Under the illumination of the candle, these eerie white human bones and the bright red dress formed a sharp contrast. This scene sent shivers down the students’ spines.
Yue Xingwen slept in room no.1 last night, and he was actually sleeping next to the corpse room? A layer of goosebumps appeared on his body, and he had to endure the nausea, looking back at Jiang Pingce and said, “The murdered is obviously psychopathic, killing so many people, dressing the dead in bridal clothes and arranging them neatly here, setting up the place as a ‘bridal exhibition hall’?”
The six corpses placed side by side not only wore the same clothes, but even sat in the exact same position on the chairs, like models used for display in clothing stores. However, these ‘models’ had turned into gnarly white bones.
Jiang Pingce analyzed. “The murdered has such strong hostility towards the bride in red. It is possible that he had been hurt by the bride in red, harboring a grudge that gradually led to psychological distortion. Thus, he quelled his psychological resentment by slaughtering the bride?”
Yue Xingwen nodded in agreement. “It’s very likely. The strange thing is that only six of the young ladies’ bones have been found, but the ghost bride who hunted us down last night was seven, and the number is not matched. Where’s the last one?”
Jiang Pingce gazed around and said, “The area of the two storage rooms is 2×6 meters, which can fill the gap in the architectural drawings, and it is impossible for another hidden room to appear on the second floor. But we are still missing 1 meter in height, indicating there’s an attic floor we haven’t found.”
Yue Xingwen said, “Let’s go out and look for it.”
The students withdrew from the storage room.
The floor height measured from the outside of the inn was 7,5 meters, and the internal structure height was 6,5meters. The missing 1 meters was either a mezzanine in the middle of an attic overhead. Yue Xingwen climbed onto the wooden table, tiptoeing, and tapping the ceiling with his knuckles as he arranged, “Two people in a room, check the ceiling and floor carefully to see if there is a hollow structure.”
Eight people quickly grouped together to search each room. Jiang Pingce stayed behind with Yue Xingwen. Yue Xingwen checked the ceiling, and Jiang Pingce checked the floor, almost every inch of the ‘carpet search’.
However, no additional entrances were found.
Both of them exited room no.1. Liu Zhaoqing and Ke Shaobin next door had also finished searching, “No hidden door found.”
The other students also had the same result.
The hidden room was not found in all the eight rooms, and Yue Xingwen stood in the corridor to ponder. “There are no hidden doors on the ceiling or the floor. It couldn’t be that the inn owner sealed the 1-meter-high mezzanine when he built this building, right? No access to enter and exit?”
Gao Yongqiang interjected, “How about tearing down this building to see?”
Everyone: “…”
Did your Architecture Department demolish the building if something could not be determined?
Yue Xingwen looked back at him helplessly, “We can’t demolish it, we have to sleep in the bed at night to get plot clues from the dream. We haven’t collected all the clues at the moment, if you demolish the building, our plot line will be interrupted.”
Gao Yongqiang’s face turned red. “I-I was just saying that casually.”
Jiang Pingce narrowed his eyes and looked closely at the structure of the building. The height was clearly missing 1 meter, how could he not find the entrance to the attic? Suddenly, something struck his brain and he said, “If we can’t find it inside, look for it from the outside.”
He glanced at Yue Xingwen, and quickly turned to go downstairs. After walking to the door of the inn, Jiang Pingce raised his right hand slightly and used the coordinate system to gather parabolic motion, leading his entire teammates to fly directly to the roof.
Gao Yongqiang slapped his head in chagrin, “Why didn’t I think of that! We can’t find the attic entrance inside the inn, and the interior can’t be destroyed, but we can disassemble from the outside—— just remove the roof directly!”
Jiang Pingce said, “Everyone, check carefully to see if there is any loose tile on the roof.”
The students began to check from the four corners. After less than half a minute, Gao Xiaoxin suddenly picked up a tile and said, “I found it, it’s here!”
Yue Xingwen walked over quickly, only to see a movable wooden board appear underneath the tile covered area, and after removing the board there was indeed a narrow room about 1 meter deep.
Qin Miao took the initiative and said, “My sister and I will go explore the way first, you boys are too tall, it’s not easy to walk inside.”
Yue Xingwen handed her the candle and said, “Be careful.”
Qin Miao and Qin Lu jumped into the room together. Both of them were within 1,7 meter tall and had a lean body, so bending down to enter this kind of room was indeed much more convenient than Jiang Pingce who was 1,89 meter tall and Yue Xingwen who was 1,84 meter tall.
A moment later, Qin Lu’s short scream came to their ears. “Ah…”
Yue Xingwen asked worriedly, “What’s wrong?”
Qin Miao said lightly, “I found a lot of suitcases. I let Qin Lu’s ‘plate movement’ move it out to show you guys.”
After a few seconds, the sisters crawled out of the room in a dusty state, and Qin Lu said, “It’s been too long since anyone cleaned in here. There’s dust everywhere, my sister and I searched around and found nothing else but the suitcases.”
As she spoke, she took out her globe, and she moved a large number of suitcases to the ground with her plate movement.
Everyone was stunned by the number of suitcases—— There were actually ten of them!
The size of the suitcases were different, the colors were black and white, colorful, and some had cartoon patterns. All of which belong to modern times, proving that their previous speculations were correct—— They did not travel to ancient times at all, it was still the real world here, only the inn was decorated in a more ancient style.
The missing 1 meter high ‘attic’ was where the inn owner stored the suitcases?
Liu Zhaoqing rubbed his temples with a headache. “Is this inn owner a perverted collector? A storage room on the second floor collects clothes and corpses of the brides, and a storage room on the roof dedicated to collecting suitcases?”
Yue Xingwen looked at the 10 colorful suitcases and pondered, “Do you need to bring suitcases when you go out for an ancient style photo shoot? I only bring my suitcase when I travel.”
Gao Xiaoxin pointed to the middle of the ground and said, “The pink Mickey Mouse patterned suitcase in the middle is the same as mine, and it can hold clothes and cosmetics for three days. I’ve taken ancient style photoshoots before, and I can do them in one day. Even if they took outdoor wedding photoshoots, I don’t see people bringing their suitcases to the photoshoot ah?”
Qin Miao frowned, “It feels like this is more like a homestay? These suitcases were brought here by the guests, right?”
Ke Shaobin adjusted his glasses and he was puzzled. “If it’s a homestay, how can there be no socket and network cable? In the modern world, will anyone live in a place without sockets and network cables, or a bathroom? You can’t even charge your phone when it’s out of battery, right?…”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Tef Wlcukfc ralii ofia atja rbwfatlcu kjr kgbcu.
Po la kjr jc beavbbg rtbbalcu qijmf, atf vfilyfgjafis jcmlfca yelivlcu vfmbgjalbc mbeiv fzqijlc atf rfaalcu yflcu bc atf jcmlfca rlvf, yea cba atf qgfrfcmf bo rb wjcs relamjrfr. Po la kjr j tbwfrajs, jr Bf Vtjbylc rjlv, fnfc lo atfs kjcafv ab fzqfglfcmf atf jcmlfca rasif, ktb kbeiv kjca ab ilnf lc remt j qijmf bo lrbijalbc klatbea fnfc fifmaglmlas?
There were a total of 10 suitcases, and this number was also strange.
Yue Xingwen said, “Open the suitcases to see.”
Everyone landed from the roof and moved neatly to open all the suitcases——
There were girls’ suitcases, stuffed with beautiful dresses, T-shirts and cosmetics. Yue Xingwen did not know any of these bottles and jars, and all of them were handed to Qin Miao and the other girls to see. There were also men’s suitcases with razors, socks, men’s sneakers, etc. Books were also found in several suitcases, including a famous book <Jane Erye>, and two romance novels.
Everyone looked at each other.
The three girls were having a lively discussion, “This cream costs several thousand for one bottle, right? This person is really rich.”
“The cosmetics brought by this girl are all first-line brands in Japan and South Korea ah…”
Yue Xingwen did not understand what the girls were using at all, so he walked over and asked, “Did you find anything?”
Gao Xiaoxin said, “From the price of the cosmetics in the suitcase, these girls are quite rich. They attach great importance to dressing up, and there is a girl who brings five lipsticks alone.”
Qin Lu added. “The girl who owns this white suitcase didn’t bring any cosmetics. Her toiletries only had face wash and a bottle of moisturizing lotion, so she should be a girl who doesn’t like makeup and loves a bare face.”
As for the style of clothes, it was really varied. There were sexy black lace dresses, there were also pure goddess style long dresses, and there was also the person who took the cool and handsome route that wore sportswear… The boys’ suitcases were equally disorganized.
Yue Xingwen looked at the suitcases on the ground, and his temple was pulsating. “There are too many clues and it’s too messy, let’s sort it out first.”
Jiang Pingce said, “Sort it out, and I’ll make a list.”
Yue Xingwen nodded and found a shady spot under the eaves of the inn with Jiang Pingce and sat down. Yue Xingwen took out a pen and paper, then he handed it to Jiang Pingce, who quickly drew out a detailed statistical table.
Jiang Pingce filled in the ‘number of suitcase’ with ‘10’, followed by asking, “How many boys and girls are there?”
Yue Xingwen quickly counted, “3 boys, 7 girls.”
Seven girls, this number was exactly the same as the number of ghost brides, but no 7 suitcases belonging to exactly 7 dead people. Jiang Pingce was not sure yet, so he put a question mark here and continued to list the inventory.
The students spent more than an hour checking the suitcases.
In the final list, there were 20 outfits for the girls, 6 outfits for the boys, 4 pairs of shoes, plenty of cosmetics, and three books, which were focused on by Yue Xingwen and marked on the suitcases.
Jiang Pingce frowned and looked at the suitcases in front of him and said, “The clothes, I don’t think it’s an important clue, they’re too varied, there are all kinds of styles, much like the suitcases that carried around on a trip by a group of people. The inn should be able to provide temporary accommodation, and the suitcase was left behind by the guests, which is the most reasonable explanation.”
Yue Xingwen also agreed with his speculation. “In reality, there are also some unique styles of homestays. Netizens will stay at such homestays specifically for photoshoots. Without sockets and network cables, is it likely that the inn owner deliberately let everyone have an ‘immersive experience’ through ancient times? But I think the word homestays is still not quite correct enough.”
The more the students listened, the more their heads hurt.
At present, there were many clues, but there was no single thread that tied the clues together.
Liu Zhaoqing wondered, “But what does this have to do with our dreams? The scene in my dream was indeed very similar to ancient times, when the doctor carried a medicine basket up the mountain to collect medicine and saved a young lady who had been bitten by a poisonous snake, and the environment was completely different from here.”
Gao Xiaoxin followed up and said, “The funeral I dreamt about was also an ancient funeral style. The bride was put into a coffin, and several people carried her all the way to the east, buried her in the ground, and erected a monument…”
Yue Xingwen asked, “Did you see what was written on the tombstone?”
Gao Xiaoxin shook her head, “I didn’t see it clearly.”
Yue Xingwen frowned slightly, and he felt confused.
The fragmented dreams, strange inn, various ancient clothes in the storage room, 5 white bones in red clothes in the second floor corpse room, and a lot of suitcases in the attic storage room…
What exactly were the clues that would string these together?
Yue Xingwen sorted it out carefully and suddenly caught the key in Gao Xiaoxin’s words, “Wait a minute, Gao Xiaoxin, you said that in your dream, you dreamt that those people carried the coffin to the east, are you sure it was towards the east side?”
Gao Xiaoxin was stunned for a moment, nodded her head, and said, “Sure, the funeral was held in the evening, it was almost dark, and the sun would set from the west, but they kept walking forward with their backs towards the sun, weren’t they going east?”
Yue Xingwen immediately stood up and looked at his teammates. “Senior brother, please sort out the suitcase with sister Qin Lu, and leave the contents of the suitcases as they are, and put them in the hall on the first floor for now. The rest of the people follow me to the forest to the east.”
8 people were divided into two groups.
divided Yue Xingwen followed the winding road to the outside of the forest, which was a wasteland, but the weeds and wildflowers were very lush. It was this junction that they had run to rest last night when they had been chased by the female ghosts all the way forward.
Strangely enough, the female ghosts stopped their tracks when they reached the junction, feeling as if she was shaken by shaken.
It was related to the scene of ‘funeral’ in the dream that Gao Xiaoxin said… If the dream was related to reality, was it possible that in reality there was also a bride who was put in a coffin and buried in the ground?
The four people continued east.
After walking for about half kilometers, a cold mechanical voice suddenly rang in their ears. “Warning, you have come to the boundary of the examination room. You will be judged as failing the exam after leaving the examination room.”
The four of them stopped at the same time, and Yue Xingwen saw that there was a tombstone standing in front of them.
The tombstone was inscribed: “The tomb of the beloved wife Su Wanxin.”
A woman with the surname Su!
The key clue was finally found, and a bride was buried on a hill not far from the inn. The surname Su, matched up exactly with the bride of everyone’s dream, the young miss from Su family.
Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce glanced at each other, simultaneously seeing a hint of excitement in each other’s eyes.
Gao Xiaoxin looked at the tombstone in front of her, and her face turned a little pale. “In my dream, Miss Su was buried in a wasteland, unlike now, there are flowers blooming around the tombstone…”
Blue wildflowers did bloom around the tombstone, and clusters of them were gathered together, converging in vigorous life.
Yue Xingwen asked, “Does anyone know about this wildflower?”
Gao Xiaoxin said, “This is forget-me-not, and the meaning expressed in the language of the flower is that my love for you is eternal and unchanging.”
Yue Xingwen looked at the tombstone thoughtfully, then said, “Dig it up and have a look.”
Besides Jiang Pingce who looked calm, Gao Yongqiang and Gao Xiaoxin’s eyes instantly widened the moment they heard those words. Gao Yongqiang’s scalp tingled and his voice could not help but tremble, “Dig– dig the grave?”
Yue Xingwen said, “Did your Architecture Department give an excavator? You didn’t get it?”
Gao Yongqiang: “……”
Yue Xingwen patted his shoulder. “Don’t be afraid, it won’t be haunted in broad daylight. If we want to solve the mystery of the inn, of course we have to find all the bones of the bride first—— dig it up.”
Gao Yongqiang’s face hardened as he raised his right hand to summon the excavator.
He was probably the first Architecture student to use an excavator to dig a grave…
Gao Yongqiang could not cry nor laugh as he maneuvered the excavator to dig the solid from the side, while Yue Xingwen sighed next to him. “Luckily we were matched with an architecture student this time, otherwise, we would have to dig slowly with the shovel in the kitchen until the end of the year.”
Jiang Pingce nodded. “En.”
Gao Yongqiang: “……”
He finally played a role, that is, digging a grave.
The excavator dug a large pit in the surrounding ground two or three times, revealing a lacquered wooden coffin.
Yue Xingwen was also bold enough to jump straight down and push the lid of the coffin open.
——The bride in red was lying in the coffin, her body had decayed and turned into white bones, but there was a large diamond ring on her ring finger of the white bone’s right hand that burned in the light.
Yue Xingwen said, “This should be the female protagonist who frequently appears in our dreams, Su Wanxin.”
The clues could probably be matched, but Yue Xingwen was still unsure about the time between the ancient and modern. Jiang Pingce stretched out his hand to pull him up from the pit and whispered, “We’ve found all the 7 brides, let’s go back to sort out the clues.”
Yue Xingwen nodded, and the four of them walked back to the inn together.
Upon arriving at the inn, Liu Zhaoqing and the other three people had already put out the suitcases side by side, and the three novels were deliberately found and placed on the table. Yue Xingwen told everyone to wait in the dining room on the first floor while he went upstairs to bring down the two rag dolls.
The dining room had round tables and eight seats, just enough for everyone to serve as a temporary meeting room.
Yue Xingwen sat on a chair marked ‘one’ and carefully observed the two rag dolls.
He could not see it too clearly last night because they had to light the candle. Today, when he took a closer look in the bright light, Yue Xingwen found that the back of the rag doll had a part of the black needle and thread appeared particularly messy, and the neat stitches next to a comparison, was simply the difference between ‘buyer’ and ‘seller’ show.
—— Someone who had re-stitched the rag doll was a person who was terrible at needlework.
Yue Xingwen said, “Senior brother, let me borrow your scalpel.”
Liu Zhaoqing raised his right hand and handed the scalpel to him. Yue Xingwen handily used the scalpel to pick through the part of the stitching on the back and disassemble the rag doll.
Upon finding a grave, he dug it up; and upon finding such an important prop, he did not hesitate to disassemble it… Yue Xingnwe was the one who looked like the person from the demolition office, right? Gao Yongqiang was complaining in his heart, and suddenly saw Yue Xingwen pull out a large pile of cloth strips from the rag doll’s body.
The cloth strips had already turned gray, and a few of them had some numbers written on them——
71 — 16 — 30
99 — 16 — 9
281 — 22 — 1
The students who sat around the round table were excited, “Has the number code appeared?!”
Yue Xingwen subconsciously looked at Jiang Pingce, asking for the other party’s opinion, the latter shook his head and whispered, “It’s just several strings of numbers with no pattern, they are not related to each other. So, it should have nothing to do with mathematical operations, we have to look for corresponding clues from somewhere else.”
Numbers, what would correspond to these strings of numbers?
Yue Xingwen continued to dismantle another rag doll, but no more numbers were found inside the male rag doll’s body.
Silence fell over the room.
Liu Zhaoqing endured for a long time, and finally could not help but complain. “Is this course so difficult? There are so many clues that I’m getting dizzy.”
Ke Shaobin’s stomach suddenly growled, and his ears turned red as he said in a low voice. “We haven’t eaten all day, aren’t you guys hungry?”
They were busy all day, and before they knew it, it was almost dark again. They had been so nervous before that they forgot about eating. Once Ke Shaobin reminded them, everyone felt hungry.
Yue Xingwen rubbed his empty stomach and realized a very important question, “The exam required us to survive for six days, but it does not provide us with food? Won’t we starve to death? It seems that we have to use the material on the spot?”
Gao Xiaoxin said, “I saw a lot of wild fruits on the way out of the forest just now, and we should be able to eat them.”
Qin Lu followed up and said, “I saw a large bamboo shoot planted over there in the forest. This inn has a kitchen, where we can fry bamboo shoots and eat them; There are also many mushrooms in the forest, and they look the same as the round mushrooms sold in the supermarket, and can be eaten.”
Yue Xingwen: “……”
The girls were very sensitive to food, probably because they were starved out of the psychological shadow of the previous Public Elective course.
Seeing that everyone was very tired, Yue Xingwen simply made a decision, “Well, today is only the first day. We can’t solve the case directly in one day. Let’s eat first, and then we’ll discuss afterwards.”
Everyone split up to gather wild fruits, bamboo shoots and mushrooms, while Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce went to the forest to collect firewood.
Yue Xingwen was thinking while walking. Seeing his serious appearance, Jiang Pingce did not interrupt his train of thought.
After a few moments, Jiang Pingce had collected a large bundle of wood, and only then did Yue Xingwen come back to his senses and said, “I suddenly have an idea that can explain some of the current doubts.”
Jiang Pingce said, “Tell me about it.”
Yue Xingwen sorted out his thoughts and seriously analyzed them. “There is a strange sense of severance between our dream world and the real world; The scene in the dreams are all in ancient times, but in reality, we are in a modern time, and cannot be directly equated. However, the dream world is inextricably linked to the dream world. For example, the female protagonist in the dream is surnamed Su, and in reality, the woman on the tombstone is also surnamed Su.”
Jiang Pingce remembered the tombstone they had just found and went off to analyze it. “The tombstone reads ‘beloved wife’ Su Wanxin, and the only person who could call Miss Su ‘beloved wife’ in the dream was Mr. Zhao, who had married her. This tombstone, perhaps erected by a gentleman named Zhao?”
Yue Xingwen nodded. “I think so too. The dream is very much like an ancient story written down by someone based on their own experiences, which cannot be completely equal to reality, yet alluding to some things in reality. Miss Su is the female protagonist, the key character who connects the dream and reality together. In the dream, Mr. Zhao is terminally ill and his family finds Miss Su, who eventually dies to marry him and celebrate the wedding. In reality, Mr. Zhao might also have some kind of illness, and Miss Su was at his side to take good care of him, and ended up dying unexpectedly as well?”
Jiang Pingce carefully pondered Yue Xingwen’s words for a moment and said, “There is a possibility. Using a story to tell your own experiences vaguely, using reality as a background is too much like an autobiographical novel, so it is replaced by ancient times?”
Yue Xingwen continued. “There is a high possibility that the inn owner is the murderer of the bride. First, the structure of the inn is very strange, there are two storage rooms on the second floor, and a large 1 meter high storage room is made on the roof, which is not how people normally build houses. He obviously planned ahead and designed this strange inn specifically to facilitate murder and hiding bodies.”
Jiang Pingce agreed. “It makes sense. The structure of this inn is indeed deliberately designed. He did not come here by chance to kill people, but he lured them here, killed them, and then hid them in the storage room.”
One of the murderes in serial murder cases was to take the initiative and look around for targets and killing at irregular locations; There was also a kind of murderer encountered in this case, who found his targets and then lured the target to his territory and then killed the target.
His territory, he could kill people naturally and smoothly.
Yue Xingwen said, “We found so many suitcases in the attic. It’s obvious that many people used to come here to stay. Why would modern people come to stay in such a remote place, in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity or internet? He couldn’t have kidnapped a dozen people by himself, so he must have some means of attracting these people to his inn of their own accord.”
Jiang Pingce said, “For example, an ancient costume photo shoot?”
Yue Xingwen shook his head. “I think just shooting photos is not attractive enough. There are too many photo studios that can take photos of ancient costumes, and the scenery of his inn is not considered as one of the best. The homestay would be even less attractive, and staying here for days with no electricity, no internet and no shower would probably drive modern people crazy.” He paused and said, “There is another means to attract guests that I didn’t tell you about earlier, for fear that a wrong guess might lead everyone astray.”
Jiang Pingce squeezed Yue Xingwen’s shoulder gently, “It’s okay, both of us can discuss it first.”
Yue Xingwen smiled and said, “There’s a bit of a bold guess, just don’t think I’m imagining things.”
Jiang Pingce’s gaze was gentle. “It won’t be.”
Yue Xingwen put away his smile and looked at Jiang Pingce seriously. “Have you ever heard of <Murder Mystery Game>?”
Jiang Pingce: “……”
Murder Mystery Game was a game that had become very popular among the young people in the last few years. He had not participated in it himself, but he had heard of it. The so-called <Murder Mystery Game> was to make up a murder script, so that the participants in the game each play their own role. Some people play the victim, some play the murderer, there were suspects, passers-by and so on.
Murder Mystery Game was even more exciting and menacing than werewolf game because, each script was different, the plot was often free and unconstrained, even scarier, the murderer was right next to you.
Suppose, the inn owner used the ‘immersive ancient style murder mystery game’ as a gimmick to recruit some young people online who loved challenges and adventures to come here to play, and then kill some girls in their wedding clothes when they were not looking…
Jiang Pingce looked at Yue Xingwen with some surprise, “How did you come up with this <Murder Mystery Game>?”
“In that dining room on the first floor, when you said ‘round table’, then, the image of a group of people meeting in ancient costumes flashed through my mind. With 8 seats, 8 rooms, and all sorts of ancient costumes, it’s hard to explain if this inn is a simple homestay or a photo studio.” Yue Xingwen changed the topic and said, “But if this place was specifically used as an ‘ancient style muder mystery game’ place, the guests would wear different ancient costumes upon entering the inn, as if they had traveled to ancient times. Wouldn’t it make sense that modern things like mobile phones and laptops would be confiscated by the inn owner, and that they would be immersed in an ancient style murder mystery game experience for the next day or two?”
Because it was an immersive experience, no modern tools would be present in each room.
There were no electric lights, but candles and flint stones were used for lighting; The round table and eight seats on the first floor could be used as a meeting room for murder mystery game’s reasoning analysis, and could also be used as a dining room; The kitchen that comes with it also gives everyone a taste of the ancient daily fun of picking and cooking meal themselves…
There would be an endless stream of people who loved novelty and excitement to come here.
The inn owner then picked some of these targets as his prey.
Those players came here just to play a scripted character and play a fun game for once. They would never have expected that this was a real ‘murder’ and that their fate had been clearly scripted.
There are brides, there is a main wife, but where are the 3 guys?
Thank you very much for the translation 🤍🤍🤍
Such a shame because I too would definitely fall for that trap. It really sounds so interesting to roleplay out an ancient times game in real life!