Chapter 364: Zero Votes

"First, I had to disguise her cause of death. Thallium poisoning was incredibly rare at the time, and hospitals didn't check for heavy metals during routine examinations. If the hospital failed to detect the thallium, my plan was to deliberately guide them toward a hereditary psychiatric condition."

"Of course, the chances of that working were quite low, so I prepared a backup plan." Beneath the helmet, Wang Shi's expression held a hidden trace of excitement, as if his story had reached its climax. "I catered to Bai Fangfang's every whim. In the eyes of outsiders, we were a deeply loving couple. I had absolutely no motive for murder. My wife, on the other hand, had a personality that made it hard for her to get along with the other teachers at her school. And because she was a rigid instructor who made harsh demands on her students, many of them hated her."

"Given the loopholes in how her school's laboratory managed toxic reagents, I considered poisoning. It's a very crude and easily exposed method of murder; chemical poisoning is always discovered eventually. The key to escaping suspicion lay entirely in the method of delivery."

"To kill someone without a trace, you must understand them completely. I spent three months memorizing every single habit in my wife's daily life."

"That included her eating schedule, her preferences, her work duties—I could even guess roughly what she was doing at any given time of day."

"Only after these preparations were complete did I begin the second step of my plan to kill her."

"My wife had always been in the habit of drinking honey water. Every day before she left for work, I would personally make her a cup to take with her."

"Before I knew it, the end of the year had arrived. The students were graduating, and as a teacher, my wife's workload grew heavy. Occasionally, she would bring home lesson plans and work logs that were usually locked up at school, working overtime late into the night."

"When that started happening, I realized my opportunity had finally come."

"Avoiding surveillance cameras, I purchased two completely identical cups from different parts of the city."

"I started using one of the new cups to make the honey water for Bai Fangfang to take with her every day. At the same time, I planted thallium bromide in her lesson plans."

"Thallium is highly toxic. Inhalation or ingestion causes acute poisoning, resulting in severe reactions within three to five days. If it's only through skin contact, however, the toxicity doesn't manifest immediately. Symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea will only appear weeks later."

"Two weeks later, my wife started feeling unwell. She began to lose her hair, and her hands and feet grew scalding hot, as if they were burning in a fire."

"I feigned concern and personally accompanied her to the hospital, but her test results came back completely normal."

"The day after we returned, I dug out the other identical cup I had bought and used it to make her honey water. It was a very special cup of honey water, laced with a lethal, high dose of thallium bromide!"

"That evening, my wife returned home with the empty cup. Seeing her normally aloof, swan-like demeanor reduced to such a haggard state filled me with an unprecedented sense of thrill."

"We did it many times that night. Her weakness and trembling brought me a very specific kind of excitement."

"The next day, I switched back to the normal cup. As for the poisoned one, I hid it where no one would ever find it."

"On the third day after the poisoning, my wife collapsed at school. This time, she never woke up."

"I rushed to the hospital immediately. I looked at her lying almost completely naked on the ICU bed, her body bristling with tubes."

"I displayed a grief that moved everyone to tears. The doctors and nurses all comforted me. Even Mu Xueying couldn't bear to watch. Heh, what a kindhearted little girl."

"Twenty-one days later, my wife was officially confirmed to have died from thallium poisoning, and the police opened a case."

"They searched my entire house but didn't find a single thing related to chemical reagents. It wasn't until the seventh day after the incident that someone finally extracted thallium bromide from Bai Fangfang's work logs."

"Everyone who had come into contact with those work logs was investigated by the police according to the timeline of the poisoning. Naturally, they found absolutely nothing. The real killer was me—someone who couldn't possibly have touched those work logs during the timeframe of the acute poisoning!"

"To this day, they still don't know my method of poisoning. Years have passed, and those useless teacher's work logs—left solely to misdirect them—are still sitting in the police evidence room. It's truly laughable."

At this point, Wang Shi wore a smile, though everyone present could see the bitterness behind it. "I never imagined that one day I would actually speak of these things out loud. This must be a nightmare. I've encountered similar scenes in my dreams many times before."

He looked toward the round table, his voice slowly rising. "After Bai Fangfang died, I married Mu Xueying, but our life after marriage was even worse. It wasn't long before we got divorced."

"I don't believe I am guilty, and I don't know if I should repent. But perhaps I did make a mistake."

"Everyone is destined to only truly fall in love once in their lifetime. By killing her, I lost everything."

No one spoke in the hall for a long time. After a few more minutes, Number One Wang Shi tried to remove his helmet and stand up from the Electric Chair.

Dressed in pajamas, his forehead was slick with sweat. He swayed as he walked, as if that speech just now had drained him of all his strength.

Returning to seat number one, Wang Shi sat down and looked at the others. "My story is finished. There wasn't a single lie in it. I hope you all will cast your votes for me."

The expressions of everyone in the hall varied, and I was also silently pondering. 'Just a verbal vote, with no fairness or oversight? How could these homicidal maniacs possibly accept that? No, the organizer is also mixed in among these twelve people. He made the rules and is a participant himself; he wouldn't leave such an obvious flaw.'

A few minutes passed, and still, no one prepared to vote for Wang Shi. Human nature was selfish; to some extent, that statement wasn't wrong at all.

Each person only had the right to vote once, and only the five people with the highest votes in the end would receive the antidote. Casually casting this vote for someone else would very likely snuff out their own chances of survival.

Time ticked by, second by second, and Wang Shi's complexion grew increasingly ugly. Right up until twelve thirty, when the alarm sounded for the second time, still not a single person had voted for him.

"Poor bastard." The man sitting in chair number two smiled at Number One. His skin was dark, but his teeth were stark white. "The story you fabricated isn't going to move us."

"Fabricated? Every word I said was the truth." Wang Shi glared at Number Two, his face grim, and said no more.

Number Two was dressed very simply, looking like a migrant worker who had just come into the city from the countryside. There was nothing particularly contrived about the way he spoke, either.

He sat down on the Electric Chair and put on the helmet. When the alarm stopped ringing, the projector behind the Electric Chair cast a bright beam of light, listing twelve numbers on the wall. Beside Number One, it read: zero votes.

'Are there cameras in the room? How does the other party know our situation like the back of their hand?' I kept my head down, using the corner of my eye to scan everyone in the hall. They didn't have anything like remote controls in their hands, nor was there anything abnormal in their expressions. 'I can't tell anything for now.'

With the helmet secured, having witnessed Wang Shi safely leave the Electric Chair, Number Two looked much more relaxed.

"Damn it, how much did you sweat just now? The inside of this helmet is soaking wet." Number Two laughed at Wang Shi, then glanced at everyone else before beginning his own confession.

"As for me? My name is Pan Shouye. I'm twenty-six. When I was seventeen, I followed my uncle into the renovation business, and I've traveled to quite a few places."

"I was young and hardworking, just a bit clumsy with my words."

"To be honest, I didn't have that many twisted schemes in my head. When it comes to murder, the cause of all this has to start with my uncle."

"We came to Jiangcheng four years ago. My uncle treated me like his own son. Seeing that I was pitiful and had nowhere to stay, he let me live at his house."

"Having worked in renovation for so many years, my uncle had a very solid financial foundation. That big house in the city was decorated like a crystal palace—so magnificent and resplendent that the glare made my eyes ache every time I went."

"I liked my uncle's house. Aside from having the most comfortable bed I had ever slept in, there was another reason."

The Number Two man smacked his lips, as if savoring the memory of some exquisite delicacy. "My uncle was forty-four that year. He had just gotten divorced and married a young wife around twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Her name was Guo Yujing."

"The first time I went to my uncle's house, my new aunt was very unwelcoming. She never gave me a good look, and when she found out I would be staying there for a while, she even got into a massive argument with my uncle."