Newbie Instance: Class Reunion (19

Zhen Liu was quite polite. He thanked Basketball Qiao again. "I was just wondering why you suddenly relented and agreed to trade the secret room's hidden location for my vote naming Lawyer Jin as the murderer."

Professor Lu and Zhen Liu seemed to be of one mind. Before Zhen Liu could speak, he played the perfect straight man and answered Zhen Liu's question. "Because when he stopped you, you were already about to find the entrance to the secret room. Since it was only a matter of time before the secret room was discovered, he might as well squeeze out its last bit of value."

Basketball Qiao's face went completely pale. That was indeed what he had been thinking.

"Then, working backward from that, the secret room must be nearby." Rather than waste time looking for the lock that opened the secret room, they might as well chisel a beam of light directly into it.

Look how happy it was.

Author's note:

Secret room: ??? Are you even human?

Chapter 19: Newbie Instance: Class Reunion (19

The secret room was not very large, roughly the size of a small elevator car. It was simply very deep, nearly running through every floor of the entire villa. A ring of standing platforms had been installed along the walls of each floor, while the center had been left open like an atrium, with a rope ladder hanging down, tied with several knots.

In short, it was a cramped but genuinely usable secret room.

When Zhen Liu had been drawing the villa's floor plan earlier, he had found it strange. The wall beside the stair railing was far thicker than it should have been, unlike any ordinary layout.

Now, the answer had finally been revealed.

There was a "secret room" hidden inside. Of course it was strange.

Zhen Liu had not chiseled too large an opening in the wall. There was surely more to investigate inside the secret room, and perhaps some decisive piece of evidence was hidden there. He did not want to cause too much damage. Once he had confirmed the secret room was exposed, he said to Second-generation Zhao, "Talk."

Second-generation Zhao had actually been mentally prepared to explain this part earlier. He just had not expected mild-mannered Zhen Liu to use such a violent method. Still, he said what needed to be said. "Yes, this is the villa's secret room. Actually, it was never meant to be a secret room..." After all, this was a private residence, not some secret base.

The space containing the secret room had originally been reserved for a home elevator.

In fact, the entire villa complex had been developed by the Zhao Family. The company's original vision had been to turn it into an upscale retirement community, so every home had been designed with space for an internal elevator.

Unfortunately, policies changed in the blink of an eye. Just after the complex went on sale, the land nearby was designated for Airport Terminal 3. The concept of retirement villas instantly evaporated, and both sales prices and demand plummeted. The Zhao Family was no pushover. They immediately cut their losses and changed their sales strategy, repositioning the complex for both residential and commercial use—for example, selling villas to businesses that wanted to open private dining establishments.

For the townhouses that simply would not sell, the Zhao Family consolidated them themselves, renting some out and turning others into guesthouses.

Naturally, the portion consolidated by the Zhao Family was not going to go through the trouble of installing elevators. The reserved spaces were simply left empty.

The guesthouse villa Doctor Zhen's group had booked this time was even more unusual. It had previously been rented to a business that ran escape rooms, then reclaimed only in the past year or two, renovated, and converted into a guesthouse. The escape-room operators had not installed elevators either. Instead, they turned the reserved space into a narrow secret room to enhance the players' experience. When the Zhao Family took the place back, they did not dismantle the secret room in order to save costs. They simply sealed it up.

"But it wasn't sealed completely. They only did the bare minimum." Second-generation Zhao had the villa's floor plan, making it easy for him to put this secret room to use.

What Zhen Liu and Lawyer Jin were considering, however, was this: if someone had really been upstairs while they were talking to the deceased that night, and if that person knew about the secret room, then he would not have needed to climb out the window to escape. He only needed to hide in the secret room first, then come out at the right moment. Of course, they needed solid evidence before any of it could mean anything. Without evidence, all their theories were just empty speculation.

Professor Lu spoke up and asked Second-generation Zhao, "So you deliberately booked this villa with a secret room for the deceased?"

Second-generation Zhao nodded. "Of course. Like all of you, I was planning to kill him too." He did not say it through gritted teeth, but his intense dislike for the deceased was real.

Just as Professor Lu had told Zhen Liu before, everyone had been on the road with a knife in hand that night.

It was simply that some had planned it in advance, while others had acted on impulse.

Second-generation Zhao continued. He had planned the murder beforehand, though his plan had been nothing remarkable. He had simply wanted to use the secret room to hide the body and conceal the fact that he had killed someone. He just did not know why the body had been taken out again. When he saw the body in Ying De's room, he had been badly frightened as well.

Yet Zhen Liu realized in surprise that Second-generation Zhao was lying. He did not call him out or show it. He merely asked, "Did you check the fingerprints and shoe prints in the secret room?"

Second-generation Zhao nodded. "I checked during the first round of evidence collection. No fingerprints were left behind." That was also why Second-generation Zhao had disappeared earlier and showed up so late for the group discussion afterward. He had been searching the secret room for clues the entire time, trying to figure out who had moved the body. Naturally, no one else could find him.

There were quite a few obvious bloodstains on the first floor of the secret room, confirming that the deceased had indeed been hidden there.

After getting the explanation, Zhen Liu began carefully examining the secret room floor by floor. Second-generation Zhao and Basketball Qiao went elsewhere. They were already familiar with the secret room and had no desire to keep searching it. Lawyer Jin chose to stay as well, but he was in no hurry to collect evidence. The moment the strange pair of brothers had gone far enough away, he immediately leaned close to Zhen Liu and whispered, "Do you believe Second-generation Zhao's murder plan?"

Zhen Liu did not stop searching. He merely said, "From the sound of it, you don't believe him?"

It was more than disbelief. He would not believe it even if it killed him.

Before Lawyer Jin could answer, Professor Lu, who had also stayed behind, inserted himself between Lawyer Jin and Zhen Liu with an unquestionable air, separating the two who had been standing too close together. He said to Lawyer Jin in a mocking tone, "Cattle and sheep travel in herds; predators always walk alone. It's your business if you like forming cliques, but before you go clinging to someone's leg, could you at least ask whether they're willing to be as childish as you?"