Chapter 24 ~ Third Game Pt.6 ~
Gu Yian looked towards the sound.
Following this, there was the sound of the window opening.
A shoe, dripping with blood, suddenly appeared below the curtain.
Then a man’s excited voice came, “I’ve come to save you!”
The curtain shook and the silhouette of a man emerged.
Before Gu Yian reacted—
—Tang Jiu sprung up and delivered a fierce side kick.
CRACK!
A figure flew out of the curtain and crashed onto the ground of the room, dragging a long line of blood. It was unknown whether he was alive or dead.
The two male players were greatly startled by Tang Jiu’s kick.
They looked at Tang Jiu’s relaxed appearance in this moment and couldn’t help but feel fear towards her.
Tang Jiu walked briskly to the person she kicked and stretched a hand under his nose to feel his breath, saying with regret, “Not dead.”
When the male players heard these words, their expressions immediately became even more ghastly.
Gu Yian glanced at their expressions and didn’t need to guess too much to know that they were probably thinking things like how nothing was more vicious than a woman’s heart and other such things.
She walked over and took a look.
There was a lot of blood on this person and it wasn’t known whether it was his or someone else. His face was dusty with scrapes and there was wear and tear on his clothes.
Even if she couldn’t clearly see this person’s true appearance, Gu Yian had a guess about his identity from his sentence just now that he was here to save her.
She guessed that this must be the stranger, Liu Han, who sent her messages during the day.
Nevertheless, hadn’t Liu Han been caught by law enforcement around 8:00 PM?
She had been in the dining area at that time and heard the arrest.
She also confirmed this point with Lu Zize.
How did Liu Han escape from law enforcement?
Gu Yian was very curious.
She thought for a while and, in this situation, perhaps they could contact law enforcement?
The unconscious person on the ground suddenly moved a little.
Tang Jiu was watching him and, without any hesitation, she slammed her fist down.
That man’s body bounced and then had no reaction.
Gu Yian took out her phone and tried to search the internet for the law enforcement number.
Unexpectedly, the first search result was the phone number for law enforcement in the City of Innocence.
She was about to dial the number but, in the blink of an eye, her phone screen changed and turned into a call screen.
The number on the call screen was, astonishingly, the number for law enforcement she was planning on dialling. Similarly, her phone also automatically marked this number as law enforcement.
So coincidental?
Gu Yian paused and then connected the call.
“May I ask if this is Junior Investigator Gu Yian?” A man politely asked.
“Yes, I’m her,” Gu Yian replied to him.
“Could you, or someone else, please open the gate for our law enforcement team? We are currently pursuing the fugitive, Liu Han, and he should have fled to the vicinity of your office building.”
Gu Yian replied, “I know. He tried to attack us earlier and now he’s been knocked unconscious by one of our investigators.”
“……” The other party was silent.
“If you don’t believe me, I can send a picture over.”
Ten minutes later.
Gu Yian and the two other male players walked to the gate of the Investigation Bureau.
The gate automatically recognized the faces of Gu Yian and the others and retracted, making room for the law enforcement vehicle to pass through.
The law enforcement team’s vehicle was a minibus.
A man in a black uniform opened the car door and jumped down before starting his chat with Gu Yian and the two others.
His goal was to ask clearly about the course of how the fugitive, Liu Han, was captured.
The two male players were especially active here, describing Liu Han’s strange appearance like it was a ghost story.
Taking advantage of their small talk, Gu Yian opened her phone and browsed through all the photos of the law enforcement members on their official site to confirm that the person they were seeing right now really was law enforcement.
“You said he climbed the window to get in?” The law enforcement person asked.
“Yes, he came in through the window. When he came in, his shoes were still dripping blood.” The male player gave an exaggerated response.
The law enforcement minibus looped around the flower bed and stopped in the parking lot, where an entire team then descended.
The person questioning Gu Yian and the two male players said, “The troop will divide into two groups. Choose someone to take two of our men upstairs to bring Liu Han down, the rest will take us to look at the window from outside.”
Gu Yian and the other male player unanimously pushed out the male player who could play games on his phone until he ran out of battery.
The player who was pushed out had no choice but to take two law enforcement members into the office building.
Meanwhile, Gu Yian and the other male player took the rest of the law enforcement team to the back of the office building.
They came to the place below the second floor window.
Gu Yian saw several bloody handprints on the wall at a glance.
From the bloody handprints as well as placements of bloodstains, it could be seen how Liu Han climbed to the second floor.
Members of the law enforcement team made rounds in the vicinity.
Eventually, a gloved law enforcement member found a bloodstained dagger in the grass.
“Captain, it’s his murder weapon. He must have accidentally dropped it when he was climbing the wall.”
The person who had spoken to Gu Yian and the others earlier saw this dagger and nodded. “Take it away. When the time comes, we’ll be able to give our brothers redress.”
The team member who found the dagger immediately used a large transparent sealed bag to put away the dagger.
When Gu Yian saw the dagger, she realized she dodged a bullet.
Just as she finished listening to them, the law enforcement team seemed to be preparing to leave.
So, she tried talking to the captain and asked, “Captain, our former investigation team leader, Qiao Xiaoman, she…”
“Oh. Our new mission is to capture her. God’s Eye hasn’t found her whereabouts yet.”
The captain gave Gu Yian an inexplicable look and then said, “That person with the surname Lu in your investigation bureau, after he learned that Liu Han escaped, called me several times and urged us to capture him, saying he was worried that the new member of the Investigation Bureau, Ms. Gu Yian, would become that criminal’s next target.”
He spoke meaningfully, “Once some people leave, they’ll be gone. Take more care of those beside you.”
After he finished speaking, he left in a smooth manner.
Gu Yian, who was left behind, stood in place helplessly.
OK, she had been misunderstood again.
Gu Yian was already used to this.
The male player next to her asked curiously, “When did you get in that sort of relationship with Lu Zize? Is it true?”
Gu Yian ignored him.
The male player believed it to be true and sighed to himself, “There’s even this move? Female players are so nice. They crook their finger and us men will run to do the work. Even if I run until my legs break, no one will help me.”
Gu Yian was speechless. If another investigator had been Liu Han’s target, Lu Zize would have given a call to the investigation team, alright?
Lu Zize said before that this concerned the reputation of the entire Investigation Bureau.
Gu Yian casually said, “Then you should become a female player too and try it out.”
The male player heard this and replied seriously, “I think I can try it.”
He was seriously considering this.
Gu Yian didn’t know whether to cry or laugh.
The two of them walked for some distance until suddenly, under the street lights, they saw the captain of the law enforcement team, who had left suavely, walk towards them again.
Gu Yian looked at him with confusion.
The captain maintained the air that a captain should have, gave a fake cough, and said, “Could I trouble you two to open the gate and let us out?”
~~~
After the chaos of the first half of the night passed over, the second half of the night was calm and quiet, allowing Gu Yian and the others to have a good night’s sleep.
It was a text message from Gu Yian’s own phone that woke her on the second day.
She placed her phone on her abdomen when she went to sleep and so, in her dreams, she heard a crisp bell.
Ding!
Gu Yian was in a sleeping bag and this small space made the noise even harsher.
She warily opened her eyes.
Gu Yian shifted, came out of her sleeping bag, and then opened her phone to check.
She received a message from God’s Eye.
“Junior Investigator Gu Yian, please go to the local market on East Ring Road in the Special Zone under God’s Eye immediately, and investigate the cause of the disappearance of the street vendor, Huang Dasheng.”
Here came a mission.
Gu Yian looked at the others in the room.
The three players who had took watch for the second half of the night had already made themselves presentable, and their jackets were exchanged for the black uniforms belonging to investigators.
Tang Jiu was about the same as her, having crawled out of her sleeping bag almost at the same time to check her message.
The other two male players seemed to be sleeping like the dead in their sleeping bags and there was no movement at all.
Since there were more than 50 accidental deaths in this office building, Gu Yian was actually really afraid of this possibility.
She got up, walked over, and nudged the back of the person in the sleeping bag with her shoe.
The person in the sleeping bag shifted, dodging Gu Yian’s small attack.
The other person was no different, preferring to roll away in his sleeping bag and he wasn’t willing to come out.
Seeing that they were still alive, Gu Yian didn’t care anymore.
The three players who took watch during the second half of the night, upon seeing Gu Yian and the others wake, told them that Brother Yong, Lu Zize, and the talkative male player who got assigned to them returned at 7:00 AM and they should be in the director’s office right now.
A female player among the three players said, with jealousy, “They showered. I saw that they were wearing new clothes. But we’ll have problems with showering.”
The reality was that they didn’t lack water or a place to shower, but they lacked a change of clothes.
Gu Yian heard this and reassured her, “We completed the mission God’s Eye assigned, so it stands to reason that we’ll have a salary. Let’s go and talk to Brother Yong or Brother Lu and see if we can get our salary in advance.”
It would have been better if she didn’t bring up this subject because, once she did, the female player recalled, “Brother Lu’s bank card is with you.”
Gu Yian calmly replied, “I’ll be returning it to him soon.”
When she and Tang Jiu returned from freshening up, the other two male players finally got up. Those two got ready in five minutes and then the seven of them went towards the director’s office.
They were unfamiliar with the place the first time, but now they were familiar in their second time.
The players were now able to ignore the ever-present cameras and knocked on the door to the director’s office as if everything was a piece of cake.
After a moment, the door opened.
The one who opened the door was that talkative new male player who got assigned a task. He greeted everyone with exhaustion and then drifted over to sit on a chair, looking battered and worn.
Brother Yong sat in the seat of the director and standing behind him was Lu Zize.
Lu Zize was in the middle of pointing at some pictures on the computer screen, advising Brother Yong.
The entry of the players wasn’t quiet.
Brother Yong and Lu Zize raised their eyes and looked towards the players.
The first person who spoke was Lu Zize. He asked, “Did everyone receive the mission of investigating the disappearance of the street vendor?”
“Yes.”
“Yup.”
Everyone responded.
When Lu Zize saw this, he hesitated for a while before saying, “Hold on a moment before your investigation. I’ll first tell you how to obtain director level authority.”
Up to here, he sighed, “Yesterday, our Investigation Bureau lost Sister Man and Leader Liang. There were originally twelve of you newcomers, but in an instant it became eight. Brother Yong and I are both worried about how we could encounter an accident at any moment. It’s best to hand over director level authority to everyone as soon as possible.”
Brother Yong listened to Lu Zize and then stood up from his seat to walk to another seat at the side before sitting down. From this appearance, he was tacitly agreeing to Lu Zize’s decision.
Lu Zize explained, “The steps to obtaining director level authority are not hard. Everyone come over one by one and I’ll tell it to you one by one. There are a few places in our bureau that require authority to access. In particular, the place where we store weapons absolutely requires authority to prevent being attacked.”
When a male player heard the word weapons, his spirit shook and he quickly asked, “Brother Lu, what kind of weapons are there?”
“Guns.”
All the players had their own thoughts when they heard this word.
In this world, which currently did not have ghosts, guns could be said to be the most powerful weapon.
Lu Zize asked, “Who’s first?”
When he asked this, Tang Jiu and the others players’ first reactions were to look at Gu Yian.
Gu Yian was like a duck driven onto a perch, but she wasn’t ill-at-ease at all.
She walked straight and sat upright.
Gu Yian smiled faintly and handed over Lu Zize’s card.
“Brother Lu, thank you for your generosity.”
Lu Zize adjusted his glasses and avoided the card.
He replied, “I’ll continue to be generous. I’ll treat everyone to three meals today. Keep it first.”
Gu Yian felt the scorching gazes of the players behind her and recalled how they, as players, really had no money.
She thought about this for a while, succumbed to poverty, and kept the card.
The steps Lu Zize told her to obtain director level authority were not difficult, mainly just obtaining the dynamic password.
One hour later, the eight players were all trained in succession.
Lu Zize printed out documents obtained with director level authority and gave them to Gu Yian.
Everything was prepared and so the eight players embarked on the road to investigating the disappearance of the street vendor.
Everyone looked at the map first.
One player said, “Isn’t this East Ring Road market the one that Lu Zize brought us to yesterday? It’s pretty big.”
Gu Yian turned to the photo of the street vendor called Huang Dasheng.
Tang Jiu sidled over and peeked. “Woah, isn’t this one of the butchers who were arguing yesterday?”
Gu Yian asked curiously, “Was he the one who gave everyone meat?”
Tang Jiu shook her head. “It was the other one.”
She muttered, “It can’t be this coincidental? Don’t tell me the reason for this vendor’s disappearance is related to the butcher who argued with him yesterday?”
Gu Yian closed their documents and said, “We’ll know when we get there. Let’s go to the market first then. Come on.”
The investigation process was easier than Gu Yian and the others imagined.
First, they went to a restaurant close to the market to eat lunch. When the restaurant owner saw their uniforms, they immediately said they had done nothing, that they were good citizens, and then asked if they were investigators.
Gu Yian and the others happened to be missing information and so they asked the owner about the butchers in the market.
The owner said all they knew without reserve.
“I know there are just two butchers in there. One is low in price, the other is high in price. The low-priced meat tastes strange and I don’t go there often, so I normally buy stock from the high-priced one. I’m an honest person and I really don’t rip off my customers. Today, the high-priced butcher didn’t come and I didn’t go to the low-priced one. The sign he put out today said he had the same quality of meat as the other person, but I didn’t believe him.”
Gu Yian took advantage of this opportunity to ask if the butcher with the higher price often argued with the other butcher.
“They do! He frequently said the other person sold fake meat and its source was dubious. But that person said he lived in a remote place and that he sold quality meat raised by his family.”
After Gu Yian listened to the restaurant owner, she flipped through the documents in her hands.
It was a pile of investigation files for missing cases from previous years in the Investigation Bureau. In the end, none of the missing people had been found and they all became unsolved cases.
However, these missing cases all had one noteworthy point and it was that they were related to the butcher who sold quality meat.
Some of the missing people had contact with the butcher, some walked by near where the butcher lived.
But because the God’s Eye System didn’t capture any suspicious circumstances the investigation was discontinued in the end just like this.
Did Lu Zize give her this stack of documents on purpose?
Gu Yian contemplated this as she gave the documents in her hands to the other players.
“Everyone, take a look at these. Huang Dasheng must have met with disaster.”
The other players were actually waiting for Gu Yian to summarize everything, but she made them look at the documents.
Everyone hesitated before grabbing the documents.
After reading this, the expression of the seven players, including Tang Jiu, changed drastically.
Tang Jiu spat out the candy in her mouth and stuttered, “Hu-hu-human… meat?”
Gu Yian nodded, certain about this point.
The male players who cooked the meat dish yesterday collapsed under the table right away and madly vomited.
Gu Yian explained, “Our former investigators all found this point. In the end, they chose to give up because they had no evidence. If investigation members don’t give out the results of their investigation, then they can’t hand things over to law enforcement.”
“Don’t tell me we’re letting him get away with this?” One person asked.
Gu Yian replied, “This is the choice Lu Zize and Brother Yong are giving us. The situation is clear and we don’t need to investigate more. We have two choices right now, one is to go to the butcher’s house and search for evidence, and the other is to return and, as per how previous investigators handled this, temporarily set the case aside because we cannot find clues and let it become an unsolved case.”
Tang Jiu said decisively, “Let’s go and find evidence.”
This was the answer Gu Yian wanted to hear.
“You’re not afraid?” She asked.
Tang Jiu replied, “The previous investigators shelved this and they all died. We haven’t even seen them so, if we copy them, wouldn’t it be hard to escape death?”
Tang Jiu’s thoughts were also Gu Yian’s thoughts.
They had to rush into the tiger’s den.
When the other players heard this, their complexion was terrible, but they had to admit that Gu Yian and Tang Jiu’s thoughts were correct.
After arriving in this world, only investigation missions were triggered. If, by any chance, they couldn’t even complete this investigation mission, then wouldn’t it disappoint the God who was always watching them?
That new male player, who had worked through the entire night, had all his hopes dashed to pieces.
He said, “I only saw this yesterday and even pieced it together. I haven’t even slept yet. Do you guys understand this feeling?”
The others didn’t speak. They understood this male player’s difficulties, but they couldn’t not go!
The new player continued, “It’s only at this age that I learned I have such a strong sense of justice. In order to find evidence, I’m willing to break into any place.”
It was clear his words were ironic and he didn’t want to go at all.
But who in this place wanted to go?
When they thought of what they would see later, everyone felt uncomfortable.
Gu Yian turned the sage card in her hand and thought out loud, “The God’s Eye System is everywhere. So, why is it solely leaving alone the area the butcher lives?”
She wanted to call the restaurant owner over again to question, but saw that the owner was already holding a basin and puking.
They didn’t withhold their conversation just now from the owner.
Once the owner made the connection, he immediately figured out the start and end points. He had eaten that meat!
Fortunately, Gu Yian’s table was far away from other customers and those customers deliberately avoided their group in their uniforms, otherwise the customers wouldn’t need to eat either.
The restaurant owner saw Gu Yian’s gaze on him.
He shook. “Investigator, please wait a moment for me.”
He ran to the kitchen right away, carrying the basin.
After several minutes, the owner, who had washed his face again, ran over with respect.
“Please ask. Whatever you ask, I’ll definitely answer.”
Gu Yian thought a while and then asked, “Do you know if that butcher has any connections? Like a backer behind him?
The owner hesitated and then, immediately, he seemed to recall something. His eyes held hatred and he said through gritted teeth, “Let me ask my friend.”
He ran to contact someone.
Half an hour later, he told Gu Yian his results.
“That person is the black sheep of a large family. I heard that someone in the family has quite a status.”
Alright, they learned the reason why the God’s Eye System couldn’t detect anything.
Gu Yian looked at the case files in her hands. This so-called City of Innocence didn’t live up to its reputation.
From Liu Han, to Sister Man, to the butcher, and to the deaths of the previous investigators who only found the murderer.
The City of Innocence hid countless sins.
Perhaps this place ought to be called the City of Sins.
Ding!
It was a text message notification alert.
The players present took out their phones.
Gu Yian looked at the sender. It was God’s Eye.
“Junior Investigator Gu Yian, the investigation mission has concluded. Please return to the Investigation Bureau of the Special Zone under God’s Eye immediately.”
Gu Yian’s line of sight landed on the camera turning around on the table.
What did this mean?
They clearly investigated something but it was making them abandon this?
Who was interfering with the God’s Eye System?
Tang Jiu slapped the table and stood up. “It’s shielding him!”
The joy on the expressions of the other players were frightened off by Tang Jiu’s voice.
Some players secretly glanced at Gu Yian’s face and cautiously said, “Isn’t… this good? No one wants to go.”
Tang Jiu snorted coldly, “This isn’t the same. It’s covering up an executioner! If we let him off today, then he’ll continue committing crimes tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. How is this good!?”
She saw the other players disagreeing with her point of view, and so she looked at Gu Yian.
“Say something.”
But Gu Yian suddenly laughed.
A subdued person was laughing all of a sudden.
Tang Jiu was flustered by Gu Yian’s laugh and nervously asked, “Gu Yian, you didn’t go crazy, did you?”
“No.”
Gu Yian’s voice was calm.
Although she was smiling, there was no smile in her eyes.
“I finally understand how to clear this world.”
“God is playing a great game with us. What a great City of Innocence.”
“No, it’s a City of Sin.”
Since the players arrived in this game world, all sorts of cases swept over them.
This was said to be a City of Innocence, but it had so many sins.
As soon as the players heard that Gu Yian knew how to clear the game, they immediately became curious.
They eagerly looked at Gu Yian.
She didn’t hide this from them and said, “Overthrow the sins. Or, in other words, overthrow it.”
She pointed at the camera on the table.
This was the sin itself.
Everyone was blank for a few seconds and then came to a realization one after another.
Gu Yian meant to overthrow the God’s Eye System!
It sounded very unreliable.
The players unconsciously thought about Gu Yian’s words and, when they thought about it, they discovered that in these two days and one night they always encountered various cases. Sins were represented behind the cases and this made them inclined to Gu Yian’s speculation.
They weren’t really going to have a life and death struggle with the forces of evil, were they?
Veteran players all understood God’s Game. In most situations, the difficulty of a game was only in guessing the game itself.
If the players could figure it out, then the game was especially simple.
If the players couldn’t figure it out, then they would get stuck in the game.
Naturally, there were also unexpected situations. For example, the ghosts were too strong and, even if they knew they had to kill the ghosts to clear the game, they just couldn’t kill them.
The new players looked at the expressions of the veteran players and knew who to believe.
As a result, everyone’s opinions became unanimous with silent eye contact.
If they wanted to clear this game, then it was most likely they had to overthrow the God’s Eye System like Gu Yian said.
“This… is too hard, isn’t it?”
One player said, “Every one of our moves is seen by it. It rules this place and has deep-rooted foundations. Can it be overthrown overnight?”
Overthrowing the God’s Eye System was easier said than done.
It had become an inseparable part of people’s lives in this place.
Cameras were everywhere.
Sometimes people could solve everything with facial recognition.
“It’s just a special zone,” Gu Yian calmly stated.
The other players exchanged glances and then a male player said, “Think about it again, could the clear conditions be something else? For example, finding the murderer who killed so many investigators.”
Gu Yian glanced at him. It was the male player who really considered being a female player last night.
The more the male player thought about this the more he felt he was right and he analyzed with great interest, “Look, our hint is that there are no coincidences in this world. The deaths of those investigators are, without exception, coincidences; but this is too unbelievable. They must be linked to our new player hint. Brother Lu and Brother Yong are always talking about accidental deaths too. I think we can clear the game by finding that murderer.”
Gu Yian’s lips curved up and, looking at him, she asked, “You haven’t noticed that’s a death warrant?”
Chapter 24 ~ Third Game Pt.6 ~
Gu Yian looked towards the sound.
Following this, there was the sound of the window opening.
A shoe, dripping with blood, suddenly appeared below the curtain.
Then a man’s excited voice came, “I’ve come to save you!”
The curtain shook and the silhouette of a man emerged.
Before Gu Yian reacted—
—Tang Jiu sprung up and delivered a fierce side kick.
CRACK!
A figure flew out of the curtain and crashed onto the ground of the room, dragging a long line of blood. It was unknown whether he was alive or dead.
The two male players were greatly startled by Tang Jiu’s kick.
They looked at Tang Jiu’s relaxed appearance in this moment and couldn’t help but feel fear towards her.
Tang Jiu walked briskly to the person she kicked and stretched a hand under his nose to feel his breath, saying with regret, “Not dead.”
When the male players heard these words, their expressions immediately became even more ghastly.
Gu Yian glanced at their expressions and didn’t need to guess too much to know that they were probably thinking things like how nothing was more vicious than a woman’s heart and other such things.
She walked over and took a look.
There was a lot of blood on this person and it wasn’t known whether it was his or someone else. His face was dusty with scrapes and there was wear and tear on his clothes.
Even if she couldn’t clearly see this person’s true appearance, Gu Yian had a guess about his identity from his sentence just now that he was here to save her.
She guessed that this must be the stranger, Liu Han, who sent her messages during the day.
Nevertheless, hadn’t Liu Han been caught by law enforcement around 8:00 PM?
She had been in the dining area at that time and heard the arrest.
She also confirmed this point with Lu Zize.
How did Liu Han escape from law enforcement?
Gu Yian was very curious.
She thought for a while and, in this situation, perhaps they could contact law enforcement?
The unconscious person on the ground suddenly moved a little.
Tang Jiu was watching him and, without any hesitation, she slammed her fist down.
That man’s body bounced and then had no reaction.
Gu Yian took out her phone and tried to search the internet for the law enforcement number.
Unexpectedly, the first search result was the phone number for law enforcement in the City of Innocence.
She was about to dial the number but, in the blink of an eye, her phone screen changed and turned into a call screen.
The number on the call screen was, astonishingly, the number for law enforcement she was planning on dialling. Similarly, her phone also automatically marked this number as law enforcement.
So coincidental?
Gu Yian paused and then connected the call.
“May I ask if this is Junior Investigator Gu Yian?” A man politely asked.
“Yes, I’m her,” Gu Yian replied to him.
“Could you, or someone else, please open the gate for our law enforcement team? We are currently pursuing the fugitive, Liu Han, and he should have fled to the vicinity of your office building.”
Gu Yian replied, “I know. He tried to attack us earlier and now he’s been knocked unconscious by one of our investigators.”
“……” The other party was silent.
“If you don’t believe me, I can send a picture over.”
Ten minutes later.
Gu Yian and the two other male players walked to the gate of the Investigation Bureau.
The gate automatically recognized the faces of Gu Yian and the others and retracted, making room for the law enforcement vehicle to pass through.
The law enforcement team’s vehicle was a minibus.
A man in a black uniform opened the car door and jumped down before starting his chat with Gu Yian and the two others.
His goal was to ask clearly about the course of how the fugitive, Liu Han, was captured.
The two male players were especially active here, describing Liu Han’s strange appearance like it was a ghost story.
Taking advantage of their small talk, Gu Yian opened her phone and browsed through all the photos of the law enforcement members on their official site to confirm that the person they were seeing right now really was law enforcement.
“You said he climbed the window to get in?” The law enforcement person asked.
“Yes, he came in through the window. When he came in, his shoes were still dripping blood.” The male player gave an exaggerated response.
The law enforcement minibus looped around the flower bed and stopped in the parking lot, where an entire team then descended.
The person questioning Gu Yian and the two male players said, “The troop will divide into two groups. Choose someone to take two of our men upstairs to bring Liu Han down, the rest will take us to look at the window from outside.”
Gu Yian and the other male player unanimously pushed out the male player who could play games on his phone until he ran out of battery.
The player who was pushed out had no choice but to take two law enforcement members into the office building.
Meanwhile, Gu Yian and the other male player took the rest of the law enforcement team to the back of the office building.
They came to the place below the second floor window.
Gu Yian saw several bloody handprints on the wall at a glance.
From the bloody handprints as well as placements of bloodstains, it could be seen how Liu Han climbed to the second floor.
Members of the law enforcement team made rounds in the vicinity.
Eventually, a gloved law enforcement member found a bloodstained dagger in the grass.
“Captain, it’s his murder weapon. He must have accidentally dropped it when he was climbing the wall.”
The person who had spoken to Gu Yian and the others earlier saw this dagger and nodded. “Take it away. When the time comes, we’ll be able to give our brothers redress.”
The team member who found the dagger immediately used a large transparent sealed bag to put away the dagger.
When Gu Yian saw the dagger, she realized she dodged a bullet.
Just as she finished listening to them, the law enforcement team seemed to be preparing to leave.
So, she tried talking to the captain and asked, “Captain, our former investigation team leader, Qiao Xiaoman, she…”
“Oh. Our new mission is to capture her. God’s Eye hasn’t found her whereabouts yet.”
The captain gave Gu Yian an inexplicable look and then said, “That person with the surname Lu in your investigation bureau, after he learned that Liu Han escaped, called me several times and urged us to capture him, saying he was worried that the new member of the Investigation Bureau, Ms. Gu Yian, would become that criminal’s next target.”
He spoke meaningfully, “Once some people leave, they’ll be gone. Take more care of those beside you.”
After he finished speaking, he left in a smooth manner.
Gu Yian, who was left behind, stood in place helplessly.
OK, she had been misunderstood again.
Gu Yian was already used to this.
The male player next to her asked curiously, “When did you get in that sort of relationship with Lu Zize? Is it true?”
Gu Yian ignored him.
The male player believed it to be true and sighed to himself, “There’s even this move? Female players are so nice. They crook their finger and us men will run to do the work. Even if I run until my legs break, no one will help me.”
Gu Yian was speechless. If another investigator had been Liu Han’s target, Lu Zize would have given a call to the investigation team, alright?
Lu Zize said before that this concerned the reputation of the entire Investigation Bureau.
Gu Yian casually said, “Then you should become a female player too and try it out.”
The male player heard this and replied seriously, “I think I can try it.”
He was seriously considering this.
Gu Yian didn’t know whether to cry or laugh.
The two of them walked for some distance until suddenly, under the street lights, they saw the captain of the law enforcement team, who had left suavely, walk towards them again.
Gu Yian looked at him with confusion.
The captain maintained the air that a captain should have, gave a fake cough, and said, “Could I trouble you two to open the gate and let us out?”
~~~
After the chaos of the first half of the night passed over, the second half of the night was calm and quiet, allowing Gu Yian and the others to have a good night’s sleep.
It was a text message from Gu Yian’s own phone that woke her on the second day.
She placed her phone on her abdomen when she went to sleep and so, in her dreams, she heard a crisp bell.
Ding!
Gu Yian was in a sleeping bag and this small space made the noise even harsher.
She warily opened her eyes.
Gu Yian shifted, came out of her sleeping bag, and then opened her phone to check.
She received a message from God’s Eye.
“Junior Investigator Gu Yian, please go to the local market on East Ring Road in the Special Zone under God’s Eye immediately, and investigate the cause of the disappearance of the street vendor, Huang Dasheng.”
Here came a mission.
Gu Yian looked at the others in the room.
The three players who had took watch for the second half of the night had already made themselves presentable, and their jackets were exchanged for the black uniforms belonging to investigators.
Tang Jiu was about the same as her, having crawled out of her sleeping bag almost at the same time to check her message.
The other two male players seemed to be sleeping like the dead in their sleeping bags and there was no movement at all.
Since there were more than 50 accidental deaths in this office building, Gu Yian was actually really afraid of this possibility.
She got up, walked over, and nudged the back of the person in the sleeping bag with her shoe.
The person in the sleeping bag shifted, dodging Gu Yian’s small attack.
The other person was no different, preferring to roll away in his sleeping bag and he wasn’t willing to come out.
Seeing that they were still alive, Gu Yian didn’t care anymore.
The three players who took watch during the second half of the night, upon seeing Gu Yian and the others wake, told them that Brother Yong, Lu Zize, and the talkative male player who got assigned to them returned at 7:00 AM and they should be in the director’s office right now.
A female player among the three players said, with jealousy, “They showered. I saw that they were wearing new clothes. But we’ll have problems with showering.”
The reality was that they didn’t lack water or a place to shower, but they lacked a change of clothes.
Gu Yian heard this and reassured her, “We completed the mission God’s Eye assigned, so it stands to reason that we’ll have a salary. Let’s go and talk to Brother Yong or Brother Lu and see if we can get our salary in advance.”
It would have been better if she didn’t bring up this subject because, once she did, the female player recalled, “Brother Lu’s bank card is with you.”
Gu Yian calmly replied, “I’ll be returning it to him soon.”
When she and Tang Jiu returned from freshening up, the other two male players finally got up. Those two got ready in five minutes and then the seven of them went towards the director’s office.
They were unfamiliar with the place the first time, but now they were familiar in their second time.
The players were now able to ignore the ever-present cameras and knocked on the door to the director’s office as if everything was a piece of cake.
After a moment, the door opened.
The one who opened the door was that talkative new male player who got assigned a task. He greeted everyone with exhaustion and then drifted over to sit on a chair, looking battered and worn.
Brother Yong sat in the seat of the director and standing behind him was Lu Zize.
Lu Zize was in the middle of pointing at some pictures on the computer screen, advising Brother Yong.
The entry of the players wasn’t quiet.
Brother Yong and Lu Zize raised their eyes and looked towards the players.
The first person who spoke was Lu Zize. He asked, “Did everyone receive the mission of investigating the disappearance of the street vendor?”
“Yes.”
“Yup.”
Everyone responded.
When Lu Zize saw this, he hesitated for a while before saying, “Hold on a moment before your investigation. I’ll first tell you how to obtain director level authority.”
Up to here, he sighed, “Yesterday, our Investigation Bureau lost Sister Man and Leader Liang. There were originally twelve of you newcomers, but in an instant it became eight. Brother Yong and I are both worried about how we could encounter an accident at any moment. It’s best to hand over director level authority to everyone as soon as possible.”
Brother Yong listened to Lu Zize and then stood up from his seat to walk to another seat at the side before sitting down. From this appearance, he was tacitly agreeing to Lu Zize’s decision.
Lu Zize explained, “The steps to obtaining director level authority are not hard. Everyone come over one by one and I’ll tell it to you one by one. There are a few places in our bureau that require authority to access. In particular, the place where we store weapons absolutely requires authority to prevent being attacked.”
When a male player heard the word weapons, his spirit shook and he quickly asked, “Brother Lu, what kind of weapons are there?”
“Guns.”
All the players had their own thoughts when they heard this word.
In this world, which currently did not have ghosts, guns could be said to be the most powerful weapon.
Lu Zize asked, “Who’s first?”
When he asked this, Tang Jiu and the others players’ first reactions were to look at Gu Yian.
Gu Yian was like a duck driven onto a perch, but she wasn’t ill-at-ease at all.
She walked straight and sat upright.
Gu Yian smiled faintly and handed over Lu Zize’s card.
“Brother Lu, thank you for your generosity.”
Lu Zize adjusted his glasses and avoided the card.
He replied, “I’ll continue to be generous. I’ll treat everyone to three meals today. Keep it first.”
Gu Yian felt the scorching gazes of the players behind her and recalled how they, as players, really had no money.
She thought about this for a while, succumbed to poverty, and kept the card.
The steps Lu Zize told her to obtain director level authority were not difficult, mainly just obtaining the dynamic password.
One hour later, the eight players were all trained in succession.
Lu Zize printed out documents obtained with director level authority and gave them to Gu Yian.
Everything was prepared and so the eight players embarked on the road to investigating the disappearance of the street vendor.
Everyone looked at the map first.
One player said, “Isn’t this East Ring Road market the one that Lu Zize brought us to yesterday? It’s pretty big.”
Gu Yian turned to the photo of the street vendor called Huang Dasheng.
Tang Jiu sidled over and peeked. “Woah, isn’t this one of the butchers who were arguing yesterday?”
Gu Yian asked curiously, “Was he the one who gave everyone meat?”
Tang Jiu shook her head. “It was the other one.”
She muttered, “It can’t be this coincidental? Don’t tell me the reason for this vendor’s disappearance is related to the butcher who argued with him yesterday?”
Gu Yian closed their documents and said, “We’ll know when we get there. Let’s go to the market first then. Come on.”
The investigation process was easier than Gu Yian and the others imagined.
First, they went to a restaurant close to the market to eat lunch. When the restaurant owner saw their uniforms, they immediately said they had done nothing, that they were good citizens, and then asked if they were investigators.
Gu Yian and the others happened to be missing information and so they asked the owner about the butchers in the market.
The owner said all they knew without reserve.
“I know there are just two butchers in there. One is low in price, the other is high in price. The low-priced meat tastes strange and I don’t go there often, so I normally buy stock from the high-priced one. I’m an honest person and I really don’t rip off my customers. Today, the high-priced butcher didn’t come and I didn’t go to the low-priced one. The sign he put out today said he had the same quality of meat as the other person, but I didn’t believe him.”
Gu Yian took advantage of this opportunity to ask if the butcher with the higher price often argued with the other butcher.
“They do! He frequently said the other person sold fake meat and its source was dubious. But that person said he lived in a remote place and that he sold quality meat raised by his family.”
After Gu Yian listened to the restaurant owner, she flipped through the documents in her hands.
It was a pile of investigation files for missing cases from previous years in the Investigation Bureau. In the end, none of the missing people had been found and they all became unsolved cases.
However, these missing cases all had one noteworthy point and it was that they were related to the butcher who sold quality meat.
Some of the missing people had contact with the butcher, some walked by near where the butcher lived.
But because the God’s Eye System didn’t capture any suspicious circumstances the investigation was discontinued in the end just like this.
Did Lu Zize give her this stack of documents on purpose?
Gu Yian contemplated this as she gave the documents in her hands to the other players.
“Everyone, take a look at these. Huang Dasheng must have met with disaster.”
The other players were actually waiting for Gu Yian to summarize everything, but she made them look at the documents.
Everyone hesitated before grabbing the documents.
After reading this, the expression of the seven players, including Tang Jiu, changed drastically.
Tang Jiu spat out the candy in her mouth and stuttered, “Hu-hu-human… meat?”
Gu Yian nodded, certain about this point.
The male players who cooked the meat dish yesterday collapsed under the table right away and madly vomited.
Gu Yian explained, “Our former investigators all found this point. In the end, they chose to give up because they had no evidence. If investigation members don’t give out the results of their investigation, then they can’t hand things over to law enforcement.”
“Don’t tell me we’re letting him get away with this?” One person asked.
Gu Yian replied, “This is the choice Lu Zize and Brother Yong are giving us. The situation is clear and we don’t need to investigate more. We have two choices right now, one is to go to the butcher’s house and search for evidence, and the other is to return and, as per how previous investigators handled this, temporarily set the case aside because we cannot find clues and let it become an unsolved case.”
Tang Jiu said decisively, “Let’s go and find evidence.”
This was the answer Gu Yian wanted to hear.
“You’re not afraid?” She asked.
Tang Jiu replied, “The previous investigators shelved this and they all died. We haven’t even seen them so, if we copy them, wouldn’t it be hard to escape death?”
Tang Jiu’s thoughts were also Gu Yian’s thoughts.
They had to rush into the tiger’s den.
When the other players heard this, their complexion was terrible, but they had to admit that Gu Yian and Tang Jiu’s thoughts were correct.
After arriving in this world, only investigation missions were triggered. If, by any chance, they couldn’t even complete this investigation mission, then wouldn’t it disappoint the God who was always watching them?
That new male player, who had worked through the entire night, had all his hopes dashed to pieces.
He said, “I only saw this yesterday and even pieced it together. I haven’t even slept yet. Do you guys understand this feeling?”
The others didn’t speak. They understood this male player’s difficulties, but they couldn’t not go!
The new player continued, “It’s only at this age that I learned I have such a strong sense of justice. In order to find evidence, I’m willing to break into any place.”
It was clear his words were ironic and he didn’t want to go at all.
But who in this place wanted to go?
When they thought of what they would see later, everyone felt uncomfortable.
Gu Yian turned the sage card in her hand and thought out loud, “The God’s Eye System is everywhere. So, why is it solely leaving alone the area the butcher lives?”
She wanted to call the restaurant owner over again to question, but saw that the owner was already holding a basin and puking.
They didn’t withhold their conversation just now from the owner.
Once the owner made the connection, he immediately figured out the start and end points. He had eaten that meat!
Fortunately, Gu Yian’s table was far away from other customers and those customers deliberately avoided their group in their uniforms, otherwise the customers wouldn’t need to eat either.
The restaurant owner saw Gu Yian’s gaze on him.
He shook. “Investigator, please wait a moment for me.”
He ran to the kitchen right away, carrying the basin.
After several minutes, the owner, who had washed his face again, ran over with respect.
“Please ask. Whatever you ask, I’ll definitely answer.”
Gu Yian thought a while and then asked, “Do you know if that butcher has any connections? Like a backer behind him?
The owner hesitated and then, immediately, he seemed to recall something. His eyes held hatred and he said through gritted teeth, “Let me ask my friend.”
He ran to contact someone.
Half an hour later, he told Gu Yian his results.
“That person is the black sheep of a large family. I heard that someone in the family has quite a status.”
Alright, they learned the reason why the God’s Eye System couldn’t detect anything.
Gu Yian looked at the case files in her hands. This so-called City of Innocence didn’t live up to its reputation.
From Liu Han, to Sister Man, to the butcher, and to the deaths of the previous investigators who only found the murderer.
The City of Innocence hid countless sins.
Perhaps this place ought to be called the City of Sins.
Ding!
It was a text message notification alert.
The players present took out their phones.
Gu Yian looked at the sender. It was God’s Eye.
“Junior Investigator Gu Yian, the investigation mission has concluded. Please return to the Investigation Bureau of the Special Zone under God’s Eye immediately.”
Gu Yian’s line of sight landed on the camera turning around on the table.
What did this mean?
They clearly investigated something but it was making them abandon this?
Who was interfering with the God’s Eye System?
Tang Jiu slapped the table and stood up. “It’s shielding him!”
The joy on the expressions of the other players were frightened off by Tang Jiu’s voice.
Some players secretly glanced at Gu Yian’s face and cautiously said, “Isn’t… this good? No one wants to go.”
Tang Jiu snorted coldly, “This isn’t the same. It’s covering up an executioner! If we let him off today, then he’ll continue committing crimes tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. How is this good!?”
She saw the other players disagreeing with her point of view, and so she looked at Gu Yian.
“Say something.”
But Gu Yian suddenly laughed.
A subdued person was laughing all of a sudden.
Tang Jiu was flustered by Gu Yian’s laugh and nervously asked, “Gu Yian, you didn’t go crazy, did you?”
“No.”
Gu Yian’s voice was calm.
Although she was smiling, there was no smile in her eyes.
“I finally understand how to clear this world.”
“God is playing a great game with us. What a great City of Innocence.”
“No, it’s a City of Sin.”
Since the players arrived in this game world, all sorts of cases swept over them.
This was said to be a City of Innocence, but it had so many sins.
As soon as the players heard that Gu Yian knew how to clear the game, they immediately became curious.
They eagerly looked at Gu Yian.
She didn’t hide this from them and said, “Overthrow the sins. Or, in other words, overthrow it.”
She pointed at the camera on the table.
This was the sin itself.
Everyone was blank for a few seconds and then came to a realization one after another.
Gu Yian meant to overthrow the God’s Eye System!
It sounded very unreliable.
The players unconsciously thought about Gu Yian’s words and, when they thought about it, they discovered that in these two days and one night they always encountered various cases. Sins were represented behind the cases and this made them inclined to Gu Yian’s speculation.
They weren’t really going to have a life and death struggle with the forces of evil, were they?
Veteran players all understood God’s Game. In most situations, the difficulty of a game was only in guessing the game itself.
If the players could figure it out, then the game was especially simple.
If the players couldn’t figure it out, then they would get stuck in the game.
Naturally, there were also unexpected situations. For example, the ghosts were too strong and, even if they knew they had to kill the ghosts to clear the game, they just couldn’t kill them.
The new players looked at the expressions of the veteran players and knew who to believe.
As a result, everyone’s opinions became unanimous with silent eye contact.
If they wanted to clear this game, then it was most likely they had to overthrow the God’s Eye System like Gu Yian said.
“This… is too hard, isn’t it?”
One player said, “Every one of our moves is seen by it. It rules this place and has deep-rooted foundations. Can it be overthrown overnight?”
Overthrowing the God’s Eye System was easier said than done.
It had become an inseparable part of people’s lives in this place.
Cameras were everywhere.
Sometimes people could solve everything with facial recognition.
“It’s just a special zone,” Gu Yian calmly stated.
The other players exchanged glances and then a male player said, “Think about it again, could the clear conditions be something else? For example, finding the murderer who killed so many investigators.”
Gu Yian glanced at him. It was the male player who really considered being a female player last night.
The more the male player thought about this the more he felt he was right and he analyzed with great interest, “Look, our hint is that there are no coincidences in this world. The deaths of those investigators are, without exception, coincidences; but this is too unbelievable. They must be linked to our new player hint. Brother Lu and Brother Yong are always talking about accidental deaths too. I think we can clear the game by finding that murderer.”
Gu Yian’s lips curved up and, looking at him, she asked, “You haven’t noticed that’s a death warrant?”
