Chapter 16: False Confessions

Hearing these words, Baili Qiangsheng's mind began to race with calculations.

'Two clocks hanging on the wall perfectly match the clock effect, signifying the superposition of time.'

'For the clock where the time cannot be determined, all the hands point downwards. For the clock where the time can be determined, all the hands point upwards. This symbolizes a Mirror Image.'

'Chen Ran's deduction is flawless.'

'According to the Mirror Principle, everything happening in this Classroom right now is the exact opposite of what is written in the police report.'

'Therefore, the answer to the Examination Paper is:'

'Eight couples who lost their children identified a suspect during their search.'

'The suspect was a school Teacher. They kidnapped the Teacher and brought him to the Classroom, where the fifteen people took out their concealed weapons and murdered him.'

'Afterwards, they set a fire to destroy the corpse and eliminate all traces of their crime.'

At this thought, Baili Qiangsheng furrowed his brow, realizing there was a severe flaw in his deduction.

In the very beginning, flames spewed from the Masked Man's eyes. According to the Mirror Principle, this was merely the scene the Masked Man witnessed right before his death.

The ones who started the fire were the seven and a half couples, yet those same seven and a half couples were also swallowed by the flames.

This obviously did not make any sense.

Suddenly, as if struck by a realization, Baili Qiangsheng whipped his head around to stare at the Masked Man standing motionless at the back of the Classroom.

'The Masked Man had an accomplice! The arsonist was this very accomplice, who burned the seven and a half couples and the Teacher to death right here in the Classroom.'

'Therefore, the final outcome is: the seven and a half couples and the Teacher all perished in the fire within the Classroom.'

The deduction ended here.

However, Baili Qiangsheng did not dare to put pen to paper. Scanning the Classroom, he realized that everyone who could have served as Cannon Fodder was already dead. The only outsiders left were Chen Ran, Zhang Yuan, and Cheng Si.

All three of them were experts at solving puzzles, extremely skilled in deduction, and virtually impossible to fool.

Furthermore, Chen Ran was exempt from answering the question altogether.

The only ones he could manipulate were Cheng Si and Zhang Yuan.

The fire inside the Classroom continued to spread.

Yet, the atmosphere in the room had dropped to an absolute freezing point, with everyone harboring their own hidden agendas.

First was Zhang Yuan. He had fed Baili Qiangsheng a lie about the future, but there was absolutely no way he would be the first to hand in his paper to test the validity of the answer.

Next was Cheng Si. Right now, her only objective was to play dead. She could not trust a single soul, knowing that the slightest misstep would lead to her gruesome end.

Baili Qiangsheng's expression darkened.

'Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!'

'If I had known this would happen, I would have kept a few pieces of Cannon Fodder alive to test whether the answer was true or false!'

'Wait.'

'I remember when I encountered a Two-Star Player in a One-Star Instance before, that person once said: When you feel conflicted over whether your deduced answer is correct, then the answer you deduced...'

'Is definitely wrong!'

'This is because the Secret Room is perfectly rigorous. By stringing all the clues together, you will arrive at one, and only one, singular answer.'

'If I am feeling conflicted, it means my deduction is wrong. And if my deduction is wrong, it means I have not found all the clues.'

Baili Qiangsheng scrutinized the Classroom once again.

Ultimately, his gaze locked onto Chen Ran and the Masked Man at the back of the room.

'If I unfold this from their perspective...'

Very quickly.

Baili Qiangsheng's eyes lit up.

'Wrong!'

'It's wrong!'

'It's all fucking wrong! Damn that Chen Ran, I was almost led to my death by him!'

Following that, he leaned over and whispered a few words into the ears of Li Annan and Ma Wenjie.

In the next moment, holding his Examination Paper and a gel pen, Baili Qiangsheng walked over to the desk in the very back row. Without a shred of hesitation, he began to write down his answer.

Li Annan and Ma Wenjie positioned themselves in front of his desk, forming a human shield to prevent anyone else from peeking.

After Baili Qiangsheng finished, Ma Wenjie took over to copy the ready-made answer, while Baili Qiangsheng and Li Annan stood in front of him to block any prying eyes.

Soon enough, all three of them had their answers written down. They rolled up their Examination Papers and strode straight toward the podium. As he brushed past Chen Ran, Baili Qiangsheng paused and coldly declared, "In the next Secret Room, we will have a proper showdown!"

The trio handed their papers to the Masked Man. The masked figure swept his gaze over the sheets, and immediately after, the tightly shut inner door of the Classroom abruptly swung open.

Without so much as a backward glance, Baili Qiangsheng and his two companions stepped out of the blazing Classroom.

Chen Ran sighed inwardly in admiration. Baili Qiangsheng was truly worthy of the title of Veteran Player. Even though Chen Ran had deliberately obscured a wealth of information, the man still managed to deduce the correct answer.

With that thought in mind, Chen Ran also prepared to exit the room.

"Wait!"

Cheng Si called out to stop him, and Zhang Yuan was also growing anxious.

Zhang Yuan had tried to dash out of the Classroom, but the moment he got close to the door, he was violently rebounded backward.

"What is the answer?" Cheng Si demanded.

Chen Ran looked at her, finding the situation strange. In the previous Secret Room, Cheng Si had merely glanced at the items on the table and immediately deduced the answer.

In this Secret Room, her performance had been absolutely dismal from start to finish. And yet, she was still able to see through his acting and refrain from passing Judgment on the Pockmarked Woman.

'She is pretending!'

Chen Ran shifted his gaze, letting it fall upon Zhang Yuan, who had just scrambled up from the floor.

'So that's how it is.'

So, he organized his thoughts and explained, "The biggest difficulty in this Secret Room lies in this question: why is there a Mirror Image element?"

"Logically speaking, we are inside a scenario constructed in the minds of the police during their review of the case. The things happening to us and the actual truth, even if not entirely identical, should be more or less the same."

"However, it is the exact opposite."

"This proves that the information source used by the police was severely deviated from reality."

"Therefore, all we need to do is deduce who was still alive in the Classroom. That person would be the sole eyewitness at the scene, and that person is the one who is lying."

Cheng Si nodded.

She adopted a thoughtful expression, while Zhang Yuan, who had been eavesdropping from the sidelines, found his eyes lighting up.

"The Husband from the first Secret Room!" Zhang Yuan became unusually excited. The Husband from the first Secret Room was the only person confirmed to still be alive!

Consequently, he hurriedly scurried back to his seat. Lifting his pen, he pondered for a moment. Since the police had obtained false information, then the answer should also be...

That very same false information!

Or rather, the false confession!

With this realization, he began to write:

Eight couples lost their children. During their search, they locked onto their suspect: the school's Teacher.

However, during the course of their stalking, the Teacher noticed that his actions had been exposed.

Thus, deciding to go all the way, the Teacher lured seven and a half of those eight couples into the Classroom and brutally murdered them.

And then, he set everything ablaze...

...

Writing up to this point, Zhang Yuan suddenly sensed that something was amiss. He raised his head, only to find Chen Ran and Cheng Si watching him with expressions akin to spectators enjoying a good show.

His heart skipped a beat.

Right at that moment, the Masked Man on the podium suddenly sprang into action. Striding over, he grabbed Zhang Yuan by the throat in a single motion and hoisted him up onto the podium.

With his other hand, the Masked Man picked up the Scissors from the lectern and plunged them deep into Zhang Yuan's abdomen.

A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the Classroom!

It was not over yet!

The Masked Man then picked up the Hammer and smashed it mercilessly onto Zhang Yuan's left arm. The crisp sound of shattering bone rang out, sending chills down the spine of anyone who heard it.

Next, Zhang Yuan was forced to taste every single murder weapon laid out on the lectern, until he was left on the very brink of death.

Smash!

The Masked Man raised the Baseball Bat and brought it crashing down onto Zhang Yuan's blood-soaked head, and yet...

He still clung to a single breath of life!

His eyes stared blankly at Chen Ran and Cheng Si, as if desperately begging for an answer.

Chen Ran extended his index finger, pointing toward the Masked Man at the back of the Classroom, and stated nonchalantly, "He did not die. Moreover, he was apprehended by the police, and during the interrogation, he fed them false information."

Upon hearing those words, Zhang Yuan finally perished.

Seeing that her goal had been accomplished, Cheng Si ignored Chen Ran, returned to her seat, and picked up her pen to write.

The informant's statement:

Eight couples lost their children. During their search, they locked onto a target, who was a Teacher at the school.

I witnessed the entire process.

I saw the seven and a half couples kidnap that Teacher and drag him into the Classroom. Using the murder weapons they had brought with them—Scissors, Hammers, Baseball Bats, and the like—they stabbed, pierced, bludgeoned, and smashed him, venting all the grief and fury of losing their children onto the Teacher.

The Teacher died.

He was tortured to death by them. They then poured gasoline all over the Classroom, planning to destroy the corpse and wipe away all traces.

However, right at that moment.

They discovered me peeking from the back door.

I was terrified.

I was afraid they were going to kill me too, so I locked both the front and back doors and bolted.

But what I didn't expect was that when they noticed me, they had already ignited the fire inside the Classroom.

Because I had deadlocked both doors, they couldn't get out, and all of them burned to death inside.

...

Looking at Cheng Si's answer, Chen Ran nodded in appraisal, "This is the false information provided to the police by the Masked Man at the back of the Classroom. Though it has a few minor flaws, it shouldn't be a problem for clearing the room."

Cheng Si remained noncommittal.

"Yeah, the actual truth is that the Second Masked Man was indeed peeking from the back door. Upon hearing the Teacher confess that he was an accomplice, he feared retaliation. That was why he chose to lock the front door, set the fire from the back door, and then lock the back door as well, causing everyone inside to burn to death."

"The very first thing he did after escaping was to call the police and 'confess' his mistake. That was how the police ended up reconstructing a completely erroneous sequence of events based on his statement."

"In his statement, the arsonist became someone acting in self-defense, the twisted Teacher became an innocent victim, and the fifteen people seeking revenge became heinous murderers. This is the Mirror Image of the Second Masked Man. And what we saw in the Classroom was the Mirror Image of the police's interpretation of his statement."

Reaching this point in the deduction, everything that followed was actually quite simple. Why did the Husband, symbolized by Chen Ran, appear here despite being an outsider?

The reason was very straightforward. Of the eight couples, seven and a half died. Naturally, the police sought out the Husband who hadn't come to the Classroom, allowing him to learn exactly what had happened.

As a result, the Husband also reconstructed the events inside the Classroom based on the police's flawed conclusion.

Then, the main storyline for the third Secret Room was practically calling out its name.

According to the statements, the Second Masked Man was considered to have acted out of urgent self-preservation and would be acquitted and released without charge.

Meanwhile, throughout the entire case, the seven and a half couples chose to kill the Teacher rather than interrogate him about the whereabouts of the children. This implied that the Children were already dead.

The Husband had lost his Child. Though he had no lingering feelings for his ex-wife, she had died while hunting down the murderer. He had to do something about it.

Thus, the third Secret Room would undoubtedly be a showdown between the Husband and the Second Masked Man.