Chapter 51

Chapter 51

The festivities in West Window Town were set to last for six days.

Three days had passed, and two people were dead.

Who could it be? The three men stood in Zhou Laoda’s courtyard, staring at the corpse in the grass in silence.

“Hey! Why are you looking at me like that!”

As Chu Yue was examining the body, Guan Doujin’s voice boomed in his ear.

Chu Yue looked up to see Shen Yubi sizing Guan Doujin up from head to toe.

Shen Yubi took a half-step back, putting a disgusted distance between them. “We were here yesterday, and we split up to look for clues. Chu Yue showed his wound last night, and I’m obviously not it. That only leaves you as the suspicious one.”

“Bullshit!” Guan Doujin bristled, rolling up his sleeves. “I’m not one of those squishy balloon people. Look at these biceps! Look at that definition!”

Chu Yue glanced at his arms and said flatly, “It’s not him.”

“Exactly!” Guan Doujin lunged to Chu Yue’s side. “Young Master Chu is the only one here with any sense.”

Chu Yue looked at him, then finished his sentence with a look of pity: “This corpse is taller than him.”

Guan Doujin: “…”

Guan Doujin: “??”

Shen Yubi raised an eyebrow, took a closer look, and nodded in agreement. “True. This guy has to be at least 185 centimeters.”

Clutching his chest, Guan Doujin silently swallowed the surge of indignation rising in his throat. These two… these two!

With a huff, he ignored their banter and turned toward the main hall.

The group from yesterday had searched the place with brutal efficiency. Even though there wasn’t much left in the house, they had managed to leave it in a state of absolute chaos.

He kicked aside a stool blocking his path. The mess was so overwhelming he didn’t even know where to start.

Chu Yue already had a specific spot in mind. After entering the house, he walked straight toward the paper-cut “Double Happiness” character posted on the wall.

He found a stool, placed it in front of the wall, and stepped up.

With a flick of his wrist, a thin blade appeared between his fingertips. He moved his hand, carefully scraping along the edges of the paper-cut.

“Where’d you get a razor blade?”

Chu Yue replied, “Bought it from the Mall.”

“What?” Guan Doujin was stunned. “You spent money in the Mall on a piece of junk like that?! How rich are you?”

The cheapest item in there cost one Point. Converted, that was ten thousand yuan-the equivalent of one day of life!

And he’d spent that on a tiny sliver of metal?

“I’m not that rich,” Chu Yue said, focusing on his work. “I’m at negative two hundred and forty.”

The Mall had initially claimed it didn’t allow credit, but he had clicked the purchase button anyway just to see what would happen. It had actually let him buy it.

This one little blade, which didn’t even have a handle, had cost him one Point, adding insult to injury for his already debt-ridden account.

Chu Yue didn’t care, though. Being in debt was being in debt. At negative two hundred and forty, being at negative two hundred and forty-one made no discernible difference.

“Neg-negative two hundred and forty?” Guan Doujin was shocked. How could someone be even poorer than him?

Only Shen Yubi frowned and asked, “How did that happen?”

Though he hadn’t seen Chu Yue’s final tally, according to his estimates, Chu Yue’s Points should have been in the thousands. It was impossible for him to be in the negatives.

At the mention of this, a flicker of annoyance crossed Chu Yue’s eyes. “The System said I caused Sunset Town to shut down, so it docked me 3,000 Points.”

“Heh, it certainly knows how to find a loophole.”

With that, Shen Yubi stopped bothering him and dragged Guan Doujin off to search elsewhere.

This was delicate work. Chu Yue moved with precision, scraping the wall bit by bit, terrified he might accidentally tear the paper-cut.

Since the townspeople insisted that this paper-cut had been posted in the main hall when Zhou Laoda’s son got married, he was going to see if that was actually true.

Judging by the level of wear and tear, the paper-cut in this room was significantly less faded than the red characters outside.
It might have been because of where it was stuck in the room, or perhaps because it had been added later.

This paper-cut was exceptionally large. Chu Yue spent a long time carefully scraping at it, yet he had only managed to remove less than a quarter.

However, that was enough.

What he wanted to see was whether there were traces left behind by a previous paper-cut that had been pasted there.

One look confirmed his suspicions.

Behind this “Double Happiness” character, there were indeed faded white patches.

They were the exact same shape as the paper-cut he had just scraped off, but the font was a size smaller, and the surrounding area was filled with tiny figures.

Once the “Double Happiness” character was placed over it, the marks were completely hidden. Had he not suddenly thought of this, it was unlikely anyone would have discovered that such a significant clue was hidden behind the paper-cut.

Shen Yubi and Guan Doujin returned from their sweep of the area. Finding no other clues, they saw what he was doing and asked about it.

Chu Yue pulled the paper-cut aside to let them see.

Upon seeing the marks left on the wall, Shen Yubi suddenly bent down and began searching for something on the floor.

Spotting a specific floor tile, he crouched, drew his dagger, and wedged it into the gap. With a forceful twist of his wrist, he pried the tile up.

A patch of dark red was revealed beneath.

Guan Doujin leaned in for a look, then crouched down himself. Without waiting for Shen Yubi’s command, he began prying up all the surrounding floor tiles.

Knowing they had found a clue, Chu Yue took out a grain of cooked rice he had hidden in his sleeve, smeared it on the wall, and stuck the paper-cut back in place.

Guan Doujin worked quickly. By the time Chu Yue walked over, he had already flipped five or six tiles.

The findings underneath were all similar-covered in those dark red stains.

“What is this? Blood?”

Chu Yue rubbed his finger against one of the red stains and brought it to his nose to sniff.

He couldn’t smell anything, though. Too much time had passed; the scent had long since vanished.

Shen Yubi narrowed his eyes and studied it for a moment. “It’s blood, but not human.”

As for what it actually was, he couldn’t tell.

The tiles Guan Doujin had pried up, combined with the one Shen Yubi had first lifted, revealed traces that seemed to connect into an arc.

There was something underneath, and judging by the shape, it was quite large.

Shen Yubi tapped the surface with the hilt of his dagger. The sound that echoed back wasn’t the dull thud of striking earth.

“It seems these floor tiles were also laid down later.”

The three of them worked together to clear the room, tossing the tables, chairs, and stools into the courtyard. Then they all crouched down and began lifting the floor tiles one by one.

Once all the tiles were cleared away, Chu Yue and the others stood at the doorway and looked into the room.

What lay revealed beneath was a massive Magic Array, its size occupying the entire room.

The shape of the Magic Array was somewhat similar to the Altar they had seen in the Plaza of Sunset Town, and it was likewise inscribed with characters they couldn’t understand, though the details were vastly different.

“Can you make sense of it?”

Chu Yue frowned after a few glances. He was completely out of his depth in this area.

However, looking at Shen Yubi, it seemed he had some understanding of it.

But when his question was asked, the first to answer wasn’t Shen Yubi, but Guan Doujin.

Guan Doujin walked into the room, circling the array several times to look at it from different angles. He crouched down, touching it here and there.

Finally, he stood up, stroking his chin as he said slowly, “So it’s this. This is too cruel.”

Chu Yue was surprised. “He actually understands it?”

“Yes,” Shen Yubi nodded. “What I know about these things, I heard from him.”

This struck Chu Yue as a novelty. Up until now, Guan Doujin had always acted boisterous and informal.

Chu Yue had previously assumed he only had high Combat Power, never imagining the man also relied on his brains.