi’an seemed to have thought of a certain possibility. He thought for a moment, then randomly raised his search warrant to one of the three female passengers: “I have a few questions for you.”
When he held up the warrant, the system automatically prompted:
[Clue 1: You smelled perfume on the female passenger in row five, but you are a straight man and cannot determine if the scent matches the one on the deceased.]
“…” Zhou Qi’an’s gaze fell on the female passenger’s red lips. Earlier, he had found a faint lipstick mark on the deceased.
[Clue 2: You found that the female passenger in row five was wearing lipstick, and there were lipstick marks on the deceased, but you are a straight man and cannot determine if the lipstick marks match in shade.]
The notification sound was like a verdict. Although colors were Zhou Qi’an’s strong suit, at this moment, he really couldn’t tell.
“I’m straight, my ass!” The female passenger looked perplexed, not understanding why he was suddenly cursing.
Zhou Qi’an patiently asked a few questions. The female passenger claimed she was heartbroken and traveling alone to relax.
“Your perfume smells nice,” Zhou Qi’an said, seemingly inadvertently, glancing at another silent woman in her seat.
“Unlike that girl, her perfume is too strong.” He had intended to try and confirm if other suspects had perfume on them through this heartbroken woman. However, his response was a burst of crying: “What did I do wrong? Why did he abandon me?”
No matter how Zhou Qi’an tried to coax information, she only talked about issues related to herself.
Zhou Qi’an glanced at the heartbroken woman’s slender fingers. Just as he was about to say something, the compartment plunged into darkness again.
This time, the brightness was even lower than before, just a thin line away from complete blackness. The malice was closer to him. Zhou Qi’an was so sleepy he felt like dying; he could only grit his teeth to stay awake.
Three suspects, a classic choose-one-out-of-three. The malice grew closer. The brightness of the phones, including those of the passengers on the bus, was being swallowed by the invisible darkness. This tunnel felt like the shell of a grave, pressing down constantly, almost suffocating.
Zhou Qi’an couldn’t hold on any longer. The next second, a sudden burst of light filled the compartment. Zhou Qi’an still stood in place, his left hand holding the Holy Artifact erupting with dazzling golden light, his right hand gripping the cane, a white silk band suspended above his hair to prevent drowsiness, and a small hammer tucked in his pocket.
The small round dark lenses reflected the golden light, looking at first glance like the eyes of a wrathful deity. Fully armed, he resembled an armored warrior.
Who dares to kill me? I’ll stab, beat, and hammer you to death!
“…” At this moment, the compartment was eerily silent for a moment.
Zhou Qi’an looked up at a female passenger in the fourth row who had stood up at some point, and questioned, “What do you want to do?” Interestingly, the remaining three suspects were sitting in rows three, four, and five respectively, while the deceased was in row six.
The female passenger in row four: “I… I dropped my phone.”
Zhou Qi’an bit his tongue hard until it bled to stay awake. There was one search opportunity left. Zhou Qi’an really wanted to hurry, but even his speaking speed began to slow down. He started questioning the female passenger in row four.
[Search count 1 consumed.]
[Current search count has been used up.]
[Clue 3: You also smelled perfume on the female passenger in row four.]
[But you are a straight man…]
“…” The woman was still rambling on about her day’s experiences, but Zhou Qi’an could no longer listen. His thoughts were scattered by the overwhelming drowsiness.
The female passenger in row three wore an ill-fitting coat, and her shoes were severely worn, indicating modest financial means. Her fingernails had dirt, and her hair was greasy. From these three points, she didn’t seem to be in the state one would be in when out with a lover. The most suspicious ones were the woman who was currently talking and the heartbroken woman.
The woman who was talking had many clichés, but most of them were nonsense, hinting at delaying tactics. Zhou Qi’an turned his head and could see they were about to enter the next tunnel not far away. Both women wore perfume and lipstick. Zhou Qi’an truly couldn’t narrow it down further. If he were clear-headed, perhaps it would be fine, but his condition was getting worse and worse.
His search opportunities were used up. Zhou Qi’an tried to see if he could extract new clues. He looked at the black-spotted child nearby and asked if he had seen anything after getting on the bus.
“Uncle, actually, I saw some things just now, but they were in the Ancient City.” The child had been crying loudly after being scared by the corpse, the flesh on his cheeks trembling with sobs: “Play rock-paper-scissors with me, and if you win, I’ll tell you.” After saying that, he covered his mouth with his small hand, but his grin was wide: “Brother, want to play?”
So that was it. After using up the search opportunities, the NPCs’ malice would appear. When questioned again, it would trigger various dangers.
Zhou Qi’an’s eyelids were barely staying open. He vaguely saw the female passenger in row four still talking, and the heartbroken woman staring straight at him with both eyes, as if waiting for a certain moment to arrive. These two were more bizarre than the other. The child frantically pulled at Zhou Qi’an’s sleeve, like a death knell: “Brother, want to play a game with me?”
The couple suddenly spoke up as well: “What’s fun about rock-paper-scissors? Come play a photo game with us, it’s very interesting.”
The tunnel ahead was less than a few hundred meters away. Zhou Qi’an suddenly approached the black-spotted child. Because he had so many weapons in his hands, the child was frightened and kept crying. His pale face was full of terror, but deep in his eyes, a hint of malicious anticipation reflected, as if he couldn’t wait for Zhou Qi’an to make a move.
“Don’t be afraid, Big Brother wants to play a game too.” Brother is full of theatrics.
The golden fishing fork disappeared, and a thick stack of banknotes, all his previous fortune-telling earnings, appeared directly in Zhou Qi’an’s hand. He raised an eyebrow, his tone lazy due to extreme fatigue. Lifting his chin, he said, “Who wants to play a small money-making game with me? You give me clues, I give you money. First come, first served, limited quantity.”
Zhou Qi’an’s gaze swept over the two suspects: “Especially information about them.”
The heartbroken female passenger’s body stiffened slightly. The babbling woman also suddenly stopped talking. Nearly five thousand yuan was crammed into his hand, looking quite substantial. Half the passengers on the bus were poor, and their eyes simultaneously lit up. Zhou Qi’an was confident this tactic would work. When they first got on the bus, several people looked pained just buying a bus ticket. They couldn’t even afford fifty yuan, let alone five thousand.
He bent down and said to the black-spotted child, “If you know any amazing clues, all of this is yours alone.” He emphasized the word “all” and shook the money in his hand like a rich landlord.
“I…”
“If you’re not talking, next.” Zhou Qi’an no longer bothered with the child and looked at the couple, repeating what he had just said. This time, only five seconds passed after his words fell before he looked at the man holding the rice cooker: “You got married, and all the money went to the matchmaker, right? Tsk, and your wife was bought.”
As Zhou Qi’an’s face, which bore some resemblance to Mother Zhou’s, approached, the groom was both angry and afraid. The banknotes in Zhou Qi’an’s hand made a hint of greed flash in his eyes. After a moment, he spoke somewhat incoherently: “I, when I was in the Ancient City, I once saw…”
Child: “Big brother, I’ll tell you!”
The couple glared at him: “What does a child know? We took a lot of photos at the scenic spots. Some bad ones were deleted, but I’ll restore them all now. Maybe there’s something there.”
“No, I’ll tell!”
“Why is it so noisy?” In the very back row, an inconspicuous old woman opened her cloudy eyes, as if she would breathe her last any second. Her little granddaughter beside her explained: “The man who got on before us died, and now someone is offering money for clues. It’s a thick wad, looks like… over a thousand. Everyone’s scrambling to speak.”
The old woman, who was practically half-buried, suddenly clutched her granddaughter’s hand tightly: “Help me up, I have something to say too.”
Author’s note:
Players left in the ancient city: Good, everyone’s here.
Zhou Qi’an: In your dreams.
