Chapter 37

Jiang Xiao, who had been missing for so long, suddenly appearing in the room would make anyone bewildered.

Since learning of Jiang Xiao’s disappearance, Bo Xiting hadn’t returned to his room, let alone added fuel to the fireplace. Thus, the once-burning flame had gradually died out, leaving only a few weak, dancing embers that flickered on the profile of Jiang Xiao’s face as he sat right beside it. In the descending darkness and the leaping red firelight, his usually handsome features seemed to take on a mysterious, ghostly allure.

Bo Xiting sized him up for a moment, confirming this was indeed Jiang Xiao and not an impostor, and said: “Where did you go?”

“Something came up, I had to leave.” Jiang Xiao said succinctly. “That’s not important.”

“What’s important… is this knife.”

Bo Xiting frowned at him, anger flaring at Jiang Xiao’s dismissive words—

Do you know how worried I was about you?

Do you know I almost drove out to search for you?

Do you know how, during this time, I…

He didn’t speak for a long time, letting the dull ache in his chest burn freely, only to be forcefully, bit by bit, suppressed back down, until his voice returned to its previous coldness.

“This is my business. I have no reason to tell you.”

Jiang Xiao was not surprised by this answer at all.

But he was indeed astonished by this result.

The first person he sought out after escaping was Bo Xiting.

Based on the current situation, this person’s suspicion was the smallest and he posed no danger.

After sneaking into Bo Xiting’s room, he had planned to just wait quietly. However, the temperature was too low late at night, and Jiang Xiao, wearing only pajamas, wanted to find fuel to restart the fireplace. Unexpectedly, while rummaging, he stumbled upon the missing small knife inside the cabinet—the film crew’s prop knife.

The knife was just placed in the cabinet, wrapped in a plastic bag.

Jiang Xiao had always thought Wen Xu took the knife.

Now things were different. Bo Xiting’s suspicion had instantly skyrocketed, and the case had become murky once again.

What baffled Jiang Xiao most was: Why did Bo Xiting take this knife?

If he wasn’t the murderer, there was no need to take this crucial piece of evidence.

“Senior, secretly taking the murder weapon is very dangerous.” Jiang Xiao pursed his lips slightly, emphasizing his tone. “It could even directly make people suspect you’re the murderer, and you have no evidence to prove you’re not—”

“You are my evidence.”

Bo Xiting said coldly.

“How else do you want me to prove it?”

Jiang Xiao was silent for a moment, then said: “Senior, we’ve already broken up. And you don’t seem to like me much anymore, plus you’re going abroad to study… Why did you choose that moment?”

Choosing to kiss him during the blackout, so furtively, was completely unlike Bo Xiting’s style.

Besides, just before the blackout, while playing the game, Jiang Xiao had given Bo Xiting the chance for a Dare, but Bo Xiting had refused.

Bo Xiting: “…”

After a lengthy silence.

Bo Xiting: “I just felt like doing it, okay?”

Jiang Xiao: “……..”

As expected of you.

Jiang Xiao pondered again, then hesitantly asked: “You didn’t think the knife was mine, so you took it away, did you?”

Bo Xiting fell silent again.

Jiang Xiao had only been speaking offhandedly. Seeing that Bo Xiting actually didn’t deny it, he didn’t know what to say for a moment.

“You didn’t think… this knife was the actual murder weapon, did you?”

“I don’t know.” Bo Xiting said. “At the time, my attention was entirely on you. I didn’t pay much attention to outside events. But your behavior at that moment was indeed very suspicious.”

“Your finger was cut by a knife, leaving bloodstains on your clothes. But I searched your luggage and found no knife, so I suspected you had hidden it somewhere.”

“And then, on the second night…”

“Wait,” Jiang Xiao suddenly noticed a blind spot. “How did you know there was blood on my clothes? I had clearly already thrown them into…”

Remembering the attendant said the clothes were clean, Jiang Xiao was shocked again. “You washed my clothes?”

Bo Xiting responded with a faint sound of agreement.

Jiang Xiao’s voice was a bit stiff. “Then… thank you.”

No other man had ever washed clothes for Jiang Xiao. He had learned to take care of himself since he was little; he always washed his own clothes.

He never expected that in a game, a man would wash clothes for him.

“At the time, I thought you were preparing to commit murder, and that the blackout might also have been arranged by you.” Bo Xiting continued. “So I rushed over to kiss you during the blackout precisely to deprive you of the conditions to commit the crime.”

Jiang Xiao broke out in a cold sweat just listening.

Bro… your thinking was way too thorough.

“That night when I came into the room, I saw your expression was a bit unnatural, as if you were hiding something. So I searched the storage room and found this knife.” Bo Xiting’s gaze shifted to the small knife. “Although I didn’t know if this knife was actually yours, to be safe, it was better to bring it back.”

“What were you planning to do with it?” Jiang Xiao asked again.

Bo Xiting lifted his eyelids. “This knife isn’t yours.”

“Of course it’s not mine!” Jiang Xiao nearly exploded. “You were kissing me at the time! How could I have gone and killed someone else!”

Bo Xiting: “Now you admit it was me at the time.”

Is that the point?! Jiang Xiao was utterly exasperated. He didn’t know what was going on in these gay guys’ heads, only wanting to kiss and cling all day, so sticky and gross. They’d broken up but were too proud to ask to get back together, yet still resorted to forced kisses. Wasn’t their possessiveness a bit too strong?!

Being gay? Never in this lifetime!

Bo Xiting: “I originally thought you orchestrated everything. But knowing your eyes can’t see, I’m certain the murderer is someone else.”

“Even if you wanted to set up a delayed device, it would be very difficult for you to complete alone while blind. If you sought help, the risk would be enormous.” Bo Xiting said.

Jiang Xiao nodded repeatedly. “You’re very teachable.”

“This knife is Qin Guan’s.” Jiang Xiao thought for a moment and told Bo Xiting about the props room. “Maybe he wanted a knife for self-defense, so he brought the key and retrieved this knife. That night, when he was stabbed, perhaps some instinct made him turn around and stab the murderer.”

“It’s a pity I didn’t search the body right away. Otherwise, I might have found that key.”

The key was now the crucial physical evidence.

Once the key was found, the murderer’s identity would be a foregone conclusion.

Bo Xiting pondered for a moment, then shook his head slightly and said:

“You guessed wrong. There was no key on Qin Guan’s body.”

“The first person to touch the corpse was Wen Xu. Under everyone’s watchful eyes, he didn’t rashly search the body. If he wanted to take something from the clothes, it would have been seen clearly.”

“I was the second person to touch Qin Guan. There was no key on him.”

Jiang Xiao was stunned. “Are you sure? Maybe the key was hidden in some concealed pocket that you didn’t check.”

“I’m sure.” Bo Xiting said coldly. “I flipped him over like a pancake, back and forth, afraid he had some clue about the murderer left on him.”

When Bo Xiting mistakenly thought Qin Guan was killed by some delayed projectile knife fired by Jiang Xiao, he had nervously and meticulously searched Qin Guan’s body.

He found no evidence proving Jiang Xiao was the murderer.

“Then it’s also possible he retrieved the knife and immediately returned the key to the butler?”

Jiang Xiao thought of another possibility.

If Qin Guan really intended to do something with that knife, to avoid being traced back to the prop knife, he would definitely return the key first, creating the illusion he had done nothing.

“Impossible,” Bo Xiting said again.

Jiang Xiao: “Why not? Qin Guan went out several times that day to get the first-aid kit for me. He had plenty of opportunities to interact with the butler then.”

“I mean, he didn’t have the opportunity to get the key from the butler.” Bo Xiting said. “Before he arrived, I was already upstairs. From the moment he entered the hotel until he met up with you, I was watching the whole time. He never took any key.”

Jiang Xiao: “…”

Jiang Xiao: “If I remember correctly, you should have entered the room after Qin Guan, right? So before that, you were just… staying in the upstairs corridor the entire time?”

This guy was just too weird! Just like last night, doing nothing but wandering the corridor, practically a human surveillance monitor!

“I arrived early.” Bo Xiting’s tone was indifferent. “Just wanted to see how many new boyfriends you’d made during this time.”

The jealousy of gay guys… truly terrifying.

Jiang Xiao vaguely felt that Bo Xiting wasn’t as pure and innocent as he appeared, maybe even a bit of a closet pervert. But saying that would probably lead to bad things, so he swallowed the words.

But this way, the deduction that Qin Guan had stabbed the murderer with the knife seemed to have hit a dead end.

Perhaps this knife wasn’t the prop knife after all.

But it was just too suspicious. It was clearly a breakthrough point for the deduction, yet he had no other way to prove this knife had ever stabbed the murderer.

“Since you want to know, why not just ask the butler?” Bo Xiting asked. “It should be a simple matter.”

Jiang Xiao had kept his head lowered the whole time, preventing Bo Xiting from seeing the expression on his face.

As if going through a complex internal struggle, Jiang Xiao finally spoke:

“That attendant is suspicious.”

“I suspect… he’s one of Wen Xu’s men.”

Bo Xiting’s ever-unchanging expression finally showed a flicker of emotion at this.

“You’re finally willing to believe that Wen Xu isn’t actually dead?”

“What?” Jiang Xiao asked, stunned. “You already knew…”

“No one in this world commits suicide for no reason, let alone him jumping down just to frame me.” Bo Xiting said. “I never thought he was dead. But I had no evidence. You wouldn’t have believed me.”

Wen Xu’s death indeed had strong points of doubt. After all, no one saw a corpse. Although falling off a cliff signified no possibility of survival.

But would Wen Xu die so easily? Even if he did, Bo Xiting might not necessarily be the culprit.

What exactly was Wen Xu trying to do by faking his death?

“I have evidence.” Jiang Xiao said softly. “Wen Xu indeed isn’t dead.”

“This hotel has a basement. From the basement, there’s a hidden door leading out. It’s locked. Although it can’t be opened, I think…”

“That door can lead outside.”

Wen Xu came back through the hidden door and, disguised as Jiang Mu, imprisoned him in the basement.

Because the basement had no windows, it was impossible to hear the wind against the glass like in other rooms. That’s why Jiang Xiao felt the room was unusually quiet.

Because the basement’s temperature was lower than other rooms, the fireplace burned non-stop, and it wasn’t ventilated, that’s why it felt so hot.

Besides Wen Xu and the butler/attendant, no one else knew about the basement’s existence. Naturally, no one could come to his rescue.

Bo Xiting’s brow furrowed almost imperceptibly, and he quickly grasped the implication of those words.

“He came back, and locked you in the basement?”

Jiang Xiao nodded. “That’s right, but…”

Bo Xiting stood up and headed for the door.

“Hey! What are you doing? I’m not finished yet.” Jiang Xiao hurriedly called out to him.

“Kill him.” Bo Xiting said coldly.

In the darkness, his dark green eyes held an extremely icy emotion. The muscles in his arms tensed, as if suppressing fury.

“Don’t go yet.” Jiang Xiao said. “I used sleeping pills to put him to sleep. We’ll have time to question him later.”

Although Jiang Xiao didn’t think questioning Wen Xu would yield any concrete information.

This guy looked like a gentleman, but his actions were even crazier than Jiang Mu’s, which frankly scared Jiang Xiao a little.

But Bo Xiting was clearly not to be dissuaded. He strode towards the door, his fingers already touching the handle—

“Senior, look, what’s this?” Jiang Xiao asked.

In his hand, he held that small, round ball.

Bo Xiting turned back, glanced at it, and his gaze froze.

Jiang Xiao hadn’t noticed the shift yet and said: “I found this under the bed in Jiang Mu’s room. It feels like it might be a clue.”

Bo Xiting stared at the iron ball and said: “A clock’s pendulum.”

Jiang Xiao: “?”

Jiang Xiao asked, puzzled: “Why would this thing… be in Jiang Mu’s room?”

Bo Xiting: “He installed a surveillance monitor inside a clock. To conceal it, he hid it behind the ball.”

Jiang Xiao: “So he definitely had surveillance?”

So that’s it. That mysterious software on his computer was probably the monitoring program.

Then, the reason Jiang Mu sneaked into the room was to retrieve the surveillance device?

That was Jiang Xiao’s previous line of thought.

But now, Jiang Xiao suddenly felt there was a flaw in this reasoning.

Why would Jiang Mu go through so much trouble—causing a blackout, sneaking in secretly—just to retrieve a surveillance device?

Something still didn’t quite fit.

At that very moment, an extremely shrill fire alarm suddenly sounded from outside—

“Fire! Everyone, run!” The attendant shouted.

Thick smoke billowed, spreading down from the fourth floor.

How could there suddenly be a fire?

Jiang Xiao’s heart leaped violently. A dense premonition of danger told him that if he didn’t solve this mystery soon, he might never be able to leave.