"I killed someone... I killed someone..."
The pocket watch the size of a millstone, [Star Time] lay quietly on the marble floor of the living room. Jian Hou stood motionless, staring blankly at the body by the door whose head had burst open and was still bleeding continuously, muttering as if his soul had left his body.
"I killed someone... I killed someone... I killed someone..."
Seeing this, Jiang Yan disregarded everything else, turned around, grabbed Jian Hou by the shoulders, and kept comforting him.
"It's fine, it's fine! Old Jian, look at me! Look at me!"
Jian Hou was still dazed, as if he could not hear what he was saying.
He could no longer remember whether he had ever killed anyone in the game. Maybe he had. Maybe he had not.
But what he was sure of was that in the game, death never shocked him too much, even if the other party was not a system NPC.
Not for any other reason, but simply because that was a game.
Whether it was the noisy system voice by his ear, the main system that could be opened at any time and always played a notification sound, the eerie and bizarre scenes inside the dungeon, the system NPCs who occasionally revealed fake humanity.
Everything told him that this was only a game.
In the game, both players and NPCs could die. After death, they turned into data, becoming part of the game, like abandoning a game account and never logging in again.
But in the real world, it was different.
Here, there was law, morality, and humanity.
And just now, he had killed someone.
He had killed a person in the real world.
"I... I..."
Jian Hou stared blankly at the blood seeping down the steps, feeling as if his hands were covered in blood.
He had killed someone. He was a murderer.
"Yan Yan... I have to turn myself in..."
"Old Jian, listen to me!"
"I have to turn myself in... I killed someone... what about my parents... a lawyer... help me find a lawyer..."
"Old Jian!"
"Ding!"
[Item: The Lost Rose]
A rich floral scent instantly filled the entire villa. Giant vines grew in from every window, turning into a cage of roses. Scarlet petals bloomed and quickly withered, fluttering down through the air.
When the roses drifted down before his eyes, Jian Hou finally withdrew his gaze from the body at the door and stared blankly at Jiang Yan.
At their wrists, a thin, thread-like strand resembling a spider’s silk was glowing faintly with golden light.
Jiang Yan let out a long sigh of relief.
His divine system had nearly drained itself stabilizing the collapsing instance in the last dungeon. He did not expect to have a little spiritual power left. It was not enough for anything else, but just enough to stabilize Jian Hou, who was mentally breaking down.
Golden light flickered along the silken thread between their wrists.
"Good, there’s still a little left," Jiang Yan said.
"Yan Yan, I..."
Jiang Yan rubbed Jian Hou’s head. "This is a game, Old Jian. And besides, you just saved me. Thank you."
At this moment, Yu Xiu’s black tentacle stretched from Jiang Yan’s abdomen, grabbed the tablet on the coffee table, typed a few big words, and showed it to Jian Hou.
[Self-defense]
Jian Hou suddenly came to his senses.
"Right... self-defense! He was trying to kill you just now, I acted in self-defense!"
"Right, so there’s no need to be afraid, Old Jian."
As Jiang Yan finished speaking, Jian Hou instantly collapsed. Just as he was about to fall, the rose vines caught him and placed him gently on the sofa.
"I was scared to death! Scared to death!"
Still trembling, Jian Hou hugged a cushion tightly as tears poured down his face.
Yu Xiu twisted open a new bottle of soda with a tentacle and handed it to him.
Jian Hou said "thank you," wiped his tears, took two gulps, then looked toward the doorway. "Yan Yan! The surveillance camera at your door isn’t broken, right? When the police investigate later, it can prove my innocence."
"It works," Jiang Yan replied while retracting the rose vines. With them, he wrapped the corpse at the doorway into a cocoon and dragged it into the living room.
"Bang!"
Falling rose petals covered the bloodstains on the marble steps, and the villa door closed again.
Jian Hou’s heart skipped a beat as he stared at the corpse in the middle of the living room. "Why did you bring him inside?"
"The body needs to be dealt with. We can’t leave it at the door."
Jiang Yan spoke expressionlessly, as if what he needed to deal with was not a person he had known for years, but a bag of worthless garbage.
Jian Hou felt something was off, but what Jiang Yan said made sense. Still...
"Well, I..."
He looked at the corpse wrapped in vines, lying stiffly on the floor, feeling pure resistance from head to toe.
Jiang Yan raised his head slightly and curled his lips. "Don’t worry. We have a professional."
As soon as he finished speaking, Yu Xiu’s black tentacle made a thumbs-up gesture at Jian Hou.
Jian Hou suddenly understood. He almost forgot that they had a suspected serial killer who loved dismemberment and corpse disposal here.
Though calling him a person now was not entirely accurate.
The next second, the black tentacle fell to the floor and transformed into a black humanoid figure identical to Yu Xiu.
Ignoring the tentacle still connected to Jiang Yan’s abdomen, Jian Hou could almost think Yu Xiu had simply put on a Conan-style shadow costume and was now standing before him.
"It can do that?" Jian Hou’s eyes widened. His fear of killing someone had mostly faded, replaced by curiosity.
Jiang Yan was also shocked. "This is my first time seeing it too."
The black shadow extended several more tentacles that grew rapidly.
The basement door opened, and the tentacles pulled an old dining table and a waterproof tarp from below.
With a loud crash, the table was placed in the center of the hall, the tarp spread neatly over it. The body wrapped in vines was lifted by the tentacle and laid upon the table in one smooth motion.
Jiang Yan snapped his fingers, and the vines receded completely.
From the kitchen came the clatter of metal. The tentacle returned carrying several knives and an apron.
Jiang Yan watched the black shadow put on the apron, and the corner of his mouth twitched. "Do you really need an apron for this?"
Yu Xiu’s shadow picked up the tablet, tapped it a few times, and showed a single line of text.
[Sense of ritual]
Jiang Yan: "..."
The black shadow’s hands and tentacles worked together, efficiently stripping the clothes from the corpse.
Jian Hou suddenly stopped him. "You... you’re not going to dismember him here, are you?"
Yu Xiu waved his hand, making a gesture Jian Hou could not understand.
Jiang Yan raised an eyebrow and translated.
"He says no. He just needs to identify who this man is and see if there are any clues on him, like why he suddenly tried to kill me."
Jian Hou’s eyes widened. "When did you learn sign language?"
"I didn’t, but..."
Jiang Yan looked at the black tentacle connected to Yu Xiu’s body. Somehow, he just understood him.
He was not sure whether Yu Xiu had always been able to make him understand, or whether it was because their bodies were now nearly fused together.
But one thing was certain, this bastard had definitely been pretending just now.
At that moment, Yu Xiu found a photo while checking the man’s clothing. He picked it up, glanced at it, then waved for Jiang Yan and Jian Hou to come over.
They approached the table. When they saw the photo, both were stunned.
It was a family portrait.
A man, a woman, and a boy of about seven or eight years old, standing at the entrance of a factory building, smiling brightly.
The photo was clearly old. Even though it had been laminated, its edges were yellowed, but it was clear that the owner had cherished it deeply.
"This man and the boy both look like that property manager, but their ages don’t match," Jian Hou said thoughtfully. "Who do you think he is?"
"The child," Jiang Yan said.
His certainty puzzled Jian Hou. "Why?"
Jiang Yan pointed at the factory gate behind them.
"Because that’s my grandfather’s ceramics factory."
"What?!"
Jiang Yan’s mother’s family had been in the ceramics business for generations. After modern equipment became available, they built factories, producing both handcrafted and mass-produced ceramics.
According to his mother, their ceramics sold well both domestically and abroad.
Originally, Jiang Yan’s mother should have inherited the family craft, but she had no interest in ceramics and had irreconcilable conflicts with Jiang Yan’s grandmother. She refused to stay close to her family, giving up her inheritance of the ceramics factory.
Now, the factory’s shares were under Jiang Yan’s name.
When he was a child, his grandfather had hoped to train him as the next artisan, but Jiang Yan had no interest in ceramics or anything.
Still, his grandfather had taught him much about the factory’s history.
The factory gate in the photo was from the first generation of that factory, which had been torn down decades ago.
"Judging from the gate’s timeline, this must be his parents and him as a child," Jiang Yan said.
"Could it be your family owed him wages or something?" Jian Hou asked doubtfully.
"Even if so, he wouldn’t try to kill me, right?" Jiang Yan replied.
Then, suddenly, he thought of something and turned to Yu Xiu.
Jian Hou followed his gaze and understood instantly.
"A relative of one of the serial murder case victims?"
Yu Xiu: "..."
At the moment, this property manager was the only clue in the current dungeon. Jiang Yan’s intuition told him that the manager’s background definitely hid critical information about the instance.
Unfortunately, given the public attention, he had no opportunity to investigate.
Jian Hou had just killed someone, and he dared not leave either. So they decided to ask Mo Cheng for help.
Soon, Mo Cheng sent back a message.
[He’s not related to any victim families, but... things are a bit complicated. Are you two at Jiang Yan’s parents’ house? Wait for me, I’ll come over.]
Seeing that Mo Cheng was coming, Jian Hou’s heart skipped a beat as he looked at the corpse on the dining table. He exchanged a glance with Jiang Yan, and they quietly replied in the group chat.
[You’re coming now?]
Mo Cheng: [I’m already on my way, almost there!]
Jiang Yan: [...Alright. Something happened here, so be mentally prepared.]
Mo Cheng: [No problem, nothing can stump me!]
Jian Hou: [You’d better be right.]
Not long after, Mo Cheng called and asked, "By the way, where did you guys get that photo?"
Jiang Yan was silent for a moment. "From the property manager."
Mo Cheng: "He gave it to you?"
"No."
"You stole it?"
"Not exactly."
"What do you mean?"
Jiang Yan: "..."
Jian Hou said in defeat, "I accidentally killed him just now. Took it from his pocket."
Mo Cheng: "...Wait for me to get there before saying anything else."
Next