Chapter 258: Master of Lies: Undead
The inquiry method discussed by Miaobishenghua and Enbutzeng was to place six chairs in front of the fountain, with one chair in the middle and the other five chairs surrounding the fountain in the shape of stars surrounding a moon.
The person being questioned sits in the middle chair and talks to the dead. Five people who are familiar with the person being questioned are selected to sit on the periphery to identify whether the person is lying or has an abnormal reaction when responding.
Azalea emblems were placed on the armrests of the six chairs to ensure that both the questioned and the appraiser could understand the "language of the dead."
After the six people have taken turns to be questioned, the next round of people will come up to be questioned.
The rest of the people were evacuated to the edge of the fountain square. They could see the questioning scene in the field but could not hear any sound, and were not allowed to move around freely.
This method ensures that the person being questioned is in a non-enclosed space where they are not threatened by the undead, and it also ensures that those waiting for their turn to be questioned cannot hear the questions and cannot prepare in advance.
Phoenix quite agreed with this way of questioning and expressed his wish to stand by and listen with Brother Lowell. Naturally, the undead would not refuse.
The questioning began, and the first person to come out for the identification of the dead was a member of Leo's family.
The first person who volunteered to sit in the middle chair was Coster Leo, the eldest son of the younger generation of the Leo family.
Koster knew that he was certainly not a vampire. Before his parents and siblings were screened, he felt that it was his responsibility to check the level of these undead spirits to prevent them from causing trouble and treating his beloved blood relatives as vampires.
Sitting down as the undead requested, Koster placed his hand on the azalea emblem on the armrest. He was shocked to hear the two skeletons standing in front of him speak in the clear and confident voice of a young woman: "Name?"
Koster stared at the undead with a female voice for a few strange seconds before he remembered to answer: "Koster Leo."
"age?"
"Twenty-seven."
"What were your grandparents' names?"
"What are the names of your wife's parents?"
"Do you remember what day your youngest sister was born?"
“Do you remember your parents’ birthdays?”
"Did anything happen in your wedding year that you found interesting?"
"What was the name of your favorite book before you became an adult?"
"What was your favorite game as a child?"
"Who were the friends you often played with before you were ten years old?"
The questions raised by the dead seemed simple at first glance, but they were not easy to answer, especially the birthdays of parents, favorite games when they were young, what happened in the year of their marriage, etc. They all required recollection before they could give answers. For some of the answers, even Koster himself was not sure whether they were standard...
The two undead ladies fired off a series of 19 questions that were quite life-like and relevant to the person being questioned. The last question suddenly took a sharp turn: "Do you want to know how we kill vampires?"
"Huh?" Koster, who was racking his brains to recall the past, was stunned.
The two undead ladies stared at Koster with their four dark eyes, taking in his reaction the moment he heard the question. They looked at each other and said politely, "We have finished asking questions. Next one."
Koster stood up with a confused look on his face and exchanged positions with his brother, who walked over with trembling legs while taking deep breaths.
Koster's brother is of the same character as Master Parker. He is terrified when he sees the undead. If he was not worried that he would be mistaken for a vampire if he refused to be selected by the undead, he would never have come to suffer this punishment.
After another nineteen questions that looked simple but required a lot of effort to answer, the two undead ladies threw out the twentieth question: "Do you know what the weakness of vampires is?"
Koster’s brother was also confused. He was not a night watchman of the church, so how could he know?
"Next one!" Miaobishenghua shouted.
There are six people in a round, and each person has to answer slightly different questions, but the last question is mostly similar: they are all related to vampires.
After asking six questions, he changed to six more and asked the vampire-related questions again.
After questioning all 47 relatives of Leo's family, the two undead ladies did not point out that anyone needed to be kept for the second round, which made the Leo family members feel greatly relieved.
But after they breathed a sigh of relief... Leo's family became suspicious again. Could they really find out the vampire's identity by just asking a few questions?
Are these undead ghosts playing tricks on them?
Master Coster thought over all the questions he could remember about his group of people being asked, but still felt they were unreliable - those old, not-so-serious matters would take him a long time to recall, so how could even close family members tell right from wrong and point out whether someone was lying?
For example, when he was asked "What interesting things happened in the year you got married", the range of his possible answers was so wide that even his wife would find it difficult to point out whether his answer was right or wrong.
As Master Coster looked at the two undead ladies with suspicion, two butlers of the manor, a housemaid and two study maids were called to the fountain and sat down on six chairs.
The two study maids were sisters who had a very good relationship. One of them was the daughter of the maid housekeeper, and the other was the daughter of the manor steward. The two manor stewards were brothers. Families like Leo's had not been prosperous for long enough to raise loyal and reliable servants, so it was best to use servants who were relatives as much as possible.
The maid and housekeeper passed smoothly, two manor butlers passed smoothly, and a study maid passed smoothly.
The last maid sat on the middle chair and answered the questions seemingly no different from the others. The two undead ladies who just repeated the questions mechanically did not ask her to stand up as they did before. Instead, they turned around and said something to Phoenix who was standing not far away.
Master Coster, his brothers, his father and the others who had been staring at the fountain all changed color.
The people who had finished questioning were asked to keep a distance from the fountain. They could not hear Phoenix's response, but only saw Phoenix take a step back and hide beside Brother Lowell.
A dead wood-shaped priest's staff appeared in Brother Lowell's hand. He pointed it at the maid sitting on the chair in the middle. A soft and brilliant holy light burst out from the front of the staff and rushed towards the maid who was frantically explaining something, forming a birdcage-like holy light prison, trapping her inside.
Everyone in Leo's family: "???"
The maid and housekeeper were horrified and screamed "misunderstanding", and the sound could be heard even by everyone in Leo's family who were far away.
But the undead clearly didn't care what she said. More than 40 undead squatting in the corner of the wall not far away drew their weapons and rushed over fiercely...
The Innadri militiamen who had been on standby also moved, violently dragging away the maid, the housekeeper and four other people who wanted to save their daughter, and ran to the servants waiting at the edge of the square, with their swords drawn and their eyes fixed on everyone, to prevent those who had not yet been selected from sneaking away.
The Leo family and the servants were panicking, but unlike when the undead appeared before, they still maintained basic order and looked towards the fountain out of curiosity - did the undead really find a vampire? The maid and housekeeper's daughter was actually a vampire?
Let alone these people, Brother Lowell, who listened to the entire interrogation process closely, was also puzzled. After trapping the maid who kept crying and defending, he looked at the two undead ladies in confusion: "Is it really her? How did you know?"
"At least half of her answers were prepared in advance, and the other half were made up." Miaobishenghua thought it was part of the mission plot and patiently explained, "Normal people would not remember things that happened many years ago and have no important meaning to them. If you ask someone what they had for dinner a week ago, everyone who is asked this question will think about it for a long time and may not be able to answer it. The questions she can answer fluently are obviously the ones she memorized specifically to disguise herself as this identity."
Among the twenty questions prepared by Miao Bi Sheng Hua and Entropy Does Not Increase , only a few of them have real intentions, and the others are just tricks.
The useful questions are about the identity of the person being questioned, with time intervals calculated in years, and are not meaningful enough for the person to remember - for example, an adult in his or her twenties will find it difficult to remember the full names of the friends who played with him or her every day when he or she was seven or eight years old. At most, he or she can remember the nicknames of one or two of them.
More importantly, these questions do not require standard answers for the questioner (players do not have the time to understand the life of every NPC), and deliberately finding someone familiar with the person being questioned to sit next to them only serves to put pressure on the person being questioned.
Miao Bi Sheng Hua taught herself criminal psychology and social psychology for the need of writing (there are textbooks available on the Internet). As the oldest of the three veterans in the closed beta test, she has richer life experience than Entropy But Growth, who is still a student, and is born with delicate observation skills - in real life, no one can lie to her!
Even if it is a complete stranger whom she doesn't know or is not familiar with, she can tell whether the stranger is bragging or exaggerating in front of her!
This kind of observation ability is not as fantastic as described in detective movies and novels, but most ordinary people are not specially trained agents. It is difficult for them to tell whether they are lying, whether what they say is true or a mixture of true and false words that were prepared in advance and even fooled themselves.
In fact, many people are deceived in real life, not because the lies are so clever, but because the deceived people only want to hear what they want to hear.
As far as Miaobishenghua is concerned, she is just playing a "puzzle game" and of course it is impossible for her to try to get what she wants to hear from the "citizen NPC" - this does not make any sense to the player.
The last question about vampires is one that doesn't require an answer. All you have to do to write a good question is observe the person's reaction.
With her brilliant understanding of the intelligence of the NPCs in this game, she felt that there must be obvious clues in the reactions of these NPCs - vampires disguised as ordinary citizen NPCs would definitely not be able to instinctively show curiosity and reaction like ordinary citizen NPCs about how players (undead) kill vampires, the vampires' weaknesses, whether vampires bleed when attacked, what the vampires look like after being killed, and so on!
To the citizen NPCs, vampires are "not of our kind", so of course they will feel curious about them. But to the pretenders, it's just sympathy for their own kind!
The citizen NPCs in the game, no matter their level or whether they will drop treasures, their AI is very high!
For a brainy player like Miaobishenghua, who has an IQ of over 120 and sufficient life experience, cracking NPC disguises with absolute advantage is a piece of cake!
After hearing the brilliant explanation, Brother Lowell and Phoenix, who was hiding behind him, had expressions that were hard to describe...
It sounds reasonable, but when I think about it carefully, I find it is too ridiculous...
Lowell shook his head and continued to maintain the sacred prison despite the curses of the undead who were eager to kill monsters but failed. He walked to the maid who was still crying and stuck the dead wood scepter into the ground, lowered his head and chanted: "As the goddess blesses, all pain will be eliminated."
The holy, brilliant and soft holy light burst out from the top of the scepter again, flowing towards the maid in the cage like a flowing river.
This is a blessing magic from a high-ranking priest that can heal illnesses that plague the human body and soothe frightened souls.
But the frightened maid in the cage regarded the blessing of the high-ranking priest as a poisonous snake or a ferocious beast, and instinctively and extremely swiftly dodged it...
Rowell: “…”
——Such a ridiculous identification method is actually useful?!
