Thinking Forest Mansion (11)

Ji Xun nodded at Fang Rui. "Go ahead."

"Go ahead with what?" Gu Rui asked, completely confused.

"You didn't know?" Tang Cha said. "Fang Rui is the brains of our team. She's about to analyze the plot!"

Fang Rui took out her little notebook and said, "The main quest in this game is very clear: find the person who killed the mistress of the mansion. The killer is one of four people: the Male Host, the Maid, the Cook, or the Butler."

"First, the Male Host. He was having an affair with the Maid, and the mistress found out. The Maid even threatened to expose his secret. Then there's the mistress. She seems to have been married several times before, and personally, I lean toward the Male Host not knowing about it. As for the Cook and the Butler... although the Cook looks very much like the killer, Xu Xingfa has already ruled him out for us. The Butler is even stranger. On the surface, he hasn't been involved in anything, but he seems to have been helping everyone cover things up. For instance, he hid the Male Host's affair from the mistress, hid her marital history from the Male Host, and even obscured the truth behind the players' deaths."

"What Xu Xingfa said before he died was strange too. It sounded like someone had encouraged him to accuse the Cook," Tang Cha said.

Fang Rui wrote down several unanswered questions in her notebook.

Question one: why did the mistress hide her marital history?

Question two: why did the players lose consciousness at night?

Question three: why was the gemstone from the mistress's earring lodged in a gap in the armor?

"And a fourth," Ji Xun said. "I think the Male Host's cause of death is important too."

Fang Rui added it with her pen, then said, "The Cook is obsessed with cooking. We could try starting there."

"Oh, right. What exactly was wrong with the Cook's food?" Tang Cha suddenly remembered to ask.

The mention of this filled Gu Rui with anger. "He used poisonous mushrooms!"

"Huh?" Tang Cha exclaimed. "So you were actually poisoned?"

Gu Rui nodded grimly. When Ji Xun had told him not to eat anything containing mushrooms at dinner, he had been skeptical.

He hadn't expected that he really wouldn't fall into a deep sleep that night.

"So poisonous mushrooms really do put you six feet under," Tang Cha remarked.

As though something had suddenly struck her, Fang Rui said quietly, "Do you think the Male Host might have died from mushroom poisoning?"

Standing in the entrance hall, Tang Cha nodded at Ji Xun, who was hiding near the kitchen on the first floor.

Then he opened the mansion's front door, and more than a dozen pheasants flapped their wings and rushed inside.

The hall instantly descended into chaos. The players pretended to chase the birds, but were actually herding them farther inside.

Hearing the commotion, the Butler hurried over at a jog and exclaimed, "Where did all these pheasants come from?"

The pheasants were about to fly toward the second floor, and loose feathers drifted all over the living room.

"Cook! Get out here!" Unable to catch them himself, and with the players only making things worse, the Butler had no choice but to run to the kitchen for help.

The Cook joined the pheasant-catching efforts with a cleaver in hand, and Ji Xun and Deng Tianyu slipped into the kitchen.

They moved aside the piled-up clutter and found a trapdoor underneath.

"Be careful."

Deng Tianyu followed Ji Xun down, then switched on his flashlight.

It appeared to be a wine cellar. The shelves were packed with all kinds of wine and wooden barrels, and the scent of wine filled the air.

The space was small enough to take in almost at a glance.

"There's nothing here. Did we come for nothing?" Deng Tianyu asked in disappointment.

"Look for a hidden door," Ji Xun said.

"Okay."

Deng Tianyu knocked on the surrounding walls and suddenly found a spot that sounded hollow.

He felt around and found a slight raised edge along the wall.

"There really is a hidden door!"

His voice was full of delighted surprise. Following the raised edge, he pulled it sideways, revealing a long passage behind the wall.

The moment they stepped into the tunnel, Ji Xun sensed that something was wrong.

He focused, and saw his surroundings slowly begin to change.

The dark tunnel disappeared, replaced by a pitch-black forest.

It was the Black Pine Forest.

Ji Xun frowned and walked forward over the black fallen leaves covering the ground.

Deep in the forest, dense clusters of mushrooms covered the ground.

Poisonous mushrooms didn't necessarily have red caps and white stems, as Tang Cha had said. The poisonous mushrooms in the Black Pine Forest, for example, were entirely black.

A small figure crouched among the mushrooms. His gender was impossible to tell from behind. He wore black clothes with a round hood, just like the trench coat Ji Xun was wearing.

"Little Mushroom," Ji Xun called.

The figure stopped what he was doing and turned around in delight. "Big brother!"

He skipped over to Ji Xun and pulled him over to see his mushrooms. "Look, big brother! My brother and I have grown so, so many mushrooms."

Ji Xun smiled faintly. "That's wonderful. Where's your brother?"

Little Mushroom pouted. "My brother got tired, so I came out. Look, big brother, so many strangers have come to the Black Pine Forest lately. My brother and I can barely keep up."

Following the direction of his finger, Ji Xun saw a half-rotted human hand protruding from the soil beneath the mushrooms.

Ji Xun reached out to touch the flourishing mushrooms, but Little Mushroom hurriedly stopped him. "You can't touch them, big brother."

"You can't touch the black mushrooms, or you'll go mad."

Ji Xun's eyes snapped open, a faint sting coming from his finger.

He looked down and saw Hei Hei biting his finger, those little black-bean eyes full of worry.

He looked around and gave a quiet laugh. So that was it.

Panic showed in Deng Tianyu's eyes. "Are you okay? You stopped moving as soon as we entered the tunnel. I thought something had happened."

"Did you set the trap in the corridor?" Ji Xun asked.

Deng Tianyu fell abruptly silent, then forced a stiff smile. "What are you talking about? How could I-"

"You told Xu Xingfa that the Cook killed the mistress. That's why he submitted the wrong answer."

Deng Tianyu's smile vanished. "He wasn't a child. Why would he believe me so easily?"

"I suspect you told him you'd already carried out experiments and ruled out the Male Host and the Butler." Ji Xun feigned contemplation. "For instance, those two players who mysteriously died on the second night?"

"Ji Xun, do you know what you're doing right now?" Deng Tianyu's expression turned icy. "You're making baseless accusations against your teammate. You're violating the humanity covenant."

"Wan Mingfei was injured. He wasn't in any mood to eat dinner that day, so why did he go mad that night and think he'd seen a ghost?" Ji Xun's gaze was cold. "Because you used bringing him medicine as an excuse to mix poisonous mushroom juice into his pain-relieving ointment."

"As for Li Hongbo, I suspect you told him that since Wan Mingfei had already angered the Cook, he was bound to die anyway, so why not use him at a critical moment to eliminate a suspect?"

Deng Tianyu clenched his fists. "That's all speculation. Do you have any proof?"

Ji Xun took a small porcelain bottle from his pocket and tossed it to him. "You forgot that Liu Jincheng was sharing a room with Wan Mingfei before. He saw you secretly bring him medicine."

Deng Tianyu tightened his grip and crushed the porcelain bottle. "Now you don't."

"Oh." Ji Xun took another porcelain bottle out of his pocket. "I forgot. It's this one."

Deng Tianyu: ...

"Also," Ji Xun said with a smile, "whether I have proof doesn't actually matter. Even without any, I can just kill you."

What did the humanity covenant have to do with him, anyway?

He wasn't human.