Mu Shan and the old driver, Li Mei briefly explained what had happened when she was forcibly teleported into the mini-game earlier.
Feng Wei nodded. “You triggered a main storyline item. I heard others mention similar situations. And you should have gotten quite a few clues from it.”
“I wanted to remind you all before we came in. For this kind of side quest, the first players to enter have the highest clearance rate. If we come in after others, the scene might be destroyed by previous players, or the level boss might be awakened, and the difficulty will multiply.”
The old driver held a cigarette in his mouth and prodded Zhang Haiyang’s butt with the spear fork in his hand. “Speaking of which, kid, did you find a photo of your mission target?”
Zhang Haiyang bent down and pointed to the last row of the employee list. “Found it! Liu Dawei, a new researcher just hired this year.”
The one-inch photo showed an ordinary tech guy, probably in his early twenties, with zero distinguishing features, zero research achievements, zero honors.
The old driver glanced at it. “Tsk.”
“This guy has a total nobody face. Matches you perfectly, kid.”
“By the way, we haven’t encountered a single zombie in this research institute. We at least need to find Liu Dawei’s corpse to know his cause of death, right?” Zhang Haiyang scratched his head.
Mu Shan asked, “What did you find when you searched his desk earlier?”
“Nothing. Not even a speck of rat droppings.”
She thought for a moment and took out the peashooter, gripping it in her hand. “Let’s go check Sun Lizhou’s office.”
As the director, his office was certainly independent.
The group followed the direction of the KT board and moved forward, passing through a long glass corridor bridge to the B Zone on the second floor of the research institute.
Along the way, Mu Shan couldn’t help but pay attention to the ceiling.
In the previous office, the Type II Gas had ultimately sprayed from the vent, and she had escaped just in time, unclear of its toxicity.
And now she discovered that similar ventilation pipes and sprinkler heads were almost everywhere in the entire research institute.
…
They arrived at B Zone on the second floor. The first few rooms had signs for [Finance Office], [HR Office], [Conference Room], and [Security Control Room].
They found the [Director’s Office] in the fifth room.
A sign hung on the door: 【On Business Trip】.
Mu Shan looked at the tightly closed door and tried the blank access card she had found under the flower pot earlier.
“Beep beep.” It rang once, but the door lock showed no response. It wasn’t the card for this door.
She put it away in frustration.
Zhang Haiyang beside her took a look, raised his large machete, and smashed the door lock with two “clang clang” blows, then brutally broke in.
The young man grinned and spread his hands. “Sister, after you!”
Mu Shan: …Dungeons make people savage.
The moment she stepped through the door, the system prompt appeared promptly.
【Player arrived at the main storyline location—the crime scene
Task progress (1/10)】
The air in the room was fresh, without the stench of being sealed. Or rather, the entire research institute smelled quite pleasant.
The overall layout of the room was similar to the deputy director’s office, but larger in area with newer facilities—at least the floor wasn’t broken.
In the empty space in the center of the office, the system had outlined a supine human figure with chalk, with a row of floating small text above it: Sun Lizhou’s corpse (simulated).
Li Mei raised her hand. “What does this mean?”
Feng Wei tsked and rolled his eyes. “The system’s really stingy, not letting us see the corpse’s state directly. That’s basically increasing the task difficulty for you.”
Even outsiders could deduce plenty from the degree of corpse decay, fatal wounds, blood volume, and so on.
Zhang Haiyang had a sudden realization. “The system’s bad, sister is good!”
Mu Shan said nothing. She walked a circle around the chalk outline. The deceased was a somewhat obese man, matching Sun Lizhou’s profile.
His desk was equipped with a desktop computer, printer, scanner, landline phone, and so on. The desk had been rummaged through messily, with record documents scattered from the drawers, but the culprit had been careful not to leave footprints.
There was also a bookshelf against the wall, but it held only honor certificates, commemorative journals, personal biographies, trophies, and medals. Many books from the shelves had fallen to the ground; the culprit was searching for something.
Beside the leather sofa Sun Lizhou used for guests was a fish tank. The fish inside, un-fed for a long time, had jumped out and dried into little fish jerky on the floor.
Water plants still grew in the tank, but they were completely buried in sand, and the tank water was murky.
Mu Shan went to the desktop computer and tapped the keyboard. The monitor lit up, requiring a lock screen password.
She thought for a moment and entered [112233].
A second later, it unlocked successfully, and a blue desktop with icons appeared.
That notebook really belonged to Sun Lizhou!
The desktop had the research institute’s standard LOGO icon, with the institute’s full name below.
There was very little data on Sun Lizhou’s computer—at least the icons were sparse and empty. It didn’t match the positioning of a director-level “father of research.”
Mu Shan found his personal schedule for the month on the desktop. There were 20 working days, all marked as normal attendance, with no business trip arrangements shown.
Mu Shan straightened up. “I was hesitating at first whether he died from a zombie attack, but now I can confirm it was murder.”
The old driver’s wheelchair rolled over the papers littering the floor. “How so?”
Mu Shan pointed to the chalk figure on the ground. “The system has already stamped it: this is the crime scene. The environment doesn’t match a zombie attack. The corpse is intact overall, no limbs eaten. The office is messy but clean, no blood splatter, no signs of struggle, and the door was closed. So it was deliberate murder.”
“What about the culprit?”
“The owner of the office I stumbled into, one of the male deputy directors. I found a notebook belonging to Sun Lizhou in the deputy director’s room, with the password torn off—it was his computer password.”
“He came here to kill and search for clues. As for why he tore off the paper, probably to prevent it from being discovered.”
The old driver said, “There are two deputy directors, Wang Siqiang and Qian Bo. How do you distinguish between them?”
“The room owner was probably over forty. From the hanging painting ‘Roc Spreading Wings,’ he has a strong desire for self-actualization, wanting to ‘soar into the sky.’ Maybe his career wasn’t going well, or he’d been suppressed by someone with no outlet.” Mu Shan speculated. “Wang Siqiang entered the research institute just five years ago and already has two research achievements—honestly, pretty excellent. Not likely to be bottled up like that.”
“The owner’s office had an administrative jacket that only middle-aged men would wear. Judging by age, it’s Qian Bo.”
Mu Shan added, “Wang Siqiang looks older, but when I flipped through the female researcher’s desk earlier, I saw a ‘C City Singles Mixer’ roster and spotted his name.”
Zhang Haiyang was slow by half a second, then suddenly interjected, “We single dogs never harm anyone!!!”
Mu Shan patted his shoulder.
“The most important point: Sun Lizhou’s research topic published in the magazine—anti-aging beauty project—exactly matches Qian Bo’s research content over the past few months. I saw detailed data files on his computer. That’s ironclad proof.”
“And Sun Lizhou is just one person. Even a genius couldn’t have the energy for so many cross-disciplinary topics at once. Even an immortal couldn’t split themselves enough.”
“So I judge that Qian Bo, resentful of Sun Lizhou’s long-term academic plagiarism, deliberately killed him!”
The next second, the system prompt updated.
【Cannon Fodder Player 537099, your [Zombie Siege] side quest progress
Task 1: Find the cause of the badge owner’s death (5/10)
Task 2: Find the reason the zombie virus spread through the city (0/10)】
Mu Shan bit her lip.
The progress updated, meaning her judgment was correct, but it was missing more detailed steps…
For example, exactly how the culprit killed Sun Lizhou.
One was the method, two was the murder weapon. That was hard to judge.
The old driver was surprised beside her. “Damn, your logic is more consistent than any so-called expert! Progress is only 5? So there are still details missing?”
Mu Shan started rummaging again. “Hard to say. Everyone, help me check the room for any murder weapons or clues left by the culprit, or anything unusual.”
The three split up and searched high and low.
Zhang Haiyang picked up the glass teapot on the tea table. “Sis, could the culprit have smashed him with the teapot and killed him that way?”
Mu Shan tilted her head. “Don’t know.”
The old driver waved it off and rummaged under the tea table for some decent Pu’er tea. “No chance. This teapot is glass, so thin. Human skull is harder than glass. The person wouldn’t die from it, but the pot would shatter first.”
Zhang Haiyang had a sudden realization, and Mu Shan nodded to show she’d learned something.
Li Mei opened the office door and peered down the corridor. “If the culprit brought the murder weapon from outside, with people coming and going in the hallway, wouldn’t it be easy to get spotted?”
“So exclude long knives, sticks, and such weapons.” Mu Shan mused. “It should be something small in area or easily foldable, something that could fit in a backpack.”
“Then it’s the fruit knife.” Zhang Haiyang was stirring the sand in the fish tank with his large machete. “Report: no weapons hidden in the tank!”
After about ten minutes, they found no traces.
There was very little blood splatter on the ground, not like a sharp weapon wound.
Mu Shan set down the messy books and materials and stood up. “I’ll go check the security room for surveillance.”
The old driver said, “It’s been so long; the odds of footage still existing are low.”
“Worth a try.”
“Then we’ll search nearby for supplies. Shout if we meet up.”
“Okay.”
Mu Shan leaned in and entered the adjacent security control room. There were no zombies inside either.
The monitor screens covered an entire wall, at least dozens of them. More than half were black, and the rest were either facing trees, the sky, or the first-floor main entrance.
Fortunately, it didn’t require a password to boot. She quickly searched the surveillance, but unfortunately, the internal storage seemed to have been damaged on the day of the chaos, unable to retrieve archived records.
Many cameras had also been broken in the chaos; only a few showed the current status sporadically.
The system really wouldn’t let anyone take shortcuts easily. Mu Shan sighed.
Really stingy…
Next door, Zhang Haiyang and the other two searched the finance office and only found a few cases of mineral water and disposable cups.
Li Mei had sharp eyes and spotted an unusual door at the corridor corner opposite the window.
“Look over there. That door seems to need an employee ID card to pass.”
“Card? I have one!”
Zhang Haiyang took out his mission item employee card, which read [Researcher—Liu Dawei].
The old driver looked back and saw Mu Shan had moved to the conference room to rummage, so he said, “Let her keep looking for clues there first. We’ll check this out.”
The three agreed, and Zhang Haiyang swiped the card to enter.
The deceased researcher’s ID card successfully opened the access door. Behind the glass door was the experimental zone, the originally white walls covered in glaring bloodstains.
“Is this where they developed four-winged chickens?” Zhang Haiyang and the other two proceeded cautiously, their shoes crunching over shattered glass fragments on the floor with “creak creak” sounds.
The old driver found a still-operating cold storage cabinet.
“What’s inside?”
“Red vials, one after another. Seems like biological blood.”
“Whatever, can’t eat it.”
In the laboratory, Zhang Haiyang hunched his shoulders and looked around warily. He carefully avoided the fragile-looking lab equipment and said casually, “Speaking of which, this place is too weird. It’s the side quest location, but not a single zombie. Bro, do you think they all ran out the main gate?”
The old driver mocked, “What, miss them after just one day?”
The second-floor lab wasn’t large, and they soon reached the end.
There was another door at the end of the corridor, marked with a green little person icon, indicating the emergency exit direction.
Zhang Haiyang casually went to pull the door open. “No way, I was just puzzled…”
Behind the door was a pitch-black staircase. His gaze stretched forward when suddenly his pupils contracted in shock. A scream was swallowed back down his throat.
Zombies packed the stairs densely. They stood there like punished elementary students, dejected with heads hanging low, squeezed shoulder to shoulder, all facing uniformly toward the downstairs direction.
The sound of the door opening instantly triggered the voice-activated lights. The horde turned their heads in unison, revealing one ashen, deathly face after another.
Zhang Haiyang instinctively slammed the door shut and broke down. “There’s no door lock!”
Almost simultaneously, scratching sounds from nails and violent banging erupted from behind the door.
The Old Driver maneuvered his wheelchair back and cursed loudly. “You and your jinx mouth—you really did it!”
Li Mei was scared to the point of tears. “Let’s hurry to the first floor!”
“No way, there’s nowhere to hide on the first floor. If we escape outside, our mission will fail!” Zhang Haiyang bolted while shouting at the top of his lungs. “Sis! Sis! Run fast, zombies are coming!”
The Old Driver’s wheelchair knocked aside the obstructing trash and he made a snap decision. “Head to the third floor and shake them off!”
Mu Shan had naturally heard the commotion. She had been about to retreat when her eyes suddenly caught the words on the conference room whiteboard: “Daily Meeting”.
The date below it was the 29th.
“Sis, run! The zombies are coming, aahhh!”
“Hold them off for a bit!” Mu Shan burst out of the room and charged toward the adjacent HR office.
Zhang Haiyang was dumbfounded. “Huh?”
He spun around, gripped the large machete with both hands, and roared. “Fine, I’ll hold them! I’ll fight you all!!!”
On the other side, Mu Shan flipped through the attendance directory in a sweat, her hands trembling from tension.
Time—it was still about time.
The date of the last meeting indicated that the zombies had attacked the research institute on the 29th, so Sun Lizhou’s time of death was at least before the 29th.
“Found it!”
The attendance system on the HR computer showed that Sun Lizhou had clocked in that morning on the 26th and never again, but the HR system had received a business trip approval email from him.
Mu Shan quickly searched for [Qian Bo]’s name.
To her surprise, starting from after the 26th—on the 27th, 28th, and 29th—he had maintained normal attendance records without a single late arrival or early departure.
A full four days?
If Sun Lizhou had died on the 26th, would his corpse have just sat in the office undiscovered for four days? Even with the current cool temperatures, it should have started decomposing by now.
And Qian Bo—if he had already killed his target, why didn’t he run? Why did he still come to work?