The Mysterious Case of the Young Detective

  Just as Zheng Hanfei had thought, in the chemistry lab, Lin Jingran, Li He, Zhou Zheng, Ouyang Xiu, and Zhong Lianyuer were all standing together. Standing before them were Gu Jie and Nan Ruoxuan, who were now explaining the murder case to everyone.

  "Now, I will reveal the truth of this murder case." Gu Ze said calmly, "According to the police investigation, there were three suspects, but one of them was out of town and couldn't have committed the crime, so the number of suspects narrowed down to two: Li He and Lin Jingran."

  "According to Li He's statement," Nan Ruoxuan continued, "he was chatting with other teachers in the office on the first floor from 11:20 to 11:50. After investigation by the police, he did not lie, so the murderer is obvious, it's you, Lin Jingran teacher!"

  "What are you talking about?!" Lin Jingran looked somewhat annoyed, "Why would I kill Ah Liang, he's my husband!"

  "Your wife?" Li He sneered with a smile, "You're currently having a divorce with him, don't think I don't know, he's already told me!"

  "You..."

  "Quiet!" Zhou Zheng interrupted the two people's argument, "Xiao Gu Jie, what you said is not wrong, but there is no evidence to prove that she is the murderer. Moreover, before the body was found, this was a sealed room. If she really was the murderer, how did she escape from this sealed room?"

  "It's true!" Lin Jingran shouted, "This place was a secret room before, I had no way of escaping at all!"

  "Run away?! Is it necessary to make such a big fuss?!"

  "What?" The playful smile on Gu Ge's face made Lin Jingran's heart beat faster and faster, thinking in her mind: Could it be? Had he already solved the mystery of the secret room? No way, this was impossible. The secret room was perfect and flawless, no one could guess it, and besides, all the evidence had been destroyed, there was no way he could find out.

  "Before I solve this puzzle, let me tell you about a previous room escape puzzle created by Diro and Katie. Using mirrors to create reflections, it made us walk from one room to another. Because the setup was identical, we subconsciously thought the two rooms were one, which is a clever use of psychology to create an illusion."

  "Ah, I've heard of this!" Zhou Zheng said, "I remember when those two kids didn't believe in my reasoning ability and tried to use this method to make things difficult for me. In the end, they were the only ones who suffered a loss. Just thinking about their expressions at that time makes me laugh. What do you think, Little Ouyang?"

  "Yes." Ou Yang Xiuzi responded helplessly.

  "What's the big deal!" Lin Jingran sneered with a smile, "Do you think using the mirror's reflection to create two chemistry labs? That idea is ridiculous."

  "It's indeed quite laughable." Nan Ruo Xun smiled, "However, Xiao Jie didn't say to take advantage of this."

  "What's the use of that!"

  "Accomplices." Zhou Zhengzheng said, "You want to say this, Xiaoxun and Xiaogujie."

  "That's right." Gu Jie smiled awkwardly, hastily pulling back Nan Ruoxuan, whose eyes were filled with anger and wanted to fight Zhou Zheng to the death. In his heart, he thought, "You should thank me, otherwise you would have become a ghost under Xiao Xuan's fist long ago. I really don't know what you're thinking, actually saying such a cheesy name."

  "What accomplices do I have? You're ridiculous!"

  "No, you actually have an accomplice! This is the key to unlocking the mystery of the locked room. In fact, when Ouyang Xi and others broke open the door, you were hiding behind the door, avoiding their line of sight, in order to achieve what's known as a 'locked room'."

  "As for the evidence." Under Gu's obstruction, Nan Ruo Xun temporarily held back her breath and added, "It's just that there is the same sand around the deceased and the door, proving that someone had been there, but the soles of the deceased's shoes didn't have any sand stuck to them. So, it can be said that those footprints were left by the murderer. Lin Jingran teacher, you seem to be wearing sports shoes, getting sand stuck on them shouldn't be a difficult thing, who knows, maybe there is still sand on your shoes."

  Lin Jingran lifted her foot, looking at the scene in surprise. Just as Nan Ruoxuan said, there were indeed some sand grains under her feet, which looked no different from those on the surface.

  "It's probably just a coincidence." Lin Jing said with a dodgy gaze, somewhat guiltily, "Maybe the murderer and I just happened to pass through the same place."

  "Oh? You want me to bring out the accomplices and evidence before you give up?" Gu Jie said.

  "Then take it out!"

  "Li and Teacher, do you remember what happened after the door was kicked open?" Gu Jie asked Li He instead of continuing to speak.

  "Of course, at that time, a scream came from upstairs, scaring me and Ouyang Xiu to rush up the stairs... What's going on?!"

  "It's here!" Nan Ruo Xun rushed to the front of Gu Jie, "I once heard Ouyang Xiuzi say that due to a computer in the seventh floor computer room suddenly catching fire, the teacher there suddenly shouted loudly, as for the name, it was Lin Jiarui."

  "But the two of them didn't have any interaction at all." Upon hearing this, even a fool would understand what's going on, but Li He was somewhat incredulous. "Neither in school nor outside did they interact with each other like strangers."

  "If I'm right, they should be sisters."

  "What?!" The crowd shouted in surprise.

  "Don't be suspicious!" Gu Jie pointed to Lin Jingran's watch, "On her watch strap, it says '2JR', JR should be the pinyin abbreviation of 'Jingran', what does the '2' in front represent? When I thought of the name 'Lin Jiarui', I understood, because the pinyin abbreviation of 'Jiarui' is also 'JR', that is to say, the '2' means two!"

  "As for Teacher Lin Jingran's statement that the deceased gave it to her, probably because when she was strangling the deceased, the watch strap was grabbed by the deceased, which can explain why one of the buckle on the watch strap had a pull mark."

  "No... it wasn't me!"

  "Do you still want to quibble?!" Gu Jie bellowed, "Zhou Zhengtan said that the murderer was killed in a fit of rage, so at this time, they must have been flustered and confused. If they called their sister or younger sister to collude with them to create a sealed room, then one of the two people would definitely forget to delete the call record. Am I right, Lin Jingran?"

  "I..."

  "Please cooperate." Zhou Zheng took out a mobile phone from Lin Jingran's pocket and said, "Mr. Li He, is this Lin Jiarui's phone?"

  "Yes."

  "The conversation time on this is 11:55, and the conversation lasted for five or six minutes."

  Gu Jie nodded and asked Lin Jingran, "Teacher Lin, can you speak now? Why do you have a phone number that seems unfamiliar to others, and why did you call the other party at the time of the murder?"

  "I... because..."

  "Sister, admit it." At this time, a woman appeared at the entrance of the chemistry laboratory, looking deeply at Lin Jingran and said, "It was you who killed your husband."

  "Jiarui! You......" Lin Jingran was somewhat stunned, she hadn't expected that her own sister would actually betray her.

  "I was wrong!" Lin Jiarui said, "I was wrong not to advise you to surrender, after all, can you hide from the police? Can you hide from your own conscience?"

  "I..." Lin Jingran took a deep breath, and finally, she lifted her head and slowly said to Zhou Zheng, "Officer, I confess. The man was killed by me."

  "So, your reason for killing him is..."

  "That's right!" Lin Jingran looked at Li He and smiled slightly, "It's because he wants a divorce with me."

  "But it's not enough to kill each other, is it?" Nan Ruo Xun said, in fact, even though the case was solved now, she still didn't believe that the other person's tears were fake.

  "You're right, if he had divorced me, I wouldn't have said anything. But today, he came here and told me that the real reason for the divorce was because I'm poor, so at that moment, a surge of anger burst out in my brain, and I killed him. As for what happened afterwards, it's just like the two little detectives said, it seems that I really shouldn't have killed him here."

  "That's right!" Ouyang Xiu nodded, "Because you insulted Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes at the same time, so we must think of every way to catch the real culprit!"

  "That's also true..."

  ……

  "So that's what you're saying, thanks to your hint, Xiao Jie and Xiao Xun successfully cracked the case?" Zheng Hanfei sat on the bed, looking at the two excited faces, couldn't help but say to Ouyang Xiuxiu with a hint of resignation.

  "I just gave them a slight hint, as for the whole process, it was all their own thoughts. Oh, right." As he said this, Ouyang Xiu took out three badges from his pocket, which looked exactly the same as the ones Zhong Liyu had taken out earlier, and handed one to each of the three people, saying: "This is your proof of joining the society, welcome to the Sherlock Detective Society."

  "Thank you," the three of them said in unison.

  "Don't lose this badge, whatever you do," Qu Menghan reminded him. "This is personally certified by Interpol and can freely enter the scene of the crime, and it also has communication functions, so make good use of it."

  "This is so powerful." Zheng Hanfei stared at the badge in his hand, saying somewhat incredulously, "It seems that this will be an indispensable thing for handling cases from now on."

  "Hey, you're all here!" Just then, the door to the room opened and Zhou walked in. "Sorry to disturb you, may I have a word with Xiao Ouyang and Xiao Hanfei?"

  "Let's go!" Qu Menghan seemed to know what Zhou Zheng wanted to say, and hurriedly pushed Gu Jie and Nan Ruoxuan out the door, while the others also knowingly walked out of the room.

  "Speak, what do you want to discuss with me?" After everyone left, a hint of sharp light flashed in Zheng Hanfei's eyes, as if he sensed that the matter they were going to discuss with him was definitely not simple, and might be related to Ouyang Xiucheng's "organization".

  "You know I'm a member of ICOP, right?" Zhou Zheng said straightforwardly. In response, Zheng Hanfei nodded, indicating that he understood.

  "So you understand why I'm here? And so close with Little Ouyang?"

  "I don't know!" This was also the point where Zheng Hanfei felt puzzled, but he could vaguely sense that it had something to do with his dual personality and might be related to his own life.

  "To be honest with you, Little Ouyang was a child I picked up the year I became an Interpol officer. Now he's become the adopted son of my friend, Ouyang Lie. From him, I found clues about an organization that ICPO has been trying to eliminate."

  "What does that organization do?"

  "They used to do research on the world's taboos, such as human cloning. Now they're doing human experiments, and Xiao Ouyang is a good example. By stimulating brain regions and implanting high-tech chips, it can produce sounds that humans cannot make, but this also has side effects. His hair can only change to this color, and he can't get wet, otherwise his brain will send out intense headaches."

  "So...... I......"

  "As far as I know," said Zhou Zheng, "you are likely to be a failed product of their research, just like Ouyang Xiu. However, you are the most perfect one. As for how you escaped and why they didn't catch you, I have no idea."

  "Is that so!" Zheng Hanfei lowered his head in thought. What's going on? Is it related to my lost memories?

  "That's all for today." Zhou Zheng turned around and walked to the door, suddenly saying: "Zheng Hanfei, I'd like to ask you, are you willing to help us find clues about this organization?"

  "I... " He hesitated for a moment, then Zheng Hanfei said with unwavering determination, "I'm willing to. No matter what, I'm a detective, and it's my duty to expose their crimes!"

  Zhou Zheng didn't say anything, he just smiled slightly, opened the door and walked out, leaving behind two detectives with extremely determined eyes. Perhaps one day in the future, they would really be able to uncover the organization's crimes, not because of their gray childhood, but in the name of being detectives!