"I can't figure it out!"
If the first case could be considered a test of cleverness, the second case was outright unreasonable. The members of the travel group whispered among themselves for a long time, but none of them could make sense of who had killed Lin Sanjiu. Feng Maomao was the first to voice her frustration.
"'X, which killed the victim, is not inside the sealed room, but you can all see X right now,'" Feng Maomao said, reading the clue aloud again, her face full of agitation. She threw her hands in the air as if surrendering. "I don't get it! If it can be seen but isn't inside, it must be outside the window, right? But there's nothing out there, not even a cloud. I really don't know who killed her."
"This isn't solving a mystery; it's solving a riddle," muttered the scholarly-looking male participant. "And the other clue—'You already know the answer; it's right in front of you'—makes no sense either. Who here already knows the answer?"
Everyone shook their heads, each looking more bewildered than the last.
"Should I give a hint?" the tour guide asked, glancing nervously at the gray-haired woman. The latter had already made it clear: no one was allowed to reveal the answer before the tenth minute. For her, the longer Lin Sanjiu stayed "dead," the less her own disadvantage weighed against her.
"For those who don't know, this pocket dimension is considered one of the most dangerous places in Cloudwalk Heights. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is... it's not really a mystery-solving pocket dimension."
The guide's voice grew softer and softer, as if afraid that any careless word might inadvertently give away the answer.
"The first case is just a trap, designed to mislead people. It does use a clever trick, but in truth, this pocket dimension is a snare. Once someone solves the first case, they're hooked. If you approach the subsequent cases as traditional mysteries and try to solve them logically, no matter how smart you are, the end result will always be death."
"I don't get it. If we're not supposed to solve the cases as mysteries, then how are we supposed to solve them?" Feng Maomao asked, glaring at the guide.
"The truths of these cases wouldn't be found in any detective novel. They could only exist in the doomsday," the guide said, glancing at the gray-haired woman. "I—I can't say more. There are three minutes left until the next case begins."
The gray-haired woman let out a humorless chuckle.
"Three minutes? That's plenty." She was now standing by the dining table, looking down at Lin Sanjiu's lifeless body. Grabbing the corpse, she yanked it off the table. "She thinks disabling my items means I can't deal with her?"
"Wait, you can't harm the victim in any way while in the pocket dimension!" the guide shouted. Under the gray-haired woman's icy stare, she meekly added, "Th-those are the rules of the pocket dimension..."
"Who said I was going to harm her?" the gray-haired woman retorted. "Why don't you explain the other reasons why this pocket dimension is so dangerous, Miss Guide?"
As she spoke, she drew a long black iron chain from her waist. Wrapping it tightly around Lin Sanjiu's lifeless body, she pulled it taut with a vicious yank. The chain bit deeply into the flesh, binding her limbs securely.
"Well, uh... while you can't harm the victim physically," the guide murmured under the watchful eyes of the group, "the victim is completely defenseless in every other way within the pocket dimension. For instance... you can tie them up, or even strip them of all their belongings."
The implications of this hit someone in the group immediately.
"Given that, who would bother solving the case or saving the victim?" a mustached man in the group asked. "If you rob the victim clean and let them die, you'd get a tidy sum of unexpected gains without any risk to yourself." 𝙍а₦Ȏ𐌱Ё§
"Plenty of people have thought that way before..." The tour guide looked at Lin Sanjiu, now tied up like a parcel, her face grim. "And plenty of them have died because of it."
"I get it," Feng Maomao said after some thought. "What goes around comes around. When it's your turn to be the victim, who's going to save you? Unless you can guarantee that the pocket dimension will never choose you as a victim before everyone else is dead—oh! I've figured out the answer!"
Her chubby cheeks flushed pink with excitement, but just as she opened her mouth to speak, her eyes met the gray-haired woman's cold gaze. Feng Maomao clamped her mouth shut, clearly flustered. She stood awkwardly for a moment before blurting, "Is it time yet?"
The gray-haired woman gave the chain one final check before crouching down in front of Lin Sanjiu's corpse.
"This isn't a Special Item," she said with a faint smirk, "but one of the strongest restraining tools from the Munitions Factory. Even if you wake up, you won't be able to break free."
Lin Sanjiu's lifeless eyes stared upward, her head limp against the ground.
"Being picked as the victim twice in a row—well, that's just bad luck," the gray-haired woman said icily, straightening up. Without looking back, she called out, "You can report the answer now."
"I'll do it!" Feng Maomao stepped forward eagerly, her round face practically glowing. "I've got it figured out. Since the person dies in this sealed room, you could say the sealed room itself, the pocket dimension, killed them, didn't it? The answer has been right in front of us all along. We've always known it, haven't we?"
The scholarly-looking man blinked, stunned. He wasn't alone; several group members broke into murmurs of surprise.
"Not inside the room, yet we can see it?"
"The sealed room can't be inside itself. Can you be inside your own stomach?" Feng Maomao explained with conviction. "Think about it, if the sealed room is X, then we've been staring at X the whole time!"
"Definitely not a normal mystery..." someone muttered. "If this were in a detective novel, the readers would tear the book to shreds."
As the one holding the answer, the tour guide immediately received multiple questioning looks. She nodded nervously, her gaze flitting to Lin Sanjiu on the ground. "Ah... she's... she's waking up."
For the second time, Lin Sanjiu came back to life with a sharp gasp, her eyes blinking rapidly as light returned to them. The gray-haired woman immediately took a cautious step back, readying herself for combat. Even bound hand and foot, Lin Sanjiu still had her Higher Consciousness. Binding her only reduced her threat level significantly; it didn't eliminate it.
But Lin Sanjiu made no move to attack.
Fixing her gaze on the gray-haired woman, her first words after reviving were, "Do you really think I was chosen as the victim again because of bad luck?"
The gray-haired woman frowned. Before she could even form the words, "What do you mean?" her legs buckled beneath her, and with a loud thud, she collapsed to the ground.