Rose Manor (14): Deducing the Past

The clues Chang Xu had were similar in composition to the parts Qi Si already knew: four incomprehensible lines of poetry, plus five diary entries.

Judging by the tone, the diaries in the two sets of clues had been written by different people, each hinting at the background story from a different angle.

Qi Si read through the clues twice, committing them to memory. Then he took another sheet of Papyrus, stood before the table, and copied out the clues from his own room.

Next, holding the red dress, he repeated the deductions he had shared with Lin Chen, earning a baffled yet impressed look from Chang Xu.

With the two sets of clues combined, the outline of a story had begun to take shape.

"A fallen Noble family had two daughters. The elder daughter, Anna, was beautiful and perfect in every way, while the younger daughter, Annie, was far more ordinary by comparison. A man stumbled into the manor, fell in love with Anna, and did everything he could to marry her. Unfortunately, he still arrived too late. Anna believed he had abandoned her and had long since died of grief."

"The reason time is the most important factor is that the Mechanical Clock was tampered with, causing the man and Anna to miss each other on the night they had agreed to elope, leading to layer upon layer of misunderstandings." Qi Si lowered his eyes to the words on the paper, his voice half-sighing, half-mocking.

"For some reason, perhaps warped love, perhaps jealousy she herself never recognized, Annie took her sister Anna's identity. She met the man when he returned to the manor, killed him, and buried him in the garden."

Lin Chen knew this information as well. It would have been too easy to expose any fabrication, and there was little use in hiding it anyway, so Qi Si told the truth, conveniently easing the wariness between the two sides of the partnership.

After finishing, he looked at Chang Xu. "Brother Chang, you dug in the garden all morning. Did you find anything else strange?"

Chang Xu replied, "Three bodies in total. Two men and one woman. Preliminary assessment: all Players."

"...All right."

Then never mind. He had thought they might find the body of the brave man who had pursued Miss Anna.

Qi Si was somewhat disappointed, though not by much. He continued, "I tested it. The Miss Anna we saw at the dining table was alive and was probably the surviving younger sister, Annie. The real Miss Anna is already dead and may appear as a ghost or monster."

Chang Xu frowned slightly. "We know Annie and Anna looked different, yet no one noticed anything wrong when Annie impersonated Anna. It seems she could harness Eerie Game's power very early on. I have a feeling Rose Manor itself has a problem. She is merely a part of the anomaly, controlled by someone else."

"That's my deduction too." Qi Si nodded in agreement.

Those who made The Rules often had the privilege of not following them, and clearly, Miss Anna had no right to break The Rules. In other words, someone else had created those strange Rules within Rose Manor.

"The clues needed to complete this deduction are either on the third floor or with Zou Yan and Ye Zi." Qi Si's gaze returned to the four lines of poetry at the top of the page.

The poem belonging to him was vague in meaning, like a prophecy and yet like a curse. A single glance at it gave him the suffocating ache of having his heart clenched tight.

By comparison, Chang Xu's four lines were much easier to understand.

[I am forever trapped in time]

[Where dawn and dusk converge]

[The cycle repeats year after year]

[Yesterday reappears with me]

It was clearly about a time loop.

Qi Si narrowed his eyes and asked pointedly, "Brother Chang, do you usually keep that [Pocket Watch of Fate] with you and check it often?"

"On average, once every half hour." Chang Xu took out the Pocket Watch from his pocket and checked the time again. "As far as I remember, there have been no obvious problems with time since entering the instance."

"Is that so?"

Qi Si did not believe Chang Xu was foolish enough to overlook it. Having obtained clues about time first, he would surely have paid extra attention to it. There was basically no chance of an error.

The deduction had reached a dead end. To move forward, they needed more information...

"Let's go. We'll check the third floor together." Qi Si reached out to push open the door.

At that exact moment, the Mechanical Clock struck its first chime.

In Guest Room No. 1 near the staircase, Zou Yan and Ye Zi sat at the desk, staring unblinkingly at an eyeball-shaped item on the table.

[Name: Eye of Hermes (Right Eye)]

[Type: Item]

[Effect: ① After placing the left eye in an enclosed space, the right eye can see what the left eye sees;

② During transmission, it can greatly reduce the vigilance and perception of nearby Players]

[Note: The God knows all, so Hermes said]

At that moment, the scene displayed on the eyeball was none other than Chang Xu's room, including Qi Si's deductions about the background story and the two men's decision to explore the third floor.

"The most brilliant game is to remain behind the scenes—to observe, to spy, and to gather the most information while everyone else remains ignorant and unaware." Zou Yan looked at Ye Zi and smiled faintly. "By comparison, openly entering the game is truly the worst possible choice. After all, we are not at an advantage in terms of force."

Ye Zi lowered her head without speaking, images of her interactions with Zou Yan surfacing before her eyes.

First, Zou Yan had acted like a harmless people-pleaser to avoid drawing suspicion. Then, she had asked Ye Zi to act foolish and arrogant, deliberately exposing her acquaintance with Shen Ming to divert attention. Finally, she had provoked an argument, misleading the other Players into thinking the two of them could never join forces.

—She had undoubtedly grasped people's hearts with flawless precision.

Ye Zi had originally thought she could use her alliance with Shen Ming to control Zou Yan. Even after Shen Ming died, she had merely intended to seek cooperation on equal footing. But now, it seemed Zou Yan had held her firmly beneath her thumb from beginning to end.

Remembering the things Shen Ming had explained to her, Ye Zi asked with a cheerful smile, "Sister Zou, this isn't your second time entering an instance, is it? A newcomer couldn't possibly have an item like this. You're an experienced Player who spent points to specifically enter this instance, aren't you?"

Zou Yan asked in return, "Aren't you as well?"

Ye Zi's smile did not fade. "I'm a complete newcomer. The contract from the company I signed with tricked me into debt, so I had no choice but to enter the game to earn some money."

"Sister Zou, is there anything special about this instance? Why did you specifically come here? I heard there are no point rewards for entering a designated instance..."

"I see." Zou Yan smiled in understanding.

She had no intention of answering Ye Zi's question. Instead, she stared directly into the latter's eyes, her face taking on a compassionate, gentle expression. "Can you help me complete an experiment?"

"What experiment?"

The pendulum of the Mechanical Clock struck once, and the echo fell silent the instant it arose.

Zou Yan said, "Ye Zi, close your eyes."

The Mechanical Clock struck its first chime. It was one in the afternoon.

Chang Xu took out the Pocket Watch in his hand and looked at it. That face which had always shown little expression finally changed slightly.

"The Pocket Watch is one hour fast. In that one second just now, the hour hand moved forward an entire mark. It was as though an hour of time had been pulled away out of thin air."

He turned the knob to reset the Pocket Watch, his tone utterly flat. Even such a strange phenomenon sounded calm and unremarkable when he described it.

The moment Qi Si heard this, he understood what it meant.

The instance's mechanism had been triggered, most likely related to the four lines of poetry in Chang Xu's room.

"It's a one-hour time reversal." Qi Si looked around. "Could it be that Eerie Game saw us at a loss and was afraid of affecting the average clearance rate, so it deliberately gave us a hint?"

He made a nonsensical joke, but unfortunately, it amused no one.

Time reversal was a clue provided by the game. The only people who could trigger the relevant mechanism were Players who had solved the puzzle.

He had always been the one secretly pulling little tricks. He had not expected someone to beat him to it this time. Unexpected developments were what made things interesting, weren't they?

With an ill-timed smile on his lips, Qi Si walked out of the room, his gaze lingering on the door of the neighboring guest room.

The gloomy, mottled wooden door was tightly shut. Nothing appeared unusual about it, and not a single sound leaked through.

Behind him, Chang Xu seemed to think of something and began patting himself down.

A few seconds later, he pinched an eyeball-shaped object from his jacket pocket between two fingers.

The thing had already shattered, but its pupil, covered in blood vessels and cracks, continued expanding and contracting as though breathing. It looked like the remnant of some tenacious monster.

"Someone was spying on us." Chang Xu tossed the eyeball toward Qi Si, gesturing for him to look.

Qi Si raised his hand and caught it. The instant his skin touched the cold fluid, a system prompt appeared before his eyes.

[Name: Eye of Hermes (Left Eye) (Damaged)]

[Type: Item]

[Effect: ...]

Chang Xu's expression was stern. "Not long ago, Liu Qingye made physical contact with me. I suspect she probably planted this item on me then. The night before last, I also came into contact with Shen Ming, so that possibility cannot be ruled out."

Qi Si shook his head slightly. "Not Shen Ming. He wouldn't be so selfless as to foresee his own death and make a wedding dress for someone else."

At this point, the clues connected into a whole, and the various oddities they had encountered before finally had explanations.

On the first day, Ye Zi had seemed lively and cheerful, even having the leisure to gossip. She clearly did not take life and death seriously, and both her acting ability and intelligence had seemed fairly good.

Yet on the second day, she had first displayed excessive pity and sympathy toward the corpses, then completely lost her composure, revealing flaws everywhere and making foolish moves...

She was like an entirely different person from the day before.

Ordinary people might have thought this was a normal reaction to trauma, but Qi Si, who had been acting since childhood, did not see it that way—there was no reason other than familiarity bred expertise.

Now it seemed his intuition had been right.

Qi Si smiled and tapped his chin with a finger. "Ye Zi suddenly getting into an argument with Zou Yan was probably just meant to create the illusion that they were at odds. Pushing someone out as a smokescreen and muddying the waters—what a fine plan..."

Chang Xu's expression sharpened. "You mean..."

Updates return to twice a day tomorrow. Sigh, they all say the first instance shouldn't be too complicated, but I just can't control these hands of mine... (But since this is posted under the mystery category, how can the trick design be too simple? Right? Right?)