Liu Chengjun did not love or respect his father, but that did not mean he wanted him dead right away.
Liu Feiyu was also frozen in place. He stared at the father he had once feared, now dead before his eyes. Aside from shock, there was also a trace of indescribable delight in his gaze.
A crucial part of the plan had fallen apart.
An Changqing’s expression darkened at once.
“Everyone, seal off the scene. No one is to come near!”
He issued the order immediately.
Long Ao and Hong Yuan moved to guard the entrance, blocking the guards who came rushing over after hearing the commotion.
“How could this happen…?”
Hong Yuan murmured to herself as she stared at the carnage inside the room.
Long Ao’s brows drew tightly together as well.
An Changqing strode into the study. He quickly examined the locked alloy windows and the walls before finally returning to the doorway.
“There are no signs of a struggle. The windows were sealed from the inside, and the ventilation system has only extremely narrow air vents.”
He looked at everyone and enunciated each word:
“This was a murder in a sealed room.”
Chen Guan ignored the looks of those around him and slowly walked over to Liu Tiancheng’s corpse.
He closed his eyes.
“Heh heh heh.”
Baal’s gloating voice rang out in his mind.
“That’s right. It has Astaroth’s scent. Very clean.”
“After killing him, the murderer conveniently wiped away every trace of his presence. A meticulous killer.”
Chen Guan asked inwardly, “How did he leave?”
“Who knows?” Baal replied carelessly. “Maybe he walked through the walls, maybe he dug a tunnel, maybe he teleported. Who knows? They’re all Espers now. Why bother with these useless mechanisms?”
By this point, nearly everyone had reached the same conclusion.
An Changqing was the first to reveal the note Chen Guan had received. Then his voice echoed through the hall, calm and analytical.
“Based on the note Chen Guan received, we can make the following deduction.”
“Liu Tiancheng discovered that Liu Xiao was a fake—in other words, that he was Thousand Faces. He wanted to confront Thousand Faces alone, so he brought him into the sealed room.”
“As a result, he was killed by Thousand Faces instead.”
“While on the verge of death, Liu Tiancheng used the last of his strength to push the note containing the clue through the ventilation shaft. It happened to be discovered by Chen Guan.”
The theory sounded perfectly reasonable.
The bloodstained note and Liu Tiancheng’s death formed an irrefutable chain of evidence pointing to Thousand Faces.
“Thousand Faces!”
Liu Chengjun suddenly turned around as if he had seized a lifeline. His bloodshot eyes fixed on the humanoid figure being guarded in the distance.
“Bring that impostor over here!”
His voice was distorted by rage.
“Interrogate him! Use every method necessary!”
“I want to know exactly how he killed my father—and how he escaped from that damned sealed room!”
The stalemate had been broken by Liu Tiancheng’s death, allowing Liu Chengjun to seize back the initiative.
The blame was now aimed squarely at Thousand Faces, who was still unconscious.
Chen Guan watched Liu Chengjun’s performance, but he could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.
He was certain that when he found the note, Liu Tiancheng’s heart had still been beating. It had been weak, but it had not stopped.
If Thousand Faces was the killer, and he had already accomplished his goal, why had he not left immediately? Why would he give Liu Tiancheng time to write a note asking for help?
Could a ninth-tier killer capable of erasing every trace of himself really make such a low-level mistake? Why had he not even delivered a finishing blow?
And then there was the note.
He recalled the scene when he found it. The note had been pushed out of the ventilation shaft by some kind of force.
How could a man who had been run through the heart by a sword and was on the verge of death possibly have had the strength to send a note through the complicated ventilation ducts and all the way to the door of his room?
There had to be another exit in the sealed room—or some other mechanism.
Chen Guan’s gaze fell on the blood-written note in An Changqing’s hand, held up as evidence.
Under the dim light, the words “Save me! He’s not Liu Xiao!” appeared especially glaring.
Suddenly, a flash of insight crossed Chen Guan’s mind.
The blood.
He stared at the pattern of the blood on the characters.
The degree to which the blood had clotted, the way it had dripped, and how it had spread while the words were being written…
Anyone who had often hovered on the brink of death could tell that this handwriting did not look as though it had been written by a severely wounded, dying man who had dipped his finger into the blood from his own chest.
If that was the case, then this was not a dying message, nor a final plea for help.
It was a carefully forged denunciation meant to frame someone else!
The real killer was definitely not Thousand Faces. There was someone else behind it.
And that person was very likely among them.
…
The main hall of the Liu residence was cleared out and temporarily converted into an interrogation room.
Two guards dragged Thousand Faces inside and threw him onto the floor in the middle of the hall.
He looked utterly wretched. His severed arm hung at an unnatural angle, while two dried streaks of blood ran down from his eyes, injured by the mental assault. His entire body lay limp and lifeless on the floor.
He lifted his head. A strange smile hung on his unfamiliar face.
Liu Chengjun looked down at him from above.
“Talk.”
His voice was cold as it echoed through the hall.
“How did you kill my father? And how did you escape from that sealed room?”
A hoarse, grotesque laugh forced its way from Thousand Faces’ throat, as though he had just heard the funniest joke in the world.
Using his intact hand, he propped up his upper body and looked up at Liu Chengjun, his eyes filled with undisguised mockery.
“I killed him?”
“First Young Master Liu, weren’t you praying for him to die a long time ago?”
“Doesn’t it tire you out, pretending to be such a devoted son now?”
Liu Chengjun’s face turned livid.
“You’re asking for death!”
Flames surged over his body, and a scorching pressure swept toward Thousand Faces, as if he intended to burn him to ash on the spot.
“First Young Master Liu, please remain calm.”
An Changqing raised a hand to block Liu Chengjun. A gentle smile still rested on his face.
“His mind has been damaged. He’s not in his right mind. You won’t get anything out of him like this.”
Liu Chengjun’s chest heaved violently, but in the end he forced down his anger and withdrew his power.
Only then did An Changqing turn around and crouch in front of Thousand Faces, his voice coaxing and suggestive.
“We all know that the person who hired you wasn’t First Young Master Liu.”
“Chen Guan saw a man in black robes in your memories.”
An Changqing stared into Thousand Faces’ eyes and slowly said, “Tell us who that man in black was. Perhaps we can grant you a quick death.”
At the words “man in black,” the mad grin on Thousand Faces’ face faded somewhat, and his eyes grew blank.
“The man in black…”
He murmured to himself as though trying to recall something.
“He gave me power… He was an envoy of Lord Astaroth…”
“Heh heh heh.” Baal let out a delighted laugh in Chen Guan’s mind.
“See? He admitted it himself. What an idiot.”
An Changqing and Liu Feiyu exchanged a glance, both seeing the gravity in the other’s eyes.
Astaroth.
That was the name of one of the legendary seventy-two demon gods.
A demon god who stood alongside Baal, ranked third among the Four Supreme Pillars.
Liu Feiyu stepped forward and pressed him in a dark voice, “What was his objective?”
The question jolted Thousand Faces, and his eyes focused once more. He swept his gaze across everyone present before finally settling on Liu Feiyu. That twisted smile returned to his face.
“His objective…”
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ng to die together with you." Lin Xuan is dead, his body thrown into the river by his scumbag lover and her accomplice. She, the president of the Su Group, is decisive, ruthless, and ice-cold. For three days and three nights, she had his body fished out of the river, and without hesitation, she kissed the bloated corpse of Lin Xuan. She laid down beside him in a cold coffin, their fingers intertwined, a smile lingering on her lips as she closed her eyes. The noble and cold-hearted woman, only bending for one man—Lin Xuan. Lin Xuan, with his golden finger, is reborn and returns to the day of his wedding to the treacherous woman. Su Qiang comes to steal the bride. Lin Xuan's eyes light up, eager to pledge his loyalty on the spot, but instead, her kiss transfers a glass of drugged wine into his mouth, causing him to pass out... 【Male Protagonist with Single Female Lead】【Yandere Tycoon】【Action-Packed】【True vs. Fake Heir】
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
