Realm Walker

The second he cleared the sealed room, sunlight hit him full in the eyes, bright enough that it made him tear up.

He stood in the doorway squinting around and got a pleasant surprise. My skills are back, but the yin corpse is gone.

He was on the open-air walkway of the faculty housing block. There were rooms lined up in rows behind him. Blue sky was up above him, with a little garden down below.

He glanced back at the number on the cell they'd held him in. Room 3-208.

The quest guide said the crime scene is at 3-404, he recalled. Same building, fourth floor.

Good. That saved him the need to hunt for the right block, and he didn't have the time to spare. There was little over a minute left on the clock. If he ran into the Detective Squad on the way, it really would come down to a one-on-seven fight. The final showdown hadn't even started, and things were already heating up to their peak.

He broke into a sprint, found the stairwell and tore his way up to the fourth floor, quickly finding room 404. The door was shut, and locked as well by the look of it. Not a problem.

He wanted to avoid wrecking the scene, though, so he cast Astral Projection and slipped his spirit out of his body and through the security door. With a click, the bolt popped, and his spirit body turned the handle on the other side to open the door. He drew his spirit back into his body, pushed the door open, and stepped into room 404.

He put on the Eye of the Observer and raked his gaze through the living room. The coffee table, TV, and sofa were all neat and tidy in their proper places. This wasn't where it happened. He crossed the living room fast and shoved open the bedroom and study doors.

The killing had happened in the study. The room was trashed. Chairs had been knocked over, books thrown around. There was broken glass all across the floor, and dried blood had pooled in several patches around the floor. There was a single bed in the corner, with their sheets in a tangle. It was everything one would expect to see after a hard fight.

The body had not been left behind. The Public Security Bureau had already taken it.

He moved through the study slowly, his eyes going corner to corner like a scanner, and he even peered under the bed. He left nothing out.

Just this scene itself isn't enough to clear me, he realized. And I'm out of time.

His hand shot to the briefcase and he dug out the phone. The screen wasn't locked, and with one tap, it lit up and began to play back a video on its own. Nothing else had popped up, not even a menu or a home screen.

The lighting in the footage was dim. The curtains in the room had been drawn. Everything was shot in a murky hush. The camera itself had been pointed at the desk. A figure sat there in a dress shirt with his back to the camera, a mask over their face, typing at a computer.

The person at the desk coughed a couple of times and spoke, their voice thick and sounding all stuffed up. "Must have caught a cold with the change of seasons..."

The angle of the footage dipped. Whoever was holding the phone had sat down. There was a good ten to fifteen seconds of nothing happening as the phone's owner seemed to consider his words, then he made himself speak.

"Professor Li. I came all the way to the capital because I want you to look at my manuscript."

Professor Li kept his back to the speaker, offering no reply. Apparently, there was nothing to discuss.

The voice of the phone's owner grew tense, edging into desperation. "I know the last draft was mediocre. Sales were bad, and it even dented your reputation. But I've come with real confidence this time. Read the new book. You'll be happy with it, I promise."

The stuffed-up voice spoke again. "I've lost interest in your manuscripts."

The owner of the phone got to his feet. "Professor Li—"

"Enough." Professor Li stood too, and his tone softened. "You've traveled a thousand miles to get to the capital, so I won't send you home empty-handed. Leave the manuscript here with me. We'll have a drink, and you can pitch me your ideas. It’s for me to decide if I want to use it."

The person carrying the phone almost burst with joy. Professor Li rose and went to a glass cabinet by the desk and pulled out a kettle-shaped bottle of foreign liquor.

As he walked back with the liquor in hand, he looked into the camera, and asked, "What are you doing with your phone?"

"Nothing, it's nothing..."

The footage was cut off. The suspect had stopped recording and pocketed the phone.

Zhang Yuanqing continued to hold the phone, his brow furrowed as he mulled over what he had just seen. So that's how things went.

He heard hurried footsteps out in the corridor. There was the sound of a key slipping into the lock, and the front door of the room swung wide open.

A whole crowd came piling in. Zhao Chenghuang and Earth God were at the front of the Detective Squad. They were all dressed in public security uniforms, with a couple of them carrying briefcases, completing the whole official-business look.

Zhang Yuanqing dragged a high-backed chair over, dropped into it, crossed one leg over the other, and gave them a cold little smile. "The struggle of good and evil. Light and shadow, interlaced. Killer against detective. Finally, the reckoning is here. The great gate of fate has already swung wide. Detectives, each of you will meet your ending. And I, the villain, will walk free as ever. Because the only one who can beat me is the legendary detective Sherlock Holm—"

Sun Miaomiao cut him off in her bright, chirpy voice. "Yuanshi Tianzun, aren't you a little too deep into character? Quit wasting time."

He didn't break character. "Charging in with fists swinging is utterly inelegant. A charismatic villain needs his own lines. His own entrance. This is the only way to match that whole vibe."

She blinked at him with those big, dark eyes. "But you're not charismatic though. You're so weird~"

His face seized up, and all the wind went out of his sails. He flapped a hand at her like he was shooing away a fly.

"Fine, fine," he conceded. "Let's get on with it, god dammit."

As he finished cursing, all eight players heard the dungeon's notification chime.

【Everyone is present. The duel begins. The next stage: The Trial!】

【Duel format: the detectives present evidence and accuse the suspect. The suspect must prove their innocence within the time limit, or be judged guilty by default. Once the suspect shoots down the presented argument, the detectives must present fresh evidence within the time limit, or the suspect is judged not guilty.

【Note: no skills nor violence are allowed in this stage.】

The rules were simple. The suspect had to knock down each charge the detectives laid out, one after another, and prove they were clean. And because it was simple, there was almost no crack to wriggle through.

Sun Miaomiao turned to World Ablaze and offered him praise. "You called it. This round really does come down to who's holding the most dirt, and we've got a briefcase full of dirt on Yuanshi Tianzun. The odds are on our side."

World Ablaze strutted about slightly, pleased by what he'd heard. "This stage was always tilted to favor the detectives. But the suspect's got something to lean on, and it's in that briefcase by your foot, isn't it, Yuanshi Tianzun?"

Zhang Yuanqing nodded. "There are some clues in here, yeah."

"You found it in the cell?"

"Yep."

World Ablaze said his thoughts aloud. "We were just down in a room on a lower floor. Our prompt told us to arrest the suspect within eight minutes. I've been counting. You took, what, about six to break out? From your track record, I can estimate how hard the cell was, and from the difficulty, I can estimate the importance of whatever's in that briefcase. You were two minutes from not making it, which means the clues in there matter a lot."

Every eye swung to Zhang Yuanqing.

"They matter a lot." He smiled and nodded, confirming it flat out.

That caused some consternation on more than a few faces. Even Zhao Chenghuang, all noble superiority and frigid arrogance, arched an eyebrow, his gaze ticking back and forth between Yuanshi Tianzun and World Ablaze.

Back in that downstairs room, World Ablaze had looked through the items and information and made a bold guess at how this stage worked, and the Spirit Realm prompt they'd just received had just proven him right. He had called it on the nose.

Now, Yuanshi Tianzun had not only walked out of the cell, he'd walked out holding something that made the squad's job harder. That alone told them plenty. These two really were a cut above the rest of them when it came to clearing dungeons.

Zhao Chenghuang pulled his eyes away. "Less talk. Let’s start."

In his officer's uniform, he opened the briefcase he had with him and pulled out a document.

"Criminal suspect Yuanshi Tianzun," he announced. "You are Professor Li's ghostwriter. Unwilling to accept being fired, you visited him at three o'clock yesterday afternoon to talk him into continuing your arrangement. He refused. Words were exchanged before it came to blows. In a fit of rage, you killed him with the fruit knife on the desk. He struck the back of your head with an ashtray before he died, knocking you out. Professor Li's wife came home from teaching and found her husband dead and you unconscious."

As he finished, his eyes floated up from the document to Zhang Yuanqing. "The first set of evidence: your fingerprints on the fruit knife, and photographs of the bruise on the back of your head."

Zhao Chenghuang slid the relevant forensic reports out of the folder one by one and held them up for the suspect. Through all of it, the other players stayed quiet, watching cool and detached to see how he'd handle it.

The audience in the colosseum watched on, just as silently. The arena had gone quiet, as though at a cinema. They were all invested in the story, all thought of idle talk forgotten.

So that's the sequence of events, Zhang Yuanqing realized as he got the gist of what could have happened. Immediately, he heard the Spirit Realm's notification chime.

【Ding! Prove within ten minutes that you are not the killer. The countdown starts now...】

There were two things to knock down—the prints on the knife and the bruise on his head. The prints were a clear fact, so Zhang Yuanqing needed a story that actually held together in order to overturn it.

Under the watchful eyes of the Detective Squad, he dropped straight back into character. "Officer Zhao, was the crime scene tampered with at all?"

"Aside from evidence removed during collection, everything has been left as it was found," Zhao Chenghuang said flatly.

"Then before I prove my innocence, I want to see the survey report of the crime scene."

He needed to verify one thing first. That was the whole game. But the survey report was a part of the officers' own investigation, their internal workflow, and not a part of the evidence.

World Ablaze shook his head, refused. "We're under no obligation to hand you anything beyond the evidence, survey report included."

Zhang Yuanqing didn't bother with him. He looked at Zhao Chenghuang instead, trying to get under his skin.

"Sure, Officer Zhao can absolutely refuse. I'm dangerous after all. Hand me any little advantage and I'll flip the whole board so I do understand why you’re fearful."

Zhao Chenghuang's brow twitched. "Cheap tricks."

He tossed the survey report over to Zhang Yuanqing—photos, written records and all.

"Hey, you—" World Ablaze bit off a short, angry shout.

Cheap, sure. But it worked. Zhang Yuanqing was grinning. To save time he skimmed past the sections detailing the state of the body and the fingerprints and zeroed in on the section that detailed other material traces at the scene. Half a minute later, he handed the file back and opened his defence.

He opened the briefcase and took out the broken glasses, held them up for the room. The left rim was empty, while the right lens, still in the frame, was covered in cracks.

"Here's the thing. I'm nearsighted, and badly so. And everyone knows what that means. Take the glasses off a man like me and the whole world goes to soup. There were no lens fragments left at the scene, and none in the survey report either. Which means I broke my glasses before I even visited Professor Li. How does a man who can't see kill anyone?"

Tone Deaf snorted. "No glasses doesn't stop you grappling with the victim and putting the knife in him. Being nearsighted isn't equal to blindness. That proves nothing."

Zhang Yuanqing nodded. "Not being able to see clearly and being unable to kill are two different things, agreed. But the fight itself proves I didn't do it."

"How?" Sun Miaomiao pressed.

"Say I wanted Professor Li dead, but my glasses are wrecked and everything's a blur. I hide the knife, wait for an opening, and hit him once. It's clean, and it's done. I do not want to get into a brawl with him because half-blind, which means I might lose." He was rolling now, easy and fluent. "So the fight in that study is exactly what clears me."

There was no notification chime. His argument had been rejected.

World Ablaze smiled. "You're right. But here's a possibility. You meant to ambush him, and because your vision was a blur, you made noise, and he noticed. That's how the fight started."

"That's genuinely possible," Zhang Yuanqing agreed.

Right as Sun Miaomiao and the others started to smile, he countered, "So why is the blood on my back?"

He stood up from the high-backed chair and turned his back to them. Only then did they see it: the wide patch of dried blood across the back of his jacket, with some darker smears down the backs of his trouser legs as well.

He turned around again, smiling. "The report says the deceased died from a single stab through the heart. So how did the blood spray out behind me? I couldn't have killed him with my back turned to him. The broken glasses and the position of the blood. Put them together, and the answer's obvious. The killer isn't me."

【Ding! The detectives must prove within ten minutes that the suspect is the killer. The countdown starts now...】

There it was. Raise a doubt, build up the contradiction, and the accusation no longer stood, even if his prints were on the knife. Innocent until proven guilty. Zhang Yuanqing let out a small breath of relief.

World Ablaze's eyes narrowed. He didn't like it, but he'd seen it coming. His opponent was Yuanshi Tianzun, after all. Nothing about this was going to be easy.

The other players frowned. Some of them, Green Pine and Earth God among them, had voted for Zhao Chenghuang the previous round, but that was then. This round, they all had a common target—Yuanshi Tianzun. Fail to eliminate him, and every one of them ate a ten-point deduction.

***

In the colosseum, the official Walkers were eating it up.

"As soon as I saw the crime scene I saw this coming, and sure enough, he caught it too. But I can spot it because I'm a Scout. How's he doing it? His brain moves way too fast."

"The pressure's on the Detective Squad now. This is the good stuff. Just run every future tournament like this, honestly."

"Ugh, it's so boring. Can we get to the fighting already? I want a brawl. Or hell, put me in, I'll do it."

"Tch. Crude Fire Sage."

***

Earth God, somehow still in his leather jacket and leather trousers, chuckled. "Not bad, kid. You have no experience in investigation, yet you knocked the charge down quickly. That's talent. Let this old man give you some trouble too."

He pulled a stack of documents from his own briefcase. "Officers lifted three sets of prints at the scene. Yours, Professor Li's, and his wife's. And per the statement from Old Wang next door, at three that afternoon, you were the only person who visited Li, right up until his wife got off work and called it in. Therefore, the killer has to be you."

【Ding! Prove within ten minutes that you are not the killer. The countdown starts now...】

It wasn't a fair fight. All the detectives had to do was pull out evidence in order and point the finger, and the pressure bounced right back off them and onto the suspect. The suspect had to take whatever info he already had and rack his brain bloody to clear himself.

Both the prints and the testimony point toward me. How do I overturn them? No, I can't overturn them. They're facts, and no one can overturn facts.

He went quiet and stayed quiet for a long while.

The players loosened all at once, counting down the seconds in a good mood.

I have to take a different angle. If the hard evidence can't be proven false, then how do I prove my reading of it? From where I stand I need to be innocent, which means the killer has to be someone else...

He turned the case details over slowly in his mind, and soon enough, his eyes brightened.

"Between the time I entered that room and the time Li's wife came back, sure, nobody else visited. But what if the killer was already in the room?"

Prints and testimony seemed like ironclad evidence, but the story they told did not have to be one in which he was the killer.

World Ablaze's expression fell. It took a couple of seconds for the others to feel it too—a sinking feeling in the gut, one after another. Yuanshi Tianzun's sharpness, and his sheer refusal to fold, were turning into a real headache.