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Would Zhen Liu be moved?

How could anyone refuse help that was freely offered?

Zhen Liu would. He simply hadn't made the connection yet and was still thinking about maintaining his persona, so he answered, "I'm a germaphobe, not obsessive-compulsive."

Whether the room was messy or not wouldn't affect Zhen Liu's search for evidence. In fact, Doctor Zhen's aversion to objects was only slightly stronger than the average person's. What he truly couldn't stand was contact with other people; the more he disliked someone, the stronger his reaction. That was why he smelled of disinfectant, rather than his belongings smelling of it.

Professor Lu: "..."

For some reason, Zhen Liu noticed that Professor Lu seemed a little dejected during the search that followed. Still, how should he put it? It was actually pretty good. Zhen Liu could force himself to socialize, but compared to talking, all he wanted right now was to win the Class Reunion prize money.

After they finished searching the guest bedroom, Lawyer Jin had also just finished searching the attic. The two sides tacitly exchanged locations.

The attic was much like the guest bedroom—thoroughly rummaged through and a complete mess. Heaven knew what it had been through. Zhen Liu's focus wasn't on what the attic contained, but on what it lacked.

This was a villa rented out as a guesthouse. The attic had been deliberately decorated as a treehouse playroom for children, with bright colors and piles of toys: an indoor slide, ball pit, plush toys, a swing chair... it had everything, except safety measures. This was the highest point in the entire villa. Falling from a window or tumbling down the stairs would be no joke.

Most guesthouses had a strong instinct for self-preservation. In a children's activity area like this, if they didn't want accidents or malicious complaints, they would definitely install protective measures.

Yet Zhen Liu couldn't find any guardrails, safety nets, or impact padding here. There wasn't even a fire extinguisher.

For now, Zhen Liu couldn't piece together what the absence of those things pointed to, but he knew that anything abnormal had to have a reason. There was definitely something wrong here.

That was probably the charm of deduction: using the known to infer the unknown. If you hit upon the answer, the sense of accomplishment in that moment would go through the roof.

After Zhen Liu and Professor Lu left the attic, they went outside and circled the villa in the yard. It was a row house with an attic. The front and back yards weren't connected, because there were other buildings immediately to either side beyond the walls. In other words, if someone was fit enough, it wasn't impossible to climb from this balcony to the neighboring one.

Zhen Liu was even a little eager to try it himself. If he succeeded, it would mean his earlier suspicion was likely true: that night, while he, Lawyer Jin, and the deceased were talking in the living room, someone had been hiding upstairs.

Then Zhen Liu began drawing a rough sketch on the light screen. He didn't have the villa's floor plan, but from memory, he roughly mapped out where every room was located.

The layout of this villa was wrong!

Six hours passed in a flash, and everyone regrouped in the dining room. When Zhen Liu and Professor Lu arrived, only Basketball Qiao was wandering idly around the living room. He really had nothing to do. Lawyer Jin arrived soon after.

Then they all went into the kitchen. For some reason, there had to be a cooking segment between the two stages.

Basketball Qiao waved his arms as he shouted, "This is a murder mystery game, not a cooking competition, right? The last game I played didn't have this many cooking segments." He had been running around doing everything last night, and he really didn't want to do it today. Basketball Qiao wanted to recruit an ally, only to discover that Second-generation Zhao, who had once worked alongside him, hadn't arrived yet. "Huh? Where did he go?"

Lawyer Jin narrowed his eyes, keenly sensing something. "Did any of you see Second-generation Zhao?"

Basketball Qiao shook his head. Ever since he and Second-generation Zhao had split up, he had been acting alone.

Zhen Liu also thought back. It seemed that after they had separated to search upstairs, he hadn't seen Second-generation Zhao again. The same went for when he and Professor Lu came downstairs. The villa was only so big. Where could Second-generation Zhao have gone?

Lawyer Jin had more or less worked it out. There had to be an undiscovered area in the villa. Second-generation Zhao knew about it, but he had concealed that information.

Just then, Second-generation Zhao came downstairs in a change of clothes, looking apologetic. "Sorry, sorry. I was sorting through clues in my room just now and forgot the meeting time."

Lawyer Jin probed, "Is that so? But when I came down the stairs, I don't think I saw anyone in your room."

"That's impossible. I've been in my room the whole time." Second-generation Zhao's expression remained normal. He wasn't unusually composed; rather, his eyes held the instinctive deference of a junior looking to an experienced player for guidance. After being questioned by Lawyer Jin, he looked extremely flustered. It seemed as though Lawyer Jin's bluff had failed and Second-generation Zhao really had been in his room all along.

But Zhen Liu's instincts told him otherwise. Second-generation Zhao was lying.

That raised another question: why was Basketball Qiao always able to "accidentally" bring up so many suspicious things? Deliberate? Coincidence? A fool's luck? Too many coincidences started to seem deliberate.

In the end, Professor Lu, Zhen Liu, and Lawyer Jin cooked lunch together. While they were at it, they checked the kitchen once more.

Before cooking, Lawyer Jin deliberately restored every knife to its original position. The slots for the kitchen utensils all matched; not a single knife was missing. Second-generation Zhao chimed in, "I had the AI check. There's no human blood on the knives, so go ahead and use them." In other words, there was at least no murder weapon in the kitchen.

But Zhen Liu and Lawyer Jin still found it strange. The game insisted that they cook in the kitchen, so there had to be a reason. If there was nothing wrong with the utensils, then what else was in the kitchen?

After lunch, the players' first group discussion began.

The five of them sat around the table in the same order as at the previous dinner. A light screen that could project images and be written on stood before the table. This time, everyone could see what was on the screen.