After Joining the Same Variety Show as My Arch-Nemesis - Chapter 17

Holding the white rose, the group returned to the first floor. With everyone working together, they sealed the secret passage back up.

“Ha, this family really knows how to hide things.” Lu Bin wiped the sweat from his forehead as he spoke.

“If they didn’t know how to hide things, it wouldn’t be interesting,” Fang Zixu said.

“Speaking of which, did you all find any other clues upstairs?” Gu Jingxi looked at everyone and asked.

Owen shook his head. “No. But there’s no need to rush. These are all the clues we have for now. Let’s sort them out properly first. We still have tonight and all of tomorrow. Don’t exhaust yourselves too much.”

“You know, balancing relaxation and effort should be the basic principle of work,” Owen said.

Gu Jingxi thought about her fully packed schedule and covered her head in pain.

“How nice it would be if everyone had your attitude.”

Although she did not directly say who she meant, everyone was in the industry, and they all knew one another’s situations. In certain matters, Gu Jingxi’s work schedule could truly be described as desperately hardworking.

Especially since the one managing her was Fu Wen.

She was a famous gold-medal manager in the industry. But similarly, the people she managed often put in many times more effort than others.

From top to bottom, they all worked extremely hard.

What Gu Jingxi did not know was that Fu Wen, who was in the equipment van outside, heard her words clearly.

Looking at his sister’s tense face, Fu Hang silently lit a candle for Gu Jingxi in his heart.

But… after all, he had already tricked Gu Jingxi once. If he let his sister go and deal with Gu Jingxi too, he was afraid he would not even be able to sleep in his office in the future. That little ancestor would definitely rush over and make things difficult for him.

So… helping her counted as helping himself.

“Uh, Sister, Xixi was just saying that casually. Don’t take it to heart,” Fu Hang said with an awkward smile.

Fu Wen cast him a chilly glance, and Fu Hang immediately shrank his neck, not daring to speak anymore.

“Tsk. I know what she’s thinking. Her start wasn’t as smooth as Jian Lan’s, and she also had to deal with public-opinion storms. Since she wants to catch up to Jian Lan, she has to work hard. After all, strength and works are the capital that allows one to speak in this industry,” Fu Wen said lightly.

“However, looking at things now, she can be relatively more relaxed in the future.” Fu Wen looked at the monitor and curved her lips in a smile.

Hearing his sister say this, Fu Hang breathed a sigh of relief.

Good. It looked like his sister would not go after Gu Jingxi later.

After coming out of the secret passage, everyone returned to their own rooms to rest. Gu Jingxi had originally wanted to return to her room and empty her mind for a while, but when she saw those densely packed photos, she paused.

Help. Would this really not trigger someone’s trypophobia? And although the faces were blurred, the owner of this room was the one downstairs. Once she associated that face with her…

So suffocating!

Just as she was hesitating over whether she should find somewhere else to rest, someone knocked on her door.

“Xixi, are you resting?” Jian Lan’s voice came from outside.

Gu Jingxi froze, then quickly went to open the door. She saw Jian Lan standing outside.

“What’s wrong, Teacher Jian?” Now that no one else was present, facing Jian Lan alone like this made her feel somewhat uneasy, to be honest.

Jian Lan, however, showed no sign of discomfort at all. She only looked at her and said calmly, “I have some thoughts about the clues we found in the basement. I’d like to ask you to sort them out with me.”

Gu Jingxi blinked and subconsciously blurted out, “Why me? What about Teacher Owen and the others?”

Jian Lan rarely paused. She quietly glanced at the camera not far away and said, “Teacher Owen is resting. Men and women are different, so it wouldn’t be very appropriate for me to disturb them.”

Gu Jingxi, who belatedly realized what a foolish question she had asked: “Ah… alright, okay.”

Jian Lan swept her gaze over the photos in Gu Jingxi’s room and said, “Let’s go to my room. The environment there is more conducive to thinking.”

On this point, it was hard for Gu Jingxi not to agree. Even if being alone in the same room with Jian Lan might make her feel a little uncomfortable…

It was still better than staying here and feeling creeped out!

So she agreed to Jian Lan’s suggestion almost without hesitation and followed her to her room.

The moment she entered Jian Lan’s room, the fear and unease she had felt in her own room instantly vanished, making her let out a long breath of relief.

Jian Lan’s room had a strong scholarly atmosphere, and that feeling made one feel extremely at ease.

“Teacher Jian, what did you want to discuss?” Gu Jingxi asked.

“The clues we’ve obtained so far have basically all been organized as much as they can be. But the white rose we found in the secret room breaks all of our original lines of thought, because this white rose has no clear direction,” Jian Lan said.

Hearing this, Gu Jingxi nodded. “Indeed. This white rose appeared too abruptly. If I hadn’t confirmed that there was only this flower inside, I would have suspected that something else had been left behind in the hidden compartment.”

“And there are still many mysteries that haven’t been solved.” Jian Lan sat at the desk, one hand resting against the armrest of the chair as she propped up her chin. Her gaze fell on the white rose on the tabletop, while her other hand rested loosely on the table, her index finger tapping lightly in rhythm.

Her brows were slightly furrowed. Behind the lenses, her eyes were deep and sharp, staring at the white rose as if she were trying to stare something out of it.

Sunlight passed through the gauze curtains and fell on her, giving her somewhat cold and condensed features a faint touch of gentleness.

Gu Jingxi looked at her and, for a moment, fell into a daze.

“The music box in Lu Bin’s room, the locked box in your room, and in the photo, there are six people. Assuming our current deductions are correct, there is still one person whose identity we haven’t confirmed,” Jian Lan said, turning her head to look at Gu Jingxi.

When she noticed that Gu Jingxi was staring at her, Jian Lan could not help asking, “What’s wrong, Xixi? Why are you staring at me?”

Gu Jingxi immediately came back to herself and hurriedly withdrew her gaze. “No… nothing. Teacher Jian, please continue.”

Jian Lan unconsciously curved her lips, her brows and eyes carrying a trace of warmth. However, she did not continue asking. After all, she knew that with Gu Jingxi’s attitude toward her, if she kept asking, Gu Jingxi might explode on the spot.

And Fu Hang and the others watching outside would probably go crazy.

So she wisely did not provoke Gu Jingxi further. Instead, she said, “I feel that the appearance of the white rose doesn’t mean our clues have been cut off here. Rather, it has opened a new turning point.”

After recovering from the awkward situation earlier, Gu Jingxi heard Jian Lan’s words and detected something.

“You mean the appearance of the white rose represents that what we know, and the ‘truth’ we think we know, has reached a turning point?” Gu Jingxi immediately became serious.

Jian Lan nodded, then said, “Actually, what I care about most is still the information in that text message.”

“The information in the text message…” Gu Jingxi murmured, then looked at her. “You mean the betrayers and the betrayed one?”

Jian Lan smiled and answered, then said, “More precisely, we overlooked something very early on. If Xiao Luo hadn’t suddenly mentioned it, we might all have forgotten.”

“The wounds. The deceased absolutely wasn’t killed by just one person,” Gu Jingxi said.

“In a film I shot before, there was a scene where a person who had been strangled was disguised as someone who hanged themselves. At first, the disguise looked very reasonable, but the position of the wound exposed everything. For someone who dies by hanging, the ligature mark on the neck tends to be higher, near the lower jaw. But for someone who is strangled, it is almost always relatively lower. The wound on the female corpse downstairs proves that she was strangled, not hanged. So we can tell that there were two people who very much wanted her dead,” Gu Jingxi explained.

Jian Lan nodded in approval. “That’s right. At least two people.”

“Eh? At least?” Gu Jingxi was stunned. She blinked and looked at Jian Lan in confusion.

“You forgot the answer on the rotating disk,” Jian Lan said with a smile.

Gu Jingxi’s brows immediately furrowed tightly. “The rotating disk… the Xu family… That… In other words, to the deceased, everyone in the Xu family was a betrayer. Why exactly is that? And there’s another problem. Xiao Wen is her son and also Master Xu’s heir. He is clearly part of the Xu family too. Doesn’t that sentence mean…”

“Yes. Xiao Wen was very likely one of the betrayers too,” Jian Lan pointed out almost without any fluctuation in her voice.

Gu Jingxi’s brows tightened, and she began seriously thinking through all the clues they currently had.

There was more than one murderer. To the deceased, the Xu family members were all betrayers. Xiao Wen’s workbook was filled with the word death…

Thinking through it this way, Gu Jingxi broke out in a cold sweat.

What exactly had happened to make everyone want to kill the deceased?

Seeing that she had thought of many things, even her complexion turning somewhat pale, Jian Lan’s gaze shifted slightly. Then she said, “Xixi, don’t think about it for now.”

Hearing her voice, Gu Jingxi came back to herself. Then she raised a hand and rubbed her temples. “Sorry, Teacher Jian. I spaced out just now.”

“It’s alright,” Jian Lan said. Then she lowered her head and glanced at the watch on her wrist before smiling. “I’m going to prepare dinner. Will you stay here and rest?”

Hearing this, Gu Jingxi felt a little tired after that round of thinking, but she had never seen Jian Lan cook before. For a moment, curiosity made her itch inside.

“No, I’ve recovered.” Gu Jingxi shook her head, then said, “Teacher Jian, I’ll go help you. I can be your assistant.”

Surprised that Gu Jingxi would take the initiative to say this, Jian Lan could not hide the astonishment on her face for a moment. Gu Jingxi caught it. Her face flushed, and remembering how the two of them were usually like kings who never met in private, she somewhat regretted saying too much. Just as she was about to change her words, she heard Jian Lan let out a light laugh.

“Alright,” Jian Lan said with a smile.

“Eh?” Gu Jingxi was the one who froze instead, not expecting her to agree.

“Then I’ll have to trouble you. Just right, I’m not like Owen, who insists on doing everything himself. I’d be worked to death that way. So I’ll leave it to you to help me by my side, Teacher Gu,” Jian Lan said with a smile.

Hearing her call her “Teacher Gu,” for some reason, Gu Jingxi’s face felt a little hot. But she quickly said, “No, no, no. In front of you, I can’t bear those two words.”

Jian Lan chuckled softly and looked at her.

“You can bear them. Don’t belittle yourself.”