Alice's Hell

The red and black small flag swayed, and the giant clock ticked, making the central plaza eerily silent.

Yu Xing's words silenced Ling Heng. After a few seconds, he finally said, "I don't understand what you mean. Ah Jiu doesn't know anything."

An expected denial. Yu Xing ignored him and continued to poke at his sore spot, "This plan, you two secretly discussed it while you were carrying her in the coffee chair, didn't you? The curse on me just now, after getting out of the coffee chair, she pretended to be fanatical to attract my attention and planted it on my back, right?"

He leisurely sat back down, crossed his legs, and his roguish demeanor was a stark contrast to Ling Heng's. "You've basically identified the deceased, but before you could make a move, I appeared. You realized I was suspicious of you and decided to kill two people—of course, to ensure accuracy, both must be done by Chen Jiu. But you already occupy a spot as an informant for the murderer, so Xie Ze and I can't know Chen Jiu's identity simultaneously. That's how we ended up in this situation."

He pointed to the model tower in the plaza. "You deliberately lured me here so that when I die by her hand, I would mistakenly believe the murderer was you."

Ling Heng pursed his lips and glanced in Chen Jiu's direction.

"But unfortunately, by the time I said this, she had already lost," Yu Xing said leisurely, knowing where he was looking.

Ling Heng withdrew his gaze and asked, "You don't have any direct evidence, do you?"

"Mhmm?" Yu Xing was noncommittal.

"Then how did you determine that the murderer was Ah Jiu and not me?"

"That mouth. The Sacrifice's abilities merge with personality, having different effects on each deducer. As a researcher, how could you possibly merge with an ability that leaves experimental subjects incomplete~"

Yu Xing smiled, his tone malicious. "What people expose subconsciously is the most irrefutable. Is it hard to accept, little scientist?"

This was indeed a surprising line of reasoning.

"Heh... can it really be like this?" Ling Heng felt a slight humiliation. In this kind of logical deduction, a little misdirection could make anyone hesitate. Yet, the person in front of him had cleared away all the fog with just a few oddly angled details.

He took a deep breath. "But it doesn't matter. Ah Jiu will push the curse onto someone else too. As long as I kill you and prevent you from speaking, the informants will still be two."

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

What?

He had his back to the central plaza model tower, and behind him was the tower itself. Ling Heng wasn't afraid of being bluffed and quickly turned around.

Zhao Yijiu's cold face, as if everyone owed him a million, suddenly appeared about two meters behind him.

Trailing behind him was a stealthy Wang Jue.

Yu Xing: "Did you hear everything?"

Zhao Yijiu: "Yes."

Yu Xing: "Do you believe it?"

Zhao Yijiu: "Yes."

Wang Jue: "That's amazing! No wonder Zhao Yijiu told me not to shout out to you guys!"

Just now, Wang Jue and Zhao Yijiu had seen Yu Xing and Ling Heng in the plaza, and Yu Xing had also seen them.

Yu Xing had even gestured towards the model tower. Just as Wang Jue was about to ask "What does that mean?", Zhao Yijiu had covered his mouth and pulled him behind the tower to eavesdrop.

So that gesture meant for them to stay quiet and hide.

Zhao Yijiu was agile and stealthy. He hadn't expected Wang Jue to be any less capable, as he could barely keep up behind him without making any unnecessary noise.

Now, things were irreversible for Ling Heng—or rather, for Chen Jiu.

Ling Heng sighed, his body moved, likely intending to run. Zhao Yijiu immediately stepped forward and grabbed Ling Heng's wrist.

"The rules don't state that suspects and detectives can't kill," Zhao Yijiu said coldly, his words even more ruthless.

Yu Xing became cheerful. "Okay, okay, go ahead and do it. If my Sacrifice hadn't been a bit stronger just now, I would have died. I'm so pitiful."

Wang Jue: "...?"

Did something feel off?

Ah, right. Yu Xing could change his expression in an instant. Was he perhaps a cunning old schemer!

Zhao Yijiu stared coldly at Ling Heng, meeting Ling Heng's gloomy yet somewhat refined gaze. Then, he slightly tilted his head and said to Yu Xing, "I'll hold him for you. You do it."

A glint flashed in Yu Xing's eyes. "That works too."

When he entered this deduction, he hadn't brought anything except his clothes. Zhao Yijiu at least had a dagger. As for himself, to kill someone, he would need Tears of the Underworld Candle or some other method that could be done with bare hands.

Yu Xing extended a hand and grabbed Ling Heng's neck.

The moment his fingers touched Ling Heng's skin, Ling Heng felt an extremely cold current flow into him from the other person, making him shiver.

Then, a pulling force came from his neck. He involuntarily took a step forward, and the coldness Yu Xing had transferred into him erupted, causing Zhao Yijiu's grip to loosen helplessly.

Yu Xing also recoiled as if pricked by a needle. Ling Heng looked up in confusion and saw Yu Xing, inches away, mouth the words—"Run."

At that moment, he suddenly realized Yu Xing didn't actually want to kill him.

There was no time to think about the reason. Ling Heng pushed Yu Xing away with all his might and ran towards Chen Jiu.

Yu Xing, pushed off balance, sat down on the ground. "Damn, he's so strong..."

"What the heck, how could he still run when you two had him restrained?" Wang Jue stared dumbfounded from the side. He had only seen Yu Xing grab Ling Heng's neck, and then Ling Heng suddenly took a step forward, a terrifying aura exploding, breaking free from their restraint.

"That cold aura—" Zhao Yijiu looked down at his hand, a thin layer of ice forming on his palm. "It's lethal."

His gaze shifted to Yu Xing. "Are you okay, sickly?"

"I'm fine..." Yu Xing said, and the hand supporting his body suddenly touched something small and hard.

He looked down, his fingertips pressing on a ruby the size of a pinky fingernail.

What is this?

He recalled.

It seemed to be the gem that fell off Alice's skirt when she came out.

With a thought, he adopted an attitude of "Since fate has brought us together, I'll take it," and put the ruby into his pants pocket.

Then he got up and rubbed his butt.

Regarding letting Ling Heng go—

It was a joke. Chen Jiu and Ling Heng should both be Single Prism members.

Chen Jiu's punishment for failing the game was likely death. He had to keep one alive; otherwise, how would he track more core members by following Ling Heng?

Therefore, Ling Heng had to live, but this reason couldn't be easily explained to Zhao Yijiu, so he could only... resort to this last resort.

"Since he ran, we won't chase," Yu Xing said. "Chen Jiu probably succeeded too. If they're smart, they'll hide after meeting up so we can't find them."

"So we have nothing else to do now?" Wang Jue thought. He had found all four clues and both identities.

"Mm, you indeed have nothing else to do," Yu Xing nodded. "I need to help Brother Jiu start another game. He's the detective, and he's still missing one clue."

Zhao Yijiu glanced at him. "What about Xie Ze? Aren't we going to deal with him?"

Yu Xing smiled. "Why should I bother with him? Although he's not the murderer in the Rui Bo case in reality, if I'm not mistaken, he should also be a murderer."

"Oh?"

As soon as he said this, Zhao Yijiu was a little surprised, and Wang Jue looked even more gossipy.

"How? How?"

"In Mijin City these past two months, three women have been found dead from throat slitting. The police have determined it was the work of one person. Although the murderer hasn't been caught yet, the scope has been narrowed down considerably. There are currently three suspects, one of whom is a white-collar worker from a listed company. I've forgotten her name, but her age, height, and other characteristics match Xie Ze."

Wang Jue's face was shocked. "Holy crap, how do you know that?"

"I have a friend... Little brother, your expression is a bit too exaggerated." Yu Xing looked at Wang Jue meaningfully.

Zhao Yijiu sighed inwardly—that excuse again.

He didn't know if he really had such a friend or if he was just making it up.

Afterward, Yu Xing and Zhao Yijiu went into the haunted house. The haunted house was mostly filled with jump scares. They placed the clue slip into the mouth of a skull prop. Zhao Yijiu used a dagger to prop it open so the skull wouldn't clamp shut, took out the clue, glanced at it casually, and then discarded it.

The clue had long since lost its meaning.

While they were acting, Wang Jue sat outside the haunted house waiting, and also kept an eye out for Chen Jiu and Ling Heng trying to sneak attack him.

The result was obviously him being overly cautious. He didn't see the two of them until Yu Xing and Zhao Yijiu came out safely.

After sitting alone outside for a while, Wang Jue had also figured out what had happened before. The more he thought about it, the more worked up he got. When Yu Xing walked up to him, he could still hear him muttering softly:

"I'm impressed. Brother, you were too decisive. Didn't you even consider what would happen if you guessed a single detail wrong and everything was wrong?"

"If that kind of situation happened..." Yu Xing glanced at him. "I'd just find a piece of tofu."

"And smash it?" Wang Jue blurted out instinctively.

Yu Xing said, "Eat it, and regret my mistake."

"..."

After this, they drily endured until the four hours were up.

The clock in the central plaza turned back to midnight again, and a broadcast echoed throughout the park: "The game has ended. The experience time in the park is now over."

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

"Game losers: Ghost Faith, Ze."

"Failure penalty: Death."

It was death, as expected... Yu Xing raised his eyes to a point in the void.

On Ling Heng, there was a trace he had left. He could actually track Ling Heng's location at any time.

Chen Jiu should be with him. Seeing the girl he liked die in front of him, what would that feel like in the hearts of a Single Prism member?

He really wanted to go and witness it.

However, the park didn't give him that chance. He stood still, his head suddenly feeling light, and his whole body floated up.

No, that wasn't quite accurate. At this moment, they were like they had no physical bodies, only consciousness, weightlessly flying upward.

Yu Xing couldn't see the consciousness bodies of Zhao Yijiu and Wang Jue, but he could vaguely discern that they were not far away.

The consciousnesses of several people floated up into the sky, and under a repulsive force, they were pushed further and further away.

Yu Xing gradually saw the full view of the park, and then saw Alice walk out of the tower under the clock that had reset to zero.

"Congratulations to everyone for leaving Alice's Park!"

Her hollow voice echoed in the ears of every deducer.

Alice stood in front of the plaza, looking up as the consciousnesses of several deducers retreated away. Her usually mechanical face suddenly broke into an extremely vivid smile.

The ghostly creatures, which had been pretending to be inanimate objects, suddenly dropped their disguises.

Yu Xing looked down at the scene from a high-altitude perspective, a knowing look appearing on his face.

Is this really a park?

As expected, the next moment, the steampunk-themed park in the deducers' sight peeled away like scraps of paper, revealing its true, pitch-black form.

Waves of black mist surged from facilities that looked as if they had been scorched, and Alice also shed her relatively pretty appearance, transforming into a withered, black devil dressed in Lolita.

It had gone from a park of gears and metal to a withered, decaying... hell.

The absurdity, forcibly and rapidly twisted from real-world events, must have many loopholes.

Just like game betas and Ubisoft's games, bugs are the norm.

Therefore, Alice's Park was in its initial state, very immature, and its attitude towards visitors...

Yu Xing felt that this place was actually a different kind of hell.

A hell specifically for punishing criminals.

Severed hands, suffocation, being roasted, terror, suspicion, mutual slaughter...

Everything was done under the guise of amusement, bringing physical and mental punishment to these deducers.

Why did he have this thought?

Because Yu Xing didn't believe that this deduction would coincidentally gather two Single Prisms, a serial killer, and himself—also not a good person.

As for Zhao Yijiu and Wang Jue, he had a hunch that both of them must have dark pasts as well.

Alice had become extremely ugly, her face pockmarked and wrinkled, her dark skin seemingly drained of all moisture, leaving only two crimson eyes that still emitted a red glow.

She affectionately touched her skirt, then suddenly noticed a missing gem on the hem.

Her face immediately contorted in rage, and she screamed, "Who took my gem!"

Her gaze wandered for a moment before locking onto Yu Xing's consciousness: "You—thief, give me back my gem!"

Yu Xing: "Oh ho."

The next instant, his vision blurred to the extreme, and when it cleared, he was back in front of the sports equipment storage room. A sea of people was behind him. The more than four hours he spent in the deduction game had only been an instant in reality.

But as he squeezed the small red gem in his pants pocket and turned his head, he happened to meet Zhu Yan's strange gaze, which she hadn't had time to retract.

"Why are you looking at me?" he smiled.

In the eyes of others, he should have been standing there the whole time, perhaps just spacing out for a moment.

But Zhu Yan squeezed through the crowd a few steps and sized him up: "Where did you just go?"