Chapter 99: Double Sealed Room!

It could be said that this time, there were no clues at all.

Fang Si Ting gazed from afar into his clear eyes, smiled faintly, then pursed his lips reservedly. He looked at the crowd and analyzed, “Those cigarette butts, aside from misleading our attention to Madam Lu, had an even more important role: creating a sealed room.”

Xiao Fen shook his head lightly.

He had it backwards.

“The cigarette butts are fake, and the person wearing the clothes might be fake too.” Fang Si Ting asked Matthew again, “The figure in the khaki clothes you saw last night—what exactly did they look like?”

Matthew thought for a moment. “They were skinny, about this tall, with a pink towel wrapped around their head, like they’d just washed their hair. They were wearing a long khaki garment—you called it a trench coat, which is very possible. I didn’t see their face clearly. She came out from the tea room side and ran up those stairs.” The more he spoke, the clearer his memory became.

Everyone came out of the tea room and looked in the direction of the stairs he pointed to. It was the west side of the manor.

“Who lives on that side?” Tang Shen asked.

The expressions of a few people in the crowd changed.

Butler Zhuo said, “Excluding the vacant rooms, from left to right: Mr. Xue Chengge, Mr. Xu Haokong, Mr. Jiao Pengxing, and then Miss Li Fei, Miss Lin Xiu, and Miss Wang Xue.”

“Obviously, it’s one of the three ladies who committed this crime.” Brother Ka said.

Xiao Fen said, “Don’t forget you live there too, Mr. Jiao Pengxing.”

“What do you mean by that?” Brother Ka’s face darkened.

“Just reminding you not to target the ladies like that.”

“Xiao Fen, do you think a man could have done it too?”

Xiao Fen felt a chill on the back of his neck. He turned to follow the gazes landing on him. Fang Si Ting had just fished a tissue smeared with lipstick out of the trash can by the second-floor west side railing. There was a hint of smugness on his face.

He’d caught the little tail.

Xiao Fen grinned brightly. “Inspector Fang, why are you trying to trap me again? How would I know about something like that?”

“It couldn’t have been a man.” Brother Ka said discontentedly. “Could Matthew have seen wrong?”

“No clear view of the face—anything’s possible.” Tang Shen said. “Many of you here are celebrities from the entertainment industry. Cross-dressing comes naturally, so it’s very possible a tall, skinny man wore Madam Lu’s trench coat, disguised himself, and ran back to his room from the tea room.”

“Whether it’s the cigarette butts, the traces in the bathroom, the missing clothes from the wardrobe, or the connection to Assistant Yan, the killer initially misled us into thinking it was Madam Lu. But in fact, it’s more likely some cunning, deceitful, particularly pretty man used this to escape responsibility.” Fang Si Ting gestured with the napkin in his hand.

Xiao Fen chuckled inwardly. Fine, deduce all you want—but why throw in the flattery?

“We need to search these rooms now.”

Fang Si Ting began assigning personnel. Besides their five vice squad officers, quite a few guests joined in. While supervising each other, they could also assist the vice squad officers in solving the case.

Six teams began searching simultaneously. Less than two minutes in, they found that the door to the second room from the stairwell wouldn’t open no matter how they knocked.

“Isn’t that Director Xu’s room?” Li Fei stood at the second-floor stairwell. Since it was their rooms, they had all been excluded from the search teams.

It was just a few sets of clothes, some cosmetics—nothing worth checking. Who would bring private items to a show like this?

“Director Xu said at lunch that his old leg injury was acting up, it hurt a lot, so he went back to his room halfway through eating.” Jiang Xu’s gentle voice rang out. He was a bit reclusive and hadn’t gone up with the group. “I don’t know if he’s feeling better now.”

“I remember one of our guests is that hot internet famous doctor lately.” Brother Ka said.

Just as he spoke, they saw the doctor being called over. He knocked several times, but there was no response from inside.

“One! Two!” Several people rammed the door open.

In less than ten seconds, a scream came from inside the door.

“Director Xu!”

The few people chatting idly on the stairs rushed up.

Fang Si Ting burst through the door into the room. At first glance, he saw the key sitting on the table directly opposite the entrance. Before he could examine it closely, he heard Xiao Fen and Song Hui screaming from the bathroom. He rushed in immediately.

The guest bathrooms in Crescent Moon Manor were all the same. Upon entering, there was the toilet and sink first, then a transparent glass sliding door. Beyond that was the shower area with the spray head, and farthest in, against the wall, the bathtub.

The top and edges of the sliding door frame were sealed with waterproof caulk, stuck tightly to the wall.

Xu Haokong’s naked body was pressed against the door, unknown if alive or dead, with a bar of soap at his feet.

Jiang Xu and the others panicked. “What do we do?”

Ou Yu followed from behind and asked in confusion, “What’s going on?”

“Director Xu passed out inside.” Song Hui tried pushing the door to the left, but it met resistance.

Everyone looked closely. The person inside had his foot perpendicular, sole flat against the door frame. Pushing the door would force Xu Haokong’s leg to bend, knee lifting.

Xu Haokong’s entire right leg was flat against the floor, foot sole upright against the door frame edge, back to the wall. He was still unconscious, knee swollen red. Pushing the door would definitely move the knee, causing secondary injury.

The guests looked at each other, but no one made a move.

“How about we leave first and come back when he wakes up?”

“He must have caught a cold. Even with heating in the bathroom, it’s not enough in this weather.”

This was a sixty-something-year-old man. Leaving him naked on the floor would get them flamed by the netizens.

“Yeah, what if something happens…”

“Make way.” Bai Zhu delivered a kick. The entire door frame tilted and fell. The people nearby hurriedly supported it to avoid smashing anyone.

Xu Haokong’s body was mosaiced on camera.

Fang Si Ting and Brother Ka carried him out and placed him on the bed.

Xu Haokong was completely unresponsive. The internet famous doctor checked him over and confirmed it was just drug-induced coma from an injectant, but his ankle was sprained and badly swollen, looking quite frightening. His knee and the back of his head were also bruised and swollen.

The guests initially speculated he’d slipped getting out of the bathtub, mistaken his medicinal injectant for the show’s syringe, and jabbed himself.

But after saying it, they all found it so ridiculous they burst out laughing.

【Holy shit, another one got taken out.】

【Has Brother Fen gone murder-crazy this episode? Check-in was yesterday, today’s only the first day, and already two down.】

【Killing is all about timing, location, and harmony. Strike when you must.】

【Nothing else to say—loving the efficiency.】

【Should’ve gone to Inspector Fang’s stream instead. So satisfying watching the mystery unfold.】

Some enjoyed solving puzzles, while others loved watching Xiao Fen set them up, then viewing from god’s perspective as they spun in circles.

The endless sealed room puzzles, plus the juicy Lu Family gossip everyone loved, sent viewer counts in Xiao Fen and Fang Si Ting’s streams skyrocketing, soon hitting the previous episode’s peak.

Lu Family management saw the numbers and grinned ear to ear. The VP even issued an order: even if the king himself showed up, no shutting down the streams.

“Boss, it’s a sealed room again.” Tang Shen excitedly brought over the key from the table. “Cliff outside the window—only way in is the door. I tested it; this is definitely the room’s key, and confirmed there’s only one in the whole manor. The guest room door can be deadbolted from inside or out, but both need the key. The door gap’s too narrow—even laid flat, no way to fish the key out from inside. Plus, there’s a security chain in the room, but it wasn’t used.”

【Fishing line this time?】

【You and your fishing line obsession.】

【Won’t work. Didn’t Tang say the gap’s too small?】

【Key’s just sitting there alone on the table with a few basic items. What prop could even be used?】

【Mechanical escape rooms test logic. Time for the engineers.】

【Engineers won’t help lololol. Reminder: top-tier sealed rooms use the simplest methods. Mechanisms are flashy nonsense, only in novels.】

【Hate you Little Fire Seeds the most. Cocky for what? It wasn’t even your idea.】

【My Brother Fen’s idea—I’ll be proud, so what.】

【If it were a real corpse found hours later, rigor mortis would set in. With that pose jammed perfectly between wall and door frame—think that door pushes open?】

【It’s a live person, though—different.】

【Live or dead doesn’t matter; unconscious either way. Sealed room’s a broad term—core is the contradiction between person and space, violating material exchange. Like snow or mud outdoors, fully accessible, witnesses could trample anywhere, but no extra traces around body? Killer couldn’t have reached the scene—boom, sealed room.】

【Take this one: ignoring Director Xu’s knee injury, initially his unconscious foot might’ve been flat, knee unable to lift, bracing the door with some resistance. Force it, miracle happens—but that’s no different from breaking in. Issue is, no matter how callous the killer, how much they ignore the knee, pushing the door open and shut repeatedly to stage it, they ultimately close it. Xu’s foot must end up bracing the frame exactly as witnessed.】

【How to make an unconscious Director Xu’s sole perfectly brace the door frame, looking like he actively pushed it shut from inside with his foot, then held it—no trace of anyone else? Besides self-inflicted, can’t think how.】

【So, double sealed room!】

They were instantly drawn in.

People always had endless curiosity for the unknown. Like Qin Shuhui’s affair—if she’d admitted it upfront, shock would fade to gossip. In many minds, temptations abounded in elite circles, and it wasn’t their hats being greened. Such moral stains were old news to worldly netizens.

But she stubbornly denied it, spiking eaters’ curiosity. The more you hide, the deeper they dig; the more you quibble, the harder they hammer you with evidence, timelines back decades.

Now, before them was something else to pique that itch.

A sealed room.

To deadbolt the guest room door from outside required the key, but it was on the table inside.

The table was about three meters from the door. On it: just the key, a laptop, a thick script, a pen holder, and a card reading “Victim.”

A trash can sat beside the table. Inside the bag: shredded paper, used tissues, a chicken bone packaging bag, an empty pastry box.

In the bathroom where Xu Haokong lay, the shower head gushed hot water. His back against the wall, a chair nearby seemed to prop his limp body from falling sideways.

The weird part: his foot braced the door.

“The killer could easily slide the door halfway, place the unconscious Director Xu by it. But then? No consciousness. When the door slides fully right to close, Xu’s foot won’t follow.” Tang Shen analyzed while demonstrating with the next room.

The person playing Xu Haokong, sitting on the floor, was the room’s owner, Xue Chengge.

He was thirty-four this year, best friends with Xu Haokong. These past years, he often appeared in Xu Haokong’s works—not the lead, but solid second male. With such heavy promotion, he’d risen from obscure extra to second-tier actor.

Rumors online claimed Xue Chengge was Xu Haokong’s illegitimate son—why else push someone so hard?

Now, their rooms were adjacent.

“Could it be the water?” Xue Chengge offered his hypothesis. “Block the drain a bit, water pools on the floor creating buoyancy. My foot braces here originally. When the sliding door moves away, my foot slides along with buoyancy and wet floor to the door edge, keeping the brace?”

The more he thought, the more feasible it seemed.

But testing it, impossible.

“Or shower gel for lubrication.” A guest suggested.

He tried it again, but still failed to achieve that effect.

“At the time, Director Xu had his entire foot raised, with the sole pressing right against the frame of the sliding door,” Fang Si Ting pondered. “It looked like he was consciously using his foot to push against the door frame on purpose, closing the door from the inside so no one could get in.”

“Maybe it’s really possible?” Zhong Jinghuan said. “We can’t rule out the possibility of ‘self-stabbing’.”

Xue Chengge stood up, walked out of the bathroom, dried the water off his body, and sneered, “How could a perfectly fine person possibly ‘self-stab’?”

“Yeah, a perfectly fine person—why would they commit suicide?” A faint, eerie sigh drifted from behind him.

Xue Chengge’s scalp tingled. He whipped around. A human shadow flickered past, but there was no one behind him.

Had he hallucinated it?