In the second line left of the column of ellipses, JoJo says 疑惑にすぎず. In the Bunpro grammar point for ず(に）as well as all of my personal experience with the conjugation, I’ve always seen it act as ないで, to mean without doing the verb. Though, here, it would seem that ず exists to like すぎない to the next phrase, as if it were すぎなくて. Have any of you ever seen ず used like this before?
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ず is a (Classical) Japanese aux verb and has multiple uses around negation. ずに is just one of those uses and it is the most commonly seen one in Modern Japanese, normally in set phrases or used to sound literary or something like that. Anyway, more info from someone who knows better than me below:
～ずに is just like ～ないで. ～ず as the 連用形 can also function like ～なくて. However, the form ～ずに is going to always be equivalent to ～ないで.
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Thank you! It had not occurred to me that ず and ず（に）could be different particles!
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