I Became a Suspect

Zhu Yan's lips curved up as she took the steamed bun.

She really hadn't eaten breakfast yet, and her stomach was growling.

"Is this... is this your brother?" Several girls crowded around, a mix of nervousness and excitement in their voices, their eyes sparkling. "He's just... so..."

"Hello," Yu Xing replied with a gentle smile, looking like a harmless senior.

Zhu Yan nodded. Before the bolder ones could ask for Yu Xing's contact information, she cut off that possibility. "Yes, he's my brother. I won't introduce you. You've seen him, satisfied your curiosity? We're leaving now."

She didn't have any particularly close friends here anyway. Enduring the gossip for the entire morning was already the limit of her composure.

"Why didn't you drive?" she asked, glancing around at the slow-moving traffic. Some cars were entering the school parking lot, while others were parked at the entrance, making the scene even more crowded.

"This place?" Yu Xing followed her gaze and said helplessly, "If I had driven here, my brain would have been squeezed through a door."

"Pfft." Zhu Yan felt her question was silly. She pulled Yu Xing towards the school. "Let's go, let's go. Our music club has a performance this afternoon in the auditorium. I saved you a ticket, and I'll take you around the school this morning!"

The other members of the music club were left behind. One girl, wanting to get closer and make an impression, started to follow, but then saw Yu Xing turn his head.

His gaze landed directly on her, carrying a hint of darkness and warning.

Instantly, the girl felt as if she were being stared at by something terrifying. She froze, stunned, and only after a few seconds did she recover, feeling bewildered. Was that look just her imagination?

Zhu Yan and Yu Xing had already disappeared.

The various clubs at Ruibo University were really going all out for the school anniversary celebration. The campus was buzzing with energy early in the morning. Zhu Yan led Yu Xing around nearly half the campus, passing by various mini-games.

Unfortunately, Yu Xing had no interest in these games, and neither did Zhu Yan. Considering Yu Xing's weak stamina, she didn't take him around for long before bringing him to the second floor of the school's milk tea shop. They ordered two milk teas and sat down at a table by the window.

"Look at you, your stamina isn't even as good as mine, a girl's," Zhu Yan teased him gleefully as she watched him take off his baseball cap, his face looking like he had just recovered from a serious illness.

"Oh, please. Most men wouldn't have better stamina than you either," Yu Xing said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. It was purely from the heat.

"Tch, you're just weak! If this keeps up, I could carry you away."

Well, this little girl is quite rebellious today.

Yu Xing's narrow phoenix eyes swept over Zhu Yan's fearless smile, his gaze turning dangerous. He curled his lips and said sinisterly, "I trained you. If you weren't strong enough, you'd already be dead."

"That look of yours hasn't worked on me since I was seventeen. You can't scare me, and I won't back down," Zhu Yan scoffed dismissively. "You look really handsome today."

"Oh," Yu Xing said, listening to her practiced surrender, propping his chin with one hand.

"If you got serious and scared me, you'd be the one crying in the end," Zhu Yan blinked, her expression confident. "You'd be crying and pinching my philtrum, begging me not to die."

"I wouldn't. I'd ruthlessly toss you in the garbage dump," Yu Xing said casually.

"Wuwuwu (╥_╥)..." Seeing Yu Xing's cold words, Zhu Yan's expression turned aggrieved, and she began to act spoiled. "I was wrong, you have excellent stamina, the kind that can go for three hundred rounds without rest!"

Yu Xing's expression turned strange for a moment. "After you became an adult, your way of speaking became a lot less suitable for children than before."

"Hehehe, this is called rhetoric. You taught me that, to use different ways of speaking to control the topic of conversation with different people," Zhu Yan's grievance vanished, and she slyly took a sip of her milk tea. "And you, you don't like it when I talk dirty to you, so you'll definitely correct me. That way, you can't put on that sinister expression! Have I learned well?"

Hearing this, Yu Xing pondered, "Hmm... you've improved."

His gaze drifted out the window. In the open space outside the milk tea shop, many clubs had set up stalls, selling things and giving performances.

"Alright, you pass. No reward," Yu Xing gestured with his chin towards the outside. "You brought me here for a reason, right? Which one of them is the target you wanted to introduce me to? You can tell me now."

"Ah, I knew it. You guessed what I was thinking again..." Zhu Yan pouted in dissatisfaction, then her gaze locked onto the cocktail club's stall outside, where several young men were performing flair bartending for visitors.

"See that guy?" She pointed to the one making drinks. He was dressed in designer clothes, good-looking, with features that were a bit deeper and more defined than the average Asian, suggesting he might be mixed-race.

"I see him. Go on," Yu Xing said, watching the young man's bartending technique for a moment. The young man was all smiles, radiating the cheerfulness of a sunflower.

Zhu Yan said, "His name is Wang Jue. He's Wang Cheng's nephew."

As she brought up this topic, Zhu Yan's expression lost its previous excitement. Her high spirits clearly dampened, revealing a seriousness that her classmates had never seen before.

"You previously asked me to pay attention to Wang Cheng of the Wang Group. After a week of investigation, I found that he does indeed have the possibility of committing a crime. For the past two years, he has been investing in the same director's three films. That director was once accused of murder, but the charges were later dropped due to insufficient evidence."

Yu Xing: "Continue."

"That director's name is Xiang Xiaoqun. I've already compiled the information and will send it to you later. Wang Cheng's investment in Xiang Xiaoqun began before the murder accusation. They are close friends with frequent financial dealings. Moreover, they are very cautious. The chat logs I obtained contain many words with unclear meanings. I think they must have agreed on code words or have other ways of transmitting information, specifically to guard against hackers like me stealing evidence," Zhu Yan said frankly, discussing her suspicions as casually as if she were talking about how delicious the steamed buns were.

"Mm. Later, divide all the evidence you found into two copies. Give me one complete copy," Yu Xing said, unsurprised. He tidied his slightly messy bangs. "For the other copy, you decide what to keep and what to give to the Criminal Investigation Detachment. Just make them notice Wang Cheng; they'll handle the rest."

"Huh?" Zhu Yan tilted her head. "This case is also being handed over to the police?"

Yu Xing looked at her and chuckled. "Don't act like you're doing something illicit all the time. You're an informant for the captain of the Mijin City Criminal Investigation Detachment. If you have evidence of a crime, of course, you hand it over to them."

"..." Hearing him say that, Zhu Yan wanted to say something but ultimately swallowed her words and steered the conversation back to the young man at the cocktail club.

She looked at the young man with a cool, indifferent gaze. "This Wang Jue appears to have a simple personality, a typical rich kid with more money than sense. He has a wide circle of friends at school. In reality, no one knows if he's involved in Wang Cheng's affairs. If you want to connect with the Wang Corporation, you can use him."

"Mm."

Just then, Yu Xing vaguely heard a scream, and then noticed that the crowd below seemed to be in a commotion.

At first, most people looked bewildered. As news spread from the southwest direction, people gradually shifted from disbelief to curiosity and apprehension. Many began to surge towards the northwest.

"What's going on?" Zhu Yan asked curiously. "Looking at their expressions, it seems like... something happened."

The clamor grew louder. Wang Jue from the cocktail club had already stopped what he was doing and ran towards the southwest corner with the others.

Yu Xing watched coldly, a sentence echoing in his mind.

Southwest, a celebration, members of Single Prism will leave clues there.

He had expected something would happen here today, just not so soon.

Standing up, Yu Xing casually picked up his milk tea and smiled, "Something's come up. Let's go take a look too."

Outside the sports equipment room next to the billiards hall, a crowd had gathered, craning their necks to look inside, like a flock of long-necked squeaky toys.

Several security guards were struggling to maintain order, sweat pouring down their faces. "Don't push! Move back!"

But it was clear their efforts wouldn't deter the onlookers. Not only were there Ruibo University students present, but also many outside visitors. The school security held no authority over them.

School staff who rushed over tried to quickly close the half-open equipment room door, only to find their hands covered in blood.

They exchanged grim glances, feeling the school was about to suffer undeserved misfortune.

Yes, someone was dead.

A middle-aged woman was found dead in the equipment room. The exact time of death was unknown and would require further judgment after the police arrived.

Yu Xing drifted like a ghost from the back of the crowd to the very front, easily seeing the scene inside the door.

The deceased lay in the center of the equipment room floor, dressed in a flamboyant red dress. It mingled with the blood flowing from multiple knife wounds across her body, deepening the shades of red.

Around the victim, blood had been artistically splattered in all directions—on the floor, the walls, even the door—forming large and small graffiti.

It was clearly a case of intentional homicide. The killer had arrogantly used the victim's blood for graffiti. If this got out without proper control, it would likely cause a sensation.

"Bang."

The door was finally closed. Yu Xing's view was blocked. He frowned and instructed Zhu Yan, who had also squeezed to the front, to call the Criminal Investigation Detachment directly.

"A murder... the method hints at mental instability. As expected, has someone from Single Prism finally committed a crime?" he muttered inwardly, his gaze scanning the crowd with scrutiny.

Just as he was about to use psychological deduction to determine the killer's current location, the deduction system, which rarely appeared actively, suddenly materialized in his mind.

[Detected a real-world criminal event nearby. The perpetrator is a deducer, meeting the conditions for Absurd Mapping.]

[Generating deduction game.]

[Mapped deduction game generated. This deduction aligns with your Main Quest.]

[This deduction is a six-player game. Deductions do not consume real-world time. The nearest six deducers to the crime scene will be voluntarily pulled in. Non-volunteers will be placed on standby.]

[Deducer Yu Xing, do you voluntarily enter?]

"What?" Yu Xing was taken aback. He hadn't known the Absurd Deduction game had this kind of feature.

The next moment, a deduction prompt appeared again.

[Three deducers have agreed to enter, four have refused.]

[Deducer List (This list only displays persona mask names): Heng, Ghost Faith, Cold Wine]

enmmmm...

Seeing the name Cold Wine, Yu Xing knew that even if no one from Single Prism was here, he had better enter to fulfill his promise to Zhao Mou.

The targeting was a bit too obvious.

Zhao Yijiu's home wasn't far from Ruibo University, so it was entirely reasonable for him to be pulled in due to proximity.

Yu Xing silently confirmed his entry and then moved to a corner.

Since it didn't consume real-world time, he didn't have to worry about suddenly disappearing and reappearing.

[Six deducers have agreed to enter, six have refused.]

[Deducer List: Heng, Ghost Faith, Cold Wine, Xing, King Jue, Ze]

[Deduction will begin soon.]

[Among the six deducers, one is the true killer in this real-world case.]