I fulfilled the female supporting role's wish and I succeeded

Chapter 230 Lotus Tower (56)

"Hey, Li Lianhua, didn't you say you wouldn't help me investigate the case?" Fang Duobing raised his eyebrows with a hint of sarcasm in his tone. As he spoke, he glanced at Li Xiangyi's reaction out of the corner of his eye.

Li Xiangyi rolled his eyes and said unhappily: "Am I helping you? I'm just afraid of death! I'm afraid that you, a young and inexperienced person, will get yourself implicated in the investigation and then implicate Luo Luo!" As he spoke, he reached out and gently patted Fang Duobing's shoulder, but his eyes revealed a barely perceptible concern.

Fang Duobing curled his lips and was about to refute, but he saw Qiao Wanwan frowning slightly, her eyes wandering, as if she was thinking about something.

"Lolo, what are you thinking about?" Li Xiangyi keenly noticed Qiao Wanwan's strangeness. He walked over to Qiao Wanwan and asked gently, "Are you tired? Why don't you go and rest for a while?"

Qiao Wanwan came back to her senses. She raised her head and looked at Li Xiangyi, wanting to say something but stopping herself. Finally, she said, "Huahua, look at that child, isn't he..."

Li Xiangyi immediately understood what Qiao Wanwan meant. Although the child's face and figure had changed significantly, his eyes and gaze reminded him of his old enemy from ten years ago—Di Feisheng.

"Lolo, it's him." Li Xiangyi's voice was low and firm. He held Qiao Wanwan's hand tightly, as if giving her strength and also giving himself strength.

"What are you two talking about? It's so weird." Fang Duobing looked at Li Xiangyi and Qiao Wanwan with a bewildered look. He scratched his head and asked in confusion, "What do you mean by him? Who?"

Li Xiangyi and Qiao Wanwan exchanged a glance and both chose silence. They knew that now was not the time to tell Fang Duobing the truth.

The three returned to Zhang Qingshi's room. The room was filled with a faint smell of blood. Although the body had been removed, the air still seemed to have the scent of death.

"Let's take a closer look." Li Xiangyi said, his eyes slowly sweeping across the room, not missing any details.

Fang Duobing and Qiao Wanwan also began to observe carefully.

"This headless corpse case and the previous seven thieves corpse case, although they look similar, but if you compare them carefully, there are still big differences." Li Xiangyi pointed to the bloodstains on the ground and said,

"In the Seven Robbers' Corpse Case, all the victims were killed with a single blow. The blades were smooth, clearly from the same individual. Zhang Qingshi's death, on the other hand, was also caused by decapitation, but the blades had jagged edges, clearly the result of multiple blows."

Qiao Wanwan squatted down and carefully observed the bloodstains on the ground. She said, "Also, at the scene of the Seven Thieves' Corpse Case, the bloodstains were evenly distributed, with no obvious signs of struggle."

"In other words, Zhang Qingshi's death was not caused by one person, but someone deliberately imitated the Seven Thieves' methods and wanted to frame them." Fang Duobing suddenly realized.

"That's right." Li Xiangyi nodded. He walked to the window, looked out at the dark night, and said thoughtfully, "Also, look at this house number."

Fang Duobing and Qiao Wanwan leaned over to take a look and saw that the character "Eight" on the doorplate seemed to have been tampered with. Upon closer inspection, they could find that the left and right strokes of the character "Eight" were shorter than those of a normal "Eight", and there were slight scratches on the edges.

"This is..." Fang Duobing asked doubtfully.

"If I'm not mistaken, the character 'eight' was originally supposed to be 'six,'" Li Xiangyi said. "Someone changed 'six' to 'eight' to confuse people."

"But why do we have to do this?" Fang Duobing was even more confused.

"Because Zhang Qingshi and the person in the 'Six' room didn't return to their rooms at the same time," Li Xiangyi explained. "The murderer killed the person in the 'Six' room first, then changed the room number to 'Eight' before killing Zhang Qingshi. This way, they could create the illusion that both of them were killed at the same time, thus concealing their true intentions."

"But why did the murderer do this? What did he want to cover up?" Fang Duobing asked.

"This requires us to start with Zhang Qingshi's identity," Li Xiangyi said. "Zhang Qingshi is 'Eight', and who is the person in the 'Six' room? What is the relationship between them?"

"I understand!" Fang Duobing's eyes lit up. "The murderer killed 'Six' to silence him, killed Zhang Qingshi to frame him, and changed the house numbers to conceal the order of the killings! As long as we find out the identity of 'Six', we can follow the clues and find the real culprit!"

Li Xiangyi nodded approvingly: "Not bad, Fang Xiaobao, you finally got it."

"Come on, I'll take you to see where I lost them." Fang Duobing said, and led Li Xiangyi and Qiao Wanwan to a small path on the back mountain of the villa.

This is a winding bluestone road with dense woods on both sides. The moonlight shines through the gaps between the leaves, casting mottled light and shadows on the ground.

"That's where I lost them," Fang Duobing said, pointing to a section of bluestone road. "I was chasing those people here when suddenly a fog rose. When it cleared, they were gone."

Li Xiangyi squatted down and carefully observed this section of bluestone pavement. He found that this section of bluestone pavement was somewhat different from other bluestone pavements. Its surface was smoother, as if people often walked on it. Moreover, there were some tiny scratches on the edge of the bluestone pavement, as if it had been scraped by something.

"There's something wrong here," Li Xiangyi said. "There's something fishy about this section of bluestone road."

"Strange?" Fang Duobing and Qiao Wanwan were both surprised.

"That's right." Li Xiangyi nodded. "Look at these scratches. They look like they were left when a mechanism was activated. Also, this section of bluestone is so smooth, which means people pass by it frequently."

"This..." Fang Duobing and Qiao Wanwan looked at each other in surprise. They had never seen such a sophisticated mechanism.

"If I'm not mistaken, this should be a movable bluestone road," Li Xiangyi said. "As long as we find the key point of the mechanism, we can make this section of bluestone road move and change its path."

"But how do we move it?" Fang Duobing asked. "This bluestone road looks like it fits perfectly. There's no place to move it."

"The fog here is thick and dense, perfect for deploying the Qimen Dunjia technique," Li Xiangyi said. "If I'm not mistaken, the control hub should be nearby."

"Found it!" he said. "The key to the mechanism is right under that tree!"

Fang Duobing and Qiao Wanwan looked in the direction of Li Xiangyi's finger, and saw an inconspicuous stone under a big tree not far away.

"This stone?" Fang Duobing was a little skeptical. "It looks very ordinary."

"It's just a disguise," Li Xiangyi said. "This stone is actually a mechanism disguised as a stone. Simply press a certain spot on the stone to activate the mechanism."

Fang Duobing walked over and looked at the stone carefully. He found that there was a very small depression on the surface of the stone, which could not be seen without careful observation.

"Right here!" Fang Duobing said, "Just press here to activate the mechanism."

As he spoke, he stretched out his finger and gently pressed on the depression.

There was a slight "click" sound, and the stone actually sank slowly. Then, there was a rumbling sound, and the bluestone road actually began to move!