Xu An sent him the photo he had just found. “The rest was deleted too thoroughly. We’ll talk after the show ends. Right now, the only connection between Xu Haokong and Xue Chengge that’s left is that one photo.”
His strongest Little Sparrow could capture anything currently posted online that was visible to the public, not limited to Xu Haokong’s phone.
However, anything the person themselves had deleted might touch on privacy laws, and some methods might not align with legal procedures. He wouldn’t track or search during the show—netizens could latch onto the smallest mistake and blow it up, which would just invite trouble.
“Go check on Hu Juan first,” Fang Si Ting said.
“Why’s that?”
Among these guests, that guy was pretty unremarkable.
“Xiao Fen’s expression was a bit unnatural when he saw him.”
Fang Si Ting was somewhat worried about last night’s events. “This guy has a prior record, and Madam Lu arranged for him to be in this episode. It looks like she’s targeting him.”
He needed to guard against potential problems.
Xu An nodded to show he understood.
Ordinary people like that had no awareness of keeping their movements secret, so checking them out was straightforward.
Only then did Fang Si Ting open the photo he had sent.
The main subject of the photo was an ordinary person taking a nightscape selfie on a balcony, but in her background, not far away in the opposite hotel building, two fully naked men sat facing each other on a lit-up room’s bed. Their expressions were relaxed and pleased, the curtains undrawn. After Xu An’s processing, even the cigarettes in their hands were clear, and the scene on the bed was utterly chaotic.
It was Xu Haokong and Xue Chengge.
Fang Si Ting found it strange. If it was this, why was Xue Chengge so scared?
The internet exploded immediately.
【What’s going on! Those two? Lovers? One pear tree pressing a begonia?】
【Don’t be so rigid. It could be the begonia pressing the pear tree.】
【LMAO upstairs.】
【Don’t make me see this, it’s eye-searing!】
【I puked. Director Xu married three or four wives before, all ending in divorce. Could it be because he likes men? If so, can he stop harming innocent people?】
【No wonder his relationship with his own son is so bad.】
【Xue Chengge’s different—he’s straight-up single and adopted a boy.】
【Same-sex marriage has been legal these past couple years. Why hide it? Just lock it down and stop hurting other clueless people.】
【Both single right now, no legal issues, but morally? I can’t get past it. Thirty years age gap… I can’t watch any of their dramas anymore.】
【Look at how that Xue guy was desperately defending the Xu guy earlier. Turns out it’s their ‘deep spousal love.’】
【Nope, I need to chill. Gonna go curse them out on Weibo.】
The internet was a storm of shock, but the guests hadn’t seen the photo and were completely unaware. They chatted and laughed as they entered the restaurant together.
Today, Yan Feng, Wang Heng, and Xu Haokong, who had been “knifed,” were taken to specific rooms on the fourth floor of the mansion to spend the rest of the episode. Their meals and daily needs were handled by dedicated servants, and even the room keys were kept by special staff.
Xue Chengge’s heart was uneasy. At that moment, he wished he could just faint and be done with it.
In just one short day, first Madam Lu and Yan Feng’s affair was “accidentally” exposed, and now his thing with Xu Haokong.
It felt like an invisible hand was manipulating everything.
And that hand knew their secrets, using these staged fake murders one after another to ruin their reputations.
Who could it be?
The first person he thought of was his own partner. Damn it—if he hadn’t given him the role in Spring Mountain Fox Fate last year, with his nobody status, how could he have raked in fans and landed follow-up gigs?
Then he thought of Mu Qiu, but he didn’t have the capability.
Kong Qin?
Looking at that innocent, worldly-naive face across from him, it didn’t seem possible for him to have that kind of scheming.
Lin Xiu?
She had a bad temper and was hard to get along with, but they weren’t in the same circle. She probably wouldn’t know the details that well.
Besides, she rarely meddled in others’ business.
Xue Chengge went through the guests one by one, eliminating them. Truth be told, he wasn’t that close to most of them.
Suddenly, his eyes met someone else’s.
Xiao Fen noticed him staring and slowly gave him a smile.
Shy, bashful, with a cautious attempt to please and a touch of unease—so… pure.
He didn’t notice the silver dining knife in Xiao Fen’s hand gleaming with sharp cold light under the massive crystal chandelier overhead.
Xue Chengge vaguely recalled something.
This person’s change was so drastic that it was hard to connect this face with another one.
In the entertainment industry’s fame-and-fortune battlefield, he saw too many people every day.
Or rather, this was just an unremarkable grain of sand in his colorful life.
But now, that grain of sand was starting to irritate his eyes.
March 17th.
He remembered. That day.
He had originally planned to endure the discomfort and watch the Pursuit Team’s deductions to identify the final real culprit guest, but now it seemed unnecessary.
“Everyone.” He stood up.
Once all eyes in the room were on him, he slowly said, “Regrettably, three guests have been eliminated today in a row, and one guest has become the murderer.”
“It’s not certain who the real culprit is,” Tang Shen said.
“What’s going on? Didn’t they admit it?” Li Fei asked, puzzled.
“We ‘interrogated’ them harshly before dinner, but they knew nothing about the murder method,” Tang Shen said helplessly. “Would you arrest someone like that?”
Kong Qin gave an embarrassed smile. “I really can’t figure it out.”
He wanted to confess too, but the double-sealed room was just too tricky.
“Back to square one,” Zhong Jinghuan spread his hands. “Who knifed Director Xu, making a sixty-year-old man sleep naked on the floor, broadcast live to the whole web? Way too disrespectful to elders and kids.”
“I know,” Xue Chengge said with an arrogant smile, giving Xiao Fen a contemptuous glance. “I know who knifed Director Xu.”
“Spill it,” Li Fei said excitedly. “So what’s with the sealed room?”
Someone had actually cracked it—impressive.
“Tomorrow at 10 a.m., I’ll tell you the answer in the gym.”
“Come on, do you actually know or not?” Li Fei whined in disappointment.
“Of course I know, and I already have evidence.”
It was just exposing dirt—who was afraid of whom?
Xiao Fen seemed oblivious, eating on his own without sparing him a single glance.
Xue Chengge thought he was scared and smirked smugly to himself.
After dinner, he caught up to Fang Si Ting. “I just threw out that statement. The real culprit will definitely come for me tonight. I need your protection.”
“You’re underestimating the killer,” Fang Si Ting said, not wanting to tangle with him.
“Believe me, it’s all that real culprit’s doing—framing and slandering!” He made one last struggle. “Those things online aren’t reliable. They’re fake, synthesized.”
“How do you know we found something online?” Fang Si Ting asked.
Xue Chengge had only been hoping against hope that Xu An might not have found anything. Otherwise, why hadn’t he stated it outright in front of everyone and the cameras earlier?
But now it looked like they really had found it.
“What did you find?” Xue Chengge asked gravely.
“About you, and Xu Haokong,” Fang Si Ting added. “Honestly, it was hidden pretty deep—took some effort to get a lead.”
He watched Fang Si Ting leave with a knowing look, feeling like all the blood had drained from his body as he slumped against the stairwell.
【Stop struggling and making excuses. I feel sick just looking at your face now.】
【Did this episode poke a gossip hornet’s nest? One case, one scandal—melon-eaters in ecstasy.】
【The whole world is witnessing their old-young romance. Such a ‘touching love’ story.】
【Xu Laodeng’s late-life reputation ruined.】
Brother Ka walked over and helped him up, joking, “Brother Xuecheng, you can’t be this weak.”
Xue Chengge glared at him viciously and whispered, “This is all your doing!”
Brother Ka was slightly stunned.
“I’m done for… you know that, right? Him too—Haokong. We’re both ruined by you…”
He shoved the man away and staggered upstairs.
Brother Ka stared at his empty hands, baffled.
It was just a show. Even with such a fake murder scene, he got this scared?
Brother Ka recalled that Xue Chengge had been whispering with Fang Si Ting earlier, so it was easy to guess the Pursuit Team had found something.
But everyone had been having fun earlier, just joking about a pair of smuggled panties. It was a variety show—better to keep it light and happy.
Could there be some unknown story behind it?
Suddenly, he seemed to think of something, and his expression changed.
He wanted to chase after Xue Chengge and ask, but the other had already gone upstairs to his room.
Fang Si Ting stopped at the entrance to the living room and quietly told Xu An, “Keep an eye on things these next couple days.”
Xu An nodded knowingly.
He had startled the snake on purpose to throw him off balance.
He took his phone into the bathroom, finished using the toilet, and when he returned to the living room and pocketed his phone, he gave Fang Si Ting a subtle nod.
He had already hacked into Xue Chengge’s and Xu Haokong’s phones. Now it was up to their moves.
In the living room, the other guests and the Pursuit Team stood or sat in a circle, eagerly starting to recap and deduce the day’s events.
“Assistant Yan was randomly knifed by Director Xu. Evidence: disguise clothes in his closet from his escape attempt,” Li Fei said, placing a chess piece on the board and adding another. “Director Xu was knifed in his room. Preliminary confirmation: Kong Qin isn’t the killer.”
“Didn’t Madam Lu say earlier she used Young Master Lu’s phone to lure Brother Fen, wanting Assistant Yan to knife Brother Fen? How’d it end up as Director Xu?” Zhong Jinghuan couldn’t figure it out.
“I’ll just tell the truth. Last night, I did go to the Tea Room because of Lu Jin’s text, but the person I met wasn’t Lu Jin—it was Yan Feng. I got worried about being spotted and hurried back to my room. I don’t know what happened after,” Xiao Fen said, showing his phone with the message from Lu Jin’s number.
“You actually went,” Zhong Jinghuan exclaimed, nearly blurting out that the sealed-room mastermind was him, but lacking evidence.
There was no such message in Lu Jin’s phone—Madam Lu had deleted it after sending. Now confirmed, he inexplicably felt much lighter.
Xiao Fen had gone thinking he could meet him.
Fang Si Ting sat on the nearby sofa, hands crossed over his chest, silent.
“You went to the Tea Room—who knows if you knifed Assistant Yan and framed Director Xu,” Brother Ka sneered.
“Brother Ka, you got no evidence I knifed him either, right?” Xiao Fen laughed.
“Don’t throw around baseless suspicions. Let’s deduce based on the evidence we have,” Lin Xiu said. “Evidence first.”
“But whether by physical ability or anything else, Assistant Yan could’ve easily knifed Director Xu. How could he get counter-killed?” Ou Yu’s mild face flashed with thought.
“As Inspector Fang said, willing to meet secretly in the dead of night means they knew each other before—easy to strike when the other’s guard is down,” Lu Jin said. “What’s so puzzling about that?”
Ou Yu sensed that in this episode, Lu Jin’s attitude toward him had shifted.
There seemed to be a faint hostility now.
The change was subtle, noticeable only to those involved.
But Ou Yu had never cared much about Lu Jin’s opinions. Sensing the distance, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
