"That's different! Xiaonian told us he would never go to that store, even if it killed him," Wang Yang argued. "As for me, I didn't just go to play, I went to investigate."
Li Bin chimed in, "Yes, I can testify to that. Xiaonian said he hated that store and wouldn't go there even if it meant his death."
"What were you investigating?" Fang Rui asked.
Wang Yang took a sip of tea, instantly becoming energized, completely lacking the dejected air he had while washing vegetables earlier.
"Previously, Xiaonian told me that store had plagiarized my store's design, so I sued them in court. A few days ago, we reached a settlement. Their boss was very forthcoming and agreed to compensate me three million yuan. My goodness, three million! With this money, I can not only clear my debts but also open a new store."
"Brother Wang, you're going to open another store? We support you!" Li Bin said excitedly. "I can provide you with creative ideas when the time comes."
"Sounds great!"
Fang Rui seized on the key point of his statement: "Was it Liu Xiaonian who told you that store had copied your design?"
"Yes. I had been to that store before and played that scenario, but I didn't trigger the hidden mechanism, so I didn't know about the design in that secret room. Later, Xiaonian sent me photos, and that's when I realized they had made a one-to-one copy of my store's design. This was all thanks to Xiaonian."
"Who designed that secret room?"
"I did! All the mechanisms in there were my ideas, though my friends helped with some creative input," Wang Yang said proudly. "However, that store did make some changes. They altered how the mechanism is triggered. They made it very vulgar - you have to touch the skeleton bride's chest to trigger the mechanism. Tsk tsk, doing such obscene things, it's disgusting and lowbrow!"
Fang Rui was speechless. No wonder the store manager's face looked unnatural when Mu Mian mentioned the location of the mechanism.
"Did you trigger that hidden level? Did you enter the 'Bride and Groom Collection Room'?" Fang Rui continued to ask.
"I triggered it, but I didn't go in. The password was too difficult; I couldn't crack it," Wang Yang's face reddened slightly. "The password in my store wasn't nearly that hard."
Having asked most of what he wanted to know, as they were about to leave, Fang Rui gave Zhang a look and then glanced at Wang Yang's cup.
Zhang understood immediately. He said to Wang Yang's sister, "Sis, where's the bathroom? I need to use it."
"It's over there."
"Boss, I'll go to the bathroom first. You guys wait for me outside."
While Wang Yang went back to washing vegetables and his sister was preparing seasonings for the evening, Zhang put on gloves and, when they weren't looking, slipped Wang Yang's cup into an evidence bag.
This cup had Wang Yang's fingerprints on it, which could be compared with the fingerprints on the display screen.
After leaving Wang Yang's sister's store, Fang Rui turned to Li Bin: "What do you think of the relationship between Wang Yang and Liu Xiaonian?"
"What do you mean? You're not suspecting Brother Wang, are you? That's impossible! Brother Wang is exceptionally good to all of us. Every time he updates a scenario, he invites us to play for free and even treats us to snacks. You've probably noticed that Xiaonian doesn't have friends. Among all of us, besides me, Brother Wang was the kindest to him."
"Did Liu Xiaonian know about Wang Yang winning the lawsuit?" Fang Rui asked.
"I don't think so. I only found out about it today. This lawsuit was very difficult. Brother Wang was so poor he couldn't even afford a lawyer. Later, he had to swear to his sister that he would never touch escape rooms again before she gave him some money. None of us thought he could win the case, let alone that the boss would be so generous and pay such a large amount without even haggling."
After Li Bin left, Zhang speculated, "Boss, could it be that Wang Yang didn't want to share the three million with Liu Xiaonian, so he killed him? It can't be such a coincidence that both of them appeared in that store at the same time, right?"
Fang Rui also found it too coincidental, and he couldn't understand why Wang Yang insisted the room was his own design when the design drawings were clearly made by Liu Xiaonian.
Fang Rui returned to the station. As he passed by Mu Mian's office, he glanced in and saw the skeleton bride standing coldly next to Mu Mian. He found it oddly eye-catching and thought it looked very unaesthetic in that position.
Mu Mian was writing a report. She would look up at the skeleton bride every few lines, then lower her head and continue writing happily.
It was seriously affecting work efficiency!
"Boss, look at you. Of all the things you could have given her, you had to choose this," Zhang commented from the side. "Mu Mian doesn't even pay attention to us anymore. Chen Xue says Mu Mian doesn't listen to her now, she's too focused on choosing brushes for it."
"Brushes?"
"Are those the forensic doctor's maintenance tools?"
"..."
Fang Rui then had Li pull up all the surveillance footage related to Wang Yang.
The footage showed Wang Yang arriving at the store at 4:03 PM that day. He was wearing a baseball cap and a mask, looking around vigilantly. At 4:12 PM, he entered the scenario and didn't come out until after 6 PM, sneaking out like a thief. It definitely looked suspicious.
"Boss, look at him. He must have a guilty conscience. This guy's acting skills are really good. We were almost fooled by him," Zhang exclaimed. When they were talking to Wang Yang at his sister's store, Zhang had thought he was a good person.
"Boss, the fingerprints on this cup match one of the fingerprints on the screen. That Wang Yang guy must have entered the password on the screen," Wang from the fingerprint comparison team quickly reported their results. He detected that one of the fingerprints matched Wang Yang's.
Fang Rui felt it was necessary to summon Wang Yang for a chat.
But he remembered what Mu Mian had said: if the killer could crack that numerical password, they shouldn't be too stupid, so why would they leave such obvious evidence as fingerprints?
The next day, Fang Rui invited Wang Yang to the station to give a statement.
When Wang Yang saw Fang Rui and Zhang, he spoke urgently: "Officer Fang, why did you call me here? I've told you everything I know. Did you call me here because you have more questions?"
"Can you help us crack these passwords?" Fang Rui handed him a piece of paper with all the numerical reasoning questions that would appear in that hidden level.
Wang Yang glanced at it and frowned, "So many? Let me see."
"No rush, take your time."
Wang Yang found it strange why they asked him to do math problems at the police station. He wasn't a math student. Nevertheless, he worked on them seriously, only to find that he seemed quite poor at math.
He was sweating profusely with anxiety. After half an hour, he had only solved two problems.
Zhang quietly graded his answers against the correct ones and whispered to Fang Rui, "He worked for an hour and only did two problems, both wrong."
Wang Yang's face was bright red. He defended himself, "I've never been good at math since I was young. If it were other types of reasoning problems, like graphical reasoning or logical reasoning, I'd be much better..."
Fang Rui frowned. If Wang Yang couldn't solve a single problem, could it be that he really hadn't entered that hidden room?
Fang Rui took out the stack of design drawings made by Liu Xiaonian. "Mr. Wang, you said all the rooms in your store were designed by you. How do you explain these design drawings?"
