Live Action Murder Mystery

Chapter 21

(The popular science regarding tops and bottoms.)

Gu Liang was homophobic? He felt that homosexuals were disgusting?

Yang Ye raised his eyebrows.

Gu Liang shut the painting album and placed it back on the shelf before he turned his head back to glance at Yang Ye.

The sight that greeted him, however, was Yang Ye’s deeply knitted brows. Under the assumption that he was worrying about the case, Gu Liang even consoled him on his own accord: “Don’t worry about it. Although the case is a little confusing right now, it’s beginning to take shape at least.”

Yang Ye gazed at him deeply before he nodded, promptly pulling out a few books to browse through. The books were all sorts of painting albums, and all of them were between two men.

As Yang Ye flipped through them page by page, he was merely focused on checking if there were any clues slipped between the pages. After a long while, he heard Gu Liang’s voice, “Yang Ye, come over here and take a look.”

Following the direction of the sound, Yang Ye looked over and saw Gu Liang standing in front of the desk where numerous picture scrolls were placed.

Methodologically, Gu Liang was unfurling each and every scroll.

Upon walking over, Yang Ye realised that all the paintings featured the same person— Oldest Martial Brother.

Although each painting had a different signature, they had familiar sounding and reiterated poem stanzas.

Some wrote: “Though the wind and the rain all looks dark, And the cock crows without ceasing, But I have seen my husband, And should I not rejoice?.”

Others wrote: “The mountain has trees and the tree has branches, I adore the gentry but the gentleman remains unknowing.”

Yang Ye picked up the latter painting which bore the Song of the Yue Boatman poem.

He told Gu Liang: “This poem was written by a man to a man. Do you know that?”

“I know,” Gu Liang nodded. Against Yang Ye’s gaze, which was brimming with a special profound meaning and muddled with indecision, he only said: “It seems like Perennial genuinely adored Oldest Martial Brother. But therein lies the strange problem, with the poems he writes and the paintings he draws, he appears to be quite refined. Would he do… that sort of thing?”

“There’s a copious amount of erotic picture albums here, no? Perhaps he did it in a moment of impulse, or his natural disposition was overturned after drinking.”

Yang Ye went back to the bookshelf and returned the perused painting album back to its original position. “In any case, all these items actually serve to prove one thing— it doesn’t have a single trace of Perennial Wang’s inclination towards women. This implies that he’s homosexual through and through.”

Gu Liang glanced at him, “Your meaning is…”

Yang Ye stated resolutely, “My meaning is, your initial brain hole was actually correct. The current Perennial Wang is most certainly not the one from before. I think our Perennial Wang did not ‘wield a sword to castrate himself’ at all. He fabricated that excuse to lie to you. The truth of the matter is that— he has no way of touching women.”

Gu Liang still looked a little puzzled. “Why? What about being bisexual? If Perennial Wang was bisexual, it’s possible that he married wives and had children in the past, and then came to like Oldest Martial Brother later.”

After a long moment, Yang Ye finally said: “Self-castration, losing that kind of ability, is something that damages a man’s dignity. For men, it’s a huge taboo and it isn’t something you confide in others lightly. If Perennial Wang was bisexual, capable of marrying wives and having children prior, and making nice with his disciples after, it shouldn’t obstruct him from continuing his relations with women.

“And what is Beauty Yi’s character setting? The most beautiful woman under the heavens. If he was bisexual, accepting of both men and women, there’s no reason for him to say he ‘castrated himself’ in the face of the most beautiful woman. The fact that he could say such a thing, this is my assumption but… the clue only goes to show that he probably has a huge psychological barrier towards women, and he can’t do it at all.”

Having understood his point, Gu Liang chimed in, “Which is why Perennial Wang has always been homosexual, and not bisexual.”

“Yes. Unless there’s other unforeseen circumstances, we can essentially confirm that conclusion,” said Yang Ye. “Especially since it’s under the condition where Perennial Wang is the top.”

Top?

When he heard the classification, Gu Liang stiffened for a beat.

Upon seeing his expression, Yang Ye smiled and asked: “Mn… do you know about tops and bottoms in a homosexual relationship, or perhaps, the differentiation between 1 and 0?”

Gu Liang: “More or less.”

Yang Ye continued to explain: “I’ve seen an example of this in reality. I had a friend who initially had girlfriends, but somewhere down the lines, he somehow became bent. After he became a bottom, he completely lost interest in touching women altogether. Therefore, if Perennial Wang was the bottom, and his situation falls into the same category as my friend’s, I can’t be absolutely certain in my deduction, because it’s entirely possible that he liked women first before he lost the ability to do it with women.

“But if Oldest Martial Brother didn’t lie and Perennial Wang really was the top, then under the circumstances where the clues serve as delimitations, I believe that he was born a homosexual instead of becoming wholly incapable of touching women after he had experiences of liking women.”

After hearing his explanation, Gu Liang reached full comprehension.

If there were no accidents, the Perennial Wang who conceived Doctor Yu with his ninth legitimate wife was, most definitely, not the current Perennial Wang.

The previous Perennial Wang was the real Perennial Wang and he liked women.

The current Perennial Wang was a counterfeit and he liked men exclusively.

“Got it. In essence, we can confirm that the persons have changed.”

Gu Liang looked at Yang Ye curiously. “How do you know about all this? Did you have a lot of girlfriends?”

Yang Ye: “That’s not it.”

— I’m bent, how am I supposed to have a girlfriend?

However, what was with his thought processes?

Was he acquainted with some fujoshis, and assumed that some of the girlfriends I was in a relationship with were fujoshis, which led to me hearing these things from said girlfriends?

Did he not have the slightest suspicion that I’m actually gay?

Yang Ye gave up, choosing to return him a question according to his train of thought. “You don’t know about it at all? You’ve never been in a relationship?”

Gu Liang: “Does Junior High count?”

“It doesn’t.”

“Then I haven’t.”

“Why?”

“I’m not really a good person, what relationships can I speak of? All I would be doing is delaying a family’s daughter.”

How did he become ‘not really a good person’ all of a sudden?

Frowning, Yang Ye lowered his line of sight, and it subconsciously landed on the red cord around Gu Liang’s wrist.

His gaze, however, went unnoticed by Gu Liang. He merely said: “Take out your notebook. We’ll work through the deductions together. I feel like we can parse out who the real murderer is.”

Yang Ye flipped open his notebook and took out the felt-tip pen the men in black issued him. Then, he slowly organised their reasonings and wrote it down on parchment.

As Yang Ye was writing, Gu Liang looked on from the side to help him check for leaks and remedied them.

They eliminated the possibility where the knife was used before the curse occurred first.

There had to be someone who cursed the deceased to death first before someone took a knife and carved the words on Perennial Wang’s body.

Numerous people had cursed Perennial Wang, and if neither of them were the real murderer, it meant that the person who died was not Perennial Wang but a counterfeit. The counterfeit’s identity was still unknown.

Lastly, whether the counterfeit died by the curse or the knife, presented two possibilities.

The first possibility was that the counterfeit’s cause of death was the curse.

As for the word carving, it could only be Oldest Martial Brother or Second Martial Brother who executed it as a means to vent their pent-up anger, and they had added on the words before six quarters of an hour into mao shi.

And the reason why he died by the curse was because someone knew about his real identity.

If that were the case, they could eliminate Second Martial Brother as the possible murderer first.

Between the four murder suspects, only the Second Martial Brother had the evidence to show that the person he was actually cursing was Perennial Wang himself.

— The Second Martial Brother used brush and paper for his curse, which was torn to shreds and later pieced back together, and everyone had seen it.

As for the remaining three, Oldest Martial Brother used a sword, Doctor Yu her rouge, and Gu Liang used water. Neither of them could prove that they cursed the real Perennial Wang and they might have written the counterfeit’s real name and Eight Characters.

Furthermore, judging from the angle of killing motivations, Doctor Yu could also be eliminated.

Because Doctor Yu’s personal enemy was her biological father Perennial Wang, not the counterfeit.

Even if she knew the counterfeit’s real name and Eight Characters, there was no need for her to curse the counterfeit.

Hence, when she implemented the curse, she definitely used the real Perennial Wang’s name and Eight Characters.

The conclusion he wrote was: “If the counterfeit was cursed to death, the murderer is locked between Oldest Martial Brother and Beauty Yi.”

The second possibility was that the counterfeit’s cause of death was the knife.

Like Yang Ye and Gu Liang previously discussed, they could already eliminate the possibility of Doctor Yu using the knife.

Thus, under these conditions, the murder suspect was locked on Oldest Martial Brother, Second Martial Brother, and Gu Liang.

Gu Liang looked over it from beginning to end before he said: “Nothing is missing. From the overview alone, Oldest Martial Brother can’t be eliminated no matter which possibility it is. The suspicions on him are too heavy. Later, you have to focus on asking him for his timeline after mao shi. Oh, but of course, my name is included in the two possibilities, I’m also…”

Before Gu Liang could finish his words, he saw Yang Ye scratch his name off.

Yang Ye’s final verdict was: “If the counterfeit died by the curse, the real murderer can only be Oldest Martial Brother; if he died by the knife, the real murderer is either Oldest Martial Brother or Second Martial Brother.”

Yang Ye kept his writing materials and said: “Shall we check the other places?”

When Yang Ye finished saying those words, he noticed that Gu Liang had yet to move.

“What’s the matter?” Yang Ye asked him.

Gu Liang queried: “Why did you eliminate me directly? Do you trust me that much?”

Yang Ye refuted him with a question: “Why shouldn’t I trust you? Wielding a sword to castrate himself, the bisexual reasoning, we examined it together. From that alone, I can essentially confirm that the person you cursed was the actual Perennial Wang.”

“And what of the knife murder? I had the time to commit the crime.” Gu Liang said, “From mao shi to three quarters of an hour in, you went to the Buddha worshipping hall. I had three quarters of an hour, which is 45 minutes, to commit the crime. As a matter of fact, I could have gone over to stab him.”

“Come on. You were sleeping the whole time. Do you think I wasn’t aware of it?”

“Maybe I had good acting skills.”

“Not buying it. I trust you, any other opinions?”

“I don’t have other opinions, no.” Gu Liang stared at him. With an indifferent tone, he said: “I’m just asking.”

After saying that assertion, he turned around and forged ahead. “Let’s go. We should investigate the weaponry storehouse.”

Upon leaving the library pavilion, the dull and desolate image of fallen leaves littered on the ground greeted him. Withered and yellow, the countless leaves abruptly rose with the breeze, like the circulating karma that people wandered and drifted in.

In that single moment, Gu Liang remembered a lot of past matters.

Opening Weibo to see hurled invectives blotting out the skies and covering the earth, going to his company to see the spurning and suspicious gazes his colleagues directed at him.

After he resigned, there was a particularly long period of time where he went without employment and wasted his time away in his house.

During that time span, he would always sink into the most awful nightmares whenever he closed his eyes. Innumerable mirages would manifest behind his eyelids; there were souls of the deceased that demanded for his life, a weeping young girl, human skeletons which were drenched entirely in blood…

This world was an endless bustle of activity; people came and people left, each of them were hurried, passing travellers. Life was but an inn; it was not necessary to bare his heart to anyone.

When Gu Liang was trapped in a predicament the world put him in, not a single person was willing to believe him.

He never expected that it was only in an unfathomable game where a ‘detective’ would tell him, a ‘murder suspect’, these three words: “I trust you.”

Truthfully speaking, Gu Liang’s first and lasting impression of Yang Ye was that he was quite frivolous and the scum of the literati. And when he said that he trusted him, the notion that he was trying to deceive him did arise.

It was just that, despite not knowing each other for a long time – nothing more than a few days, really – it was also true that they had been together from morning to night. Hence, when Yang Ye said that line, Gu Liang could perceive that he was being quite genuine. Gu Liang felt a little gratified by his words, in all honesty.

Thus, when Gu Liang glanced back at Yang Ye, he was wholly ambivalent. But Yang Ye felt his own heart quiver when that look was directed at him.

Yang Ye could not describe what he was feeling in that moment. It was kind of like a butterfly fluttering its wings near his heart before it immediately flew away. It failed to strike home, but it also felt like going too far was just as bad as not going far enough.

He did not know if he was trying to capture that fleeting feeling but Yang Ye raised his camera subconsciously and took a picture of Gu Liang.

Lowering his camera, Yang Ye stared at the camera, causing a smile to seep into the depths of his eyes.

Gu Liang’s voice travelled over. “Secretly taking photos of me again?”

“We should take more photos. As a memento.”

“Memento? It’s not like we can bring the camera with us. When this scenario ends, all these tools will be taken back.”

“You’re seriously…” Yang Ye kept his camera and sauntered over to pat his shoulder. “Sometimes, it’s good to live in the moment. Not everything has to be meaningful. If you feel happy when you’re doing something, it’s the right thing to do.”

“Happiness makes it right? Does breaking the law and committing crimes count?”

“Tch, don’t twist my words deliberately.”

“Sure,” Gu Liang smiled, “I’ll stop contending with you on that. Let’s go.”

“Go ahead.”

“Huh? You’re pulling on my robe sleeve again?”

“It’s rare for you to wear skirts.”

“…….”

“How about I hold your skirt?”

“You can try.”