Chapter 8

(One on one, I want to personally interrogate you.)

Once the question left Gu Liang’s mouth, Son Bai glanced at him but he did not reply immediately.

Swallowing his saliva, Son Bai tried to recall what had occurred before he said: “Yeah, he was lying on the table. I knocked on the door a few times but no one answered. Therefore, I just pushed the door open and went in. That’s when I found him lying on the table. I thought he might be sleeping, so I placed the food down on the table and left.”

“You didn’t do anything else?” Gu Liang queried.

“No… No.” Son Bai said, “Didn’t I come downstairs to eat with you guys after ten minutes? How would I have the time to do anything else? My script didn’t state otherwise. After delivering the food, I returned to my own room, tore up the pillbox, and threw it off the balcony before returning back to the dining room to eat. This is everything, there’s nothing else.”

“Okay. I have no other questions.”

With no inquiries left to ask, Gu Liang went quiet. He leaned back against his chair and closed his eyes to take a rest, but it also gave the impression he was thinking of a stratagem and was already aware of who the perpetrator was.

However, he did not verbalise anything.

Gu Liang’s hands were placed on the table, and the jut of his carpus bone looked as pretty as a jade.

Yang Ye stared at that hand for a long while. All of a sudden, he stood up and leaned over to tap on the table space in front of Gu Liang.

Gu Liang opened one eye and was surprised to find that Yang Ye’s visage was well within reach.

Startled, Gu Liang leaned back instantaneously and scowled. He said, “What are you doing?”

“Let’s go. One on one.” Yang Ye walked towards the interrogation purposefully. “I want to interrogate you.”

Gu Liang: “&#k2026;&#k2026;”

Seconds later, in the interrogation room. Yang Ye and Gu Liang sat down, face to face.

The sound isolation in the interrogation room was extremely good; not a single noise from the centralised discussion room could be heard. And perhaps for similar reasons, they could hear each other breathing when no one was talking, even though they were seated a fair distance away.

Yang Ye pushed his glasses up and asked Gu Liang: “When do you think Boss Bai died?”

Gu Liang rapped his forefinger before he spoke, “According to everyone’s accounts, Maid Liu knocked on Boss Bai’s door at 12:20 but no one answered; 10 minutes later, Son Bai entered the room to deliver the food and he was lying on the table motionlessly, seemingly asleep; and when Brother Bai took a knife to commit his murder, it was already two in the afternoon. From my observations, when Maid Liu knocked the door and no one answered, which was 12:20, Boss Bai was already deceased.”

Yang Ye tossed out another question, “Then, who do you suspect?”

Gu Liang went silent for a moment. Finally, he said: “There was a sentence that Son Bai said just now, which I found a little strange.”

Yang Ye: “How was it strange?”

“If I wanted to kill Boss Bai, and I found him sleeping at his desk while I was sending him the poisoned food, would I just put down the poisoned food and leave?”

Gu Liang shook his head, saying: “I wouldn’t. Because I can’t guarantee he will eat that particular box of food when he wakes up, I would definitely do something. On the converse, Brother Bai’s actions were more logical. Who cares if Boss Bai is unconscious because of my feigned death medicine, or if he’s purely sleeping, since he has a chance to kill him, he definitely has to seize the opportunity to stab him.”

Yang Ye nodded. “Mn, that makes sense.”

“Alternatively, if I didn’t want to kill the person right then and there, I would, at the very least, make another trip to his room to check if he’s eaten the poisoned meal before deciding on my next course of action.”

Gu Liang said, “Which is why Son Bai’s words roused my suspicion. I asked him if he did nothing else afterwards. He replied to me definitively, and then went on to reiterate himself thrice, saying that the script did not state otherwise, and he did nothing because of that. But this doesn’t conform to logic. Even if he did nothing then, he should have found a chance in the afternoon to visit Boss Bai’s room at minimum, to see if he’s been poisoned to death by the white moonlight.”

Yang Yes squinted his eyes slightly, smiling. “If we went according to your logic, you deserve to be suspected as well. Did you go to the scene of the crime to check if he was alive or dead?”

“It’s true that I didn’t. But my script specifically wrote one line— ‘After observing him for a long period of time, you noticed that Boss Bai would drink his chicken soup every day and without fail. Thus, you are confident that your plan will succeed’. Therefore, I thought my plan to be infallible; and naturally, it was not necessary for me to confirm it. It’s not like I could have known that the chicken soup would be toppled.”

Yang Ye nodded, expressing that he accepted his pretext. He asked: “What about Maid Liu then? She’s worthy of being suspected too. You didn’t know the chicken soup was toppled, but she did. Since Son Bai saw Boss Bai sleeping, she could have seen the same thing when she went to call Boss Bai.

“And for the same reasons present in Son Bai’s circumstances, she should be worrying about whether Boss Bai had consumed the cinnabar mole spiked food. It would only be right if she went out of her way to ascertain if Boss Bai had eaten, and if he had been poisoned to death.”

Gu Liang stared at Yang Ye, a faint smile curling at the edges of his lips. “She did go and ascertain it. Have you forgotten? The deceased was discovered by her.”

* * *

Having said that, Gu Liang’s gaze emptied out as if he was staring at the dust in the air again.

With a light tone of voice, he uttered, “In compliance with the script’s settings and under the circumstance where everyone is uncertain about whether they are the murderer or not, they have to conceal themselves; they have to hide their motivations for killing as well as their modus operandi. Even the system is not exempt from having to obey this principle.”

“Hence, when the system broadcast relayed the script, its pretext was, when Maid Liu realised that Boss Bai had disappeared for a long time, she decided to go to his room to find him and check on his condition, instead of directly saying that Maid Liu went to see if she had successfully murdered Boss Bai.”

“In all honesty, this can be seen as…. The impartial nature that the system has when dealing with issues, because it can’t give the real murderer hints. If it announced the real reason why Maid Liu went to find Boss Bai and the murderer was attentive enough, they will take note of this point and imitate the excuse.”

After listening to Gu Liang’s deduction, Yang Ye stared at Gu Liang with deep eyes for a long time from behind his lens. He pushed up his glasses. Subsequently, he stood up, walked towards the interrogation room door in large strides, and opened the door. He told Maid Liu: “Maid Liu, I’ll be inconveniencing you for a bit.”

Hearing that, Maid Liu proceeded into the room very quickly.

When they saw that the person being called was Maid Liu and not themselves, Brother Bai frowned and Son Bai’s expression became a little grave as well.

After the door to the interrogation room was shut, Yang Ye looked towards Maid Liu. “I’ll only ask you one question, at 3:10, why did you go and find Boss Bai? What was the true reason?”

Maid Liu answered: “To check if he’s been poisoned to death by my cinnabar mole poison of course. Whenever the system reads out the general plot, it will hide everything in order to protect everyone, and it will never expose any one’s murderous intentions.”

Once Maid Liu finished speaking, Yang Ye issued a soft sigh and invited her out.

Inside the interrogation room, the lights were hazy and dim.

In this sort of environment, Gu Liang’s face appeared to be even whiter.

However, not a trace of emotion could be discerned on his visage as he stared at Yang Ye. “We have our vote. If you don’t want to die, what you have to do next is persuade Brother Bai and Maid Liu to get them to vote correctly.”

“When do you think he acted?” Yang Ye asked.

Gu Liang placed both his hands on the armrest. After a long moment, he knocked one of his index fingers and said slowly, “We’ve underestimated him. He’s been lying from the start— ever since he met the both of us in the morning.”

T/N: A relatively short chapter, and an extra update because it’s National Day for Singapore OwO

Please stay safe everyone xx