Chapter 145: This Game Makes No Sense Anymore

Two cases.

One was black, about half the height of a person, and looked quite heavy. It seemed packed with a multitude of items.

As for the smaller case, calling it a suitcase was a bit of a stretch. It was roughly the size of a laptop bag, and its materials appeared quite precious, trimmed with pure white animal leather along the edges.

"The large one is mine."

Taking in the appearance of the two suitcases, Rott spoke directly without any intention of concealment.

And the small one...

Everyone turned their attention to the remaining two people: Irene and Lina.

"The small one is mine." Feeling the gaze of the group, Lina raised her hand rather timidly.

Seeing that both suitcases had owners, Jian Qi let out a breath of relief. He had been genuinely worried they might deny ownership.

"Do you mind if we open and inspect them?" he asked further.

"No problem."

Rott made a gesture inviting them to go ahead.

With Rott taking the lead, even if Lina had wanted to say no, the words wouldn't come out. She could only nod with a somewhat embarrassed expression.

With permission from both, Jian Qi immediately instructed Emotionless to open the cases.

Emotionless didn't hesitate and directly unlatched Rott's case.

Aside from a few changes of clothes, the interior contained various strange little gadgets: a magnifying glass, a flashlight, paper bags...

After scanning the contents for a few moments, Emotionless squatted down and withdrew a white cloth roll from the suitcase. Unfolding it, tools resembling tweezers appeared before everyone's eyes.

"These are things I frequently use when working on cases." Rott offered a brief explanation upon seeing this.

Rolling the white cloth back up, Emotionless continued to search through the remaining items in the suitcase.

An enforcement badge bearing Rott's name. A wallet containing unfamiliar currency. A few men's interest magazines.

After thoroughly searching Rott's luggage, Emotionless found nothing out of the ordinary. Quickly restoring the items to their original positions, he then moved on to Lina's suitcase.

At this, Lina turned around completely, as if exposing the contents to everyone filled her with intense shame.

Emotionless, however, cared nothing for her shame. Unlatching the case, he immediately began pulling out the items one by one:

Extremely revealing clothing, a leather whip, ropes tied into bizarre shapes, a candle, a ping-pong ball-sized sphere attached to an elastic band, two soft circular pads, some visibly expensive cosmetics, and a black necklace bearing a thorn symbol.

"Are you a believer of the Church of Pain?" Mrs. Irene asked Lina with some surprise upon seeing the necklace.

Lina nodded, looking slightly abashed as she said, "It helps me suffer less during work."

"What is the Church of Pain?" Jian Qi inquired, hearing the exchange.

"A cult, though better than others in that their followers only torture themselves." It was Rott, not Irene, who answered Jian Qi.

Jian Qi nodded, then remarked, "In that case, information about this train remains pitifully scarce."

"Why don't we just leave this train right now? I have a bad feeling about this place," Youman suggested. He truly didn't want to spend another second here.

"Didn't you say the back connects to something? Maybe we can find some tools. We could modify those cargo crates and ride them out..." The more Youman talked, the more viable his plan sounded to him.

"Didn't you hear what Jian Qi just said? The mountains outside are crawling with wild beasts. Getting off the train now is no different from feeding yourself to them." Lina snapped back to reality and cast Youman a look of utter contempt.

"Let's stay here for the night for now; it's getting late anyway," Rott said, motioning for everyone to look outside while he took the suitcase handed over by Emotionless and retrieved a few tools he deemed useful.

Following his advice, the rest of the group looked outside and saw that the sun hanging in the sky was indeed obscured by the mountain ridge, about to dip below the horizon.

"Strange, how did time pass so quickly?" Seeing this, Youman instantly dismissed the idea of leaving right away. The mountain forest at night was infinitely more dangerous than during the day.

Having gathered the items he might need, Rott stood up and asked the group, "I'm going to deal with the body now. Anyone want to come with me?" As he spoke, he gave a slight tug to the quilt he had been gripping in his hand all along.

Yet, after a long silence following his question, not a single person responded. Naturally, no sane person would want to have any contact with a corpse.

In the end, seeing Rott left hanging, Jian Qi finally spoke up, "I'll go with you."

Rott glanced at Jian Qi upon hearing this, then addressed the others, "Then you lot go to the kitchen and grab some food. Oh, and remember to block the passageway with something after you get the food. I don't want to be stabbed in my sleep tonight by someone from the engine car."

Though Rott said this with a smile, making it sound like a joke, his words served as a sobering reminder to everyone: they were not the only ones on this train.

Without waiting for their reactions, Rott turned and walked toward the toilet in the rear carriage, accompanied by Jian Qi.

Once the two had completely departed, the people left in the carriage finally snapped back to their senses and began carrying out Rott's instructions.

Amidst this slightly chaotic scene, Youman's hand stealthily reached beneath the seat where the tough guy had found the photo, completely unnoticed by anyone present.

Finding no hidden items, his eyes flickered twice. Then, transforming back into his cowardly, spineless journalist persona, he joined the rest in heading toward the kitchen to fetch food.

...

...

"Did you discover something?"

Entering the toilet and closing the door behind them, Jian Qi asked. He wasn't as easily fooled as the others into believing Rott had suddenly grown kind enough to collect the nameless man's body. As for the smell, simply keeping the toilet door shut would have sufficed; there was no need to go to such lengths.

Hearing Jian Qi's question, Rott smiled non-committally without offering an explanation. After using the quilt to cover the dead man's body in front of Jian Qi, he walked over to the window on the left side of the toilet. Raising the flashlight from his luggage, he shone it directly upward.

Instantly, the darkness overhead was banished by the bright white beam.

Seeing his action, Jian Qi understood everything in an instant.

"There really is a passageway up there." His earlier hypothesis was proven correct. Someone must have used the overhead passage to enter the toilet and carry out this locked-room murder.

Yet, just as he felt the truth of this mystery was about to unfold, he suddenly heard Rott gasp in astonishment.

"How can this be?!"

Startled by the exclamation, Jian Qi immediately looked up toward the ceiling. When he saw the situation above, his pupils contracted sharply.

The passage he had deduced did indeed exist. However, contrary to his expectations, the width of this opening was merely the span of a palm. Not to mention an adult, even a toddler of two or three years old could not have squeezed through this exit.

This completely shattered his previous hypothesis.

"Could it really have been a ghost that killed him?"

He felt something was amiss, yet he couldn't quite pinpoint where the problem lay.

"Clues. We're still missing a crucial clue. What on earth was the killer's motive?"

While he was lost in thought, Rott, having recovered from his shock, sprang into action. Standing on tiptoe, he reached out a hand, apparently intending to push the opening wider to verify whether it was truly that restrictive.