The weapon by the pillow

Chapter 99: The Director of the First Half?

"If I were to say that last night's ceremony wasn't over yet, that the 'live broadcast'... would continue, Mr. Cheng, would you still be so composed?"

The gunman's words were like needles soaked in well water, piercing deep into Cheng Tan's cochlea.

"What!" Cheng Tan was startled, the card he had just picked up almost slipping from his fingers. "You could not possibly be...?"

"Mr. Cheng, you still don't understand?" The man chuckled softly.

The laughter echoed in the quiet private room, dry and harsh like shards of ice falling into a porcelain bowl. His left hand still held the gun firmly pointed at Fang Jie, while his right hand reached into his inner pocket, pulled out something, and with a slight flick of his wrist—

The object traced an arc, landing precisely with a crisp "ding" sound into the wooden box containing thirteen bone dice.

God!

Cheng Tan's pupils suddenly contracted.

Inside the wooden box, the newly dropped object was swirling slightly among several pale white bone dice—a die with one corner neatly trimmed off, its smooth surface exuding a cold, craftsman-like quality.

That die with a missing corner!

In room 403, eight people sat around a die-hard die, passing it from hand to hand in the deathly silence. The die that would determine who would "receive" it!

Cheng Tan remembered it clearly: when the dice stopped in front of him, it was pointing upwards with a "three," and the cut-off corner was stuck between a "two" and a "four."

"How...how did this end up in your hands..." Cheng Tan's throat tightened, his voice sounding like it had been sanded.

"There are eight of us, and seven more? What did you do to them? What happened in that room...? That live stream wasn't Jin Xiaohao, it was you..." Cheng Tan's words were jumbled up, his mind a jumble of threads, unable to connect them.

The man with the gun slowly shook his head, the muzzle of the gun remaining motionless: "I don't know either. I directed the first half, but you... didn't follow the script. So the play ended."

"What a load of bull! You're using human lives to fill in the script, do you even consider yourself human!" Cheng Tan roared, trying to get up, but Cheng Jing pressed him back into his chair with one hand.

"That was a ritual." The man's tone was so calm it sent chills down your spine. "Only three were broken in total."

"Where are those seven people?" Cheng Tan pressed, his heart pounding painfully inside him.

"I want to know too," the man said, a fleeting look of bewilderment crossing his eyes for the first time, seemingly genuine. "My men went in, and they vanished without a trace!! The second half... I'm waiting for the next installment. How about we continue the play today, and try to pick up where last night left off..."

The private room was so quiet you could hear the dust settling.

The old clock on the wall ticks away, tick-tock, tick-tock, as if counting people's lifespans.

Cheng Tan stared intently at the broken die. It lay silently amidst a pile of bones, gleaming coldly.

Last night's events weren't a dream, nor were they hysteria; they truly happened. Someone orchestrated a "ritual," trapping eight people inside, while the fate of the others remained unknown. And Cheng Tan was the only one who "came back"—if you could call crawling back from a haunted house to his own bed a "comeback."

Now, the person who set this up is right across from us, holding a gun, yet claiming they don't know what the rest of the story will be like.

Absurd. Terrifying.

But a voice inside Cheng Tan hissed: This person didn't lie all the way through.

"You call it a ritual," Cheng Tanqiang suppressed his turbulent emotions, his gaze shifting from the dice to the man's face, "What's the point? What's the purpose?"

"Pay back the debt." The man's words were as short as a knife's edge. "Justice. Truth. Call it whatever you want. At its core, it boils down to one thing: someone owes a blood debt, and it's time to pay it."

"Who do you think you are to decide life and death?" Cheng Jing couldn't help but interject, her voice trembling with anger. "What gives you the right?"

The man turned to look at her, a strange weariness in his eyes: "Officer Cheng, you've handled many cases, seen countless victims and their families. Tell me, when the law fails to deliver justice, when the world protects the wicked, when the truth rots in the mud... what can those still breathing do? Wait idly? Wait until the wicked die of old age? Wait until all the evidence turns to ashes? Wait until they themselves are exhausted, going to their coffins filled with hatred?"

Cheng Jing opened her mouth, but couldn't utter a single word.

She had indeed seen far too many eyes like that—bloodshot eyes filled with despair, and within that despair burning with scorn for the word "justice." In the dead of night, when no one was around, she had asked herself the same question, but the answer was like moonlight—visible, yet unattainable.

"Another Li Kai! What good is your obsession with the case?... The last time I saw him, he was almost insane!" Cheng Tan glared at the man. "You think you're pursuing the truth? The truth is probably laughing in the shadows!!!"

"I... I have to do something. Mr. Cheng, it's your turn to play." The man turned his gaze back to the card table. "This game isn't over yet."

Cheng Tan looked down at the cards in his hand. His mind was no longer on the fourteen dominoes, but the game had to continue. At this moment, only this small card table was a stable shell, allowing for conversations and undercurrents.

He played a card—six of bamboo.

"Eat," Fangjie suddenly said, picking up Cheng Tan's six of bamboo and combining it with her own four and five of bamboo to form a straight. This action was like a pebble thrown into stagnant water, slowly bringing the stagnant game back to life.

Fang Jie discarded a nine of bamboo, then looked up at the man with the gun: "You said you directed the first half. Does that mean last night's live broadcast was a setup by you?"

"Half," the man admitted. "I used Li Kai's influence to set up the venue again after he had arranged everything. I prepared the location, I installed the equipment, and I even picked the people... Of course, Liu Li was the culprit."

"A mishap?" Cheng Tan frowned.

"She ruined everything," the man said calmly.

"What about the people in the ceremony?" Cheng Tan pressed. "What connection do they have with Jin Dafu's case?"

"Everyone's involved," the man said. "Some benefited from the demolition compensation back then, some were sycophants who knew but kept silent, and some were leeches who sucked blood from that tragedy. I investigated for three years, screening and filtering again, and finally identified seven. Add one more 'executioner,' making a total of eight, to correspond to..."

He paused, then looked at the box of bone dice: "They correspond to eight creditors out of the thirteen victims."

"So last night was a trial?" Cheng Jing asked, "To expose their dirty laundry through live streaming, and then... settle the score?"

"A trial requires evidence of guilt," the man said. "I have prepared evidence of everyone's crimes. The live broadcast is so that the whole world can see, so that those who are still at large can also see—the time has come, it's time to pay the price. As for settling the accounts... I didn't arrange it."

"What do you mean?" Cheng Tan keenly seized the loophole in the words.

"I originally planned to reveal the evidence of their crimes on the live stream, make them confess their sins, and then have the 'executioner'—the eighth person I arranged—pronounce the 'verdict' in public. The verdict was empty, a moral judgment. I didn't intend to take anyone's life." A slight ripple appeared in the man's voice. "But someone... changed the script."

"Who?"

"I don't know," the man answered frankly. "Once the live stream started, someone took over the whole operation, and I became a pawn in it too!"