Iris 24

Let us return to the moment when Mu Qin and the others arrived at the storeroom by the church's back door to look for a ladder.

When they saw that someone had kicked open the storeroom door, ransacked the place, and made the ladder vanish without a trace, Mu Qin guessed that Zhou Yue had gotten there before them to take the exit key. Mu Qin therefore decided to change their plan. Xu Fu and he would draw the killer's attention, while Qiu Zijia searched for the hidden exit. But Xu Fu had to give Qiu Zijia his Chariot Card to carry.

"Give the Chariot Card to Qiu Zijia!?" When Xu Fu first heard the proposal, he looked at Mu Qin as though he were an idiot. "Are you out of your mind? What use is that card in his hands? He's only looking for the hidden exit, not fighting the killer! He's got neither the physique nor the courage for it. He'll only waste the Chariot Card's value!"

"So you think you won't waste the card's value?" Mu Qin calmly shot back. He looked Xu Fu up and down, lingering on the leg he was dragging along. "Look at your leg, Xu Fu... Even if you use the card, the Chariot's effect can't immediately heal your injured leg. Even with all your physical abilities enhanced, your injury could still make you a little slower than the killer. That means he'll catch you easily. Using the Chariot not only won't save your life, it may even work against you."

"My leg is injured because of you!" Xu Fu gritted his teeth. He could not understand Mu Qin's thinking. "Besides... fine, even if you're right, I can't make full use of the card's value. But Qiu Zijia can? It would still be better to give the card to you!"

"No, I can't use it." Thinking of Zhou Yue, Mu Qin sighed and shook his head. "That killer won't fall for my bait."

"Why wouldn't he fall for your bait?" Xu Fu found Mu Qin's insistence strange.

Mu Qin knew his words sounded suspicious. After a moment's thought, he decided to change the subject without betraying anything. "We both know perfectly well that we have only two choices now: take the key back from the killer, or use the hidden exit."

Xu Fu found that baffling. "What I don't understand is how the killer knew the key was on the church's second floor. Does he have a Fool Card too!?"

An excuse immediately came to Mu Qin. "Cheng Guoxu had a Fool Card too. After you killed him, did you take his card?"

"I wouldn't take anything from that piece of trash!" At the mention of Cheng Guoxu, Xu Fu flared up, grinding his teeth in hatred. "I was too busy whipping his corpse. God, he died far too easily. I still can't let it go!"

Mu Qin went along with it. "So you didn't take Cheng Guoxu's card. Then the killer probably took it and used it."

"Can the killer use tarot cards from the human side?" Xu Fu was not an especially experienced veteran player. He only knew that people on the human side could fight one another for tarot cards. He had never seen, and did not know, whether a killer could seize and use a human's card.

Mu Qin said, "I don't know whether he can use it, but we should make the worst-case assumption. Let's assume he can."

"Suppose he used the tarot card to find out that the exit key was on the church's second floor, then went upstairs and took it. At that point, there's a very good chance he'd lie in wait on the second floor, because we would definitely come to the church looking for the key too. He wouldn't need to waste time searching for us. He would only have to wait for us to come to him."

Mu Qin began laying out his analysis. "In that situation, we need to find a way to deal with him. Like I said, we have only two options: take back the key, or use the hidden exit."

Xu Fu listened honestly to Mu Qin's analysis and cut in, "But both options are extremely difficult."

"They aren't equally difficult." Mu Qin continued, "First, consider the hidden exit. Neither of us knows enough about it. And you said earlier that opening it requires meeting certain harsh conditions. We don't know what those conditions are either. With so many prerequisites missing, even if we use Qiu Zijia's Fool Card to find the hidden exit, we might still be unable to open its door. The hope of escaping through it is very slim, full of unknowns and uncertainty. I don't recommend escaping that way."

Xu Fu frowned. "Then you mean we should take back the key?"

"That's right. Rather than searching for a hidden exit we don't know the location of and trying to meet some godforsaken condition we know nothing about, we should deal directly with the problem in front of us. We need a simple, effective way to take the exit key straight from the killer."

"But how do we take it back?" Xu Fu still felt it was highly unreliable. The chance of taking the key from the killer was simply too slim.

Mu Qin raised his eyes and stared at Xu Fu. "I'm very curious. How exactly did you 'kill' the killer earlier? I mean, that killer was sprawled in the stairwell, covered in blood and playing dead. Those wounds must have been your handiwork, right?"

"I don't know." Xu Fu briefly explained what had happened. "I found a knife in the church. While I was looking at it, someone rushed out from behind and attacked me. I instinctively turned and blocked with the knife, and somehow it cut his face. After that we fought. There were several cuts. At those angles... it was as if he had run straight into my blade himself."

"He came at your blade? I see." Mu Qin thought for a moment. "So you got your knife in the church then too? Why didn't you explain that to us from the start, instead of choosing to abduct Han Li?"

"I didn't know you were there too. When I went over, all I saw was that woman screaming at a corpse. I was panicking too, afraid people would mistake me for the killer, so I simply took the woman away." Xu Fu said, "I learned from her that she used to work at this orphanage. That made me think of my sister, who died here. I was furious, and I decided to kill the woman."

Mu Qin commented, "You really are brutal. You wanted to kill someone simply because of a possibility you didn't even know was true. No wonder you went to prison for manslaughter."

"The issue we're discussing isn't whether I'm brutal, is it!?" Xu Fu was becoming impatient. He knew full well about the flaws in his personality, and he had no intention of changing. He acknowledged his vile nature and continued to do exactly as he pleased. In that respect, Xu Fu had a certain kind of backbone.

Impatiently, Xu Fu said to Mu Qin, "Stop wasting time. Tell me your plan!"

"After hearing your account, I think we have even more reason to let Qiu Zijia use the Chariot Card." Mu Qin looked back at Qiu Zijia, who stood behind them, shrinking into himself and saying nothing. "He's the best person to break this deadlock."

"Why!?" Xu Fu still did not understand.

"This killer is calculating," Mu Qin said. "He'll play dead to muddle our judgment. He'll frame you for the crimes to disrupt our thinking. He even took the main-door key before we did, and he'll stake out the church waiting for us to come... Do you think he won't see through the fact that we're deliberately trying to draw his attention?"

Xu Fu seemed to grasp Mu Qin's meaning. "You're saying that even if we go and draw his attention, he still won't fall for it, right?"

"Right. He won't fall for it." To be precise, Zhou Yue would not fall for Mu Qin's bait. Zhou Yue knew what Mu Qin wanted to do. Zhou Yue understood Mu Qin.

Because they understood each other, Mu Qin had to resort to extraordinary measures. He had to do something Zhou Yue would never expect. The unexpected was always a weakness.

Mu Qin said, "Whether you or I try to take the key from the killer, we'll make him wary. Once he's wary, he won't easily come near us. And if he doesn't come near us, taking the key is out of the question. But Qiu Zijia is different."

As he spoke, Mu Qin reached out and pulled Qiu Zijia, who was standing behind them, over. Qiu Zijia had gone pale from listening, drenched in cold sweat. Yet Mu Qin seemed to have made up his mind. "First, we'll give the Chariot Card to Qiu Zijia and pretend to send him to look for that hidden exit. Then we'll go draw the killer's attention. We don't need to make it too obvious, but the killer will certainly see that we're trying to lure him, so he won't take the bait. He won't come after us. Instead, he'll keep patrolling around the church while lying in wait. Then he'll find Qiu Zijia. He'll see Qiu Zijia as a weakling incapable of fighting back, someone he can kill with ease."

Mu Qin's words made Qiu Zijia's face turn from white to green. Trembling, he asked Mu Qin, "Mu Qin... y-you want me to face the killer..."

"Yes. I want you to go." Mu Qin stared at Qiu Zijia seriously. "I want you to pretend you can't fight back at all. The killer has no knife on him now. To kill you, he may choose another method. The simplest and quickest would be to snap your neck. To snap your neck, he'll have to get close to you. And when he does, you can take the key off him. Once you've got it, use the Chariot Card to shake him off and run straight for the exit. We'll come over and hold the killer up to buy you time!"

"N-no! I can't do it!" Just listening to Mu Qin lay it out made Qiu Zijia feel as though he were suffocating. When Mu Qin said that the killer would try to snap his neck, Qiu Zijia even instinctively raised a hand to cover his throat.

"You can do it." Mu Qin looked steadily at Qiu Zijia, his gaze filled with confidence in him. "Only you can do it."

After saying that, Mu Qin turned to Xu Fu and held out his hand, asking for the Chariot Card Xu Fu was holding.

Xu Fu had listened to Mu Qin's entire plan. He had to admit it was practically flawless. Mu Qin understood the killer's mindset so well, as though he had an exceptionally deep understanding of the killer himself.

Is it just my imagination?

Xu Fu wondered vaguely. There was something off about Mu Qin. It felt as though Mu Qin were hiding something, but he could not say what was wrong with him or what exactly he was concealing. And Mu Qin's plan... really was a good one.

"All right." Xu Fu was not especially good at thinking things through. Most of the time, he preferred to act on instinct. Seeing Mu Qin's serious, focused gaze, he decided to trust him. He reached into his pocket, took out his Chariot Card, and placed it in Mu Qin's hand.