Great! I'm surrounded by villains!
Chapter 138 - 58: Truly Puzzling

Chapter 138: Chapter 58: Truly Puzzling

Criminal Psychology was right after all.

Indeed, Duan Mingyuan had put himself in the shoes of the terrorist from the Wangxu Organization by using the knowledge from above, and it took him half a class to talk Lu Renjia to death.

"You can’t suspect Teacher Mingyuan, he couldn’t possibly be a bad person!"

Ning Ruyue said, "But you’re right, an alibi really is meaningless."

Truly a princess both upright and kind.

Actually, you didn’t need to add that last sentence at all.

Duan Mingyuan wanted to criticize Ning Ruyue.

"Is he your teacher?"

One-Eye pondered deeply as he touched his chin and asked, "Did he do anything suspicious just now?"

"He did."

Ning Ruyue said, "He kept touching the walls and glass of the train, although I still don’t know the meaning of that act, it’s definitely unrelated to Mr. Lu Renjia’s death!"

"When did this happen?"

"About a quarter of an hour ago."

"That’s exactly when Mr. Lu Renjia is presumed to have died."

One-Eye suddenly realized, as he was obviously a man of the world, "Although the compartments of the train prevent passengers from visiting each other, an Ability is not included in this limitation. If he could extend his Life Energy quietly by tapping the walls and infiltrate the washroom to kill Mr. Lu Renjia, this could be entirely feasible—and meanwhile, he could take advantage of the fact that he was with you in the same room all the time to establish an alibi."

"Humph, pure nonsense."

Jiuyue finally swallowed a piece of chicken wing. With Mr. Mingyuan’s Ability, it’s indeed as easy as taking something out of a bag to kill from a distance, but she only needed one sentence to prove Mr. Mingyuan’s innocence.

This was an ironclad fact, and she would not allow anyone to underestimate Mr. Mingyuan’s strength, "If Mr. Mingyuan wanted to kill someone, do you think you would even be able to find the body?"

"Exactly!"

Ru Yue folded her arms across her chest and nodded in agreement.

"Mr. Mingyuan can kill everyone on the train without a sound or trace!"

"Indeed, Teacher Mingyuan is the strongest and most twisted ogre in history... huh?"

Halfway through her agreement, Ning Ruyue realized something was amiss.

Teacher Mingyuan plans to quietly kill everyone on the train?

When did this happen?

"Classmate Ru Yue, everything that just happened was part of a vivid lesson. Always remember, most wrongful convictions in this world are based on the presumption of guilt at the start."

Duan Mingyuan stood up and as he passed by Jiuyue, he didn’t forget to pinch her big tail, which was drooping over the back of her chair, as a lesson.

Jiuyue’s body shivered, and she let out a "meow."

"When you believe someone is guilty, everything he or she does seems very suspicious. To find the truth, you must get rid of preconceived notions," he continued.

He then said to One-Eye, "The reason I touched the train’s walls and windows was purely out of interest in the Barrier on the Peach Blossom train, and besides, it’s your fault for allowing a member of the Wangxu Organization onboard the train."

Carrying his condolences for Mr. Lu Renjia, Duan Mingyuan went to the VIP area’s washroom.

One-Eye and Ning Ruyue followed closely behind.

Mr. Lu Renjia lay there quietly with his head plunged into the basin; his hands hung over the edge of the basin, and his melted brain was flushed into the drain along with the water, leaving only a bare neck.

There were no signs of struggle in the washroom, and Mr. Lu Renjia hadn’t even cried out for help during the process.

Since the body was discovered a quarter of an hour later, One-Eye said the body had been found by Mr. Lu Renjia’s personal bodyguard, who was assigned to him by Tiandao Network Company.

They say he was a retired space mercenary hired at a high price from "Heaven."

The moment this towering bodyguard forcefully broke in and saw the body, he was scared like a baby and sat down on the floor, and despite several attempts to get up, he fell over and over again.

The bodyguard repeated multiple times that after Mr. Lu Renjia entered the washroom, no one else had approached it.

As to whether he was just trying to cover for his failure that led to the death of the person he was supposed to protect remained unknown.

"Teacher, what do you think?"

Ning Ruyue, struggling to suppress the nausea prompted by the bizarre murder scene, asked eagerly in the spirit of active learning.

"After Mr. Lu Renjia finished using the toilet, he came to the sink to wash his hands, and then suddenly felt an itch at the back of his head. So he dipped his head into the sink, trying to rinse off the foreign object on the back of his scalp. A minute later, the itching stopped, the water washed away the foreign object, and his melted head with it,"

Having completed the investigation of the scene, Duan Mingyuan said, "Deprived of his head, Mr. Lu Renjia felt somewhat tired, so he lay on the edge of the sink to rest for a while, until now."

"Are you telling a dark fairy tale?"

The one-eyed man asked.

At first glance, it sounded like a hellish joke, but if one considered it carefully, especially in conjunction with the corpse’s enigmatic appearance, it was downright chilling.

Because that was exactly how Mr. Lu Renjia had died so easily.

Even though his head had been flushed down the drain, he hadn’t made any call for help or left any signs of struggle.

It indeed seemed as if he had merely been resting beside the sink for a while.

"Teacher..."

Ning Ruyue tugged at the corner of Lu Renjia’s clothes, "Then, can you resurrect someone without a head?"

"Without a head is possible, but not without Life Energy,"

Duan Mingyuan believed Life Energy was akin to the soul; as long as a trace of spirit lingered, he could accomplish reconstruction.

However, it seemed that Mr. Lu Renjia’s Life Energy had been flushed down the drain along with his brain, leaving behind a bizarre corpse that was nothing more than an empty shell in front of them.

This could only be interpreted as the Wangxu Organization also understanding the meaning of "soul" and killing people cleanly and thoroughly, completely severing any chance they might have had at Resurrection.

The reason Duan Mingyuan had come to the scene was not just because of the news of Mr. Lu Renjia’s death but also due to a fascination with the Wangxu’s method of killing.

He was curious about what kind of Ability could allow someone to approach Mr. Lu Renjia without making a sound under the watchful eye of a bodyguard and melt his head off without him noticing at all.

Because in theory, if the murderer could melt Mr. Lu Renjia’s head, they could melt anyone else’s.

According to the theories he had summarized from the manual, the stronger the Ability appeared, the more stringent the restrictions tended to be, a biological subconscious limitation. After reading "Dreamland Odd Talk," he found theoretical support for this.

The author of "Dreamland Odd Talk" mentioned that controlling Dreamland itself was a discipline that required long-term training.

Unless, the murderer had obtained an intermediate professional title and forcibly exerted his Ability through a Barrier.

But this clearly didn’t apply to the current case.

If someone else had released a Barrier on the train, Duan Mingyuan would have noticed it immediately.

So, it was more likely that Mr. Lu Renjia died after triggering a certain condition.

He looked at the ashen-faced bodyguard and asked, "Before he died, did Mr. Lu Renjia have any contact with anyone?"

"There was a woman."

The bodyguard suddenly thought of something but immediately became hesitant.

"A woman?"

"He said he saw a woman, but I didn’t see her. It’s not my fault, this has happened more than once or twice. He always explains afterwards that it was a virtual person in his smartphone, I don’t understand these things."

"Where is his smartphone?"

"He took it with him to the washroom."

The one-eyed man immediately began searching the body’s pockets.

He turned the jacket and trousers inside out, but couldn’t find any trace of the smartphone.