Chapter 1 So, Even If They Discover the Truth, the Ending Won't Change?

Night fell, and Mingmei noticed that the game was counting down the final ten minutes.

Mingmei had just watched Li Que and a lawyer handling Shu Chuan's inheritance leave. The fact that this vast fortune inexplicably fell into the hands of Li Que, who was unrelated to Shu Chuan, made Mingmei's mind wander to the image of the deceased being "cuckolded."

"Tsk!" Mingmei couldn't help but lean back.

This wasn't something to imagine!

At this moment, Mu Chen was using the small kitchen in the game apartment to cook online for Mingmei.

Hearing Mingmei's sudden, disjointed question, he immediately picked up on it and said, "Even if they didn't catch the murderer during the investigation, the ending of this game was already set. Even if they discover the truth later... no one else will know this truth."

Mu Chen spoke of this cruel reality, as if foreshadowing the final fate of their characters.

A rich, milky aroma wafted over, and Mingmei looked at the steamed milk curd in front of her, then turned to Mu Chen. "Adjudicator?"

"Mm." Mu Chen nodded and sat down beside Mingmei, praising her. "You really can't hide anything from you."

"Come on, if I couldn't see the comments in the livestream, I wouldn't know your character had such a powerful identity."

Mingmei picked up the bowl of steamed milk curd, her nose filled with the rich milky fragrance. As she tasted it, she listened to Mu Chen's "confession."

"Actually, you can think of this as the world of a novel. The life trajectories of every character in the novel have already been set.

Some people are born at the center of the world, blessed with good fortune. Even if their origins are humble, miracles always seem to happen to them."

"Like Li Yuan... no, like Li Que?"

After Mingmei finished speaking, Mu Chen didn't refute it.

"If everything goes smoothly, a novel with such a person as the protagonist would be a standard爽文 (Shuangwen – a genre of Chinese web novels featuring wish fulfillment) from the perspective of others."

"Mm." Mingmei nodded, remembering what Mu Chen had recorded on his computer. "But their good luck seems to have been cut short halfway?"

"That's right." Mu Chen nodded. "Because there was a transmigrator who knew the protagonist's upcoming rise in advance, so he took the lead and seized all the opportunities of the original male lead."

"Li Que's parents' car accident... was that also his doing?" Mingmei remembered what she had seen in the livestream just now, the things that Lu Xiaoyao and Lou Jia had discovered.

"Yes, in the original book, Li Que won the lottery after his college entrance exam, which was also the first large sum of money for his business venture. But this time, his parents had an accident along the way, giving Li Que, who had been smooth sailing since childhood, a fatal blow."

"But if the transmigrator had the ability to arrange for his parents to have an accident, why didn't he find a way to find that lottery ticket? It's really..."

"No, he did win the lottery, but he won a different kind of lottery. In the original book, the plot mentioned here was just a casual write-up of the lottery numbers next door. But this transmigrator had obviously read the plot thoroughly. His idea at the time was very simple: don't let the male lead find out, and get rich secretly."

"So... he also had a sum of money to start with, so he could invest in various projects before the male lead?" Mingmei remembered the matter related to Cha Sheng. Obviously, the factory project in Cha Sheng's hometown was also preempted by the transmigrator.

"But—what about Cha Sheng? Could it be that he is also a transmigrator?"

"No, he is not. He is a reborn."

Mingmei: Good heavens!

Such a small book, and all sorts of characters have come!

"Because in the original book, he was just a nameless character whose appearance was only because the male lead wanted to completely take over the coal mine and was one of the sacrifices in the struggle with the original coal boss. But he unexpectedly awakened and wanted to resist his fate, so he was reborn."

"However, after being reborn, if he stayed away from the male lead or the transmigrator, away from the plot, he could be an anonymous but rich second-generation demolisher outside the story."

Mu Chen sighed softly at this point. "In the original book, Li Que invested in this company very low-key, without investigating, just simply thinking it was okay. He invested a sum of money in the early stage and then ignored it.

But the boss used the money to discover the coal mine and was reluctant to share the profits, so he engaged in illegal coal mining. In the original story, Cha Sheng's family were all honest and good people.

Honest people were bullied. Although their family caught up with the demolition, they didn't get any demolition dividends, so their lives were always bad. His parents went to work as miners in the illegal coal mine to make a living and eventually died in a coal mine collapse.

Later, Li Que also realized that the company he invested in was fishy. When he confronted the coal boss, he used this matter as a tool.

Assisting Lin Li Que was at the peak of his career at that time. These kinds of business incidents happened one after another, and he didn't have time to have any humanistic care for these people afterward. He didn't even tell the people here his name when he participated in this matter.

For Cha Sheng, the male lead he knew was the investor in this company, a well-known business upstart in M City."

"What he didn't expect was that he was reborn. While his family benefited from the demolition, his parents went to that former sand and gravel company again because of their greed for petty gains. He still couldn't stop his parents' death. It was still the same company. So, whose fault is this?"

After Mu Chen finished speaking, Mingmei nodded thoughtfully, indicating that she understood.

"Indeed, although the two investors are not the same person, for Cha Sheng, it is the same person. So, he wants revenge?"

"Yes, although he repeatedly realized in the process of confirming that some things seemed to be slightly different from what he knew in his memory, because most of the things were still the same as in his memory, he chose to kill Shu Chuan."

"Did he design the flower pot?"

"No, the trap on the ground was indeed designed by him." Mu Chen smiled. "For this reason, when he pretended to talk to 'me,' he secretly took away the rehearsal position design drawings and the ribbon-cutting process plan. It was so hard for 'me' to pretend that I didn't know."

"That's not right."

Mingmei listened to Mu Chen's words and looked at him in confusion. "Since you are the Adjudicator, and you discovered the transmigrator, and you have been by his side for so long, why didn't you deal with the transmigrator in the beginning? Why are you now condoning the reborn to kill the transmigrator?"

Mingmei looked at Mu Chen, who kept smiling, and vaguely felt that there seemed to be another person that Mu Chen hadn't mentioned.

"Li Que moved the flower pot?"

"Mm." Mu Chen admitted this time, but he said again, "The Adjudicator is actually to maintain the stability of the novel world and eliminate the existence of abnormal factors in this world."

"The transmigrator was indeed an unstable factor in the past, but when the original male lead was hit hard and lost his male lead halo, the factor that could stabilize this world became the transmigrator."

"Tsk~ You, the Adjudicator, are really fickle. You diligently stared at the original male lead from childhood to adulthood for so many years, but when his halo disappeared, you immediately defected. You..."

Speaking of this, Mingmei's face changed slightly. Seeing that Mu Chen didn't speak, as if waiting for her to continue, Mingmei asked uncertainly, "Does this halo come back?"

"That's not the case, because... the current Li Que is from the future. The Li Que of this world was accidentally killed by Shu Chuan a month ago."