Newbie Instance: Class Reunion (20

[But how were they supposed to stop Brother Hao from calling the police?]

Who was Brother Hao?

He was the School Bully who had bullied Doctor Zhen during their school days. After being expelled, Brother Hao had not turned over a new leaf. Instead, he had promptly joined the underworld and had now become the organization's leader. Lawyer Jin had been set up by Ying De and, half-willingly, become the organization's legal advisor, handling unjust cases for important members, including the second-in-command. Meanwhile, the organization's second-in-command had just been imprisoned after being reported for drug use and trafficking...

In short, Brother Hao was an utterly wicked man, and he had once been classmates with everyone present, including the deceased.

This newbie instance was called "Class Reunion." It truly lived up to its name.

Brother Hao had also lent Ying De, the deceased, money at usurious interest. The night before, Ying De had called Brother Hao and sworn that he would soon be able to repay both the debt and the interest. Unfortunately, fate had other plans. Ying De had turned around and died miserably in the guesthouse. After receiving the news, Brother Hao had trapped Doctor Zhen and the others in the villa as well, threatening them to hand over the real culprit within two days or he would burn them all alive.

Clearly, Brother Hao's real goal was not to avenge the dead Ying De. What he wanted most was probably money, though he might have had some other purpose as well.

Yet he had gone to such lengths to trap them here. There was an inexplicable contradiction in the logic behind his actions...

"And don't you think Brother Hao showed up far too quickly?" Although all this could be forcibly explained as the creator finding a plausible reason to gather them together to solve the case, Zhen Liu instinctively felt that things were not that simple. "Who administered the hypnotic drug, and what was the purpose of drugging everyone? That is also a question without an answer."

They had always suspected the deceased, but why would the deceased have done it?

Second-generation Zhao had checked his mission against the narration that had appeared when the corpse was first discovered, confirming that Zhen Liu had not lied to him. The main mission clearly stated that they had to hand the true culprit over to the police, but the initial narration had said that Brother Hao, the loan shark, had flown into a rage and ordered them to hand over the killer within two days.

They looked like the same thing, but upon closer thought, they were completely different—perhaps even diametrically opposed.

"Why don't we discuss it together?" There was no longer any need to exclude Lawyer Jin. Zhen Liu said to Second-generation Zhao, "Many hands make light work. Only by pooling our ideas can we find a way out."

Second-generation Zhao looked at Zhen Liu for a long time before finally nodding with difficulty. He had compromised.

After stubbornly holding out for more than a dozen attempts, he had actually been persuaded.

[Oh my god, why am I suddenly a little moved?]

[Unity is strength!]

[Their goal now is to save themselves from Brother Hao first, then deal with everything else.]

[I hope this time there'll be a different ending.]

[There definitely will be!]

After leaving the Black Room, Zhen Liu explained everything to Jin Zhuang, the only one still out of the loop.

Jin Zhuang was, after all, an experienced player. He had played many instances and encountered all sorts of situations, so he immediately shared his own experience. "This game is very realistic. Sometimes, I even feel that it is real, just a case that happened in another country that I happened not to know about. Brother Hao showing up so quickly cannot possibly have been just the game forcing us together with some excuse."

If the game had given them any cheat, it was probably that each of their phones could access the internet to look things up, and that they could directly obtain test results for blood and corpses.

If there really had been five people trapped with a corpse for two days, they would never have been able to conduct such a detailed investigation.

Of course, this cheat could only help players look things up. They could not contact the outside world, much less call the police.

Second-generation Zhao and Basketball Qiao sat quietly there, listening to Zhen Liu and Jin Zhuang's analysis while recalling what had happened back then. The circumstances had indeed been exactly like this.

The villa had been dark day and night. Ying De's corpse had remained in the room, gradually rotting and stinking as time passed. Basketball Qiao had not dared stay in his room on the first floor at night, but even so, they had still had to grit their teeth and search for evidence, to find the real culprit, because they did not want to die.

But how could it have been so easy?

Not to mention that their mental states had completely collapsed at the time, making it impossible for them to remain calm. They had only been ordinary people. Without testing equipment, they could not obtain accurate information about everyone. How could they possibly identify the murderer through mere talk? Even in the end, they had not known the secrets each person had hidden.

In the end, Second-generation Zhao could only steel himself and secretly discuss it with Basketball Qiao. Finding the killer was already impossible, so there was no need to go through all that trouble. Since Brother Hao wanted someone, they could simply hand one person over.

Who cared whether that person was actually the killer?

The person to be handed over was easy to choose—the lawyer.

On one hand, both Second-generation Zhao and Basketball Qiao hated the lawyer because of their mothers' deaths. On the other hand, the professor loved the doctor, and the doctor clearly knew that the professor was his ally. If they wanted to forcibly push out the doctor or the professor, they would certainly fail.

The professor and doctor had the same concerns, so they ultimately agreed to Second-generation Zhao's proposal.

Four against one. Even though the lawyer realized that something was wrong and tried to resist, one person's resistance was insignificant. In the end, he was still tied up and handed over to Brother Hao.

The four people left in the villa thought the nightmare had ended, only to be burned alive inside the villa anyway.

This was probably retribution, Basketball Qiao thought. Even if the lawyer had truly handled an unjust case for the second-in-command, the law should have punished him, not them pushing him out to take the blame.

"But what exactly was Brother Hao after with this whole series of actions?" Jin Zhuang muttered to himself. He could not quite understand this underworld boss. Lawyer Jin's character profile had not contained much about Brother Hao either. It only said that Brother Hao had recently been very happy—the kind of happiness that came from being about to make a fortune.