Alice's Hell

The little red-and-black flags fluttered, and the huge clock ticked steadily, making the central plaza seem utterly silent.

Yu Xing's words left Ling Heng silent. Several seconds passed before he said, "I don't understand what you mean. Ajiu doesn't know anything."

Just as expected, he denied it. Yu Xing didn't bother responding and continued twisting the knife: "You came up with this plan while you were alone with her in the Coffee Chair, didn't you? After we got off the Coffee Chair, she pretended to be a fanatic to draw my attention while you planted the curse on me from behind, right?"

He casually sat back down and crossed one leg over the other, looking like a laid-back rogue—a stark contrast with Ling Heng. "You'd basically identified the victim, but before you could make a move, I showed up. You realized I was suspicious of you, so you decided to kill two people. Of course, to make sure it worked, Chen Jiu had to kill both of them. But you'd already taken the slot for an accomplice who knew the killer's identity, so I couldn't let Xie Ze know who Chen Jiu was too. That's how we ended up here."

He pointed at the model tower in the plaza. "You deliberately arranged to meet me here so that when I died at her hands, I'd think you were the killer."

Ling Heng pressed his lips together and glanced toward Chen Jiu.

"But unfortunately, by the time I said all that, she'd already lost." Yu Xing knew what he was looking at and spoke leisurely.

Ling Heng turned his gaze back to him. "You don't have any direct evidence, do you?"

"Hmm?" Yu Xing neither confirmed nor denied it.

"Then how did you decide the killer was Ajiu and not me?"

"Your mouth. A sacrifice's ability fuses with their personality, and it manifests differently for every deduction participant. How could a researcher like you possibly develop an ability that leaves test subjects horribly mutilated?"

Yu Xing smiled broadly, his tone malicious. "What a person reveals through their subconscious is the hardest thing to argue against. Isn't that upsetting, little scientist?"

It was a truly surprising line of reasoning.

"Heh... That works?" Ling Heng felt a trace of humiliation. With this kind of logical deduction, a little misdirection should have been enough to leave someone uncertain. Yet the man in front of him had dispelled every doubt using only a few oddly chosen details.

He took a deep breath. "But it doesn't matter. Ajiu will pin the curse on someone else, too. As long as I kill you and stop you from talking, there'll still be only two people who know."

Yu Xing shrugged. "A little too late. Look behind you."

What?

Ling Heng had his back to the model tower in the central plaza. It stood right behind him. He wasn't about to be fooled, so he whipped around.

Zhao Yijiu's cold face, the kind that looked as if someone owed him a million, had appeared two meters behind him without warning.

Wang Jue was trailing behind him, tiptoeing.

Yu Xing asked, "Did you hear everything?"

"I did," Zhao Yijiu replied.

"Believe me?"

"I do."

"Damn, that's amazing! No wonder Zhao Yijiu wouldn't let me call out to you!" Wang Jue exclaimed.

Earlier, Wang Jue and Zhao Yijiu had spotted Yu Xing and Ling Heng in the plaza, and Yu Xing had spotted them too.

Yu Xing had even pointed toward the model tower. Wang Jue had just been about to ask, "What does that mean?" when Zhao Yijiu clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him behind the tower to eavesdrop.

So that gesture had meant they should stay quiet and hide.

Zhao Yijiu was quick and stealthy, but Wang Jue had surprised him by keeping up right behind him without making a sound.

Now, there was no way out for Ling Heng—or, more accurately, for Chen Jiu.

Ling Heng sighed and shifted, probably intending to run. Zhao Yijiu immediately stepped forward and seized his wrist.

"The rules don't say suspects and detectives can't kill people," Zhao Yijiu said coldly, his words utterly merciless.

Yu Xing perked up. "Great, go ahead! If my sacrifice hadn't been a little stronger, I'd be dead already. I'm so pitiful."

"...?" Wang Jue thought.

Why did something feel off?

Oh, right. Yu Xing had changed expressions at the drop of a hat just now. Could he be a scheming bastard?

Zhao Yijiu fixed Ling Heng with an icy stare. Ling Heng met it with a somber yet refined gaze. Then Zhao Yijiu tilted his head slightly toward Yu Xing. "I've got him restrained. You do it."

A strange glint flashed through Yu Xing's eyes. "Sure."

Apart from his clothes, he hadn't brought anything into this deduction. At least Zhao Yijiu had a dagger. If Yu Xing wanted to kill someone, he would have to use Tears of the Underworld Candle or some other method he could manage with his bare hands.

Yu Xing reached out and grabbed Ling Heng by the throat.

The instant his fingers touched Ling Heng's skin, a specially frigid current flowed into Ling Heng from Yu Xing's body. Ling Heng shuddered from the cold.

Then a force tugged at his throat, pulling him one involuntary step forward. The chill Yu Xing had passed into him suddenly erupted, forcing Zhao Yijiu to release his wrist.

Yu Xing recoiled as if pricked by a needle. Ling Heng looked up in confusion and saw Yu Xing, close enough to touch, silently forming a few words with his lips: "Run away."

At that moment, Ling Heng realized that Yu Xing hadn't actually wanted to kill him.

There was no time to wonder why. Ling Heng shoved Yu Xing away with all his strength and ran toward Chen Jiu.

Yu Xing stumbled and dropped onto his butt. "Damn, he's strong..."

"What the hell? How'd he get away when you two had him restrained?" Wang Jue stared in shock. All he'd seen was Yu Xing grabbing Ling Heng by the throat, then Ling Heng taking a sudden step forward as a terrifying aura erupted and broke through the two men's hold.

"That icy aura..." Zhao Yijiu looked down at his hand. A thin layer of ice had formed across his palm. "It can hurt people."

He turned to Yu Xing. "You all right, sickie?"

"I'm fine..." As Yu Xing spoke, the hand supporting him suddenly felt something hard.

He looked down. His fingertip was pressing against a red gemstone about the size of his pinky fingernail.

What was this?

He thought back.

It seemed to be the gemstone that had fallen off Alice's skirt when she appeared.

On a whim, he decided, Since we're so fated to meet, I'll keep it. He put the red gemstone in his pocket.

Then he got to his feet and rubbed his butt.

As for letting Ling Heng go—

Come on. Chen Jiu and Ling Heng were both probably members of Single Prism.

Chen Jiu would likely die if she failed the game. He had to keep one of them alive; otherwise, how would he track Ling Heng and follow the trail to more core members later?

So Ling Heng had to stay alive. But Yu Xing couldn't explain that to Zhao Yijiu, so... he'd had to resort to this.

"Since he got away, let's not chase him," Yu Xing said. "Chen Jiu's probably succeeded, too. If they're smart, they'll hide after meeting up so we can't find them."

"So we've got nothing to do now?" Wang Jue thought it over. He'd found all four clues and identified both roles.

"Yeah, you've got nothing left to do," Yu Xing said, nodding. "I have to open another game for Brother Jiu. He's the detective, and he's still missing one clue."

Zhao Yijiu shot him a sidelong glance. "What about Xie Ze? Aren't you going to deal with him?"

Yu Xing smiled. "Why would I? He wasn't the killer in the real-life murder at Ruibo, but if I'm not mistaken, he's a murderer too."

"Oh?"

Zhao Yijiu was surprised, and Wang Jue looked even more intrigued.

"Tell me, tell me!"

"Over the past two months, three women in Mijin City have been found with their throats slit. The police concluded the murders were committed by the same person. They haven't caught the killer yet, but they've narrowed down the suspects quite a bit. There are currently three. One is an office worker at a publicly listed company. I forget her name, but her age, height, and other features match Xie Ze."

Wang Jue's face filled with shock. "No way! How do you know that?"

"I know someone... Kid, you're laying it on a little thick," Yu Xing said, giving Wang Jue a pointed look.

Zhao Yijiu sighed inwardly. That excuse again.

He had no idea whether Yu Xing really knew someone or was making it all up.

Later, Yu Xing and Zhao Yijiu went into the haunted house. It was mostly full of jump scares. They found the clue slip in the mouth of a skull prop. Zhao Yijiu used his dagger to keep the skull from snapping shut, took out the clue, glanced at it, then tossed it away.

The clue had long since lost its meaning.

While they were inside, Wang Jue sat outside the haunted house, keeping an eye out in case Chen Jiu and Ling Heng came to ambush him.

Clearly, he needn't have worried. By the time Yu Xing and Zhao Yijiu came out safely, he still hadn't seen a trace of the two.

After sitting all alone for a while, Wang Jue finally made sense of what had happened earlier. The more he thought about it, the more worked up he got. When Yu Xing came over, he could still hear him muttering under his breath:

"I give up, bro. You're way too decisive. Didn't you ever think that if even one detail was wrong, the whole thing could fall apart?"

"If that happened..." Yu Xing glanced at him. "I'd find a block of tofu."

"To smash your head against?" Wang Jue asked without thinking.

"Eat it, then regret that I'd made a mistake."

"..."

After that, they spent the rest of the four hours waiting in silence.

The clock in the central plaza turned back to midnight, and a broadcast rang out across the entire park. "The game has ended. Your time at the park is up."

"Game winners: Jue, Heng, Xing, Cold Wine."

"Game failures: Ghost Faith, Ze."

"Failure penalty: death."

As expected, death... Yu Xing looked up at a point in the air.

He'd left his aura on Ling Heng, so he could track Ling Heng's location at any time.

Chen Jiu should be with him. What would it feel like for a Single Prism member to watch the girl he liked die right in front of him?

Yu Xing really wanted to go watch.

But the park didn't give him the chance. He was standing still when his head suddenly felt light, and his whole body began to float upward.

No, that wasn't quite right. At that moment, they seemed to lose their physical bodies and become nothing but consciousness, floating weightlessly into the air.

Yu Xing couldn't see Zhao Yijiu or Wang Jue's consciousnesses, but he could just make out that they were nearby.

Their consciousnesses drifted into the sky, pushed farther and farther away by a repelling force.

Gradually, Yu Xing saw the whole park. Then, beneath the clock that had reset to zero, Alice walked out of the tower.

"Congratulations on leaving Alice's Park!"

Her hollow voice rang in the ears of every deduction participant.

Alice stood before the plaza, her face tilted up as she watched the participants' consciousnesses retreat backward. Then her mechanical face suddenly broke into an extraordinarily lifelike smile.

It was as if the ghost, which had been pretending all along to be a non-living thing, had suddenly dropped its disguise.

Yu Xing watched from what felt like a bird's-eye view, and understanding dawned on him.

Was this really a park?

Sure enough, the next moment, the steampunk park in the participants' field of vision peeled away like scraps of paper, piece by piece, revealing its true, pitch-black form.

Puffs of black smoke rose from the facilities, which looked as if they'd been burned to a crisp. Alice shed her relatively pretty appearance, becoming a charred black demon in a Lolita dress.

In an instant, the gear-and-metal park had turned into a decayed, withered... hell.

The rules of the Absurd World were bound to have plenty of loopholes if it could forcibly twist real-life events into absurdity so quickly.

It was like a game's test server or a Ubisoft title: bugs were the norm.

So Alice's Park was in an early, highly immature state, and its attitude toward visitors...

Yu Xing thought this place was actually a kind of hell.

A hell designed to punish criminals.

Mutilation, suffocation, being roasted alive, terror, suspicion, killing one another...

It was all a disguise of amusement, concealing punishments inflicted on the participants' bodies and minds.

Why did he think that?

Because Yu Xing didn't believe it was just a coincidence that this deduction had brought together two members of Single Prism, a serial killer, and himself—who wasn't exactly a good person either.

As for Zhao Yijiu and Wang Jue, he had a feeling that they both had dark pasts of their own.

Alice had become hideously ugly. Her face was pitted and wrinkled, her black skin looked as if it had been drained of all moisture, and only her two scarlet eyes still glowed red.

She lovingly stroked her skirt, then suddenly noticed a gemstone missing from its hem.

Her face twisted viciously. She shrieked, "Who took my gemstone?!"

Her gaze roamed for a moment before locking onto Yu Xing's consciousness. "You—thief! Give my gemstone back!"

Yu Xing said, "Well, well."

The next instant, everything blurred before his eyes. When it cleared, he was back in front of the gym equipment storeroom, with a huge crowd packed in behind him. The more than four hours he'd spent in the deduction game had lasted no more than an instant in reality.

But when he felt the little red gemstone in his pocket and turned his head, Zhu Yan was just pulling back her strangely fixed gaze. He caught her looking.

"What are you looking at?" He smiled.

In everyone else's eyes, he should have been standing there the whole time, perhaps zoning out for a moment.

But Zhu Yan pushed through the crowd and took a few steps closer, looking him over. "Where did you just go?"