The composition of Chang Xu's clues is similar to the parts already known to Qisi. They are four lines of unexplained poetry, plus five paragraphs of diary content.
Judging from the tone of voice, the diaries in the two clues were written by different people, which just metaphorically represent the background stories from different aspects.
Ziss read the clues from beginning to end twice, memorized them in his mind, took another piece of papyrus, stood in front of the table and silently wrote down the clues in his room.
Then, he held up the red skirt and repeated the speculation he had told Lin Chen, which received an unclear and stern look from Chang Xu.
The two clues merged together, and a story took shape.
"A declining aristocratic family has two daughters. The eldest daughter Anna has a beautiful face and is perfect in all aspects. The younger daughter Anne is much mediocre in comparison. A man accidentally entered the manor, fell in love with Anna, and made various I tried hard to marry her, but unfortunately I came a step too late. Anna thought she had been abandoned by him and had already died in depression."
"The reason why time is the most important is because the mechanical clock was tampered with, causing the man and Anna to miss each other on the night they had agreed to elope, causing many misunderstandings." Qisi lowered his eyes and looked at the words on the paper, his voice half-sounding. Sigh, half in jest.
"Anne didn't know what her psychology was, maybe it was abnormal love, maybe it was jealousy that she was not even aware of. She took on the identity of her sister Anna, met the man who returned to the manor, and killed him. Bury him in the garden.”
Lin Chen also knew that this information was too easy to be exposed if it was fake, and it was of little use, so Qisi told the truth, just to dispel the wariness between the two parties.
After he finished speaking, he looked at Chang Xu and asked, "Brother Chang, you have been digging in the garden all morning. Did you find any other strange things?"
Chang Xu replied: "There are three corpses in total, two men and one woman. It is initially inferred that they are all players."
"……All right."
That’s okay, I thought I could find the body of the warrior who pursued Miss Anna.
Zissi was slightly disappointed, but not much. He continued: "I have tested that the Miss Anna we saw at the dinner table is a living person, and should be the surviving sister Anne. The real Miss Anna is dead, Maybe it will appear as a ghost."
Hearing this, Chang Xu frowned and said: "It is known that Annie and Anna look different, but she replaced Anna without being noticed. It seems that she can mobilize the strange power very early. I feel that there may be something wrong with Rose Manor itself. She is just a part of the weirdness, and there is someone else who is leading all of this.”
"This is also my guess." Chiss nodded in agreement.
Those who make the rules often have the privilege of not following the rules, and it is obvious that Miss Anna has no right to break the rules. In other words, there is someone else who makes the weird rules in Rose Manor.
"The clues to complete this part of the reasoning are either on the third floor or with Zou Yan and Ye Zi." Qisi said pointedly, his eyes returning to the four lines at the top of the page.
The poem that belonged to him had an ambiguous meaning, like a prophecy or a curse. Just one glance at it gave him a suffocating and throbbing feeling of his heart being clenched.
In comparison, the four lines of Chang Xu's poem are much easier to understand.
【I am finally trapped in time】
【This is the junction between morning and dusk】
[Reincarnation year after year]
【Yesterday is with me again】
It's obviously a time loop.
Qisi narrowed his eyes and asked casually: "Brother Chang, do you always carry that [Destiny Pocket Watch] with you and look at it often?"
"On average, I check it once every half hour." Chang Xu said, taking out his pocket watch from his pocket and checking the time again, "In my memory, from the time I entered the dungeon to now, there has been no obvious problem with the time."
"Is that so?"
Qisi believed that Chang Xu was not too stupid. He was the first to get the clue about the time. He would definitely pay more attention to this aspect and there would be no possibility of making mistakes.
The reasoning has reached a dead end, and more information is needed to advance...
"Let's go to the third floor and take a look." Zis said.
He reached for the door.
In an instant, the mechanical clock struck its first stroke, and the remaining sound fell silent as soon as it was heard.
…
In Room 1 near the stairs, Zou Yan and Ye Zi sat at the desk, staring intently at an eyeball-shaped prop on the table.
[Name: Eye of Hermes (right eye)]
[Type: props]
[Effect: After placing the left eye in a certain closed space, you can see what the left eye sees through the right eye (can only be used once in each copy, and each time lasts ten minutes)]
[Note: God knows everything, so said Hermes]
At this moment, what appeared in the eyeballs was the scene in Chang Xu's room, including Qisi's speculation on the background story and the two people's decision to explore the third floor.
"You see, sometimes we don't need to argue too much. We just need to hide behind the scenes to observe and pry, and we can get all the information we want to know." Zou Yan looked at Ye Zi and smiled lightly, "In comparison, It's really the worst option to conflict with them in public, we don't have the advantage in terms of force, do we?"
Ye Zi swallowed, and the various interactions between Zou Yan and her appeared in front of her eyes.
First, he pretended to be a good person to prevent others from being jealous; then he asked her to take the initiative to cause a dispute, misleading other players into thinking that it was impossible for the two of them to form a union...everything he did was full of sophistication.
Ye Zi remembered the knowledge Shen Ming had given her and asked hesitantly: "Sister Zou, this is not your second time entering the dungeon, is it? Such props are not something a newcomer can get. Are you a veteran who spent points to designate a dungeon? "
Zou Yan asked back: "Aren't you the same?"
Ye Zi shook his head repeatedly: "I am just a newbie. I was swayed by the contract of the company I signed, and I got into debt, so I had no choice but to join the game and want to make some money. Sister Zou, is there anything special about this copy? Why? Do you want to take the initiative to come in? I heard that there will be no point rewards for entering designated dungeons..."
"That's right." Zou Yan smiled knowingly.
She had no intention of answering Ye Zi's question, but looked directly into the latter's eyes, with a compassionate and gentle look on her face: "Can you help me complete an experiment?"
"What experiment?"
The pendulum of the mechanical clock struck the first stroke, and the solemn bells echoed throughout the entire floor.
Zou Yan said: "Yi Zi, close your eyes."
…
The mechanical clock struck its first stroke, one o'clock in the afternoon.
Chang Xu picked up the pocket watch in his hand and took a look at it. His expressionless face finally changed.
"The pocket watch advanced by one hour. In just one second, the hour hand moved a full step, as if an hour was taken away out of thin air."
The tone of Chang Xu's statement was smooth, and even such a strange phenomenon was described by him calmly.
Qiss understood the meaning the moment he heard these words.
The mechanism of the dungeon was triggered, which is most likely related to the four-line poem in Chang Xu's room.
"It's an hour-long time reversal." Zeiss made a judgment and looked around with squinted eyes. "Could it be a weird game that saw us unable to do anything, so he was afraid that it would affect the average clearance rate, so he deliberately gave us a hint, right?"
He was making nonsense jokes, but there was no smile on his face.
When they first started studying the clues of the four-line poem, a player successfully triggered the time-return mechanism. It was too coincidental to be an accident.
A bad premonition arose spontaneously, but Qiss became uncontrollably excited.
He had always been the only one who made small moves secretly, but he didn't expect that someone would take advantage of him now. The unexpected is interesting, isn't it?
He walked out of the room and his eyes lingered on the door of the guest room next door.
The gloomy and mottled wooden door was tightly closed. There was nothing unusual about its appearance, and not even the slightest sound could be heard.
Behind him, Chang Xu seemed to have thought of something, and stretched out his hands to grope around himself.
After a few seconds, he stretched out two fingers and took out something like an eyeball from his jacket pocket.
The thing had been broken into pieces, but the bloodshot and streaked pupils were still dilating and enlarging continuously, performing a behavior similar to breathing, like the remnants of some kind of tenacious monster.
"Someone is spying on us." Chang Xu said, throwing his eyeballs at Qisi to show him.
Qisi raised his hand to catch his eyeballs. The moment his skin touched the cold fluid, a system prompt appeared in front of his eyes.
[Name: Eye of Hermes (left eye) (worn)]
[Type: props]
【Effect:……】
Zeiss understood everything almost immediately.
Chang Xu has no defense against others. In the eyes of those who are interested, he is like a sieve, full of flaws from beginning to end.
If he can take advantage of it, so can others.
Sure enough, after the plan includes more than one person, various flaws will inevitably appear... His handling of some details is still too rough.
Chang Xu didn't know what Qisi was thinking.
Looking at the young man's gloomy face, he calmly recalled: "Not long ago, Liu Qingye and I had physical contact. I guess this prop was most likely placed on me at that time. The night before, Shen Ming and I also had a physical contact. We have been in contact with each other and cannot rule out the possibility."
"It's not Shen Ming. He had a premonition that he was going to die and made wedding clothes for others. He doesn't seem to be such a selfless person."
Qisi let out a breath, gradually suppressed all kinds of messy emotions, and analyzed concisely: "Yi Zi suddenly had a dispute with Zou Yan, probably just to create the illusion that the two of them are at odds. The key point of the layout should be this morning."
Chang Xu looked serious: "You mean..."
