chapter 17

“Second Young Master.” When Qin Nan didn’t move, the old woman urged him again.

Qin Nan’s thoughts were a mess. Remembering what Jian Fan had warned him earlier, he didn’t dare disobey an NPC. He nodded and hurried out of the courtyard.

He planned to leave first, then come back after eight to see what was going on.

After leaving the dead man’s courtyard, he found a corner not far away and stood there for a while. Only when the System time ticked over to exactly eight o’clock did he head back toward the courtyard.

It was only a few steps.

The old woman in the courtyard was already gone. Qin Nan had no idea where she’d gone-or whether she’d already left the courtyard entirely.

There was still light in the dead man’s room, but there was no silhouette inside. Qin Nan frowned slightly. He’d come in through the main gate, and the spot he’d been waiting at was also close to the main gate. If anyone inside had left through the front, there was no way he wouldn’t have seen them.

With questions piling up in his mind, Qin Nan knocked on the dead man’s door.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

No response came from inside.

Qin Nan thought for a moment, then chose to push the door open and go in.

The scene inside was almost the same as what he’d seen during the day-except the body was gone. No. More accurately, it had been moved.

There was still no blood-intertwined Taiji Diagram on the floor. The dead man was now sitting at the desk, a dagger buried in his chest, blood steadily streaming down. Qin Nan’s gaze immediately snapped to the man’s forehead.

There was no injury on it.

Qin Nan took a few steps forward, about to check on him. Just then, the dead man suddenly raised his head and stared straight at Qin Nan.

That turn of events caught Qin Nan completely off guard. He froze-and before he could do anything, what happened next made his eyes widen.

A figure appeared out of thin air inside the room. It wore the same clothes as him, had the same height and build-except it had no face. The moment it saw the dead man look up, it panicked for an instant, then rushed forward, grabbed the inkstone on the desk, and smashed it down with a loud crack.

Blood quickly seeped across the dead man’s forehead. He stared at the Faceless Person in disbelief, then his eyes rolled back and he passed out.

What the hell?

Qin Nan’s eyes were wide. His mood right now could only be described as terrible.

It felt like he’d made a very bad choice.

From the moment he’d stepped out of his bedroom, every action he took had been a choice-and this choice meant that he, the Second Young Master, after discovering his stabbed father had woken up, didn’t hesitate to finish the job.

In other words, the one who stabbed the dead man wasn’t necessarily the murderer… but he might be.

After knocking the dead man unconscious, the Faceless Person seemed to blank out for a moment. Then it lowered its head and looked at the inkstone in its hand, making a decision almost immediately. It quickly left the crime scene with the inkstone.

And the moment the Faceless Person stepped out of the room, Qin Nan felt another soundless ripple.

The environment around him began changing rapidly. He was clearly still standing in place, yet the scenery kept shifting-as if it were following the Faceless Person all the way out of the room, to the lake where it threw the inkstone in, and then all the way back to its own room.

When the surroundings finally became the same as his own room, that soundless ripple rose again-and the line of text that had been floating in front of him, “the night the murder happened,” vanished completely.

…So he was back?
So…

Just how stupid had he been?

Qin Nan raked a hand through his hair, more than a little annoyed with himself.

What was done was done. Regret was useless. He quickly forced himself to calm down and began sorting through the clues he had.

First of all, the victim should have been stabbed sometime after Qin Nan was spotted and driven out of the courtyard by the old woman. The person most likely to have done it was the one who had been inside the room talking to the victim-someone who looked like the Eldest Young Master, but wasn’t actually him.

Judging from what Xiao Cui had told him, the victim had called the Eldest Young Master over. Based on what he himself had encountered, Qin Nan boldly guessed that this had also been a choice presented to Xia Zeqin.

Xia Zeqin had run into the messenger sent by the victim. He might have gone, he might not have-but the person Qin Nan later saw in that room absolutely could not have been Xia Zeqin. So for now, Qin Nan could rule out Xia Zeqin as the one who stabbed the victim with the dagger.

The man who only looked like the Eldest Young Master stabbed the victim, then left the scene.

After that, as for what the Second Young Master did… Qin Nan’s face darkened at the thought. As the Second Young Master, knowing his own father favored the eldest son and planned to hand the family business to him, he was dissatisfied and went straight to the victim’s courtyard in a fit of anger.

According to the Script’s logic, the Second Young Master couldn’t possibly have gone there to look for clues to the killer; that wasn’t his motive at all. So Qin Nan felt this line of reasoning was the most reasonable. And everything he’d done since then would most likely be mapped directly onto the Second Young Master’s actions in the Script.

The Second Young Master had rushed to the victim’s courtyard, seen his own father apparently speaking with his elder brother, and hidden to one side to eavesdrop. He was discovered by an old servant woman of the manor and driven away. Even after being spotted, he was still unwilling to give up and loitered at the gate for quite a while, then snuck back into the victim’s courtyard-only to find the victim already stabbed.

When the victim came to, for reasons unknown-perhaps he truly wanted the victim dead, or perhaps he was afraid-the Second Young Master grabbed the inkstone and smashed it down, knocking the victim unconscious, then left.

By then, both wounds were already there. As for the third one…

Qin Nan thought back. At the time, the victim had only been bleeding from the chest; the clothing below had been clean. While the victim was still alive, there was no way someone could have quietly castrated him and then tidied him up without leaving a trace.

In other words, after the Second Young Master left, someone else had come, castrated the victim, actually killed him, and finally set up the crime scene with the Taiji Diagram.

At that thought, Qin Nan let out a small breath of relief.

As long as he wasn’t the murderer, he wasn’t beyond saving yet. At the very least, his situation was a lot better than that of the killer, who would be besieged on all sides.

But when he remembered the old woman who’d caught him, his head started to ache again. During tomorrow’s evidence collection, they would be allowed to question the household servants-that naturally included that old woman. Once it came out that he’d sneaked into the victim’s courtyard before the victim’s official time of death, his level of suspicion would shoot up.

After all, in this game, the murderer wasn’t the one who must die; it was the one everyone decided was the murderer.

Qin Nan had to admit he’d landed himself in a huge mess.

While Qin Nan was stewing in regret, Jian Fan finally began to move.

When the words “the night of the murder” appeared before his eyes, Jian Fan stayed perfectly calm. He sat in his room for a while first. He didn’t encounter any NPCs or strange events. Once he was sure nothing would be triggered in there, Jian Fan left his room.

But his target wasn’t the victim’s courtyard.

It was-the Eldest Miss’s residence.