Chapter 188: 184 Kelake

After a not-so-delicious dinner, the four of them returned to their respective rooms to rest. They did not decide to sleep in the same room; setting aside whether they could even rest while monitoring each other in such an environment, the culprit who could kill Count Bluebeard without a sound must be meticulous, and sleeping in the same room might even facilitate the culprit's actions, as the danger coefficient was truly very high.

After returning to his room, Kelake once again sorted through the information on the four people originally living in this castle.

Count Bluebeard, deceased, was the master of this count's castle. He was gluttonous and fond of food, with deep-seated lust, yet unexpectedly warm-hearted; he had hosted a strange traveler like himself and barely verified his identity. Should one call this a lack of vigilance, a hidden agenda, or was he truly that kind and hospitable?

Butler Walunte looked to have the temperament of a butler in an aristocratic household from a film or television drama. He carried a hint of arrogance toward everyone other than Count Bluebeard and had a somewhat poker-faced expression. Initially, he appeared somewhat shocked by the Count's death, but he soon adopted the composed and qualified attitude of a butler to deal with the situation.

It was just that his method of dealing with it inevitably made people suspicious. In this isolated castle where the mountains were sealed by heavy snow and one did not know when the snowfall would stop, with the culprit still among the few people in the castle, he forbade any investigation under such latent danger. If he were not the culprit, or... could the act of investigating the Count's room be disadvantageous to him?

Cook Hela was skilled at hiding and disguising her feelings, a master of acting. He was no psychologist and found it difficult to see through her true inner heart from her appearance. Perhaps the reaction she displayed when seeing the Count's death scene was also a disguise. Like Butler Walunte, she had entered Count Bluebeard's room before he died.

Maid Milaier, from her performance, was a very ordinary, normal girl and was the first person to discover Count Bluebeard's death scene. During last night's dinner, the restraint she showed in the face of Count Bluebeard's lewd attitude was obvious, but it was clearly not as natural or deep-hidden as Hela's, yet this also perfectly fit her identity as a new maid. She was very likely the person who wrote the letter and passed the note to him.

Thinking of Maid Milaier, Kelake's mind could not help but conjure up the little maid's cute smiling face, along with the various scenes of her showing reliance on him, and he felt an indescribable sense of heart-fluttering and trust. Of course, he was very certain this heart-fluttering was not love; he had been in love and knew the taste of it, which was why he found this inexplicable feeling of heart-fluttering difficult to describe.

After some analysis, although Kelake could not analyze who the culprit was or who had performed the exorcism on the corpse, he had a conjecture about who might be on his side.

Kelake felt a bit hot; he discovered he was sweating—cold sweat.

He drank a cup of plain water that had just cooled down and returned to the bedside to continue pondering.

Now, jumping out of Count Bluebeard's murder case, Kelake developed a suspicion toward this castle and this world, and even developed a "questioning" of himself.

Was he really Kelake? The abnormal race folklore researcher employed by the largest Investigator Organization on Earth, the Abnormal Biology Foundation in the New York region, who had accepted an invitation from the Xuanmi Group in the Shenzhou Region to help research and analyze abnormal races newly discovered in Shenzhou in recent years, but had suddenly lost consciousness on the way there—perhaps he had died, and then somehow transmigrated into this world.

Was it really like that?

Kelake felt as if he were living in a dream; he was currently in a dream that was very difficult to wake up from, and he also felt that the world of that folklore researcher was the real nightmare. After all, that world was even crazier, even more dangerous, and fraught with crises...

The more Kelake thought, the more confused he became; his brows were tightly furrowed, and his heart was in pain.

What made him start to doubt all of this was precisely the book titled *Metamorphosis* on the desk in Count Bluebeard's room.

That book was a suspense novel, and the author was a bestselling writer from Sakura Island in the Shenzhou Region. This book was equally popular, telling the story of a protagonist who, after an accident, had a part of his brain replaced with that of a murderer, leading to a change in his temperament and style of conduct, from which a series of suspenseful events occurred.

Kelake had seen the beginning of that book; it was the one he had read.

But this was not normal, because that book told a story set in the 21st-century Earth. Judging from the level of civilization in this world, which was at most the 17th or 18th century, how could a story with that background appear here?

This was very abnormal!

Therefore, Kelake began to doubt this world, and even doubted this castle, the people here, and everything that was happening.

He strongly suspected that during the period he lost consciousness on his way to the Shenzhou Region, he must have encountered some kind of Abnormal event and was very likely in the midst of it now. Everything he was experiencing was not real; there was a group of people manipulating all of this, and they were using him for something, or simply wanting to watch him make a fool of himself!

Who exactly were they, and what did they want to do?

Kelake clutched his head and tapped it, wanting to make himself recall the forgotten memories, even if it were just some fragments.

When one realizes that one is in a place where countless invisible hands are manipulating one, anyone would feel palpitations and panic, and Kelake was naturally no exception.

Unfortunately, Kelake felt as if he were about to scratch his head raw, yet he still could not recall a single important memory. He could only force himself to calm down and temporarily stop thinking about so much.

He took out the pocket watch he kept in his bosom, looked at the slowly flowing clock hands, and muttered, "Could this broken pocket watch be a hint for me?"

Looking at where the hands were pointing, Kelake let out a deep breath, then closed the watch cover, put it back properly into his bosom, got up, and put on his shoes and clothes.

Regardless of whether the others could sleep peacefully tonight or what they were doing at this moment, he could not wait; he had to figure all of this out.

Before figuring out the truth of this world, first, he perhaps had to follow the wishes of those "people" who brought him here, clarify the cause of Count Bluebeard's death, and find the person who wrote him the letter.

Going out today, Kelake did not bring any lighting tools again, relying entirely on a pair of eyes that had adapted to night vision to move about like a nearsighted person with limited vision.

Kelake did not immediately return to Count Bluebeard's death scene, but instead came to Kande's room.

The person who took the Stone Statue of the Peering Shadow of All Things must have come in after he had visited Kande's room, taken the Stone Statue, and then used Count Bluebeard's corpse to complete an exorcism. Perhaps Kande's room held some clues.