The scream interrupted the actions of the fire-controlling Player, causing him to pause and instinctively glance at the upper right corner of the ceiling, the source of the sound.
It was clear that it came from the second floor.
Lu Qingjia chuckled, “What a coincidence.”
Shrugging, he added, “Alright, let’s go take a look.”
The group then opened the door, exited the workshop, and followed the sound to the second floor.
At this moment, the entire family in the house had gathered, each face displaying a mix of panic, disbelief, and terror as they stared at the corpse in the study.
The boss, who had gone upstairs after meticulously briefing Lu Qingjia and the others, was now slumped in his large office chair, a sharp knife embedded in his chest. He held the knife’s handle with both hands, eyes closed, his expression devoid of pain as he had passed away.
Blood flowed from his chest, staining a large area of carpet beneath him.
The boss’s wife covered her mouth and cried out in despair, “How could this happen?”
Her two children clung to each other in panic, while the boss’s mother, a sharp-faced old woman, exclaimed in anger, “Who killed my son?”
To be honest, while the incident was indeed tragic, the Players felt little emotional impact.
Firstly, this family was already suspicious, and who knew what kind of game NPCs they were dealing with, especially those who interacted with moving wax figures.
Secondly, with noon approaching and the tricky wax oil for making wax figures, they had no time to deal with this sudden, seemingly out-of-place murder case that interrupted their tasks.
Thus, the group planned to exchange a few polite words to comfort the family before returning to the workshop to continue their research on the wax figures.
At that moment, however, the system announced a new task—
【Triggering Side Quest—Unravel the Murder Case in the Wax Museum’s Secret Room. Main Quest temporarily locked; it will reopen after the side quest is completed.】
“Damn, this is too shameless!” a hot-tempered male Player cursed loudly.
“Why not just write it out directly? Just say you’re messing with us, not letting us complete our tasks. If you want to harm the Players, just say so! What a load of nonsense.”
“How long until the delivery time?”
“Less than four hours.”
“We need to reserve at least two or three hours to make the wax figures, so we can’t spend more than an hour solving this murder case.”
“Who here is good at reasoning? Or has a function for scene replay? Or a mental ability to make a few people tell the truth?”
“Anyway, it can’t be us. So the only suspects left are the boss’s family.”
The others shook their heads in response: “No one.”
Lu Qingjia said, “Since this is a delay tactic, it must have integrated our existing advantages. There can’t be any shortcuts.”
Just like the interview location in the previous level, that was the limit of what a speed ability user could achieve in a group.
In fact, with Lu Qingjia’s mental control, given his current spiritual power, controlling one person to obey him was quite simple. However, this family was clearly not ordinary people. Mental abilities were powerful but also risky, and in an unnecessary situation, Lu Qingjia was unwilling to take that risk.
Upon hearing this, the group began to feel anxious: “So what do we do? Just to be clear, I’m not good at reasoning.”
“This kind of locked-room murder case is something the police would take a while to solve. Are we really going to waste a whole day on this ridiculous case?”
“How could that be?” Lu Qingjia replied. “Give me five minutes.”
The group was taken aback, looking at Lu Qingjia in disbelief.
Hadn’t he just said he didn’t have any relevant abilities? Even though his intelligence was already evident, five minutes seemed—
Lu Qingjia stepped forward and addressed the boss’s family: “Forgive me for being blunt, but as outsiders, after the boss brought us into the workshop, we only stepped out for a few minutes to catch our breath in the corridor. The cameras in the corridor on the first floor should have recorded this. Besides that, we haven’t gone anywhere else, let alone upstairs.”
“So, while it’s unfortunate to say this, the suspect who killed the boss should be among you, his closest relatives.”
Lu Qingjia raised his hand to silence the agitated family members, saying, “Now, could you please go to the surrounding rooms one by one?”
“I will call you in here to question you one at a time.”
It seemed that this was indeed a specially designed obstacle event for the Players. An intern was doing the work of a police officer, and the family didn’t seem to find anything wrong with it, cooperating exceptionally well.
It was as if it had been programmed into the system.
Lu Qingjia smiled, and after the family members entered different rooms, he had a few Players guard the doors.
He didn’t immediately call anyone over but first took a look at the clues in the room.
A so-called ‘locked-room murder case’ naturally meant that the first scene was discovered while the room was in a sealed state.
The boss’s study had only one small window, which was poorly lit, and most places in the house were like this.
The window was locked from the inside, with a layer of tape stuck on it, showing no signs of having been opened. The Players went outside to check the castle, which, due to years of neglect, had crumbling walls with no signs of scratches.
According to common logic, it was impossible to enter from the window.
The study door was also sealed with a layer of tape on the inside of the door frame. This tape was industrial-grade, with good elasticity and strong adhesion, and was over five centimeters wide.
From the current state of the tape, it showed no signs of having been repeatedly torn off, indicating that it was likely forced open when something went wrong.
The boss’s wound was located at the heart, with the knife handle slightly tilted upwards, suggesting that the knife had been inserted from a position slightly above the boss’s level.
On the desk was a cup of coffee that had been mostly consumed; aside from that, there were no other abnormalities in the room.
Lu Qingjia picked up the cup of coffee and sniffed it, then pulled out a device the size of a voice recorder.
He turned on the device and scanned the cup of coffee. After a second or two, a virtual screen popped up next to the scanner, listing all the components of the coffee, including the cup and the liquid inside.
This was a high-tech product bought from the Infinite Game, capable of identifying most elements, though it wasn’t omnipotent. However, it was sufficient for this situation.
Sure enough, the results showed that the coffee contained a high concentration of sedative ingredients.
A Player who walked in saw this result and said, “So the one who served the coffee is the murderer?”
“No wonder the boss died from a stab to the heart without any pain on his face; he must have been killed in his sleep.”
They complained, “Do they think we’re fools? Who would commit suicide in such an awkward position?”
Indeed, while stabbing the heart could lead to a quick release, for the boss’s physique, the posture of holding the knife with both hands and inserting it into his heart was quite awkward.
The inconvenience of exertion could lead to unnecessary pain, and with so many doubts, it seemed like a poorly disguised murder made to look like a suicide, full of flaws.
Lu Qingjia shook his head and smiled, “Who knows?”
“Could you call in the person who first discovered the scene?”
The first to discover the scene was the boss’s mother. Although she appeared angry, she didn’t seem overly sorrowful.
During Lu Qingjia’s questioning, she revealed that she had brought the coffee to the boss first.
She had seen the boss come out of the workshop looking unhappy, so she brought a cup of coffee into the study and discussed some matters with him.
“Could you tell me what those matters were?”
Seeing the old woman frown, Lu Qingjia smiled and said, “You know, the deceased is paramount. You wouldn’t want your son to pass on with resentment and injustice, would you?”
Only then did the old woman say, “It was about the distribution of retirement funds. This house and the factory were inherited from me and his father, but now he wants to send me to his brother.”
Lu Qingjia nodded, not pressing further, and said, “Alright, that’s all I wanted to ask. You can go back now.”
The old woman had a lot to say but felt stifled, as if she had been choked.
But seeing Lu Qingjia’s apparent disinterest in anything extraneous, she reluctantly exited the room.
Next to be called in was the deceased’s daughter, who, in contrast to the gloomy and conservative atmosphere of the wax museum, was dressed provocatively and wore heavy makeup.
It was clear she had a significant interest in Lu Qingjia. Upon entering, she began to sob, but her cries sounded somewhat affected.
“Mr. Lu, you really have to help me catch the murderer so my dad can rest in peace.”
Lu Qingjia asked, “Could you tell me what you were discussing with your father? I heard you looked a bit panicked when you ran out of the study and bumped into your grandmother without apologizing.”
The boss’s daughter looked a bit dazed: “I had a fight with my dad, which made him have a heart attack, so I was really anxious. I didn’t kill my dad!”
“After I came out, my brother and mother also went into the study; they can testify.”
“Alright, I believe you.” Lu Qingjia smiled and escorted her out of the room.
The boss’s daughter felt a bit like she had stepped into thin air.
When the boss’s son came in, Lu Qingjia recounted the boss’s daughter’s testimony and confirmed with him, “Was your father still alive when you entered?”
“I—I don’t know.” The boss’s son replied in a panic, “When I came in, my dad’s chair was facing away from the door, and he looked like he was asleep. The back of that big chair is so thick that I couldn’t see clearly. I thought he was just sleeping, so I secretly took my game console that he had confiscated.”
“So you didn’t see your father from the front at all?”
“That’s right.” The boss’s son said, “It must have been my grandmother or my sister who did it. Who knows, my dad might have already been dead when I came in.”
Lu Qingjia patted his shoulder and smiled, “I’ll judge the outcome; you don’t need to speak too much, alright?”
The boss’s son stiffened, his expression darkening as he left the room.
Lastly, the boss’s wife came in, repeatedly emphasizing that her children could never be the murderer. They were still young, and the father’s death was already heartbreaking; now they were being treated as suspects, which was incredibly distressing.
After she finished speaking, Lu Qingjia said, “Speaking of a not-so-cold fact, it’s actually quite easy to set up a locked-room scenario with tape.”
As long as you stick half of the tape on the door before leaving and leave the other half out, then use a vacuum cleaner to suck it from the door frame, you can create a seemingly flawless locked room.
Lu Qingjia leaned closer to her and said, “Earlier, you came down with a vacuum cleaner, and the brush head and suction tube were separate. You claimed the carpet was dirty, but the bristles on the brush head had no hair or dust on them, as if you only needed to use the suction tube.”
“Don’t you think that’s inefficient?”
The boss’s wife raised her head, her gaunt face showing signs of distress, her expression sad and desperate, her lips trembling: “Are you implying that the murderer is me?”
Lu Qingjia looked at her, and at that moment, the air in the study felt as taut as silk, as if his next words would determine a person’s fate.
Cold sweat broke out on the boss’s wife’s face, as if she was eagerly awaiting the knife to drop.
But Lu Qingjia chuckled lightly, “How could that be? I believe the boss’s wife is not the one who stabbed the knife into the boss’s body.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t wrongfully accuse anyone. Now that I’ve finished asking questions, it’s not proper to leave the boss’s body here. Please find a place; I’ll have someone move the boss’s body first.”
For a moment, the boss’s wife looked at Lu Qingjia with a hint of a sinister expression.
But before she could show any signs of a flaw, she feigned relief: “Thank you, thank you, Mr. Lu.”
Lu Qingjia chose a tall, strong Player to help carry the boss’s body and exited with the boss’s wife.
He instructed the boss’s children and mother to stay together and not to separate, then gathered the Players back to the workshop.
“Why didn’t you directly expose the boss’s wife?” someone asked. “It’s obviously her, right? Even if it’s not her, it could very well be her two children.”
“To cover up the matter of her children committing murder, she created this locked room as a disguise.”
However, someone disagreed: “I think it was the boss’s mother. Wasn’t that cup of coffee brought to the boss by her? And she was the first to discover the body afterward.”
“An old lady like her, when she found the door wouldn’t open, instead of calling for help or figuring out what was going on inside, she just forced her way in.”
“Maybe before she broke in, the boss was just asleep, and after she broke in, she stabbed him to death. In reality, this locked room was just a ruse, and the timing of the murder was completely off.”
“Then how did she set up the tape?” someone countered. “Surely the boss didn’t stick it on himself? How would she know he would tape it? Was it prearranged?”
“I think this might not be a single conspiracy but several conspiracies combined, leading to the current complex situation.”
After saying this, they turned their gaze to Lu Qingjia: “By the way, didn’t you say you could solve the case in five minutes and continue the task? It’s been almost half an hour.”
“I’ve already solved it.” Lu Qingjia replied. “After entering the study for five minutes, everything I did afterward was just laying the groundwork for making the wax figures.”
“What do you mean?” several people were confused.
Seeing Lu Qingjia’s serious expression, he said, “If you don’t believe me, ask the system.”
“This—” someone immediately consulted in their mind, “System, has the main quest been unlocked?”
The system’s voice, though mechanical, seemed somewhat reluctant at this moment: “Player Lu Qingjia has solved the locked-room murder mystery. Side quest completed; main quest unlocked.”
“When did this happen?” everyone was stunned. “Wait, why didn’t you say anything?”
“Not only did I not say anything, but you also pretended to ask them one by one? Wasn’t that wasting time?”
“How could it be a waste of time? This is an important step in the main quest.”
As he spoke, a puddle of sludge appeared on the ground, startling the Players, who then realized it was likely Lu Qingjia’s ability.
The sludge wrapped around something that emerged, and as the sludge dissipated, everyone discovered that it was, in fact, the boss’s corpse.
“What are you doing with this?” someone exclaimed in despair.
Lu Qingjia smiled, “Since they want to put on a show to delay time, wouldn’t it be a waste of their effort if I didn’t seize the opportunity they provided?”
Saying this, he tossed the boss’s body into the pot of wax.
As the legs made contact with the wax, perhaps due to the intense pain, the boss’s eyes suddenly opened wide.
He glanced around, quickly understanding the situation, and seeing his lower body melting in the wax, he began to struggle.
But Lu Qingjia firmly pressed down on his head, slowly pushing him further into the pot, grinning at the boss, “Hey? Didn’t you already die? It’s illegal to rise from the dead.”
“Ugh, ugh~~” The boss struggled desperately, but his strength was no match for the overwhelming Points and the limits unlocked by Lu Qingjia, who possessed the Celestial Bloodline.
The wax splashed out from his struggles was all blocked by the bubble barrier that appeared around Lu Qingjia.
The boss was certainly not small in stature, but as he was pushed into the wax pot, melting and sinking, it wasn’t much of a burden.
After a while, the boss’s expression froze between terror and unblinking death, and eventually, his eyes melted away in the wax, his head sinking into the pot.
Meanwhile, Lu Qingjia stirred the contents like a witch brewing a magical potion, wielding a large spoon.
The expressions of the group of Players were all blank.
“What the hell is going on? That bastard boss wasn’t dead at all? Did they conspire together to create this so-called case just to delay time?”
Lu Qingjia nodded, “Sort of.”
“Wait, when did you know?”
“Pretty much from the beginning.”
“…”
“First of all, this sudden murder case was clearly set up to obstruct us from completing our tasks. Everyone understands that. So if that’s the case, why must it be a plot set by the system? Isn’t there a possibility that this family is self-directing and performing?”
“After all, the timing was too coincidental, almost perfectly timed to create a disturbance.”
“However, the probability of either possibility is fifty-fifty, so I had to go to the scene to confirm.”
“And as you all saw, this family was purposefully causing trouble. It seems they weren’t being controlled by the plot; they were subjectively aware that they needed to hinder us.”
“What did we see?” several Players exclaimed in frustration. “Brother, can you speak clearly?”
“The tape on the door frame had a prominent fingerprint at the bottom, belonging to the boss. It should have been left when he was talking to us, and in a fit of emotion, he sweated and left an obvious fingerprint.”
“When the scream came, the workshop door was closed, yet we heard it clearly, indicating that the soundproofing of this entire house is poor, at least loud sounds cannot be completely isolated.”
“The boss’s wife came down with a vacuum cleaner, claiming she had just used it, but before that, none of us heard the sound of the vacuum running. Her vacuum was a high-power model, bulky and old-fashioned. With our Players’ hearing, if she had used it for even a moment, we would have heard something. This indicates she never used it, whether for cleaning or to use the vacuum to attach the tape to create the locked room.”
“The reason she let us see her coming down with the vacuum was merely to provide a misleading clue.”
“And earlier, when I asked the boss’s mother about the people who came in afterward, I had them tell me how much coffee was left on the table when they entered.”
Lu Qingjia smiled, as if recalling the scene was amusing: “A few of them were so flustered that they couldn’t even remember whether the tape on the window was already stuck when they entered the study, yet they could clearly remember the amount of coffee in the cup.”
“Clearly, the window’s position was more conspicuous, and that silver-gray tape clashed with the wallpaper.”
“This means they were misleading us the entire time?” a female Player asked. “They didn’t even care who the real murderer was; as long as we provided the wrong answer, they wouldn’t unlock the main quest, and they would win?”
“Exactly.” Lu Qingjia nodded. “And after confirming these points, I gave the system the answer in my mind: the truth of the locked-room murder is that the boss committed suicide.”
“This was a poorly disguised suicide made to look like a murder. The tape was stuck on by the boss himself, and he stabbed himself after taking sleeping pills before the effects kicked in, deliberately using an awkward posture, with the whole family having prearranged what extra steps to take as a smokescreen.”
“But all you need to understand is that they needed our wrong answer. So the question arises, if we follow the clues, even someone who isn’t good at reasoning would have a one in four chance of guessing the remaining four suspects.”
“Who should we set as the murderer to minimize the probability?”
“The victim!” a Player instinctively replied, then tapped his own head. “What a pig brain I have.”
At this point, Lu Qingjia stopped stirring in his hand.
Then, a layer of Sludge covered his body, and after splitting in half, it formed a mold of himself.
Lu Qingjia picked up a large spoon next to the tool rack and scooped out the wax from the pot, pouring it into the mold.
The originally unruly and aggressive wax, after absorbing the boss’s body, became stable enough to create a life-sized wax figure.
After filling the mold and using his Ability to cool it, he peeled it off, revealing a lifelike wax figure identical to Lu Qingjia.
Lu Qingjia looked at it for a while and shook his head. “It still needs coloring. Does anyone here have an art background?”
“There should be, right? Since this task was assigned, they must have allocated someone with the corresponding Ability,” said a fashionable male Player. “Me, I’m a makeup artist. Based on everyone’s input, it should be no problem.”
Seeing that a wax figure had been completed, though somewhat eerie, the others felt a sense of relief that they had made progress.
They asked, “This amount is only enough for one person, right? What do we do next?”
Lu Qingjia smiled and suddenly locked eyes with a wax figure beside him—the one that had almost been burned earlier.
He hinted, “You all missed an important detail from what I just told you.”
“What, what?” The group now looked at Lu Qingjia with a mix of guilt and admiration, like students facing a teacher.
Lu Qingjia said, “I told you that every move we make in the workshop is being monitored, which is why the timing was so perfect to interrupt our attempt to harm the wax figure.”
“So, the question is: there are no cameras in the workshop. Given how cautious you all have been up to this point, even if there were hidden cameras, you should either have used Items to block the signal or trusted that I would have done so.”
“Since it’s impossible to observe everything in the workshop through technological means, how do they know our every move so well?”
Lu Qingjia reached out and touched the wax figure in front of him. The wax on its body seemed to increase, as if it were sweating profusely in extreme tension.
“The wax figure?” everyone exclaimed.
Lu Qingjia laughed. “Not just monitoring. Didn’t I just say these wax figures are moving at an extremely slow pace?”
He glanced at the wax figures, looking puzzled. “Hmm? You’ve already seen me turn the boss into a wax figure, yet you still haven’t chosen to run away?”
He smirked maliciously. “Your sense of crisis is really lacking. We have to deliver the goods by 4 PM, and the boss’s body is only enough for one wax figure.”
“So, where should we get the rest from? Isn’t it obvious?”
As soon as he finished speaking, something seemed to be pulling out from within the wax figure, but it was too late.
At the same time, desperate roars came from outside.
The Players went out and found that the entire house was now enclosed in a huge bubble. The bubble looked thin and soft, as if it would pop at the slightest touch.
But in reality, it was incredibly resilient and unbreakable, at least for the people inside the house.
The remaining four members of the boss’s family were at the front door, trying to escape, but the massive bubble blocked them.
No matter how hard they tried to break through, they couldn’t penetrate the barrier.
Hearing footsteps behind them, they turned around and looked at Lu Qingjia leading the group as if they had seen a ghost.
“What, what are you going to do?”
Lu Qingjia smiled. “Nothing much. We’re just short on materials for the wax figures we need to deliver this afternoon. I’d like to borrow from you temporarily.”
“For the sake of your family’s century-old reputation, you wouldn’t refuse to make such a small sacrifice, would you?”
The boss’s family trembled, while the Players behind them exchanged glances—how had they suddenly become the big bosses of this terrifying wax museum?
