The first time the players — Cute Rabbit included — laid eyes on an actual human “corpse” inside a holographic game, more than a few of them flinched.

That was when the inn’s errand boy burst through the door, stumbling toward the tree, dropping to his knees to check for breath. His voice cracked. “Boss! Boss—! Someone, help, the boss is dead!”

The cook came charging out of the kitchen waving a cleaver, bellowing: “Nobody leaves! Someone, go report this to the authorities, now!”

The errand boy was gone in a blur.

A moment later, a young man in red official robes arrived at the inn with several guards in tow. A name floated above his head: Di Renjie.

The game was called The Cases of Di Renjie. Apparently the key NPC had just made his entrance.

Cute Rabbit studied him quietly. As the game’s resident detective, his model had clearly gotten special attention — tall, upright posture, sharp clean features, the kind of presence that radiated quiet authority. This was the figure players were meant to trust, the in-game stand-in for law and order.

Right now, though, his expression was severe.

He examined the body carefully, then moved everyone into the inn’s ground-floor hall. “Who was the deceased?”

The errand boy answered immediately. “Our innkeeper. Chen Shao’an.”

“Did he have a wife? Children?”

The boy shook his head. “He was never married.”

“Did he have enemies? Anyone with a grudge against him?”

“Not that I ever heard of! He was a good man. It’s just the three of us running this place — me, Uncle Lin, and the boss. I handle errands, Uncle Lin cooks.”

Uncle Lin pointed an accusing finger at the players. “The killer has to be among them! These guests who checked in last night — something’s not right about them. Maybe they had some old score to settle with the boss. My lord, please, look into them carefully!”

The players exchanged glances.

Di Renjie turned to face them, his voice level. “Each of you, in turn — who you are, and why you came to stay here last night.”

The tallest of the male players had been standing in stunned silence; he seemed to come back to himself and muttered under his breath, “Holy shit, this game is an actual murder scene” — though the system flagged and muted the profanity before anyone could make it out. The others only caught him mumbling something, not what.

Di Renjie’s brow furrowed. “I asked you a question. What are you muttering?”

The man cleared his throat. “Right! Lord… Di, is it? I’m Zheng Kainan, from Linzhou. Heard the autumn scenery around here was worth seeing, so my sister and I came to Qingshan Town.”

He recited it like a script he’d just pulled up — which, transparently, he had, reading straight off his character sheet.

A new player fumbling the rules. Understandable enough.

The girl beside him, pale-faced, picked up immediately. “I’m Zheng Mingyue. Came with my brother to see the sights. We don’t know the innkeeper at all.”

The “siblings” surnamed Zheng had clearly been system-assigned — and it showed. They barely seemed to know each other, though their clothes marked them as wealthy young heirs, fine fabric, careful tailoring.

Di Renjie’s gaze moved to the woman beside her.

A delicate-featured young woman in plain blue cloth spoke next. “I’m Qin Fang, from the neighboring Qin Family Village. I was on my way to Qingshan Town to buy fabric when I got caught in the storm and took shelter here.”

A tall, broad-shouldered man spoke up. “Zhao Yong. Blacksmith. Heading to town to find work at the smithy. Never met the innkeeper either.”

Another man, pale and visibly trembling, spoke in a thin voice. “I— I’m Lin Shu’an. My home is a thousand li from here. I’m a scholar traveling to the capital for the imperial exams… passing through, caught in the storm, stopped here for the night. I don’t know this innkeeper.”

The figure who’d kept his wide-brimmed hat on the whole time finally spoke, low and guarded. “Zhou Han. Came to visit my grandmother in Qingshan Town.”

Di Renjie’s eyes settled on him. “Remove the hat.”

He did. A jagged scar ran across his face — ugly, deliberate-looking. A few gasps went up around the room.

Zhou Han remained unbothered. Once everyone had gotten a good look, he put the hat back on. “I’m a hunter. Caught a branch across the face years ago, out in the field. I wear the hat out of habit now — don’t want to startle anyone. My apologies, my lord.”

Di Renjie nodded once, and his gaze finally landed on Cute Rabbit.

She cleared her throat. “I’m Chen Lu. My parents have passed. I have nowhere else to go, so I came to Qingshan Town to find my second uncle. Who is… the innkeeper.”

Every head in the room turned toward her at once.

Not one of last night’s guests had known the innkeeper — except this one, his actual blood niece.

Murder needed a motive. That made her, instantly, the prime suspect.

Feeling the weight of every suspicious stare, Cute Rabbit waved her hands frantically. “He’s the only family I had left in this world! I’m devastated that he’s dead!”

She forced out a couple of tears and turned a pleading look on Di Renjie. “My lord, you have to find whoever did this to my uncle! Please, get justice for him!”

The room: “…”

That performance deserved an award.

The first-time murder-mystery players were already starting to feel the headache coming on.

Someone caught the discrepancy fast — the script had been built for six players, but there’d been seven guests at the inn last night.

The Zheng siblings, here for sightseeing. Qin Fang, here for fabric. The blacksmith Zhao Yong. The scholar Lin Shu’an. The hunter Zhou Han. The innkeeper’s niece Chen Lu. Plus the errand boy and the cook in the kitchen.

That accounted for everyone present last night. So who was the killer?

Di Renjie’s gaze swept the room. “Last night, during the hour of Chou — what was each of you doing? Anyone able to corroborate? Starting with you.”

He pointed first at Cute Rabbit.

SYSTEM: Time reference generated. Hour of Chou — 1:00 to 3:00 AM.

Reading the prompt, Cute Rabbit answered immediately. “I went up to bed at the hour of Zi. By the hour of Chou I was already deeply asleep.”

“Hear anything?”

“No. Slept soundly straight through to morning.”

The Zheng siblings chimed in quickly. “We also went up at the hour of Zi. Didn’t hear anything else.”

Qin Fang spoke up. “During the hour of Chou, I think I heard something rustling downstairs. Like a rat gnawing on something? I was too tired to go check, so I went back to sleep.”

Lin Shu’an, pale, said quietly: “I have the exam ahead of me, so I was up reading by candlelight most of the night — until close to the hour of Chou. Just before I fell asleep, I heard soft footsteps downstairs, going from the second floor down to the first.”

The hunter Zhou Han said, flatly: “I didn’t sleep at all last night. I heard the footsteps too. Sounded like someone pushed a door open and went out.”

Zhao Yong shrugged. “I didn’t hear a thing.”

It seemed the system had handed out different overnight events to different players — some had simply slept through it, others had caught fragments worth noting.

Di Renjie looked around the room. “All of you remain under suspicion. To clear your names, you may take part in the evidence search yourselves. My guards will accompany you — disturb nothing at the scene.”

SYSTEM: First evidence round. Please proceed in groups.

Di Renjie’s guards trailed the players as escorts. The Zheng siblings, Qin Fang, and Zhao Yong went upstairs first. A few minutes later, four of them moved to search the courtyard while the remaining three searched the upper floors.

The search phase was loosely structured — players could move freely. But with guards present, nothing found could be removed or destroyed.

Cute Rabbit searched thoroughly, going room by room without rushing.

Being a detective inside a holographic world was, she had to admit, genuinely fun. With Di Renjie steering things, the objective stayed clear and the whole experience never devolved into chaos.

This beat Werewolf by a mile for sheer intensity.

In room Jia on the second floor, she found a bow and several arrows — Zhou Han’s, presumably — one arrowhead crusted with dried blood. Deeply suspicious.

On the third floor, in room Xuan, she found an elegant embroidered pouch, a pair of mandarin ducks stitched across it.

---

Roughly half an hour later, the first search round wrapped up.

Di Renjie sketched out a layout of last night’s room assignments for everyone.

The inn had three floors. The ground floor held the main hall, kitchen, back courtyard, and woodshed, along with quarters for the errand boy and cook. The second and third floors were guest rooms.

Third floor: Tian — Chen Lu. Di — Lin Shu’an. Xuan — Qin Fang. Huang — the innkeeper. Second floor: Jia — Zhou Han. Yi — Zhao Yong. Bing — Zheng Kainan. Ding — Zheng Mingyue.

Room Tian sat directly above room Jia, and so on down the line. The staircase ran beside rooms Huang and Ding.

With the layout mapped out, everyone’s position the night before suddenly snapped into focus.

Di Renjie gestured toward the body in the courtyard. Everyone followed his gaze — the corpse now covered by a cloth.

“The body soaked in the storm all night,” Di Renjie said. “The face is badly swollen and unpleasant to look at. I won’t be showing it to you.”

The players: “…”

Much appreciated, honestly.

He continued. “The storm scoured the courtyard clean of any trace evidence. What we know is that the chest shows a puncture wound from a sharp instrument. Have any of you found anything of note?”

His expression stayed grave, and the tension in the room ratcheted up another notch.

Cute Rabbit spoke first, quietly. “I found a bow hidden under Zhou Han’s bed, along with a bloodied arrow. I think my uncle might have been shot.”

Zhou Han adjusted his hat, eyes cold as they landed on her. “That blood is from a boar I killed a few days ago.”

Cute Rabbit: “…”

He went on. “I, for one, found a letter hidden in room Tian — Miss Chen’s room.”

“That was from my father,” Cute Rabbit said quickly. “Asking my uncle to look after me. That’s all it was!”

Zheng Kainan spoke up. “I found a sharpened iron awl hidden inside a pillow in the blacksmith’s room. I’d say that makes him pretty suspicious.”

The discussion erupted into overlapping voices.

A fully immersive holographic game made it remarkably easy to lose yourself in the role. With Di Renjie guiding the process, everyone had thrown themselves into solving the case.

Once the first search round concluded, Di Renjie had his guards collect every piece of evidence and bring it to the main hall for review.

The suspicious items so far:

A sharpened iron awl from the blacksmith’s room. A bow and an arrow with unidentified blood, found under the hunter’s bed — either could plausibly be the murder weapon. A letter from Chen Lu’s room. The embroidered pouch with the mandarin ducks from Qin Fang’s room. A locked wooden box from the innkeeper’s room. And the footsteps in the corridor that multiple players claimed to have heard.

Who, among all of them, was the killer?

---

Di Renjie laid the evidence out on the table, his tone even. “You have the time it takes for an incense stick to burn to discuss this among yourselves. At the end, you’ll vote on who you believe is guilty. That person comes with me to the magistrate’s office for questioning first.”

The players traded uneasy looks.

Wait — the NPC wasn’t going to catch the killer himself? They had to figure it out on their own? What if they got it wrong — wouldn’t that mean condemning an innocent person?

Seeing their hesitation, Di Renjie simply lit the incense stick to start the clock and settled off to one side, watching with evident interest.

Once the incense burned down, apparently, it would be time to vote.

After a moment’s hesitation, the players dove into reconstructing the timeline.

Qin Fang spoke first. “Let’s go back over what happened last night. When we arrived, we were caught in the storm — did anyone notice anything off about the innkeeper at the time?”

Lin Shu’an said quietly, “I remember him telling the errand boy to get hot water ready quickly, get everyone settled in fast. He seemed… eager to get us all upstairs and asleep, almost rushed about it.”

Zheng Kainan thought it over and nodded. “Now that you mention it — I’d wanted to order a bowl of noodles, but everyone else went straight up, so I just went along with it.”

Qin Fang continued. “The rustling I heard came from downstairs. I’m in room Xuan on the third floor — based on the layout, the rooms directly below me would put that sound coming from Yi, Bing, or Ding.”

Zhou Han, from room Jia, adjusted his hat and said evenly, “I heard movement next door. Someone pushed open the door to Yi and went out.”

Lin Shu’an added, “I heard footsteps downstairs too — directly below my room is Yi.”

Every eye turned toward Zhao Yong, occupant of room Yi.

His face went red. “I had to use the outhouse in the middle of the night, that’s all!”

Qin Fang frowned. “Then why were you so secretive about it? And when Lord Di asked earlier, you said you heard nothing at all.”

“I was digging through my pack for medicine!” Zhao Yong protested. “My stomach was bad yesterday, I had diarrhea all night — I always travel with basic medicine. When his lordship asked if I’d heard anything, I meant other than my own noise. I just didn’t think to count myself!”

That explanation didn’t land well with the room.

Suspicious eyes stayed fixed on him.

Flustered, Zhao Yong’s face reddened further. “Murder needs a motive! I had no quarrel with the innkeeper — why would I kill him?”

Cute Rabbit cut in. “When you went to the outhouse — did you see or hear anything else?”

Zhao Yong scratched his head, thinking hard, then suddenly brightened. “I saw a light flicker on the third floor. That would’ve been the boss’s room.”

“So,” Cute Rabbit said slowly, “when you went out to the outhouse, my uncle’s room lit up with candlelight. He was awake?”

Zhao Yong nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes! When I came back his candle was still lit. After that I just fell asleep — no idea what happened next.”

The room remained skeptical.

What they could say for certain: the innkeeper had died sometime during the hour of Chou, between 1 and 3 AM. Whatever happened, it happened while everyone else was supposedly asleep.

If the footsteps everyone reported hearing really were just Zhao Yong’s trip to the outhouse, then that clue led nowhere — a red herring.

Cute Rabbit frowned, turning it over in her mind. Murder needed motive — what grudge could any of these people actually have against the innkeeper? And “I was asleep” was the weakest alibi imaginable; no one could prove whether anyone had genuinely been unconscious or only pretending.

The Zheng siblings had traveled from afar purely to sightsee — didn’t fit a murderer’s profile. Lin Shu’an’s family lived a thousand li away, passing through on his way to the capital exams — unlikely he’d ever crossed paths with the innkeeper before. The hunter, the blacksmith, and Qin Fang were all locals, though — any of them could plausibly have history with the man.

Cute Rabbit cleared her throat and laid out her reasoning. “It stormed all night. My uncle’s body was found under the tree in the courtyard. Nobody goes wandering into a courtyard in a storm at one in the morning for no reason.”

That got everyone’s attention. All eyes turned to her.

“So there are only two possibilities,” she continued. “Either someone arranged to meet my uncle in the courtyard and killed him there — or the killer murdered him inside, then dragged the body out, letting the storm wash away the evidence.”

Murmurs of agreement went around the room.

Zhou Han spoke up. “If it’s the first scenario — the boss agreeing to meet someone outside at that hour — it would have to be someone he trusted deeply. And who here actually knew him? Only her.”

Cute Rabbit pushed back. “I have no parents, nowhere else to go — I traveled all this way specifically to depend on him. Why would I kill him?”

Zhou Han pointed at the box recovered from the innkeeper’s room. “Look at this.”

He picked it up, turning it over in his hands. “An ordinary wooden box wouldn’t weigh this much. What’s inside it?”

It was locked. Zhao Yong spoke up. “I can pick that kind of lock. Let me try.”

He produced something resembling a silver needle, worked at the lock for a moment, and with a soft click, it sprang open.

Everyone froze.

Inside: ten gold bars, stacked with perfect precision.

Zhou Han said, “Your uncle was never married. You said yourself he was your only family left. If he dies, you inherit everything he owns — including this gold.”

Cute Rabbit, somewhere between laughing and crying, protested, “I had no idea he had this kind of money! And how did you know it was gold in there before it was even opened?”

Zhou Han’s voice stayed cold. “It was too heavy when I searched the room earlier — that struck me as wrong. That, plus the letter in your pack — you’re the most suspicious person here.”

The letter was unfolded for the group to read. It was from Chen Lu’s late father, written before his death — something to the effect of go to Qingshan Town and rely on your second uncle, he’s a man of means, he’ll see you properly married off when the time comes.

A perfectly ordinary dying wish — except now, in this context, it read like evidence that Chen Lu had known all along that her uncle was wealthy, and had let greed take hold.

Suspicion swung hard back toward her.

Cute Rabbit’s frown deepened. “So your theory is — I was worried that once he married and had children of his own, he’d stop caring about me, so I killed him to keep the inheritance for myself?”

A few people nodded, genuinely considering it.

She nearly laughed out loud at the absurdity. “That’s not nearly enough motive for murder! And besides — I’m a woman. How exactly would I stab a grown man nearly twice my size?”

“You were family,” Zhou Han said. “He wouldn’t have been on guard around you.”

Lin Shu’an nodded along. “That tracks. If Miss Chen asked her uncle to step outside for a quiet talk in the middle of the night, he wouldn’t have suspected a thing. Then she stabs him from behind — no one the wiser.”

“And the weapon?” Cute Rabbit demanded.

Zhao Yong jumped in. “My awl? Did you sneak in while I was asleep and steal it?”

Qin Fang, calm and methodical, laid it out: “Chen Lu lures her uncle outside last night, exploits his trust in her as his niece, kills him from behind — motivated by wanting the gold to herself once he’s gone?”

Cute Rabbit: “…”

There was genuinely no good way to argue against all of that at once.

As the incense neared its end, Di Renjie’s eyes opened. “Have you reached a conclusion? Who do you believe is the killer?”

Every finger in the room pointed at Chen Lu — Cute Rabbit’s character.

Di Renjie raised a hand. “Take Miss Chen in for questioning.”

“Wait, what, no!” Cute Rabbit protested. “You’ve got the wrong person!”

She genuinely wanted to post an SOS at that exact moment: Just got arrested by Di Renjie for a murder I didn’t commit, send help, currently very stressed.

SYSTEM: You have been voted out. +5 points.

SYSTEM: You may exit and queue for a new session, or continue observing from spectator view until this session concludes.

Getting voted out stung, obviously, but she wasn’t about to leave without seeing how it ended.

A moment later, Di Renjie spoke again. “Perhaps Miss Chen is not, in fact, the true culprit. A second search round — one more chance.”

The remaining players exchanged glances.

Di Renjie lit a fresh stick of incense to mark the new round.

As the incense began burning down fast, several players bolted upstairs, scouring every corner for anything they’d missed. Someone grabbed a candle to check dim corners for footprints, stray hairs, anything.

Qin Fang, notably, actually turned up a few strands of hair in the corridor — and on closer inspection, they matched the innkeeper’s.

She also found an odd white powder near a doorway.

The second round of analysis began in earnest.

“We might have wrongly accused Chen Lu,” Qin Fang said. “If she already knew her uncle had money, there was no real need to kill him just to inherit it. And if the awl was the weapon, how would she have gotten it from the blacksmith’s room and put it back without anyone noticing?”

Zheng Kainan offered his theory. “I still think the blacksmith is the most likely suspect. First — opportunity. His outhouse story doesn’t hold up. Second — means. That sharpened awl matches the fatal wound. As for motive—”

“What motive could I possibly have?” Zhao Yong protested, exasperated.

Zhou Han said, evenly, “Maybe you and the innkeeper had some dispute, and it got out of hand.”

Zhao Yong rounded on him immediately. “I’d say you’re more suspicious than me! You’re a hunter — your arrows kill just as easily. And arrows work at range — you could’ve shot him from a second-floor window without ever going downstairs! Blood on the arrowhead, and you just happen to have a story about a boar? You expect us to believe that?”

The two of them began trading accusations back and forth.

The second vote went against Zhao Yong.

He did look genuinely suspicious — the outhouse excuse hadn’t held up under scrutiny.

And yet the game wasn’t over.

A cold sweat was starting to break out among the remaining players.

Was the real killer buried that deep?

Zheng Mingyue spoke up, quietly. “I— I think there’s something off about Qin Fang. She keeps steering our reasoning. Like she’s deliberately pointing us in certain directions?”

Lin Shu’an raised a tentative hand. “I’ve thought the same — she’s been remarkably composed this whole time. And what about that pouch found in her room?”

Qin Fang frowned. “That was my mother’s. It has nothing to do with this.”

The investigation stalled. They circled the same evidence again and again without reaching anywhere new.

Then Qin Fang spoke up. “Wait — something occurred to me. Last night, when Zhao Yong went to the outhouse, he saw light in the innkeeper’s room. If that’s true, the innkeeper was still awake after Zhao Yong went back to sleep, correct?”

Everyone nodded. “Right — so the murder happened after that.”

“I heard Zhao Yong get up,” Qin Fang continued, “and then I got drowsy and fell into a deep sleep almost immediately. Heard nothing after that.”

“Same,” said Zhou Han. “Heard the door next door open, then I was out.”

Lin Shu’an blinked. “I— me too, actually.”

“So,” Qin Fang said slowly, “we all fell into a deep sleep at almost exactly the same moment — and all stayed asleep through everything that followed. Doesn’t that strike anyone as strange?”

The room went quiet.

Under normal circumstances, waking up to a noise in the middle of the night wouldn’t be followed by instantly dropping back into deep, unbroken sleep. But that’s exactly what had happened to everyone, right after Zhao Yong’s trip to the outhouse.

The system clearly had some mechanism for controlling player sleep states in-game — but there had to be a reason behind this particular pattern. Why would some have heard things and others not, if it was simply random?

Qin Fang turned to Di Renjie. “That powder we found by the doorway — could you examine it, my lord?”

Di Renjie’s mouth curved slightly. “It’s a sedative.”

A chill went down every spine in the room.

A sedative.

Which meant — they’d all been drugged last night?

---

The discovery of the sedative threw the whole case into deeper confusion.

The remaining players — the Zheng siblings on a sightseeing trip, Qin Fang in town for fabric, the hunter and the scholar both just passing through — none of them seemed to have any real connection to the innkeeper.

But could there be a connection none of them had realized yet?

Qin Fang laid out a new theory. “Here’s a possibility: the killer dispersed the sedative through the corridor sometime after midnight, to make sure every guest stayed unconscious — and then murdered the innkeeper.”

She paused, her face going slightly pale. “Or — another possibility. This is a black inn. And the innkeeper drugged us himself.”

The words sent a fresh wave of chills through everyone in the room.

A black inn — a place that preyed on its own guests? So was this a case of thieves falling out, or revenge?

Watching from the sidelines, Cute Rabbit couldn’t help giving a silent thumbs-up. Nicely done, sis.

Having been voted out early thanks to her character’s suspicious family ties, her own run had been cut short — disappointing in the moment, but watching the others work through it from the spectator seat turned out to be its own kind of entertaining.

Qin Fang pressed on. “I think we need to check everyone’s clothing and belongings for traces of the sedative.”

Di Renjie granted them another stick of incense’s worth of time.

The group went back upstairs to search again.

No sedative turned up in anyone’s belongings — but inside the Zheng siblings’ packs, they found a substantial amount of gold wrapped in cloth.

Both siblings looked visibly rattled.

“That’s ours!” Zheng Kainan said quickly.

Zheng Mingyue jumped in. “He’s right — our family runs a trading business in Qingzhou. We’re fairly well-off. We just didn’t want to advertise it while traveling, for obvious reasons, so we weren’t entirely honest before.”

Qin Fang eyed them both with suspicion, then shook her head. “Since nothing turned up in anyone’s belongings, let’s go back and search the innkeeper’s room more thoroughly.”

The group filed into the dead man’s room and began searching every corner.

A moment later, Zhou Han said, “There’s something here. Some kind of mechanism.”

He’d crawled under the bed and found a small raised knob, no bigger than a fingernail, easy to miss without looking carefully.

He turned it. A sharp click — and a section of the wall swung open to reveal a hidden compartment.

It was packed with gold and jewels.

Tucked among them were several small vials — one of them filled with the same white sedative powder.

Silence.

The pieces had finally clicked into place.

It really was a black inn.

Zhou Han said quietly, working through it out loud: “The Fortune Inn was running a long con. Whenever a guest passed through carrying real money, the innkeeper drugged them, robbed them — and, it seems, sometimes killed them.”

Zheng Mingyue’s face went pale, goosebumps rising across her arms. “So— so he noticed we had money, and was planning to drug us and take everything we were carrying?”

Zheng Kainan muttered a curse, then added, “And that’s why we all slept so heavily after the hour of Chou — we were drugged.”

Qin Fang pulled the timeline together. “Let’s lay this out properly. During the hour of Chou, Lin Shu’an, Zhou Han, and I all heard movement — Zhao Yong heading down to the outhouse. The boss’s room lit up around the same time, which means he was aware Zhao Yong was up.”

“Once Zhao Yong went back to bed, the innkeeper used the sedative on the rest of us.”

“He intended to rob the Zheng siblings of their gold — and somewhere along the way, someone turned the tables and killed him instead.”

Every eye swung back to the Zheng siblings.

Zheng Mingyue spoke up fast. “Not me! The pack was with my brother the whole time. If the innkeeper was going to steal anything, he’d have gone into his room, not mine.”

Zheng Kainan: “…”

So much for sibling loyalty — she’d thrown him under instantly.

“It wasn’t me either!” he protested. “I slept the whole night, I genuinely don’t know anything. And besides — our packs showed no sign of being opened. He never got the chance to even touch them!”

Qin Fang considered this, calm as ever. “I don’t think it was either of you. There’s no blood anywhere in your room. If you’d caught him stealing and killed him in self-defense, there’d be some trace of it.”

Both Zheng siblings exhaled with visible relief.

Which left the hunter and the scholar.

Everyone studied the two remaining suspects, watching for any flicker of guilt.

But the hunter’s hat hid his face entirely. And the scholar looked pale, soft-spoken, every inch the harmless bookish type — nothing like a killer.

Then Qin Fang spoke again. “Actually — Lin Shu’an. The candle you were reading by last night. Could we take a look at it?”

Something shifted in his expression at the question.

Everyone noticed.

A candle? What did a candle have to do with anything?

The scholar had kept a low profile the entire session — frail, bookish, every appearance of someone who couldn’t hurt a fly.

Could it actually be him?

Qin Fang’s gaze dropped to the jade pendant at his waist. “And this. That’s no ordinary pendant — it looks expensive. You’re from money, aren’t you?”

Lin Shu’an gave a thin, pained smile. “It was my father’s. Our family did have some money once, yes. We fell on hard times. My parents are both gone now.”

“Did the innkeeper have something to do with that?” Qin Fang asked.

His face went white. “How dare you make an accusation like that with no proof?”

“My apologies,” Qin Fang said. “But murder needs motive. The Zheng siblings have money, but they’re not the killer — they were the target. The hunter doesn’t strike me as someone from wealth. Which leaves you.”

She studied him closely. “Pale skin, soft hands — you’ve never done a day of hard labor in your life. Which tells me your family must have had real money once. That gold in the innkeeper’s box… could it have belonged to your parents?”

Lin Shu’an said nothing.

The incense burned out.

Di Renjie rose. “Have you reached a verdict?”

Every finger in the room turned toward Lin Shu’an.

Di Renjie smiled faintly. “Well done. Round three, and you’ve finally found the true culprit. It seems you do have some instinct for this work after all. Guards — take Lin Shu’an into custody.”

SYSTEM: Session complete. Evidence discovery: 80%.

SYSTEM: Investigators win. Player Qin Fang contributed most, +20 points. Surviving players, +10. Eliminated mid-session, +5. Killer concealed for over two rounds, +10 bonus.

SYSTEM: View the crime replay?

Every player who’d exited the session immediately hit the replay button.

---

Rain-soaked night. Seven strangers had taken shelter at the inn.

Deep in the night, Lin Shu’an sat reading by candlelight — a candle laced with a counteragent that neutralized the sedative.

Upstairs, the blacksmith Zhao Yong hurried down to the outhouse. The noise woke Qin Fang and Zhou Han, both of whom, like Lin Shu’an, caught the sound of footsteps.

Zhao Yong returned and went back to bed.

Shortly after, the innkeeper slipped out and dispersed the sedative through the corridor.

Everyone fell into drugged sleep — except Lin Shu’an, immune and wide awake in the dark.

The innkeeper made his move toward the Zheng siblings’ room, intending to steal their gold — and the moment he stepped out, he found the scholar already standing in the hallway.

Lin Shu’an spoke softly. “Innkeeper, that tree in your courtyard is a fine one. Mind if I take a look at it?”

The innkeeper’s face flickered with alarm, though he kept his voice even. “It’s the middle of the night, there’s a storm out there — what business do you have outside?”

Lin Shu’an’s expression stayed perfectly innocent. “Lightning flashed a moment ago. I thought I saw something under that tree. Just want to check.”

He picked up an umbrella and went down. The innkeeper followed close behind.

At the tree, Lin Shu’an crouched, picking up a stick, pretending to dig. “I think it’s here. I thought I saw bones just now.”

The innkeeper tensed and leaned in to look—

In that instant, Lin Shu’an spun around, snapping the umbrella shut—

A sharpened iron point, hidden in the umbrella’s tip, drove straight through the innkeeper’s heart.

The man’s eyes went wide. He dropped where he stood, beneath the tree.

Standing in the downpour, Lin Shu’an’s face had gone pale and still as a corpse’s, something almost ghostly in his expression. He looked down at the body without a trace of warmth and said, quietly, “My parents are buried beneath this tree. Today, you join them.”

Lightning split the sky.

A strange smile crossed his lips. He opened the umbrella again, letting the rain wash the blood from its tip, then walked back inside, returning it to the woodshed alongside the cook’s and the errand boy’s umbrellas — indistinguishable from the rest.

That was why no one had thought to look there during the search. The actual murder weapon had been sitting in plain sight the entire time.

The players: “…”

Watching the replay unfold, a collective chill ran through the room.

Evidence discovery had stopped at 80% — beyond the umbrella, no one had thought to search beneath the tree itself, where the real bodies lay buried. With the innkeeper’s corpse resting right there, nobody had been willing to disturb it to dig further.

Why had the innkeeper died specifically under that tree? It hadn’t occurred to anyone to ask until the replay made it obvious.

Lin Shu’an’s parents — once wealthy travelers — had passed through this very inn years ago and never made it out alive. Their son had returned, years later, to settle the score, killing the innkeeper on the exact spot where his parents’ bones were buried.

Cute Rabbit stared at the replay, completely floored.

“Holy hell,” she finally said. “That’s cold.”

The scholar — the quietest, least suspicious presence in the entire room — had been the actual killer from the start.

Which left one nagging question:

Was the killer a player… or an NPC?

The more she thought about it, the more unsettling it got.

This fully immersive holographic murder mystery format was something else entirely.

Cute Rabbit was already itching to queue for the next round.