Live Action Murder Mystery Chapter 34.1

Chapter 34.1

(Useless timeline?)
Before he went to sleep, Gu Liang set a timer on the electrical rice cooker to make himself a bowl of porridge for breakfast.
After sleeping for 4 hours, Gu Liang woke up to drink some of his porridge before he placed the remaining porridge into the refrigerator like he usually would.
Once he was done, he followed the card prompts and headed over to the backfield of Seventh Secondary School. The time was approximately 4:30 at dawn.
The reason why he specifically arrived an hour in advance was because he wanted to investigate the area beforehand.
Gu Liang went to the sports equipment room first. The place where they stored the baseball bats was quite obvious and Gu Liang found his murder weapon easily.
However, he did not pick up a baseball bat as he continued to search the entire sports equipment room instead.
Conforming to Gu Liang’s expectations, he managed to find an inventory check, and it stated: “End of the Week Sports Equipment Check. 5 August, Check Results, 27 baseball bats…”
Putting down the inventory check, Gu Liang went to count the number of baseball bats and there were only 26.
At that moment, Gu Liang already had an inkling in his heart.
Without taking the murder weapon, he went straight to the sand pit.
Gu Liang crouched down and used his hands to dig at the sand. Sure enough, he dug out a corpse.
The corpse happened to be lying on his stomach, so Gu Liang shifted aside the sparse hair on the back of his head and saw the distinct blood wound— which was formed by a baseball bat.
After adjusting the corpse back to its original position, Gu Liang searched the sandpit again. Without requiring much time, he found a baseball bat with a ball.
— Therefore, at the same time yesterday, this character Shopkeeper Meng had already killed Principal Zha once.
It was just that Boss Meng had been murdered afterwards and promptly lost the memories pertaining the last 24 hours, which resulted in the situation where he did not remember killing Principal Zha and was planning to act against him in the backfield once more.
If that was the case, would Principal Zha appear again?
The time ticked closer to 5:50 in the morning.
After Gu Liang hid behind a tree, he saw Principal Zha arriving at the sports field like he usually would, and he started to break into a run.
At that moment, his card started to vibrate violently. Gu Liang took it out to have a look and it wrote: “Warning! Alert! Boss Meng is about to violate the script requirements! Please follow the script and act accordingly this instant!”
Gu Liang ignored it; no matter how intense the vibrations were, he did not spare his card another glance.
Five minutes passed, and there was only five minutes to the plot where Boss Meng committed his murder. It was not enough for Gu Liang to run to the sports equipment room to take up the baseball bat and return back to the sports field to carry out the murder.
Hence, the system made the judgement that Gu Liang had violated the rules right away.
Two men in black emerged and brought Gu Liang away.
A third man in black also appeared, holding onto a baseball bat, preparing to carry out the murder in Gu Liang’s stead.
With an apathetic expression, Gu Liang allowed the men in black take him away.
— Come on, having to enter the small black room with each script, I’m already used to it. Who’s scared of whom?
— That’s not right, I lost my memories, this exact same scene might have already occurred yesterday.
Which means to say, this is my fourth time entering the small black room?

Concurrently, the news of Boss Meng breaking the rules was sent to every player in the instance via the card notification method.
Yang Ye had woken up early and he was in the kitchen making breakfast by then.
His card shook, causing him to pick it up to have a look, and he saw Gu Liang’s rule violation.
“This broadcast is a rule violation report, Boss Meng has violated his script requirements, he will receive his punishment immediately. In view of the numerous violations that the the actor of Boss Meng Player Gu Liang has, his current accumulative punishment time will be 1 hour.”
Yang Ye was busy cutting the green onions then.
A ray of daylight trickled into the kitchen, shining onto his tall and wide stature which was hunched over as he was prepping the ingredients.
When he read the card’s contents, Yang Ye’s eyebrows wrinkled together instantaneously. Although he frowned at the card for a long time, he kept his card away in the end, and continued cutting the green onions. Following, he cracked open an egg, added the flour and started making the scallion pancakes methodologically.
Not long after, the earthenware pot at the side began issuing gurgling noise. That was the spareribs and Chinese yam porridge he was cooking, where the spareribs had been boiled separately before they were steeped together with the yam inside the porridge. Now that the porridge was seething, Yang Ye lowered the heat and allowed it to continue simmering slowly.
Once he was done with breakfast half an hour later, he took a shower to wash off his sweat and made his way to the entrance of the coffin shop.
He did not know where Gu Liang went early in the morning, so he could only keep watch here and wait for him.
When Yang Ye finally waited till Gu Liang’s arrival, the rosy dawn was flourishing.
Rays of the morning light – coloured in orange and reds – sprinkled all over the streets, and Gu Liang trudged against and amidst the dawn’s light. Each step he took seemed to require some arduous effort on his part, but his expression was unchanged, still calm and unhurried.
— At this moment, he looked like a hero making his triumphant return.
Yang Ye walked towards Gu Liang in large strides and stretched his hand out to support his arm.
Gu Liang stood still. His long lashes were lowered and it took him a long while before he reacted by raising his head to gaze at Yang Ye.
His slack pupils slowly came into focus, allowing Gu Liang to recognise Yang Ye. He asked: “Why are you here?”
Yang Ye answered him in a low voice: “I saw the report. You—”
“I’m fine. Got used to it.” Gu Liang shook his head lightly.
Yang Ye furrowed his brows and studied him carefully.
His white T-shirt was completely drenched with sweat, sticking close to his skin and the colour of his flesh could be faintly perceived.
Owing to the inferior quality of his clothes, the hemming at his collar had frayed and it directly revealed a section of his collarbone. Drops of sweat welled in the gaunt of his clavicles, and in an unexpected, momentary feat… it harboured a slight sensuality that was incorrigible.
Yang Ye did not dare to look further; he lifted his eyes to observe Gu Liang’s face. His obsidian hair was soaked with sweat which made them stick to his forehead and the side of his temples, and his complexion was even paler than his usual norm, to the point where it was about to become transparent.
Simultaneously, Yang Ye could feel that despite the near lack of emotions of Gu Liang’s visage, he was actually afraid.
While Yang Ye was supporting his arm, Gu Liang had unconsciously placed his hand on Yang Ye’s, and his own arms were trembling non-stop as he borrowed Yang Ye’s arm to stand firmly.
If Yang Ye were to bring himself a step closer, he would sense that his entire body was shaking.
Yang Ye asked him softly, “I received the notification about your rule violation. Did… your script make you kill someone, but you refused to?”
Gu Liang lifted his eyes, fixing his tea-coloured irises and pupils on Yang Ye. Subsequently, he said in a placid tone: “And so you have guessed it.”
“Were you familiar with the person?” Yang Ye queried.
Gu Liang shook his head. “We’re not familiar. Why?”
Yang Ye’s mouth curved up at its corners, and that slightly deep smile was different from his typical careless and casual ones.
Half a beat later, Yang Ye quoted in a heavy voice: “Either you kill me personally, or get locked up in the small black room and allow the men in black to kill me in your stead. When you compare the choices with the inexorability of my death in mind, why put yourself through a trip into the small black room? Therefore, if you’re smart enough, you ought to choose to kill me directly. You even went on to talk about weighing the pros and cons, and that it was natural and normal in human relationships…
“Gu Liang, it turns out you have a mouth full of knives and a tofu heart.”
When Gu Liang heard those words, he froze for a momentarily before he smiled immediately.
The smile had some mockery, but it was also bitter and pained.
“For one, I merely felt that, why should I allow the system to lead me by the nose? Everything is fun and games, but when it comes to strenuous labour like killing someone, since the men in black will take the trouble on my behalf, I’ll let the men in black do them instead.
“Secondly, I’m doing this precisely because I’ve weighed the pros and cons. I’ve had PTSD once; I don’t want my old illness to relapse again, or have days where I’m being plagued by my nightmares every night. Therefore, I’m doing this purely because I am selfish.”
Yang Ye twisted his body to gaze at him. “Sleepless nights? Why do you have them? Because you blame yourself and feel guilty. This symbolises that you have a conscience. Why do you have to constantly put up an emotionless façade?”
Gu Liang went silent for a moment, before he said with a hoarse voice: “Yang Ye, you don’t understand, I’m really not a good person.”
“But I think you’re genuinely good.”
“……”
“Everything that happened this morning, is the best evidence.”
As Yang Ye stared at Gu Liang, who was frail after accepting his punishment, state of mind utterly downtrodden, he genuinely wished that he could give him a hug.
But he was afraid that the gesture would cross into ambiguous territory.
Hence, Yang Ye turned back around and half-knelt. He told Gu Liang: “Enough, let’s not talk about these first. Come, I’ll carry you back to my place.”
“Why… Why are you carrying me on your back?” Gu Liang found it a little strange.
“Just do it, pretend that I’m carrying a hero.”
“Hero?”
Gu Liang felt even stranger but his lips hooked up subconsciously, “I never knew that a person like me could still become a hero.”
Yang Ye simply said: “That’s enough, I know you’re struggling to walk. Next time, if there comes a day in some scenario where I become injured or go lame, it’ll be your turn to carry me on your back.”
Although Gu Liang declined to comment, he did lift his hands to hold onto Yang Ye’s shoulders, because he could not deny the fact that he was incapable of taking another step forward. “Thanks, but there’s no need for you to curse yourself.”
Yang Ye chuckled, holding onto Gu Liang’s legs before he stood up and piggybacked Gu Liang in the direction of his courtyard.
On the road, Gu Liang asked him: “Why are we going to your house? I made porridge, do you want to go to my house to drink it?”
Yang Ye returned a question: “Scallion pancakes and spareribs yam porridge, do you want to eat it or not?”
Gu Liang thought about it briefly before he nodded. “Eating.”
“Let’s go then. To my house it is.”
When all was said and done, Gu Liang was a matured man and there was definitely weight to him. However, he was undoubtedly weak from the torture and he did not have much strength to use when he was clinging onto Yang Ye’s neck. Hence, he started to slide down Yang Ye’s back after they had travelled a small distance.
The chafe of their clothes came with an audible noise, and Yang Ye felt a scalding sensation running down his back.
Yang Ye stiffened his back momentarily. Subsequently, when he caught sight of the hand that had drifted down to his chest, he allowed Gu Liang to slide to the ground naturally and gave him the barest support for his landing.
Then, while Gu Liang was still in the midst of processing what had occurred and standing stock still, Yang Ye turned around.
Taking advantage of his confused state, Yang Ye bent his waist and carried him up directly.
One of his hands was holding his waist while the other was holding his legs.
The was basically a standard princess carry.
Gu Liang frowned, feeling a touch awkward.
However, he heard Yang Ye murmur, “Close your eyes and rest for a while. We’ll be there soon.”
Gu Liang yawned, eyelids heavy to the point where he had trouble lifting them.
Thus, he looked at Yang Ye with squinted eyes. The sight of him carrying him and walking forward at a steady pace as the skylight shone on his face, invested his eyebrows with greater, unswerving determination.
In that instant, Gu Lang abruptly recalled the situation in their first scenario.
Although he looked nonchalant as he administered his poison in accordance with the script back then, he was honestly a little unsettled in his heart.
Yang Ye had given him a few words: “You are not a sinner. You are a victim.”
Those words had consoled Gu Liang back then.
Gu Liang believed that he was once a vile character, and he had caused the death of others.
For the same reason, he had paid a price measured in excruciating pain.
He was flogged by the feeling of guilt every day and night, causing him a long period of deep unrest. It was only when he accepted psychological treatment and took prescriptions with strong effects that he slowly improved little by little.
He did not want to experience those feelings ever again.
First and foremost, it did not matter if it was the oral insulin or the ‘Draw a Circle to Curse You’, all of these were products that were far-fetched from reality. And truth to be told, in those two instances, Gu Liang could essentially ascertain the fact that he was not the real murderer, which was why he followed the script requirements and carried out those actions.
But right now, asking him to hold a baseball bat and directly swing it into a stranger’s head, he was incapable of doing it.
He was afraid that this person would genuinely die, he was afraid that when he closed his eyes, he would see white brain matter and the fresh red blood.
Although Gu Liang suffered immense physical and mental torture when he was accepting his punishment in the small back room, his conscience had been smooth and steady from the very start. Hence, he felt no fear, and he even felt a little gallant as the punishment was just beginning.
But everything changed when the punishment started.
Gu Liang had been to the small black room thrice.
During the first time in the small black room, iron pieces were pasted on his ears and made him listen to the ginormous discordant of his own body. That sort of terrible noise gave rise to hallucinations and the wholehearted desire to commit suicide.
In his hallucination, he saw the middle-aged lady he had harmed and she seemed to have turned into a ferocious ghost that was demanding his life; that was the first layer of punishment.
The situation in the second instance was similar to the first, except the time was lengthened.
The third time was no longer the same.
This time around, the small black room remained pitch-black. Seated on a chair, Gu Liang had closed his eyes, up until light appeared before his eyes a while later.
When Gu Liang opened his eyes, he saw that middle-aged lady and her daughter.
This time around, the scene was neither blood-reeking nor filled with demons; there were no frightening circumstances.
By all comparisons, the images were quite soft and warm this time around.
For the entire one-hour duration, it was like a 3D movie where fragments of the middle-aged lady’s life together with her daughter were broadcasted to Gu Liang one by one.
As the lady was sending her daughter to school, she carried her on her back as she waded across a ditch; the lady saved her money for an entire year to buy her daughter the piano she liked; the daughter got 100 marks for two of her Primary Five examinations, and the lady made her favourite sweet and sour fish to reward her……
It was only at the last moment where the image abruptly changed— Gu Liang was faced with the appearance of two tombs and they belonged to the middle-aged woman and her daughter respectively.
On the screen, their two names were as bright as blood, piercing and bleeding into Gu Liang’s eyes.
At that moment, Gu Liang heard the broadcast.
“New Hell third layer, Residence of Names. Pain assessment, three stars. End of punishment.”
Gu Liang’s gaze cooled into indifference when he heard everything.
Truthfully speaking, the reason why he accepted the punishment so calmly was because he truly felt that he had committed a crime.
Conversely, he felt that he could relax a little after being punished.
The murder mystery game was a world that doled out punishments.
Gu Liang was becoming increasingly certain of this point.
At the very least, the murderer and the deceased had crimes.
When every scenario concluded, all of their crimes would be made known to the public.
Meanwhile, the players that escaped death by sheer luck faced the possibility of being forced to confront the crimes that they had committed before time and time again in the small black room.
When he saw the two tombs, Gu Liang could perceive that it was not the names of the middle-aged lady and her daughter that were carved into basalt; rather, it was writing all the crimes he had committed.
Everything was giving Gu Liang a reminder— of how terrible of a person he was.
After he exited the small black room, the small speck of self-pleasure he initially had in his heart disappeared completely.
Gu Liang found himself hysterical— where did he even find the audacity to have the thought that “his actions were a little gallant today’?
Much later, Gu Liang chanced upon Yang Ye who was waiting for him.
As Yang Ye was standing on the road that was strewn with morning light, he looked lofty and stalwart.
He told him, he felt that he was a hero.
Hero.
That word… How could I possibly be worthy of it?