Author: 木尺素 / Mu Chisu

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 151

Inside the basement of the old villa there were as many as 27 corpses.

After Zhou Qian, Bai Zhou, and He Xiaowei finished exploring, they returned to the first floor, reuniting with Qi Liuxing and Hidden Blade, and asked about their situation.

Hidden Blade had been keeping watch near a window, observing the surroundings. Qi Liuxing explored the second floor alone, bringing down a pile of photo albums and diaries, placing them one by one on the dusty coffee table.

The group first opened the photo album.

The photographs within were shocking—

Various women appeared with all their joints broken, bodies twisted into impossible positions, tied up with colorful ropes. Some wore princess dresses, legs wide open; others wore café maid outfits, bent at the waist, heads twisted at unnatural angles… Each victim was different in appearance, dress, and posture, yet they shared one common trait—they all appeared to be underage girls.

All of these photos were taken while the victims were submerged in water.

They had been beaten, their bodies broken, placed in glass containers in the basement, immersed in an unknown liquid—like specimens preserved alive.

Qi Liuxing tapped on the diary next to the photo album, saying, “This house likely belonged to the killer. Here’s his diary. There’s something else strange I’ve found, but first, look at this diary.”

Opening the diary, the first page contained chilling text—

“That day when I returned home, my parents weren’t there. I called my sister, but no one responded. I was hungry and couldn’t find food in the kitchen, so I looked for my sister to make something. I searched everywhere and didn’t find food, only the smell of blood…

“Following the scent, I went upstairs, saw blood flowing from under the bathroom door, more and more blood, so sweet-smelling…

“What could possibly have such sweet blood? Curiosity filled me!

“To find the source, I pushed open the bathroom door. The blood was flowing from the bathtub. Pulling back the curtain, I saw my sister lying in a pool of blood…

“I don’t remember the exact date, but I’ll always remember how she looked in the blood. So beautiful. Her skin was white like snow, especially after soaking in water. The red blood looked like blooming flowers nourished by snow, vivid and captivating.

“My sister was always beautiful, but in that moment she was most beautiful. She was probably dead, yet she radiated vibrant life! I’d never felt this before!

“I once saw the death of Granny Wang next door—her skin sagging, so ugly I had nightmares and vomited for days afterward. But my sister was different!

“For a girl to die at such an age and still be so beautiful…

“That day I was 15… My sister was maybe 16 or 17, I don’t remember, but she wasn’t yet an adult. She killed herself, probably heartbroken over a boy. She was foolish. Why die for someone else? Yet, if she hadn’t been foolish, I wouldn’t have seen such beauty.

“Thank you, sister. Because of you, I discovered true beauty. I’ll dedicate my life to chasing this beauty. Beautiful girls should die young, at their most vibrant.”

Those lines on the flyleaf were enough to make anyone’s flesh crawl—the killer’s motive was laid bare in stark, unmistakable words.…There could be no doubt this diary was written by the murderer himself.

Beyond the flyleaf many pages had been torn out—about half the notebook by thickness.…What remained recorded the killer’s inner thoughts about his crimes.

“19X9… don’t know the date; made another specimen today. I’m happy.”

“19X9, still no idea what day of the week it is… I lurked outside the high-school gate for ages. Hee-hee, I waited till they came out of class… so many young, pretty girls… Such vitality—freshest of all. They should stay in this moment forever! …After I got back I went to the basement for a look. They’re so beautiful, truly beautiful, beautiful just like my sister. The way life flows away like that… it’s too moving.”

……

Thus the flyleaf named the reason he killed; the rest recorded which day he made what specimen, how pretty each one was, and so on.…But with so many pages missing, much information about the victims and how they were turned into specimens had vanished too.

If those missing sections really were all victim data, that raised new questions.…Assuming one page per victim, the diary’s original thickness suggested the killer murdered over a hundred people.

Why, then, were there only twenty-seven corpses in this basement?

…And how had he managed to keep killing for so long without getting caught?

Thinking this, Zhou Qian asked Qi Liuxing, “You said you thought something was odd. What’s odd?”

 “These newspaper stories are weird.…

“And look at these sheets—wanted posters with sketches of a fugitive. They must’ve been pasted on the streets so people could inform on him.”

Qi Liuxing unfolded a paper and Zhou Qian skimmed it and quickly saw the key points.

The headlines blared: “Identity of the brutal culprit who imprisoned and tortured seventeen girls confirmed—please view portrait below and offer any leads.”

“…Serial-murder case solved; thanks to informants.”

“Three hundred people sign petition demanding death penalty for killer of blossoming youths!”

……

The diary, newspapers, sketches, photos, and the bones in the villa’s basement together restored much of the truth for the “players”—

The murderer was plainly twisted.

At fifteen he had witnessed his sister’s death in the bathtub, which birthed a pathological aesthetic obsession.

As an adult, every time he thought of that scene, he yearned to recreate that tableau. 

Once circumstances allowed, he set his plan in motion, turning his dream into reality.

He kidnapped girl after girl, bound them, submerged them in water inside glass tanks until they died, and photographed them at the brink of death—to capture what he believed was “the most beautiful instant of life.”

When seventeen girls had disappeared, the police took notice and searched the whole city.

Eventually the police must have located his house.

But before they arrived, the killer had fled.

Searching the home, the police found seventeen bodies. Canvassing neighbors, they confirmed his appearance and ran his portrait nationwide as a wanted man.

His atrocities enraged everyone—people plastered his image everywhere, praying he’d be caught.

While on the run, whenever he saw the posters he tore them down—some he trashed, some he took home. He also collected every news story about his crimes so he could respond at once.

That explained why his room contained wanted posters and newspapers.

On the surface the timeline seemed coherent, yet many points defied explanation.

The papers spoke of only seventeen victims—why were there twenty-seven bodies in the basement?

The papers said the killer had become a fugitive, so the police must have searched his home. The corpses, merely soaked, weren’t destroyed. Standard procedure would return them to the families.

Under no circumstances should bodies have remained here.

Where had things gone wrong?

On the side, He Xiaowei sorted the clues and said, “So much doesn’t add up—it’s really weird. If the killer was arrested, why are the victims’ corpses here?

“The diary’s victim count, the news reports, the bodies downstairs—they’re all different! So strange!”

Qi Liuxing thought a moment. “I suddenly have an idea…”

He glanced at Zhou Qian for confirmation.

Zhou Qian patted his shoulder. “Go ahead—let’s see if we’re on the same page.”

Qi Liuxing said, “I feel there’s only one explanation. If the killer stayed under arrest, none of this fits. But if he was arrested and then released, things start to make sense…

“These newspapers are from before his first arrest—back when he’d killed only seventeen. Those corpses were taken away, not left in the basement.

“Later he was released and resumed killing. Judging by how many pages were torn out—if each page stood for one victim—he killed over a hundred people, moving from place to place.”

Picking up the diary, Qi Liuxing continued, “For unknown reasons, the pages about the first seventeen victims were destroyed—perhaps by the killer, perhaps not. At that time, the later sections hadn’t been written yet…

“So the flyleaf alone proved only that he was mentally disturbed or suspicious. It wasn’t enough to convict him, certainly not enough for execution.

“After that… say he murdered twenty more somewhere, got discovered, maybe even caught again, but later the diary pages about those twenty were likewise torn out…

“This happened several times, right up to now!”

He Xiaowei scratched his head and after a moment said, “I get the sequence, and most issues fit—but the key one doesn’t. Police found corpses in his house and knew he was the killer—why did they release him? Again and again?”

Zhou Qian said, “Back then forensic tech was primitive. The evidence chain to convict might have been incomplete.

“Or… new key clues emerged that exonerated him, so he was repeatedly freed.”

Even if police found countless bodies in his basement, without direct evidence linking him to the killings, full conviction was difficult.

“I’m busy with work, seldom home. I keep my key under the porch flowerpot—someone could’ve taken it and made a copy.”

“Someone used my house to dump murder victims! How terrifying!”

“I rarely go to the basement… I did hear noises down there at night but never imagined so many corpses!”

“Officer, I truly knew nothing!”

……

To convict, the chain of evidence must be complete. If its critical link was missing—in an age without CCTV and with limited investigative methods—the killer had ample excuses.

He Xiaowei could instantly imagine countless lines the murderer could use.

Then he said, “But still—he pulled this stunt at least twice. Could cops really let him off that easily? Even lacking evidence, they should at least—”

Zhou Qian cut him off, “What if, right then, a new suspect appeared? And the clues about that suspect were even more direct, more solid?”

“What…?” He Xiaowei froze, then comprehension dawned. “You mean… the power of the Murder Exhibition Hall?! Holy shit…

“You’re saying…”

“I’ll use Ruan Mei—the woman who killed her own children—as an example,” Zhou Qian said. “She killed once every year or two, but the Exhibition Hall clearly links time and space. In Hall A, walking from Gallery 1 to 7 we confronted seven bodies—actually we visited seven murder scenes. Each scene was special: only the corpse, none of the surrounding environment.

“In a sense, seven layers of time overlapped, intersecting only at those bodies. We saw just the corpses.”

He continued, “That alone shows the Hall can connect timelines. While there we saw past crimes pushed into the present for us. But time-linkage is two-way—we forgot that.”

Qi Liuxing quickly picked up. “You mean we saw scenes from the past—but people in the past might have seen us, or at least traces we left.”

“Right. I’ve been wondering what the exhibition’s purpose really is…” Zhou Qian narrowed his eyes and looked at Bai Zhou. “Think carefully: we were the ones who touched the infants’ corpses. If people in the past could see that, they’d find fingerprints on the bodies—ours. Enough for police to create new clues.”

“Fuck, I got it! Every corpse is a time space node. The cops who caught Ruan Mei found your fingerprints replacing hers, so you became suspects in her place!”

He Xiaowei’s eyes bulged. “Ruan Mei had staged everything as accidents—doctors saw nothing, so she killed many babies before being noticed…

“The evidence chain against her was flimsy to start with. Once new prints appeared, police naturally decided she wasn’t the killer and let her go…”

“Exactly. Whether Ruan Mei kept killing afterward I don’t know. What’s before us is this villa’s owner: once released, he went on to kill over a hundred girls.”

Zhou Qian said gravely, “The Murder Exhibition Hall is helping serial killers escape justice so they can kill more… That means the Hall is altering history—enter the classic paradox.”

He Xiaowei: “What paradox?”

Hidden Blade answered while still watching the window, curved blade in hand. “The Grandfather Paradox: if you travel back and kill your maternal grandfather, how can you still exist?”

He Xiaowei: “Oh, right—that’s why the idea of parallel timelines arose; you’d be in a parallel world, not your own. But now…”

Bai Zhou, rarely vocal, said, “Now it means Blue Port City has no parallel timelines. If you went back and killed your grandfather, both of you would vanish.”

He exchanged a glance with Zhou Qian—both instantly agreed: this, presumably, is why Blue Port collapsed.

Ruan Mei’s child murders are exhibited in Hall A; the serial killer of streetwalkers in Hall B; Hall C has more than one killer—the Swastika Killer and the Pentagram Duo.…Other halls they hadn’t even visited—like the girl-specimen killer, whose case was likely in Hall D or beyond.

Each hall linked different time spaces.

Ruan Mei, the Swastika Killer, the Pentagram Killers, and this specimen-maker had all been caught in original history, likely headed for execution.

Capture of the killers meant no further murders and life went on.

Yet while visitors searched for clues in the Exhibition Hall, they touched bodies and left new traces.

Someone touching an infant’s neck, for instance, became direct evidence of strangulation. Past-era police, finding these traces, shifted suspicion.

Thus, true serial killers were released back then.

When they finished Hall A, Zhou Qian had suspected killers might reach present-day Blue Harbor City through the Hall.

Now he saw he’d underestimated it.

In truth, killers could arrive in present Blue Harbor City and shuttle between now and the past, continuing their murders.

Take the twenty-seven victims in this villa.

In normal history those girls never died.

The Hall provided clues to new suspects. The killer was acquitted, leading to their deaths.

History was rewritten.

In the original timeline those twenty-seven girls might have lived happily, married, borne children, generations flourishing…

Their deaths meant none of their descendants ever existed.

Twenty-seven lives lost early would, via butterfly effect, hugely impact history—

And that’s just one killer freed.

Remember, the Hall freed many killers. The cumulative effect on Blue Harbor’s history is incalculable.

No parallel timelines exist here. The Grandfather Paradox self-repairs—kill a grandfather and you vanish too.

Thus in Blue Harbor 2031, countless grandparents were murdered in the past, and their descendants blinked out of existence.

Correspondingly, countless buildings disappeared—because the architects, the workers who built them, never existed.

Most of those cases happened more than three centuries ago in what is now Blue Harbor.

Over the long span the cascading effects grew, until the entire city collapsed into the apocalyptic ruin it is today.

So the questions that remain are: where are those serial killers now, and what main quests will the players face next?

While Zhou Qian pondered, Qi Liuxing suddenly exclaimed, “Qian Ge, I just noticed—what’s with your wrist? How come you’ve got a white band? The system never listed white.”

“There’s no white, right. So maybe it’s a hidden color the system hasn’t announced yet.”

Zhou Qian said, “Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet are the seven colors of the rainbow, yet the system listed only the last six—no red. That’s odd too.”

“Even though you have to wear any band you find, white is still strange…” Qi Liuxing frowned in concern.

Just then Zhou Qian laughed: “Because our Zhou Ge’s surname is Bai*—white’s my lucky color.”

*Clarity: It means white.

Qi Liuxing, Hidden Blade, He Xiaowei: “…”

“Enough—back to business.”

Zhou Qian never felt embarrassed; embarrassment was always others’ burden.

He said calmly, “With furniture this old, and all the bones shattered, those twenty-seven may well have been this killer’s final victims over three hundred years ago. He was never caught again; the corpses decayed here until today.

“The victims have rotted for three centuries, but the killer? He likely crossed to the present via the Exhibition Hall.

“Following this reasoning, Ruan Mei and the rest may appear too. We have to watch not only other players but also the killers. We also need to ponder why red and white bands haven’t appeared.

“Still, gleaning all this from one villa is pretty good. To learn more about the killer we’ll search other buildings—plus keep hunting for bands and weapons. Those will be our bargaining chips.”

Just after Zhou Qian assigned tasks, a new system message arrived—

[Band colors and counts updated: Orange – 20; Yellow – 25; Green – 25; Blue – 25; Indigo – 25; Violet – 25]

[Additional rule: if a player dies, the band they wear will be destroyed immediately]

He exchanged a look with Bai Zhou—

Five orange bands were gone. Were five people simply swapping bands, or… were they dead?

Zhou Qian frowned. “Someone who found a green band and then a violet one would be persuaded by violet-band players to switch teams that fast? At game start, in so little time? Unlikely. He’d keep extra bands as leverage. Much more likely… those five are dead, not re-banded.”

Bai Zhou nodded agreement. “Probably an old grudge.”

With weapons scarce, unknown tasks, and team strategies uncertain, no one would waste weapons lightly—under rational analysis.

But if old vendettas surfaced, people would act irrationally, settling scores first. That was likely why those five died.

“Either way, somebody probably already found a stash of lethal weapons—we need to hurry.”

With that, Zhou Qian summoned the little dragon and patted its head. “Find me weapons and bands, can you?”

The blue dragon hopped obediently to the floor. “Yip!”

Having absorbed massive life-force in the Demon King Father-and-Son instance, it could now act frequently.

Its specialty was searching, and it was fast. Sending it to fetch bands and weapons was almost overkill.

As it was about to leave, Bai Zhou rarely called it back. He placed his palm on its forehead.

Moments later he lifted his hand and said, “Now both Zhou Qian and I can see whatever you see. I also added directional sensing—if anything happens, we’ll feel it at once and rush over.”

The dragon responded coolly, “Oh.”

Seeing this, Bai Zhou frowned, reaching to pat its head—

But the dragon instantly dodged.

Zhou Qian blinked twice, then squatted and held out a hand.

The dragon hopped over, lowered its head, and nuzzled Zhou Qian’s palm several times.

Zhou Qian smiled. “Be careful out there, okay?”

“Yip yip!” The dragon nodded sweetly and flew out the window.

Bai Zhou, witnessing it all: “…”

Waving after the dragon, Zhou Qian turned back to Bai Zhou and grinned. “Seems it likes me more than its own dad, huh?”

Unable to pat the dragon, Bai Zhou instead gently tousled Zhou Qian’s hair and smiled. “Mm. All of us like you.”

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The author has something to say:

Hidden Blade, He Xiaowei, Qi Liuxing: We can’t bear to watch…

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