Beginner Edition · Class Reunion (Seventeen

Lawyer Jin asked in confusion, "Then what did Murderer C stand to gain? Blowing this whole thing up?"

Zhen Liu shook his head. "No, framing someone. Murderer C was certain that once the body was put back, the police would only find direct evidence against Murderer B or Murderer A."

Only then did everything make sense. Of course, there could be other variations, but the underlying principle remained the same.

Someone had hidden the body, and someone else had deliberately put it back.

The only thing Zhen Liu could be certain of was that Doctor Zhen had not touched the body. He had been focused on gathering a few people to eat breakfast with the deceased, creating an alibi for himself.

Lawyer Jin was unlikely as well. Since he had used poison, he would certainly avoid being alone with the deceased, lest he be unable to explain himself.

The person who hid the body was most likely Second-generation Zhao. He was familiar with the layout of the entire villa, and Zhen Liu could practically conclude that there was still a secret room in the villa that none of them knew about. As long as they found it and tested it for bloodstains, they would know whether the deceased had stayed there for a while.

Of course, the reverse was also possible: someone had hidden the body in the secret room, only for Second-generation Zhao, who knew the villa well, to discover it and take the body out.

How should he put it? Everyone had really been busy that night.

And somehow, miraculously, they had not run into one another...

Zhen Liu: "!!!" Why had they not run into one another? He raised his hand and summoned 333 and DM. "Can I request physical examinations for all of us?"

Blinded by a single leaf.

It was not only the deceased who could have been drugged. Zhen Liu now suspected that every one of them had been given sleeping pills.

Then this had not been a spur-of-the-moment act. It had been premeditated as well.

Chapter 17: Beginner Scenario · Class Reunion (17

The test results came back quickly. Every one of them had sleep-inducing drugs in their system, without exception.

Basketball Qiao was dumbfounded. "Then who drugged us?" Why had everyone been drugged? If the person who did it wanted to conceal himself this way, what was the point? Sleeping together with everyone else?

Zhen Liu could not say that the result had come as a complete surprise, but he quickly came up with several possibilities. "Either the person who drugged us is among us. As for what he wanted..." Zhen Liu could not be certain for the moment. He could only think that the other party might have been trying to blur the timeline. "Or the deceased did it."

The revelation caused an uproar. "!!!"

Still, this guess broadened everyone's thinking and shifted their attention back to the deceased. What exactly had Ying De called them here for in the first place? He had already more or less succeeded in threatening them, whether the threats were real or fake, so why had he insisted on confirming it face-to-face?

Lawyer Jin stated bluntly, "Doctor Zhen and I painstakingly waited for this meeting because we were waiting for a chance to kill. Then what was Ying De waiting for? To die?"

Everyone must have had a purpose in what they did, and the deceased should have been no exception. He was such a profit-seeking scoundrel; how could he not have had ulterior motives? Unfortunately, the information they had so far was still insufficient to piece together the deceased's motive.

Zhen Liu said, "Perhaps once we find out why the deceased truly gathered us here, we can solve the mystery of his death."

Second-generation Zhao shared after Zhen Liu. He was also the last person in this round of group discussion. At some point, the sky outside the villa had quietly darkened. Once the discussion was over, it would be time for dinner. The day had passed so quickly. Zhen Liu wondered uneasily whether time simply passed this quickly in the game, or whether...

Second-generation Zhao's target of hatred was very clear—Lawyer Jin.

It was the kind of hatred that made him want to eat Lawyer Jin's flesh and drink his blood. Zhen Liu had no idea where such deep enmity between Second-generation Zhao and Lawyer Jin had come from. He even felt that after only a short time without speaking, Second-generation Zhao's disgust for Lawyer Jin had risen another level. He was becoming less and less like Xiao Zhao, the player Zhen Liu had first known, and more and more like Second-generation Zhao from the script.

The moment Second-generation Zhao began, he fleshed out the theory Zhen Liu had not voiced. "I think Lawyer Jin was the one who administered the sleeping pills, to confuse the timing. Moving the clocks forward an hour or back an hour would greatly affect our judgment of the fatal injury and who the real murderer was." For example, everyone might have believed they killed someone at three o'clock, when it could actually have been four—or only two. Once time could no longer be trusted, many things became uncertain.

Basketball Qiao suddenly understood, playing along like a perfect straight man. "Right! He pretended to have been drugged along with us, when really he was trying to hide the fact that he had adjusted the time throughout the entire villa—"

Basketball Qiao wore an excited expression that said, "I saw this in

Conan

!"

"—and he'll have to drug us again to set the time back!" After saying that, Basketball Qiao looked warily at Lawyer Jin, afraid that he would pull out a handkerchief and knock him unconscious the next second.

Lawyer Jin practically rolled his eyes into the sky. "If I wanted to drug you, I would have done it at lunch. Would I have needed to wait until now?"

At lunchtime, they had still maintained a veneer of superficial friendship.

For some reason, Zhen Liu felt that perhaps this was why the game insisted on making them cook and eat over and over again: to give someone the chance to drug them a second time. If nothing unexpected happened, they would definitely have to pass out again that night.

Other than that theory, Second-generation Zhao contributed nothing more of value. He merely proved once again, from every possible angle, the inevitable connection between Lawyer Jin and Class A Poison. The evidence was irrefutable. He even submitted the evidence to the previous questionnaire on the spot, and Jin Zhuang completely losing one point in the side quest served as proof that his evidence was genuine.

But Zhen Liu only wanted to say that no one had doubted it. He simply did not think that Lawyer Jin's connection to Brother Hao proved Lawyer Jin was the murderer.

Lawyer Jin's expression remained remarkably calm, because... he had already decided that Second-generation Zhao and Basketball Qiao would lose that point too!