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Isn't not wanting the person you secretly loved to get blood on their hands a common enough reason?

Professor Lu answered, "Oh, then I might have done that." He admitted it without the slightest 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 also a master at giving perfunctory answers. He neither refused to answer nor answered properly, merely saying, "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 known to Professor Lu—he had also anticipated that Lawyer Jin's interference would make the victim die early, so he had acted even 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 revealed a thoroughly deranged smile, yet his tone was as casual as if he were merely stating a fact. "How could I possibly leave trouble behind? What if he didn't die?"

Zhen Liu addressed the matter objectively. "Professor Lu lived on the second floor, so there's a high chance he wouldn't 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 thrown 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 sitting so awkwardly in the recreation room was unlikely to have been done by someone who lived 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 did not necessarily guarantee death. On the other, someone who chose that method either knew for certain that the victim could not fight back, or was very confident that the victim was no match for him.

In other words, those who fit the profile for pillow smothering were either someone who had administered a sleep-inducing drug, or the tall, strong, powerful-handed Basketball Qiao.

Assuming the pillow method really belonged to Basketball Qiao, everyone's methods of murder became quite clear.

Lawyer Jin used Type A poison.

Doctor Zhen used Type 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 stabber had no experience with killing and, in a panic, stabbed a few extra times. But now it seemed that Professor Lu simply had a habitual tendency to finish people off, wanting to make absolutely certain the victim was dead and would not get back up.

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

That greatly narrowed the range of suspects.

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

Zhen Liu, the fourth to share evidence after Basketball Qiao, currently also suspected Second-generation Zhao. But unlike Lawyer Jin's deduction, 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 villa's laundry room was underground. Besides serving as a garage, it had a bright skylight that could be used to dry clothes. The washing machine was free for guests to use, but like the other appliances, it kept usage records, clearly showing the hours of operation.

Why wash clothes at such a sensitive time?

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

Pale bluish-white traces were everywhere.

These were the bloodstains that should have been wiped away.

"The person who carried out this series of cover-up actions was either the killer, or someone who discovered the killer's actions and wanted to erase the traces for him. You can say that the pair covering for each other was Professor Lu and me, because I currently have no evidence proving it was not the two of us. But given that I know exactly 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 was the true purpose of the side mission. It was not merely to make us choose; it was also hinting that, as early as the crime phase last night, people had already begun covering for each other. It's just that..." The person who stabbed the victim and the person the cover-up artist thought 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 mistakenly believed Basketball Qiao had done it. Then 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 still one thing I 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 always has to be a follow-up plan to shake off suspicion, right? For example, Lawyer Jin and I had both considered how to clear ourselves before the police. We just didn't expect 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 claim that someone had broken in to rob the place.

But they all looked as though they had acted on impulse and had absolutely no backup plan. Were they really going to return to their rooms and sleep peacefully after killing someone—whether for real or only supposedly? 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 discreetly watched Second-generation Zhao's reaction. "I currently have an immature theory. Could it be that Killer A really did kill someone on impulse and, in the panic, had no idea how to handle it; Killer B covered for him and secretly hid the person away; then Killer C found the corpse and put it back in the victim's room?"