Chapter 17: The Door-Kicking Group Sets Off!

Thwack!

In the cabin, Zhang Zhiyuan slapped photos of the crime scene onto the table, "The answer lies in the posture of these bodies."

"Quit beating around the bush, buddy. Just tell us," the American said impatiently.

"It's a clock."

"A... clock?"

"That's right, the victims' hands and feet were arranged at specific angles, corresponding to the three hands of a clock. Because some angles were difficult to bend, or needed to overlap, the bones had to be broken, making the corpses look extremely twisted and bizarre!" Zhang Zhiyuan explained. "This isn't a particular fetish of the murderer; these people were deliberately forecasting their crimes!"

"Now that you mention it, it does seem to take that flavor," Anthony Chekhov said after scrutinizing for a moment. "So, is this a time hint?"

"No, all the crimes occurred at night, and the public places are scarcely populated only at that time," he shook his head. "The direction of the hands merely represents numbers; it's the combination of these numbers that is the real answer."

"Wait a minute... we need to clarify one thing," Zhou Zhi interjected. "Does this game also use a 24-hour system? If they use a different time system, then all these deductions would be invalid."

"Are you daft, kid? This game was made by Earthlings. Could it use any other time system?" Joe James gave him a disparaging look.

"But..."

"Their clocks also make a circle in twelve hours," Tyler suddenly said.

"How do you know that?"

"I saw someone pull out a pocket watch earlier when I was on the street," he gestured upward as if to push up glasses, but his frame had none. "It was quite a distance away, and I couldn't see very clearly, but one of the hands was pointing directly at the 6 o'clock position, which basically matched the outdoor dusk."

"How far was it?" the Russian asked curiously.

"About thirty-five feet away; the person was to my right front at the time."

"Ha!" Anthony clapped his hands together. "If you went hunting, you'd be sharpshooter."

Tyler smiled thinly, "I don't take pleasure in killing; humans should coexist with nature on equal terms."

The smile instantly dropped from Anthony's face.

Thirty-five feet, Zhang Zhiyuan was slightly taken aback, that's more than ten meters away! How could this person catch such detail from such a great distance? They weren't even specifically looking at that time. Swallowing his surprise, he cleared his throat and said, "Mr. Tyler is quite accurate. In fact, when I asked where Yeni Temple was, I incidentally learned about this as well—of course, I was asking what time it was."

"So you already knew the numbers indicated by those corpses?" Qianyuan Mingzi asked, baffled. "Then why did we still need to go to the scene in person?"

"Because we had to confirm the origin point... or rather the starting point." Zhang Zhiyuan pointed to the photo of the transept of the temple. "Just by looking at the photos, it's impossible to determine the directions. If we didn't go to the scene, we wouldn't know which limb was the hour hand and which was the minute hand. Now I know, the origin point is the victim's head, uniformly pointing north. The first thick limb to the left, whether it's a hand or a foot, represents the hour hand!"

"I see! That's educational," Mingzi exclaimed after peering at it for a while. "This trip has indeed been very enlightening."

"Using this photo as an example, the hour hand is 3, the minute hand is 35; combined, it's 335." Zhang Zhiyuan picked up a case file, holding it before everyone, "And right after the Yeni Temple incident, the next case happened at the coffeehouse on Maple Leaf North Street; its address is precisely 335!"

This was the predicted answer.

"However, Mr. Zhang, there's something you overlooked," Tyler mused. "What about the second hand? If we count clockwise, the thick limbs are hour and minute hands respectively, and the thinnest is the second hand, it should have a reading as well, like around 40 seconds on this photo."

"Indeed, the second hand has a reading, but it's unrelated to the address," Zhang Zhiyuan replied. "What we need to do with the second hand is just look at its position. For example, 40 seconds is around 8 on the clock face, and the coffeehouse case happened exactly eight days after the temple case! As for why they do this, that's because the address alone doesn't determine the precise moment they commit the crime!"

"Whoosh—" Anthony whistled. "These guys really are bold, are they that afraid the police won't find them?"

Without a doubt, it was a blatant provocation to the public's safety.

"Buddy, how did you make the connection from the photograph to the clock?" Tyler seemed curious. "Most people either get too scared to look closely at these bloody scenes, or they just stare at the details without moving on. You actually considered the whole thing, that's quite something."

"I used to..." Zhang Zhiyuan almost blurted out that he had handled similar cases before but stopped himself mid-sentence, "I've seen many detective and mystery works, and I've downloaded quite a few case files from the internet, just as a personal interest. Usually, if the killer wants to convey a message, they often choose numbers as the medium. And the things that can be linked to numbers are limited... like codes, clocks, patterns. The most extravagant one I saw was a solution hidden in a geometric figure..."

"Alright, alright, that's not important," Zhou Zhi couldn't help saying. "Big brother, just spit it out already. Where is the location indicated by the latest case?"

"958, and there are two days left until the deadline from this moment on."

"Two days?" Joe James exclaimed, "We have to stay here for two days to pass the level? That won't do, I have other plans tomorrow!"

"That's what I wanted to ask, too," Zhang Zhiyuan raised his voice. "Host, are you listening? You can answer this kind of question, can't you?"

"Of course, I have been following everyone's progress," a figure slowly emerged in the air, it was Paradise's guide, Chaoyang. "Please don't worry, this is just a game, I can adjust its running speed at any time."

"Running speed... what do you mean?"

"When you are active normally, your perception of time flows the same as reality, like right now," Chaoyang paused. "But when you enter a dormant state, I can instantly skip you forward to two days later, just like—"

He snapped his fingers.

"—this."

Zhang Zhiyuan blinked, for a moment, he truly felt a brief darkness before his eyes, but it was just for a moment. Before he could even react, all his sensations returned to normal.

"Host, does that mean it's now..."

"Correct, two days later," Chaoyang replied. "The specific time is... 9:25 PM. As for the time outside the game, it's still the same second before you jumped."

"Don't just skip like that, I had much preparation work undone!" Zhang Zhiyuan stamped his foot. "Forget it, just remember to give a heads-up next time you jump time. Since it's already evening, we need to head to—"

"Ah! Where did one of my fingers go!" the American suddenly screamed.

Everyone looked over to see him holding up a hand missing its middle finger, howling in pain.

"This... is a minor oversight, my apologies, I'll fix it right away," Chaoyang clapped his hands again, and Joe James' finger was restored to its original state.

"What the hell happened!?" he panted, asking.

"Just a program bug, we will fix it as soon as possible," Chaoyang explained.

"We don't have much time, we need to hurry!" Zhang Zhiyuan urged. "We've skipped too much time, we still don't know which building is 958..."

"North District, Golden Street, Sinclair Grand Theatre," Chaoyang interjected.

Everyone was momentarily stunned; it was the first time the host had given such a direct clue.

"Consider it a compensation for the bug just now," Chaoyang's figure gradually faded, "I will remind you, it's now 10:11 PM."

"We've just used an hour!?" Zhang Zhiyuan's expression changed, "The killer might have already arrived, we must start immediately!"

"I've been itching to go; it's the Grand Theatre, right, let's move!" Joe James took the lead and rushed out of the cabin.

As he watched the group melt into the night, Chaoyang let out a sigh... Having experts handling this was indeed helpful, but he had made a big oversight, which was the issue of time continuity. Creating these bodies consumed wishing power by the hour, and to avoid running at a loss, he couldn't possibly keep these unconscious bodies active for two full days. The most economical method was to erase them first and recreate them when needed. But these weren't just mud figures, and intrinsically, the bodies created before and after had no connection. He did his best to make the two consistent, but the result was still barely passable, even forgetting a finger in the process.

This meant he had already paid double the cost just in creating the bodies, not to mention there was one more person this time than last.

Chaoyang shook his head and followed them—things had come to this, all he could hope for now was to get as much wishing power feedback as possible...