The Novelist Forced to Become Famous

Min-cheol Park summarized: "So, at 10:20 PM, Dan called his fiancée (Jian Jing), asking her to come over at 12:30 PM. Then at 10:30 PM, he called his brother-in-law (Wu Lie) to come over, who left at 10:50 PM. After that, he met with his brother-in-law (Andrei) from 11:15 to 11:30 PM."

"This timeline is very strange. If what Raji said is true and Dan thought he was going to die today, he wouldn't have possibly not seen his son. And what about his nephew? He was very fond of Bai, wasn't he?" Zhang Xue'er furrowed her brows. "Moreover, calling Jian Jing first doesn't make sense. Did he not want to see anyone during that one hour between 11:30 PM and 12:30 AM?"

Ishikawa Kan said concisely and forcefully: "Someone is lying."

"Who?"

"Jian Jing was the first to state her timeline. The probability of her lying is very low," Valeriya wrote a string of Russian in her notebook and analyzed, "It would be too easy to expose."

Everyone agreed.

"Mr. Kojima's suspicion has increased," Kumiko Terauchi said, "He could have just followed Jian Jing's statement. At such a late hour, the probability of overlapping with someone else's time is low."

Hiroto Ishikawa: "I'm more suspicious of the son. It's too strange not to see your own child. I think after 10 PM, Dan should have notified his son first."

Connor Lee asked: "Is there a possibility that the one-hour blank was when the murderer was killing? He was afraid that his crime time would be discovered by the next person to arrive, so he cut off the head of the corpse to create the illusion that the body might not be Dan's, to mislead us?"

Jian Jing: "Is the coroner's report for the witch out yet?"

Utility Man Raji: "It's out. The witch's time of death was between 10:00 PM and 1:00 AM. No signs of homicide have been found so far."

Wataru Kojima: "Witchcraft."

The case became more complicated.

"Let's use the testimonies as reference, but it's better to look at the evidence," Jian Jing suggested. "Assuming witchcraft exists and Dan was preparing for immortality, he would need a new vessel. So now we have a new question: did the immortality spell succeed?"

Ran-er Kim gasped: "If it succeeded, is Dan still alive?"

"Oh, that's scary," Kumiko Terauchi looked around, joking, "If Dan is still alive, why don't we ask him directly who the murderer is?"

No one responded.

Jian Jing, not wanting her to feel awkward, smiled and said: "Perhaps Dan didn't successfully transfer his soul."

Wataru Kojima: "If Dan had already transferred his soul, the killer wouldn't need to kill him again. I think the killer's most likely motive for killing Dan was to prevent him from becoming immortal."

Jian Jing nodded: "I also lean towards this motive."

"Who would want to stop him?"

Valeriya answered without hesitation: "Of course, the person he was going to replace."

"Then we're back to the old question, who did Dan choose as his vessel?" Connor Lee said, "Me, Reporter Park, or someone else?"

"There must be other clues," Jian Jing said, "Where is the witch's room?"

NPC Butler: "On the 9th floor."

The 9th floor was the leisure area, with a cinema, billiard room, indoor golf, wine bar, gym, and indoor pool. Because of the incident on the first day, no one had really been here.

This time, everyone gathered on the 9th floor to look for the witch's room.

The butler said: "I don't know where the witch lived either, only that she was on the 9th floor."

Implying, please find it yourselves.

Everyone split up and roughly searched the rooms with doors, but found no signs of habitation.

"Another locked room," Wu Lie looked at Jian Jing and asked, "Any ideas, Professor Jian?"

She smiled wryly: "This place is too big, and I'm not an architect. At least give us a range."

Butler: "The captain has a floor plan."

"Phew," Ran-er Kim exhaled dramatically, "Let's go borrow it now."

With the floor plan in hand, everyone gathered around the table to study it.

Jian Jing hadn't drawn an architecture card, so after studying it for a while, she couldn't see anything unusual. The others were the same, so they finally decided to split into groups to verify if any room looked particularly small.

This took everyone quite some time, plus eating, resting, touching up makeup, and using the bathroom. By 3 PM, they finally found a door behind the cinema's screen wall.

"It's not easy for a 70 or 80-year-old lady to go in and out of here every day," Min-cheol Park remarked.

Connor Lee: "Let's see what secrets are inside."

The last piece of the puzzle finally appeared.

Pushing the door open, inside was a dark room with strange colored papers hanging from the ceiling, covered in incomprehensible symbols. Many threads hung from the ceiling, each with a doll's head tied to it.

In the center of the room was a rug and a low table, like a living room, with a door behind it.

Jian Jing: "This is creepy."

"This is too scary," Zhang Xue'er unconsciously moved closer to her, her 5'11" height putting her almost at eye level with the doll heads.

Making eye contact, she shuddered and hugged Jian Jing's arm: "What was the witch trying to do?"

Jian Jing: "You've hit the key point. Why did the witch help Dan? Looking at the scene, it seems she even gave her life for this spell."

She ignored the surroundings and went straight to the inner room.

The inner room was just a tiny bedroom, with a very small wooden bed, an old cabinet, and bottles piled in the corner containing unknown liquids.

"Jian-san, your background is here," Wataru Kojima called to her.

Jian Jing turned to see the photo he was holding.

A young woman holding a little girl, both photographed in a hospital. On the back of the photo was written: With my daughter Little Yu in 1940.

"Yu Meng is the witch's daughter," Jian Jing realized. "Wait, there's small text on the photo."

She took it to the light and squinted to make it out: "Daniel Charity Hospital, the name on the medical record is Little Yu."

Kumiko Terauchi: "Could it be that Yu Meng was sick, Dan saved her, so the witch was willing to help him with the spell to repay the favor?"

"I remember the reports saying Yu Meng's parents were ordinary workers," Wataru Kojima said. "Oh, she was adopted too."

"It was probably an out-of-wedlock birth," Jian Jing said. "This was scandalous. To let her daughter grow up well, the witch entrusted her to a working-class couple. But Yu Meng inherited the witch's powers and knew some witchcraft, just not well enough, leading to her death by backlash. Looking at it this way, I'm probably not Dan's child, but he might know about my background."

That cleared things up.

Next was to search through everything.

With over a dozen people rummaging through a small room, even the best-hidden secrets would be uncovered.

A quarter of an hour later, they dug out a diary hidden under the floorboards.

All secrets were about to be revealed.

The diary's opening, as expected, recounted the witch's own experiences: As a young girl, she was deceived by a scoundrel and unfortunately became pregnant. The tradition in Wu Village was that only unmarried women could be shamans. After losing her virginity, the villagers wouldn't allow her to stay, so she had to leave her hometown.

Life wandering outside was difficult, but fortunately, her daughter was born safely, and the mother and daughter relied on each other. However, when the child was three years old, she was diagnosed with a rare disease that required a large sum of money for treatment.

The witch was at her wit's end, almost jumping into the sea with her child, but fate intervened, and she met Dan, who was doing charity work. Dan paid for her daughter's treatment and also developed a strong interest in witchcraft.

To repay the kindness, the witch agreed to be a nanny at Dan's house. But considering her child's future, not wanting her to be called a bastard without a father, she entrusted her to a family to raise.

Many years passed, and Yu Meng somehow learned about her background and found her, wanting to learn witchcraft, but was refused.

However, Yu Meng didn't give up and stole one of her notebooks, ultimately dying from the backlash.

She felt she had nothing to live for, but Dan told her that Yu Meng had a daughter. For the sake of her granddaughter whom she had never met, she persevered.

Twenty years later, she was old and wanted to meet her only relative.

Dan verbally agreed but kept putting it off until the granddaughter appeared as the son's fiancée.

She begged Dan to treat her relative well, but Dan proposed a deal: he would agree to the son's marriage, but the witch must help him transfer his soul.

The witch agreed.

She told Dan that the soul transfer ritual required several necessary conditions:

1. The spellcaster must sacrifice their life. Reincarnation is a forbidden technique, and the witch serving as a medium will definitely be dragged into hell as the price for defying fate. She was old and had no more attachments, willing to die for Dan as long as her granddaughter's future was secure.

2. The new vessel must have a blood connection with Dan. Blood ties are the bridge for the soul; only with the same blood can the soul travel from the old body to the new one.

3. The spell must be cast at midnight every night.

4. The materials needed for the reincarnation spell are: Dan's blood, the new vessel's blood, an altar, the midnight bell toll, some yellow paper, cinnabar, and clay.

"As expected, it requires a blood relation." Everyone wasn't surprised by this, but was more concerned about the timing. "The ritual at midnight, that's quite strict."

Wataru Kojima asked, "What happens to the original body if the ritual is successful?"

"It says here that the old vessel loses its soul and will naturally die. The new vessel's soul, unable to find a place to reside, will dissipate, completely destroyed and not entering the cycle of reincarnation."

Kumiko Terauchi drew in a cold breath, "That's cruel."

"It's terrifying," Ran-er Kim rubbed her arms, "Blood relations are family, how could Dan bring himself to do it?"

Andrei: "So, is the killer the vessel Dan chose?"

"It should be him, right? He didn't want to be replaced by Dan, and killed Dan during their struggle."

"Is it possible that it's the other way around? The ritual succeeded, he entered Dan's body, Dan killed himself, and is now disguised as someone else."

"That's possible too."

The group continued discussing as they returned to the conference room.

Now that they had gathered most of the clues, they could enter the final deduction phase.

Jian Jing held a cup of cola, the caffeine and sugar making her mind three times clearer. She picked up a pen and wrote the key points on the whiteboard.

First corpse: Dan (Cause of death: Suffocation; Time of death: 23:00-02:00)

Second corpse: Witch (Cause of death: Natural causes; Time of death: 22:00-01:00)

Reincarnation ritual: Midnight, blood relation, vessel

Did the ritual succeed? Big question mark.

"Let me summarize briefly. The main question we're facing now is whether Dan's ritual was successful or not. The suffocation death could be homicide or a natural death due to a medical condition.

"If it succeeded without any accidents, Dan's 'natural death' would be normal and wouldn't require beheading or creating a mystery. So, if it succeeded, there must have been an accident. For example, the chosen person entered Dan's body, they conflicted, Dan killed himself, and the other person couldn't be the murderer, so they beheaded the body to disguise it. This requires us to find out who has become Dan now.

"If it didn't succeed, then the killer is still themselves, and we just need to find their identity."

Valeriya asked, "Can we rule out some people now? Those without blood relations?"

"We can't," Jian Jing said, "The vessel's relatives might also kill to protect them. It's also possible that the killer knew nothing about witchcraft and just wanted to kill him, but coincidentally matched the circumstances. Judging suspicion based on motive alone isn't comprehensive enough."

Her reasoning was logical, and the guests who had their own ideas now had to reconsider.

But Min-cheol Park said, "You've considered it very thoroughly, but from the current situation, witchcraft seems to be the most likely direction. So I'd like to share my thoughts along this line of thinking with everyone."

"Of course," Jian Jing returned to her seat, yielding the whiteboard.