S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 5 Chapter 37

Inheritor of the Three Murderers 06 – The Inheritor's Game

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Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang found a postcard from "G" on Xu Ming's desk.

The postcard was sent from a country in Southeast Asia, and based on the postmark, Jiang Ping found the place where the photo was taken; it was a waterfall in the jungle, and it wasn't a place of interest, it was sparsely populated.

"Xu Ming seems to like waterfalls." Bai Yutang looked at Xu Ming's computer and found that it had Iguazu Falls as its desktop background.

"Likes waterfalls ah..." Zhan Zhao glanced at the postcard again.

The postcard didn't have the usual greetings or anything like that, but rather a string of strange numbers.

Bai Chi stared at the string of numbers for a long time. His little brain performed n kinds of cryptographic decryption calculations on the string of numbers, but none of them came to a reasonable conclusion.

"Hmm..."

It was rare to see him, a genius, frowning over a maths problem. Everyone else looked at Zhan Zhao – After all, it was the password G had left behind.

Zhan Zhao reminded Bai Chi, "Don't forget 9:45."

Bai Chi's thinking movements froze, then his eyes lit up, "Ah!"

The crowd then saw Bai Chi pick up the pen and paper on the table and write down a string of characters – it was a URL.

"How did you solve this?" Bai Yutang asked curiously.

Bai Chi happily replied, "It's a simple arithmetic problem. If the time the sun is shining on the photo is 9:45 in the morning, then you can deduce the exact location where it was taken. This position is the height of the photographer. The numbers on the postcard are different sets of heights, and by the same principle, the time can be deduced in turn. These times will be marked on the clock at different locations. If 9:45 represents the letter G, then by extrapolation one can figure out the letters represented by the other points in time. The numbers that don't correspond to a letter correspond to the exact position of a symbol on the keyboard, and the final conclusion is a web address."

The SCI crowd all looked at Bai Chi with their mouths open – How on earth did this kid define the word "simple"?

In addition to the SCI crowd, there were also some police staff and the school headmaster as well as a few faculty members related to Xu Ming, all of whom maintained a dumbfounded stance as they stared at Xiao Bai Chi.

Bai Yutang rubbed his eyebrows, not wanting to think about any time angle coordinate strings... he simply handed Jiang Ping the slip of paper with the URL written on it.

Jiang Ping opened that web page... The content of the screen that appeared after clicking enter made everyone frown.

They saw that the page was very simple, with a black background that was divided into four small black screens, each of which had a string of green numbers that were counting down.

They were:

2:16:23

5:37:11

18:33:32

27:22:29

Time was dwindling by the second...

"What does it mean?" Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao felt that something was wrong and asked Jiang Ping, "What kind of webpage is this?"

Jiang Ping shook his head, "This is an ordinary website that anyone can use to set up a countdown page like this. You don't need identity information to register with a cell phone, the registered cell phone number on this page is disposable and has been deactivated."

Zhan Zhao stared at that page for a while, then reached out and held down the CTRL and A keys... Only to see that on the selected page, some content that was hidden inside the dark screen was revealed.

"Ah!" Jiang Ping suddenly realised, "It turns out the content was written in black font on a black screen!"

What was hidden was still a string of numbers.

"What kind of numbers are these?" Zhan Zhao asked, "Password?"

"They look like IP addresses." Jiang Ping quickly looked up the IP addresses, "They're all in S City!"

"Which address is this one with only a little over two hours left?" Bai Yutang asked.

"In the city..." Jiang Ping looked up the address, "a cafe next to the park in the Binjiang community."

"Cafe..." Bai Chi was still wondering, but Bai Yutang had already dragged Zhan Zhao out of the school's office building.

In the pile of police cars at the main entrance, Bai Ye was still smoking by their car.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang took a look at A'Mo still sitting obediently in the car, so they let go of their hearts... but they still couldn't go back.

Bai Yutang signalled for everyone to get in their cars and make a trip to the cafe in the city.

Driving to the destination, Zhan Zhao looked at the time, "How long will it take to drive to Binjiang?"

"One hour." Bai Yutang said.

"Then there's only about an hour left." Zhan Zhao frowned, "Will it be the same situation as Xu Ming?"

"Whatever the situation is, it won't be good." Bai Yutang said as a voice came from the call station, it was a patrol officer who had already arrived at the cafe.

Bai Yutang had just called the patrol officers near the neighbourhood to go and check first to see if anything dangerous was happening. The patrol officers seemed to have already checked and were telling Bai Yutang – The cafe was open twenty-four hours a day, there were a few guests inside, it was very quiet, and there were no abnormalities.

Zhan Zhao felt it was unusual, "Why would there be a cafe that is open twenty-four hours? What's the point of drinking coffee in the middle of the night!"

"For example, catching up on drafts all night or something." Bai Yutang glanced at Zhan Zhao, "After all, not everyone can hypnotise an editor to change the deadline..."

Zhan Zhao flattened his mouth – Speechless!

Zhao Jue was in the back seat laughing "Hahaha..."

Zhan Zhao gave him a blank stare in the rearview mirror.

"Captain Bai!"

The voice of the patrolman who had contacted him just now came from Bai Yutang's open radio.

"What's the situation?" Bai Yutang immediately asked.

"Erm... there's something strange." The patrolman on the other end replied, "An old lady in pyjamas walked into the cafe just now."

Bai Yutang also felt strange, "An old lady? At this hour?"

"Right." The patrolman nodded, "She just walked out from the opposite neighbourhood and went straight into the cafe."

Zhan Zhao looked at the time, and it was already early in the morning, so he asked, "How old does that old lady look? What style of pyjamas?"

"She's very old, looks like she's in her seventies or eighties, her hair is all white, and she's wearing ordinary pyjamas that are very thin, as if she's just got out of bed." The patrolman replied, "She's also wearing slippers."

"Did she take anything?" Zhan Zhao asked.

"She took a box or something like a pillow, my partner went over to see..." Before the patrolman finished his words, the crowd suddenly heard a loud boom.

The communication was interrupted...

Almost simultaneously, Bai Yutang's phone rang.

"Chief!" Jiang Ping's anxious voice came from the other end of the phone, "Those times have suddenly changed!"

"The first one has turned to zero!" Jiang Ping said.

"It suddenly turned to zero..." Bai Yutang frowned.

Zhan Zhao, on the other hand, remembered that email from Xu Ming's mailbox just now – game reprogramming...

"What about the other times?" Zhan Zhao asked Jiang Ping, "Which address is the one that was changed to the shortest countdown?"

"The other..." Jiang Ping said, suddenly stopping.

"What's wrong?" Zhan Zhao asked.

Bai Yutang was also anxious, "What happened?"

"Uh... the other three sets of numbers are paused!" Jiang Ping said, "The seconds aren't moving!"

"Paused?" Zhan Zhao felt confused.

Jiang Ping worriedly looked at Bai Chi who was writing furiously beside him and whispered, "And Chi Chi seems to have gone crazy... Is he okay?"

Bai Yutang was puzzled, "What happened to Bai Chi?"

"He's probably calculating the rules." Zhan Zhao said, "Two times, the game planning has changed after that, there would be rules in that."

"It must be a maths problem anyway." Jiang Ping looked at Xiao Bai Chi who had a sweaty forehead and had written numbers all over the paper.

"Tell him to stop calculating, it's not possible to calculate with only two sets of numbers! There are too many possibilities." Zhan Zhao said, "That's probably the reason for the suspension of the other numbers! If there were three sets, Bai Chi would be able to calculate it."

"So there is indeed a rule in place?" Jiang Ping asked.

"Rules..." Zhan Zhao suddenly muttered to himself, then his finger gently tapped his chin, "Rules!"

With that, Zhan Zhao suddenly turned back to look at Zhao Jue.

Zhao Jue didn't have much of an expression on his face.

Zhan Zhao frowned, "You knew from the start?"

Zhao Jue spread his hands.

"You knew without saying anything about it!" Zhan Zhao got angry.

"Which one of you will explain it to me?" Bai Yutang couldn't help but interrupt. At this time, his car had already made its way into the Binjiang neighbourhood, and there was chaos ahead. There were fire trucks and police cars parked on the side of the road where the cafe was located, with thick smoke rolling out.

"The G signed on the postcard isn't G!" said Zhan Zhao with some chagrin, "We're too focused on G as a person, but that's just a letter!"

"So the one who sent the postcard to Xu Ming wasn't the G we know, but the murderer just happened to write the letter G?" Bai Yutang asked.

"It doesn't matter at all what that G stands for! We've focused too much on G and instead ignored the murderer himself!" Zhan Zhao said to Jiang Ping on the other end of the phone, "Check all the people in S City who have an IQ of 120 or above, who are maths students or who work in jobs that have something to do with maths, and which of these people are related to Xu Ming as well as those few students who were attacked."

Jiang Ping began searching for information.

Bai Yutang stopped the car and everyone got out.

Bai Yutang asked Zhan Zhao, "Maths?"

"From the simplest behavioural analysis, this real murderer behind the scenes does not fit the characteristics of G at all, and it can be said that they are definitely not the same person. The most obvious characteristic is that this murderer is a very regular person! Whereas G is completely devoid of regularity, the two of them are on fundamentally different levels! They're not even the same species if you put it in biological terms! If one is a mammal, the other is an insect!" Zhan Zhao said, "We should focus on finding the murderer first through the evidence in front of us, and then find out if he's related to G!"

Bai Yutang nodded. Behind him, Zhao Hu, who was following, asked Ma Han, "I don't seem to be able to understand again... I can understand the individual words, but I can't understand it when they're put together into a sentence!"

Ma Han was just about to say something, but his eyes were attracted to a certain point in the distance, and he looked in the direction behind Zhao Hu.

Zhao Hu looked back and saw that not far from the yellow cordon put out by the police at the crime scene, there was a sports car... that was very familiar.

"That's Eleven's car." Zhao Hu said.

"What is he doing here?" Ma Han walked towards the car.

"Yo..." Zhao Jue was going to go say hello to Eleven, but Zhan Zhao pointed at A'Mo in the car, "Stay and watch the car!"

"What's there to see in the car?!" Zhao Jue was dissatisfied.

Zhan Zhao squinted at him.

Zhao Jue, however, laughed, "Oh? Are you angry because I didn't prompt you? Tsk tsk, when did you start expecting anything from me?"

Before Zhao Jue finished his sentence, Zhan Zhao stepped on his foot.

Zhao Jue rubbed his foot and looked at Zhan Zhao who was angrily walking towards the crime scene.

Bai Yutang helplessly glanced at Zhao Jue.

Zhao Jue took his anger out on him, "What are you looking at?!"

Bai Yutang was not angry and slowly said, "You seem to be deeply afraid that we won't hate you."

Zhao Jue narrowed his eyes.

Bai Yutang seemed to want to say something else, but eventually swallowed back his words and turned back to catch up with Zhan Zhao who was in front of him.

Bai Ye frowned at Zhao Jue, "Why didn't you warn them?"

Zhao Jue looked at Bai Ye and asked rhetorically, "Aren't I always positioned as the bad guy? It's called professionalism!"

Bai Ye was speechless.

Zhao Jue pointed ahead and said, "Go and let the wind out." (Angel: Let the wind out has a few meanings, but in the context of committing a crime, it means to undertake the task of observing the external situation.)

Bai Ye glanced at him and hesitated for a moment, but in the end, he went forward.

When Zhao Jue saw that Bai Ye was walking to the front, he opened the door of the car and got in, sitting right next to A'Mo.

In the backseat of Bai Yutang's car, the two of them just sat quietly.

Zhao Jue sat for a while, then suddenly crossed his legs and turned his face to look at A'Mo, "So the most dangerous place is the safest place, don't you think so?"

A'Mo's white eyes kept their gaze forward, but the blank and helpless expression that had been maintained on his face gradually faded away. He slowly turned his head, his face facing Zhao Jue, and a shallow smile appeared at the corner of his mouth, "You are right in not letting them expect anything from you."

Zhao Jue maintained the same expression he had earlier.

A'Mo turned back, still staring ahead, the smile on his face disappeared and he said in an icy tone, "This way they won't be sad or regretful if you die."

Zhao Jue gently raised his eyebrows and reached out to cover his heart, making an expression of being hit by an arrow.

A'Mo sneered, "But I actually saw him today!"

"It's not surprising that he would show up, of course we have to actively save ourselves when time is running out." Zhao Jue looked at the cafe that was still smoking in the distance and asked, "How many inheritors have been eliminated?"

"Together with the one just now, there are about five!" A'Mo replied.

"In other words, besides you, there are still three left?" Zhao Jue asked.

A'Mo, however, shook his head, "No... there's four!"

Zhao Jue was taken aback, "There's still another one? Wasn't there nine back then?"

"There is still a hidden one!" A'Mo said, "I always knew there was another one! But I don't know who it is, he was locked in the room next to mine."

Zhao Jue was puzzled, "Why did they hide one?"

A'Mo nodded, "It must be because he's more special."

......

In the distance, Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang crossed the cordon and saw Bao Zheng standing in front, staring at the cafe that had been blown to rubble in the distance and breathing deeply.

Zhan Zhao frowned, "Two big cases in one night that killed a lot of people..."

"Hmm."

After Zhan Zhao finished speaking, he heard that Bai Yutang's reaction was a bit strange, so he looked at him – Sure enough, Bai Yutang's attention was not here, but in the direction behind him.

Bai Yutang seemed to have something on his mind.

"Hey," Zhan Zhao gently tapped on him, "what's wrong?"

Bai Yutang gestured behind him. When Zhan Zhao looked over, he saw that Bai Yutang was gesturing to Bai Ye, and behind Bai Ye was their car.

"What's wrong with Bai Ye?" Zhan Zhao asked.

Bai Yutang frowned, "Bai Ye is standing in a position that just happens to be blocking the rear window of my car."

Zhan Zhao thought for a moment, "Do you think Bai Ye is deliberately blocking our view to prevent us from seeing what's going on in the rear window?"

"I feel like Zhao Jue has met A'Mo before." Bai Yutang said, "They're just pretending to meet for the first time."

Zhan Zhao was puzzled, "Is there anything wrong with the two of them? I don't see it..."

"There's nothing wrong with the behaviour of the two of them, if there was you should be able to spot it." Bai Yutang shook his head at Zhan Zhao, "I just have a hunch."

"Intuition?" Zhan Zhao inexplicably found it believable and looked back again.

"A'Mo is acting a little afraid of Zhao Jue, isn't he?" Bai Yutang asked.

Zhan Zhao nodded.

"But I think that he is actually not afraid of Zhao Jue at all! He's not afraid of any of us at all." Bai Yutang replied, "As well as the fact that he, an ordinary blind man, was able to evade the pursuit of four professional assassins and wait until we came to his rescue... This in itself is extraordinary."

Zhan Zhao stopped in his tracks when he heard this.

Bai Yutang looked at him in puzzlement.

He saw Zhan Zhao suddenly turn back around and look at Bai Ye.

Bai Ye happened to raise his head, and the two sides' eyes met.

Zhan Zhao stared at Bai Ye for three seconds before turning back, grinding his teeth and nodding to Bai Yutang, "Your intuition was right!"

On the other end, Zhao Jue, who was chatting with A'Mo, saw Bai Ye take a few steps back and was confused, "What are you doing?"

Bai Ye replied in a calm tone, "They found out."

Zhao Jue froze for a moment and slapped his leg, "Careless! Forgot about the inhuman intuition of the Bai family's little tiger!"

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

My dragon boat team had its first on the water practice tonight and damn, it was cold, it was long, it was tough, it sucked, but man was it good.

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: February 2, 2024 by Angel

Edited: May 8, 2024 by Angel