Chapter 1019: The Number of Small Notes
"Why did you dispose of the body?" the local zone player asked the hat player. "If you didn't kill him, what was the point of doing that? Is the second note in your hands or not?"
The hat player met the gazes of the other players. "Is what he said really true?"
"You saw it too. The first note and the third note are right here. At least the chances of him lying are very low, but that's not necessarily the case for you," the local zone player said.
"He only said you disposed of the body. He didn't say you killed him, nor did he say the note was in your hands," the male player who had ambushed Xu Huo said irritably. "I've already handed over my note. What's there for you to hide? Time is life. Wasting time is equivalent to murder."
"Speaking up would be good for everyone," Zhou Yuanzhu also said. "Besides, you can't beat all of us."
"What gives you the right to judge whether what I say is true or false?" the hat player retorted. "If I randomly pointed at someone, would you believe them?"
"Whether we believe it or not is our business. Just say whatever you want," the lip ring player said coldly, staring at him. "I'm still waiting for you to clear your suspicion."
"I don't know," the hat player said with a dark expression. "Although I entered that room after the man died, I didn't find any useful information."
"Then why did you have to mess up the body like that?" Chi Minghong asked in confusion. "That's completely misleading to others."
"Maybe he was the one who killed him," Miss Ding said, using a prop to lock down Teacher Fan, her face grim as she looked at him. "Otherwise, why go through all that trouble?"
Although innocence wasn't too important to players, it was a different story when it came to life and death. One against ten, without being able to use a ticket, no one could claim they could walk away unscathed.
The hat player quickly explained, "I just hoped you wouldn't shift your focus to infighting among players. Instead of investigating who killed a dead man, it's better to concentrate on finding..."
"These two things have nothing to do with each other," Xu Huo interrupted him. "That reason isn't convincing."
"You're covering for someone else." He looked around at everyone. "Among us, there should be people who entered the instance pretending not to know each other."
Players weren't ordinary people. Being a high-level player meant having strong mental fortitude at the very least. They wouldn't reveal their guilt just because of someone's words. But at that moment, Teacher Fan pointed at Miss Ding and said, "It's her!"
"When we first entered the instance, we all went upstairs to check. I saw with my own eyes the two of them going up one after another, and they also came down almost at the same time!"
Miss Ding immediately slapped him back and sneered, "Don't forget, you were upstairs at the time too."
Xu Huo arrived after Chi Minghong and the other four had come down from upstairs. At that time, there were indeed two people acting together, but that didn't mean they knew each other.
"If not you, then who?" Teacher Fan said with hatred in his eyes. "Everyone else was searching on their own. Why were you two the only ones sticking together? If it wasn't to cover something up, why would he bother messing with the corpse?"
Miss Ding and the hat player both had unpleasant expressions. Before anything was confirmed, the other players had silently surrounded them.
"You're targeting me just to get the first note, aren't you!" Teacher Fan was eager to drag them down with him. "One kills, the other cleans up. What a pair of dogs and bitches!"
The muscular man raised his hand, and the harsh noise disappeared. He said, "There's only one way to confirm whether the second note is on them."
Before he finished speaking, he attacked Miss Ding. A giant caliper-like prop was thrown out, pinning her to the wall. At the same time, an arc-shaped light curtain ejected from the prop sealed her movements, trapping her entirely within a narrow two-meter-square space.
Miss Ding's first prop didn't activate successfully, meaning she couldn't keep up with the muscular man's rhythm. So when the light curtain disappeared and he punched down, she, along with her defensive prop, crashed through the wall behind her and rolled into the adjacent room.
Meanwhile, the local zone player and the lip ring player flanked her from left and right to assist.
Three against one, and Miss Ding quickly fell at a disadvantage. Just as the lip ring player's dagger was about to stab her in the back, the hat player beside her finally couldn't hold back and intervened. First, he used his trait "Triangle Lock" to slow down the three muscular men, then used a movement prop to bring Miss Ding out of the encirclement. The two retreated together to a corner of the room and tried to break through the wall to escape.
Unfortunately, the other players weren't pushovers either. The doors, windows, walls, ceiling, and floor left no gaps for them.
Under the encirclement, the hat player said, "That woman wasn't killed by Ding Xiang!"
"When I saw the scene at the time, I also thought it was her, which is why I arranged the body in a sacrificial pose. But afterward, I asked her, and it really wasn't her."
"If you want clues, I only know one thing. Some of the sharp weapon marks left in the room resemble one of Ding Xiang's props."
He signaled Miss Ding to take out the prop.
Without hesitation, Miss Ding immediately produced a fan-shaped metal strip, about the length of an arm and as thick as a little finger. She tested it on the chair beside her. The scratches left by this metal strip were quite different from most weapons. They started with a very small micro-arc, and the surface of the marks was rough and uneven.
After testing, she looked at Xu Huo. "You even know that Liang Zong covered up the traces. Why didn't you say anything at the time? You could see him without being discovered. Are you afraid of a face-to-face confrontation?"
Zhou Yuanzhu laughed. "Now you're the most suspicious. Can you escape by randomly biting others?"
"What is your relationship?" Xu Huo didn't answer Miss Ding's question but asked something that seemed unrelated. "Husband and wife? Engaged? Or boyfriend and girlfriend?"
"What does this have to do with the matter?" Miss Ding's face turned cold, but the hat player, Liang Zong, pressed her hand. "Ding Xiang is my fiancée. We've been engaged for a year."
"That doesn't sound like a lie," Xu Huo said. "If you've been together for a long time, you should be very familiar with each other's props."
At the time, he had indeed seen Liang Zong carefully examining the marks in the room for a while.
"Not them?" The muscular man walked over and asked with a smile, "So who's next to be ruled out?"
Xu Huo glanced at him. "There's no need. Unless you also know someone here."
The muscular man shrugged. "I don't know anyone, but since all the players are here, it's not hard to rule out a few targets."
Xu Huo didn't speak, but the lip ring player sneered, "You can try. One less death means one less. Maybe the instance will end sooner. But who knows who'll be the one to die then!"
"Reducing the number of people might not necessarily help," Xu Huo said. "The notes we've obtained so far all have numbers. If the numbers repeat, it means the note's target can be repeated. That would only keep reducing the participating players. If not, there might only be fourteen notes in total."
(Chapter End)