Ever since joining this tour group, Lin Sanjiu had mentally cursed more times than she could count. Of course, cursing didn't solve any problems. Take now, for instance: no matter how much internal ranting she indulged in, outwardly, she was still a corpse.
"Wow, so the pocket dimension chose her as the victim, huh?" Feng Maomao remarked with a hint of admiration. "Miss Guide, you really made the right call adding her to the group. She's a magnet for drama."
The other eager faces crowding around nodded in agreement.
"The pocket dimension sure moves fast," another group member chimed in. "We finish lunch, and boom, there's a dead body. What's next? Time to gather clues and solve the case?"
Even in "death," Lin Sanjiu could still hear and see clearly, and her thoughts were as sharp as ever. Her "death" must have been an effect caused by the pocket dimension. She realized far too late that the dining room itself was part of the pocket dimension.
Now, it all made sense. Eating was undoubtedly a trigger to activate the pocket dimension. The moment lunch was over, the pocket dimension started. No wonder this tour group insisted on having lunch in this non-restaurant location.
The more Lin Sanjiu thought about it, the angrier she became.
What kind of mental illness was this? Were the Twelve Worlds Centrum people not satisfied with narrowly escaping death in random pocket dimensions outside? She had never seen anyone actively pay money to seek out danger!
"Her complexion looks awful, and there's foam at the corner of her mouth. It must be poison." A scholarly-looking male posthuman squatted down beside her, examining her with interest. His long face loomed alarmingly large in her field of vision. "That limits the method of poisoning to two possibilities. One is the bread she brought herself, but poisoning that seems nearly impossible. The other is the soup. But we all drank the soup."
Some of the group members voiced doubt, prompting Feng Maomao to recount in detail how Lin Sanjiu had dipped her bread into the leftover soup in the pot. Clearly, even death didn't stop her from being a source of embarrassment—or from regretting her choices. If only she hadn't taken that extra step with the bread, it might have been one of the actual tourists lying on the floor now.
"I need to remind everyone," the guide interjected with her trademark cheerful tone, "this is a Lightning Murder Mystery pocket dimension. The case is not complicated, but you only have ten minutes to solve it. After ten minutes, new content will begin."
Ten minutes?
The "dead" Lin Sanjiu suddenly felt her nerves spike. What if no one figured it out? What would happen to her then?
"What happens if we don't solve it..." Feng Maomao voiced the exact question Lin Sanjiu had on her mind.
"The victim will actually die," the guide explained with a pleasant smile, showing no concern for the very-much-alive feelings of the corpse on the floor. "That said, there's no need to panic. I'm very familiar with the style and mechanics of this pocket dimension and could be considered an expert at solving them. I'll provide the correct answer if time is running out."
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The group didn't seem worried at all. Even with the guide's assurances, Lin Sanjiu wasn't comforted. She had just met this guide today! What good was her guarantee?
"Oh, the pocket dimension is giving us clues and objectives now," the male group member announced, his gaze shifting toward a spot Lin Sanjiu couldn't turn her head to see. "It says, 'Identify the method of poisoning...' Huh? We're not finding the murderer?"
"First clue: the victim had no utensils. Recall the victim's actions while eating bread..." Feng Maomao frowned in thought, glancing back at the dining table.
The table, draped in a white cloth, held six sets of messy dishes; plates, crumpled napkins, and bits of leftover food rested neatly on six placemats. Only the spot set up temporarily at the serving side of the table remained completely empty.
"Second clue: the victim was a last-minute addition. She had no meal of her own on the table, nor was there originally a place set for her."
"Third clue: the victim produced a piece of compressed bread, which significantly expanded in size..." the male group member muttered. "I wasn't paying attention to her bread at all."
The victim herself was deep in thought. Lin Sanjiu couldn't even recall where she'd bought that bread. It had been no bigger than a piece of gum when compressed, but once unwrapped, it had puffed up into a soft, round loaf the size of a soccer ball, enough to feed two or three ordinary people.
However, since posthumans required far more energy than regular humans, that amount hadn't been excessive for Lin Sanjiu. In fact, the entire soccer-ball-sized loaf had already made its way into her dead stomach.
"Are there any other clues?" someone asked. "She ate the same soup we did, but we didn't die. Doesn't that mean the problem really was the bread?"
"But how could anyone have poisoned bread she pulled out of her own belongings?" another voice countered.
"Could it be that the poison had settled at the bottom of the pot and didn't fully dissolve? So, when she dipped the bread, it absorbed the poison?"
"No way. Even if that were true, the pot was scraped clean, and the last couple of bowls would've had to contain poison too," another group member, sitting close to the table, refuted. Ɍ𝘈₦ǒꞖË𝘴
While the group enthusiastically debated her untimely demise, Lin Sanjiu, who couldn't say a word, felt like she was going to explode from frustration. She knew her own actions better than anyone and had already figured out how the poisoning had occurred. But as a dead person, she couldn't speak, so she had no choice but to listen to the group's wild guesses.
Amid the lively discussion, Feng Maomao walked thoughtfully out of Lin Sanjiu's line of sight. Unable to turn her head, Lin Sanjiu could only infer from the sound of footsteps that Feng Maomao had returned to the dining table.
"Five minutes have passed," the guide reminded them.
"Miss Guide," a plain-looking gray-haired woman, standing in the far corner of Lin Sanjiu's field of vision, suddenly spoke up. "I have a Special Item that projects a person's mental responses as visual images after I ask them a question. Can I use it on the victim? She's not actually dead, is she? She must still be conscious."
"Yes," the guide replied hesitantly. "If it's for gathering clues, you can give it a try—"
She stopped short, falling silent.
Lin Sanjiu, sensing something was amiss, barely had time to process her unease when she heard the guide stammer, "Huh? Who... who are you?"
The dining room fell into complete silence. The guide's trembling voice, fragile as a spider's thread in the wind, was the only sound.
"I-I don't remember anyone like... like you being part of our group."
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