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Wasn't it common to not want the person you secretly loved to get blood on their hands?

Professor Lu answered, "Oh, then I might have done it." He admitted it without hesitation, even seeming a little... proud? Looking at Zhen Liu, he said seriously, "Before you killed him, I would have made sure he stopped breathing first."

Zhen "Pineapple Head" Liu remained unmoved. "What time did you do it?"

Professor Lu was an old master at brushing things off. He did not refuse to answer, but neither did he answer properly. He merely said, "Anyway, it was before two in the morning."

Basketball Qiao had not even realized what "two in the morning" meant, but Zhen Liu already understood. Doctor Zhen's supposedly foolproof plan had not only been discovered by Professor Lu—Professor Lu had even predicted that Lawyer Jin's interference would cause the victim to die early, so he had acted sooner.

"So you admit that you used the golf club on the second floor?"

"If I had done it, half the back of his head would have been gone." Professor Lu flashed an utterly deranged smile, though his tone was as casual as if he were merely stating a fact. "How could I possibly leave behind trouble? What if he didn't die?"

Zhen Liu discussed the matter objectively. "Professor Lu lived on the second floor. It's highly unlikely he would leave the murder weapon there."

From the very beginning, Zhen Liu had ruled out the possibility that the golf club belonged to Professor Lu. It was an instinctive human reaction: murder weapons were generally either discarded far away or kept close at hand. Of course, they could also be left behind at the crime scene in a rush. In any case, leaving it neither here nor there in the recreation room was unlikely to have been done by someone living on the second floor.

Lawyer Jin added, "By the same logic, smothering someone with a pillow doesn't seem like a method Professor Lu would choose."

On one hand, smothering someone might not actually kill them. On the other, someone who chose that method either had to be certain the victim could not resist or be very confident in their own strength, believing the victim could not beat them.

In other words, those who fit the profile for pillow smothering were either the person who had administered sleep-inducing drugs or Basketball Qiao, who was tall, strong, and powerful.

If the pillow method really belonged to Basketball Qiao, then everyone's murder methods became obvious.

Lawyer Jin used Class A Poison.

Doctor Zhen used Class B Poison.

Basketball Qiao used a pillow.

Second-generation Zhao used a golf club.

Professor Lu used a knife.

In Lawyer Jin's personal judgment, he had initially thought the person who stabbed the victim had no experience killing for the first time and had panicked, stabbing several extra times. But now it seemed that Professor Lu had simply habitually finished the job, wanting to make absolutely certain the victim was dead and would not get back up.

And if the murder methods matched up, another deduction about the timeline emerged: Professor Lu had been the last to act. After all, something as obvious as stabbing could not possibly have gone unseen—or unsmelled—by those who came before.

That greatly narrowed the range of suspects.

Lawyer Jin fixed all his attention on Second-generation Zhao. So was this why Second-generation Zhao wanted to deal with him so badly?

Zhen Liu, who was the fourth to present evidence after Basketball Qiao, also currently suspected Second-generation Zhao. However, unlike Lawyer Jin, Zhen Liu believed someone had seen the knife wounds and deliberately concealed them.

"I went to the laundry room and found records showing that someone had used it in the middle of the night." The laundry room of the villa guesthouse was underground. Besides the garage, it had a bright skylight design that could be used to dry clothes. The washing machine was free for tenants to use, but like the other appliances, it kept usage records, clearly listing the times it had been used.

Why wash clothes at such a sensitive time?

"Because there was blood on them." Following the order he had arranged, Zhen Liu displayed several corresponding photographs. "But everyone knows that even if bloodstains are wiped away, they can still be detected. This is the washing machine's Luminol Reaction."

Bluish-white traces were everywhere.

These were the bloodstains that should have been wiped clean.

"The person who carried out this series of cover-up actions was either the murderer, or someone who discovered the murderer's actions and wanted to erase the traces for him. You could say that the pair covering for each other was Professor Lu and me, because for now, I also have no evidence proving it wasn't the two of us. But knowing clearly what I did and what I saw, the only conclusion I can infer from that is you two brothers." Zhen Liu looked at Basketball Qiao and Second-generation Zhao.

Even though neither of them admitted it, the fact that they were biological brothers was practically something everyone already knew. The only question was whether they could find direct evidence before the game ended.

Zhen Liu continued, "I think this is the true purpose of the side quest. It isn't just making us choose—it's also hinting that as early as the crime phase last night, people had already been covering for each other. It's just that..." The person who stabbed the victim and the person the cover-up artist believed had stabbed him could be two different people.

For example, Professor Lu might have been the one who stabbed the victim, but Second-generation Zhao might have mistakenly believed Basketball Qiao had done it. In that case, he would definitely carry out some follow-up actions for his brother.

Either Second-generation Zhao used the washing machine, or Basketball Qiao did.

"There's one question I still can't figure out, and I hope everyone can help think it through." Zhen Liu displayed part of his reasoning on the light screen. "After killing someone, there has to be a follow-up plan to shake off suspicion, right? Take Lawyer Jin and me, for example. We both considered how to clear ourselves before the police. We just never expected so many people to act that night."

How did the three people who used physical attacks plan to hide the truth of the victim's death?

They could at least have claimed that someone broke in to rob the place.

But they all appeared to have acted on impulse, with absolutely no backup plan. Were they really going to return to their rooms and sleep with complete peace of mind after either truly killing someone or falsely believing they had killed someone? Wasn't that a little too careless?

"Professor Lu and I also discovered that the victim's room might not have been his first death scene." As Zhen Liu spoke, he watched Second-generation Zhao's reaction without drawing attention to it. "I currently have an immature hypothesis. Is it possible that Murderer A really killed someone on impulse and, in a panic, had no idea how to deal with it; Murderer B covered for him and quietly hid the body; then Murderer C found the corpse and put it back in the victim's room?"