Chapter 1517: To Get a Confession, You Must First Get Their Guard Down
Yu Yuan stuffed the [Migratory Letters] back into the corpse's pants pocket, watching as Edgar Allan Poe turned his gaze back to him.
In just the past few seconds, something had happened, but he couldn't immediately figure out what it was.
Lin Sanjiu had written on the paper, "I suspect there's something between them," but as to what they had, he waited for a while and received no response. When he looked up, he realized that Poe had done something while he was momentarily distracted by reading the [Migratory Letters].
What did he do?
During the past few seconds, Poe had been quiet, only moving the cursor across his large screen as if lost in thought. The large screen was his terminal for writing games, and it looked like a projection cloth. Since the game he was working on had just begun, the screen only displayed the first line: "Location: Convenience Store Outside Residential Area."
"If you're not in a hurry to leave, we can chat a bit more," Poe said and affectionately patted the female corpse's hand, not seeming to recognize it as such. "Come on, let me reset the room, and we can talk on the sofa."
"No need." Yu Yuan looked down at the hand that was patted and removed it from the beverage table. Poe had been gradually restoring his working environment for writing games, but Yu Yuan couldn't see why he was doing so. Poe didn't look like he was about to develop a game, so why bring out the writing terminal?
Was it a coincidence?
Poe had quietly done something, and at the same time, Lin Sanjiu's writing stopped midway. It had been quite a while, and she hadn't sent any more messages.
It seemed his task wasn't over yet.
This person, who needed his help at every turn and barely managed to infiltrate the new game launch, could she really help him escape his Veda identity? She felt so unreliable.
As Yu Yuan thought this with an expressionless face, Poe had already rearranged the sofa. His letters seemed to be flung directly from his palm, and even Yu Yuan didn't catch their movements. Once the sofa materialized, Poe fell into it, patted the spot next to him, and said with a smile, "Come, come, sit down."
To extract information, you have to get them off guard first.
Yu Yuan mimicked how a human female would signal to a male, brushing his hair back and slightly lowering his head, saying, "You're very skilled with words." Considering his lack of mastery over facial muscles, he did not attempt to smile.
Poe chuckled.
"You must have been here for quite some time?" Yu Yuan said.
"Seven or eight months," Poe replied, crossing his legs and leaning back. "Anything you don't understand, you can ask me. I'll teach you. Come, sit."
Since it's a corpse, neither you nor I care.
With this thought, Yu Yuan sat down next to him, Poe's arm resting on the back cushion behind him. "Are you familiar with Zhou Xian?" Yu Yuan asked, thinking about Lin Sanjiu's hint regarding his relationship with Zhou Xian.
"Zhou Xian? Not really. Aside from occasional group discussions about our games, I don't have much to do with him."
So, what did Lin Sanjiu mean by that?
"How do you communicate about your games?" Yu Yuan asked. He hadn't forgotten to look at Edgar Allan Poe with focused eyes, as if every word from his mouth were a passage from War and Peace. He took a bit of a risk by asking this question, but considering that the deceased girl was a newcomer, perhaps.
"Haven't you communicated too?" Poe furrowed his brow.
Yu Yuan hadn't expected to hit a snag so soon.
He blinked a few times, slightly opened his mouth, and managed to look surprised. "Ah? Did I? Oh, was it that one—"
"Yes." Poe's frown deepened, and he shifted back slightly, as though he wanted to take a closer look at Yu Yuan. Yu Yuan recognized this as the expression of suspicion in humans, although the other party probably hadn't realized that he was speaking to a corpse. "You were there that day, weren't you? We all gathered in the rotunda in the afternoon, and you even talked about the first game you wrote."
"Promise you won't laugh." Yu Yuan lowered his head, letting his hair fall, feigning embarrassment. "It was my first time, so I was very nervous. I thought it was something like a work report... When you said communication, I thought you meant casual chats when designing games."
Poe relaxed, and his arm went back to its original position.
He laughed. "I see. Normally, there's not much to talk about. They won't tell you the truth, but actually, we arrange a communication gathering every week. Why? Because we launch a game every week on average, so we need to share our games with each other. That way, if we're ever unlucky and sent out, we can avoid the games written by each other."
"Who usually arranges it? Was the last one at a fixed time?"
"We all discuss it together. Roughly every week, someone will suggest it, and we'll see when everyone is free that day."
Yu Yuan paused and then suddenly sat upright. He knew what Lin Sanjiu's unfinished sentence was—they had a way to contact each other.
This explained why Poe had taken out his game-writing tools even though he wasn't writing a game; he must have sent a message to someone through it. Considering what had happened around him that was worth reporting, Yu Yuan knew that Lin Sanjiu's cover was blown.
She hadn't finished her sentence, likely because her situation didn't allow it. If someone had used text to restrict her freedom and then notified another person to deal with her...
He couldn't afford to waste any more time here. Yu Yuan abruptly stood up, knocking aside Poe's hand as he leaned closer. Facing Poe's surprised look, Yu Yuan thought of an excuse. "I suddenly remembered there's a problem with my second game. I have to go check it."
Poe looked disappointed and reached out to grab him, saying, "Are you in a hurry? How about I come with you and take a look?"
"Okay, let's go now," Yu Yuan said after a moment of thought. He decided to temporarily keep Poe occupied, using him as a tool to open the door. When Poe heard his agreement, he was overjoyed, and his facial muscles quivered with excitement. He jumped up and walked with Yu Yuan toward the door.
Yu Yuan stepped back, letting Poe open the door for him.
"What's your second game about?" Poe asked as they walked out. "Not to be blunt, but your first game was too gentle. It's not that it can't be done that way, but writing something so bland is rather meaningless."
"Oh? How was it too gentle?" Yu Yuan responded unconsciously.
"The people who died in your apartment scenario didn't really die after the game ended," Poe said. "They just had a bout of madness, put on a show, and then everything went back to normal... There's no challenge in that."
If Yu Yuan could be overwhelmed by the emotion of surprise, he would probably have collapsed by now.
Even as part of the Veda, he had to pause for a few seconds before slowly asking, "So, you remember my apartment game, then. What do you think could be improved?" There were many apartment scenarios in this world, so he couldn't be certain that this one was that one.
"How could I forget? The games designed by newcomers are usually quite bland," Poe said. "In my opinion, you could completely turn it into a survival game. All external supplies become ineffective, and for eight people going in, there are only enough survival resources for four. Constant disasters... Oh, right, that psychic character—you could have her continuously prophesize disasters. Let me tell you, they love to take action against the bearer of bad news first."
Yu Yuan's hand, in his pocket, tightly gripped the [Migratory Letters].
So, the creator of the game that had captured Ji Shanqing was this already-dead woman?