Regardless of whether Ke Xingyun had ulterior motives, she had already agreed to help them. Unless absolutely necessary, she did not want to break her oath.
Whatever grievances they had could wait until they got out.
In any case, even after all this time, her entire body was still trembling and completely beyond her control. Yang Chaoyu simply sat on the floor and tried to piece together all the information she knew.
MN had required them to find clues, but had not specified what the clues concerned. At present, the only thing Yang Chaoyu knew about was the jumping case she had learned about from the driver. Judging from this case, what Yang Chaoyu and Ke Xingyun had seen earlier was very likely the girl who had fallen to her death.
Yang Chaoyu was a fairly optimistic person and tended to believe that the girl posed no threat.
If that girl had truly wanted to deal with someone, with her uncanny ability to appear and disappear, these four people who had seriously come for the interview would be helpless. She could cut them down whenever she wanted, even take them all out at once. Why would she need to stand outside the window and frighten them?
The place where she had appeared was the first breakthrough point.
Of course, it was also possible that she had been lonely and wanted to tease them...
They had seen the victim, so the clue was probably meant to identify the criminals. But when she looked around the surroundings, the family appeared very ordinary. It was a standard apartment layout with three bedrooms and one living room.
The old man wandered into the master bedroom, apparently looking for something.
Yang Chaoyu sat in the old man’s place and looked at the photograph. It showed a family of four. The father and mother stood in the back, their hands resting on the boy’s shoulders. The girl stood to the boy’s right, with her shoulder held by the mother.
After looking at it for a while, she was about to put the photograph back.
It was just an ordinary family photograph. She did not know why the old man had looked at it for so long.
However, before putting it back, Yang Chaoyu noticed something unusual.
In the photograph, the two adults stood very close to the boy. The three of them wore natural smiles, but there was some distance between the girl and the boy. Moreover, the mother’s hand resting on the boy’s shoulder was merely placed there lightly, while the hand on the girl’s shoulder was tightly gripping it. Looking at the photograph from farther away, it was obvious that the girl’s body seemed crooked.
As if the mother were holding her down and gently pushing her out of the photograph...
The girl’s expression was also very unnatural, her smile extremely forced.
The longer Yang Chaoyu looked, the stranger it seemed.
The girl looked about the same age as the boy, but why was there always such a strong sense of incongruity? Yang Chaoyu studied it for a long time without figuring out exactly what was wrong. Since she could find nothing else unusual, she put the photograph down.
This was the second breakthrough point.
All the questions revolved around the little girl, so her room should be the key.
But Yang Chaoyu could not determine whether that room belonged to her or to her younger brother.
She decided to look around first.
The bedroom had been completely transformed. A large hole had been smashed into the windowsill, with marble fragments mixed with reinforcing bars and concrete. The sight was horrifying. She could not help thinking that if she had failed to dodge at the time, the fate of the windowsill would now be the fate of her head.
She forced herself to stop looking at it and instead examined the desk below.
The desk had already been searched by the baseball cap. There were some colored pens, exercise books, and examination papers. On the papers, Yang Chaoyu saw a name: Wen Shaojun.
That should be the name of the boy in the family.
There was nothing belonging to the little girl in the room.
Her line of sight fell on the locked compartment.
There were only three hours. Looking for a key would waste too much time. This was not a mystery-solving game where being told to use a key meant one could only use a key. Yang Chaoyu was the kind of player who, upon finding a hammer or an ax, always tried to use it to open locks instead of looking for the key.
Of course, there were even more methods in real life.
She directly removed the bottom two drawers, then turned the cabinet upside down and reached into the gap between the drawers and the cabinet wall.
It was fairly wide.
Her heart leaped. Relying on her slender wrist and nimble fingers, she pushed her hand straight into the drawer from behind it.
Since she had overturned the cabinet, the things inside the drawers had naturally fallen onto the top of the cabinet. Her fingers touched something as soon as she felt around. Pinching it between her index and middle fingers, she pulled it out.
It was a diary.
In the name field, it said: Wen Shaoqiao.
She sat down on the floor and, just as she was about to open it, thought of Ke Xingyun.
After struggling with the decision for a while, she picked up the diary and walked outside. Although she was very unwilling, she had promised to take care of “her son,” after all. She could not go back on her word, could she? She hated people like that most of all.
Just then, her phone began to vibrate.
【MN】The first time period has ended. Congratulations to No. 520 for finding clues No. 1 and No. 2, earning 300 points; congratulations to No. 662 for finding clues No. 7, No. 6, and No. 5, earning 500 points. Four obvious clues and one hidden clue remain. All job applicants, please continue your efforts.
Yang Chaoyu stopped in her tracks and hesitantly looked at the diary in her hand.
She felt that this diary should be very important, so why was it not a clue?
Or did it have to be deciphered?
With that thought, she walked outside.
She had just reached the doorway when she collided head-on with the baseball cap.
He was tall. Looking over her head at the cabinet in disarray, he smiled and said, “You’re quite clever.”
Yang Chaoyu warily hid the diary behind her back.
He raised both hands and said, “Don’t be so sensitive. I’m not going to take it.”
Yang Chaoyu looked at him for a moment and asked, “Are you No. 662?” She had guessed it from the text message.
When the man nodded, she asked again, “How do you check the numbers?”
“The numbers are in the upper-left corner of the phone’s livestream interface.”
“Why have you suddenly become so honest?”
Yang Chaoyu looked at him suspiciously. Earlier, whenever she asked him anything, he had acted as though he demanded an “equivalent exchange,” yet now he was obediently telling her everything.
No matter how she looked at it, there had to be a scheme.
“Because you’re someone who has a clue now, too.” He nodded toward the diary in her hand.
Yang Chaoyu did not believe him. “It’s that simple?”
The old man emerged from the master bedroom and said, “His score is currently the highest. He has obtained the most clues, making him the most likely to figure out the whole story, and also the most likely to achieve the highest score. That is why he wants you to share your clue.”
Having been exposed, the baseball cap nodded. “That’s right.”
“The highest score?”
“Clues have different scores depending on their importance. For example, I have two clues: one worth 100 points and one worth 200, for a total of 300. Although they have different values, both are obvious clues, so their scores are relatively low. A hidden clue is worth at least 500 points. If you sort out the course of events, or deduce the victim and the perpetrator, you can earn 1,000 points.”
After the old man finished speaking, the baseball cap added, “Although I could obtain it by force, using violence against an old man or a woman would obviously be inappropriate, wouldn’t it?”
Although his tone was gentle, Yang Chaoyu still broke out in a cold sweat.
She did not believe that he cared about virtues such as respecting the elderly and cherishing the young. He had probably refrained from acting because the final moment had not yet arrived and he did not want to tear off the mask between them.
“I’m not completely sure there’s a clue inside,” she said. “Besides, I want to give this clue to Ke Xingyun and the others.”
“What a merciful heart,” the old man said.
But his tone was filled with mockery.
Yang Chaoyu remained calm. There would always be clues. Besides, she had a certain confidence that she absolutely would not die.
It was probably because, when she had nearly been struck by the overseer earlier, something had tugged at her ankle. She had kept it hidden in her heart without telling anyone, but that did not mean she had forgotten it. And the implication behind it...
At this thought, she became even more composed.
“If there really is a clue inside, I’ll help find the real culprit as well.”
The old man raised an eyebrow and said, “You’re quite genuine.”
The baseball cap snorted and turned to leave.
When Yang Chaoyu reached the hallway, she was surprisingly unaccustomed to the brightness here. She handed the diary to Ke Xingyun. Ke Xingyun glanced at Qi Yang, who had passed out from excessive blood loss, and was just about to open it when a figure snatched it first.
It was Zou Qing.
After snatching it away, she began flipping through it frantically.
Judging by her condition, she probably could not take any of it in.
Yang Chaoyu went over to snatch it back, but Zou Qing scratched her face. Yang Chaoyu immediately lost her temper.
Ke Xingyun quickly held her back and said weakly, “She looks really abnormal. Big sis, forget it. What if she completely loses control? The three of us might not be her match. Besides, in her current state, even if she got us all killed, she probably wouldn’t be sentenced anyway.”
That was a common escape tactic in foreign countries...
Seeing Zou Qing muttering incoherently, Yang Chaoyu was unwilling to let it go, but she was also genuinely afraid that the other woman might completely lose her mind and fight to the death.
She said to Ke Xingyun, “I have a feeling one of us is going to be gone.”
Ke Xingyun’s eyes welled with tears.
Yang Chaoyu had only meant to scare him and was about to laugh when he said, “Then it’ll probably be you, big sis. I found a clue.”
Yang Chaoyu:!
..The Clown turned out to be me.