Chapter 112
Chapter 112
The sight of Qin Musong covered in blood blanked Cheng Miao’s mind for an instant.
He was so strong that people often forgot he was still made of flesh and blood.
He could be injured. He could die.
By the time Cheng Miao came back to herself, she had already run to him.
She and Lin Zhu took his weight. With a flick of her fingers, she produced a plump white ginseng root. One corner was missing, and a bite mark remained.
“Eat it.”
This was an Item for healing physical trauma that Cheng Miao had obtained in The Three Little Bears’ Home. Back then, Tong Qian had stopped bleeding after taking only one bite.
Qin Musong knew the Item and how precious it was. He had no intention of eating the whole thing. He only wanted one bite to stop the bleeding.
He had barely opened his mouth when Cheng Miao shoved the entire ginseng root inside.
Qin Musong fell silent.
Cheng Miao knew what he had been thinking, but to her, no Item mattered more than a person’s life.
No matter what happened, this instance still had two nights remaining. If Qin Musong merely stopped the bleeding, he would remain in tremendous danger.
As he swallowed, the other players stared openmouthed. His mangled wound slowly healed, and a new arm grew from it.
Only when color returned to his face did Cheng Miao relax.
Qin Musong clenched his new fist and pulled a smile across his blood-spattered face. “I’m fine now.”
Cheng Miao pressed her lips together without answering. His hand had returned, but the wound had been enormous. The blood loss had severely depleted both his strength and his mental energy.
She also knew Qin Musong would never use the mental and physical recovery Item Lin Zhu had received from Lian Ge.
That was a line he had chosen for himself, and Cheng Miao could only respect it.
After helping him sit, she noticed Qi Jiajia standing rigidly to the side. Before Cheng Miao could speak, the girl lowered her head and asked coldly, “What happened?”
Yang Ke and Little Red were exhausted too. At worst, Xiao Song’s act of closing the door might have caused the game to fail immediately and killed everyone inside.
Both had been holding in their fury. Talking over each other, they described what had happened.
Each player had seen something behind the person who entered before them. Together, those apparitions depicted Shen Xin’s transformation from a living woman into a corpse.
Behind the first few players, Shen Xin had appeared in white, beautiful and smiling, slowly approaching.
Then she became pale and weak, followed by a body covered in wounds, and finally a rotting corpse crawling with maggots.
The later the turn, the more horrifying the sight for the person outside.
But no matter how terrifying it became, they could not close the door.
Baili Qianqiu sat to one side. He took an expensive-looking silver lighter from his jacket pocket and lit the white cigarette in his mouth.
By the time Yang Ke and Little Red finished, Old Zhao had collapsed to the floor.
When Xiao Song failed to emerge, he had already known something was wrong.
Xiao Song had been the most timid person on their team. Old Zhao had prepared himself for the possibility that the young man would not survive this trial.
But he had never imagined Xiao Song would close the door on Qin Musong!
How was that different from murder?
If Qin Musong had not been an exceptional fighter, ruthless enough even toward himself, he could never have escaped.
Old Zhao’s lips moved, but his thoughts were too chaotic to form words.
When he finally recovered, Qi Jiajia stood before him, wrapped in an overwhelming aura of bloodlust and murderous intent.
Old Zhao stared blankly at the beautiful young girl. Her catlike eyes, usually bright, were now scarlet and icy. Under those deathly black pupils, his whole body began trembling beyond his control.
“Qi Jiajia, come back!” Sensing her murderous intent, Cheng Miao hardened her expression for the first time and called her by name.
Like someone awakening from a nightmare, Qi Jiajia froze. After a moment, she slowly returned to Cheng Miao’s side and sat without a word.
Qin Musong stroked her hair again and again, while Lin Zhu hurriedly pulled marshmallows from his bag and fed them to her one at a time.
The scarlet in Qi Jiajia’s eyes gradually faded.
Cheng Miao walked to Old Zhao. The middle-aged man might once have been a spirited photographer, but now he sat broken on the floor, his eyes dense with guilt and pain.
He too had lost every teammate.
Cheng Miao sighed. “What Xiao Song did was his own decision. Even if you were a team, you couldn’t control him. Don’t blame yourself too much.”
She turned away, then looked back after two steps. “Jiajia is still a child. She lost her head because she cares. Please forgive her.”
Old Zhao nodded numbly.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Cheng Miao said softly.
Behind her came a man’s muffled sobs, filled with endless despair and helplessness.
After a night’s rest, Qin Musong’s condition improved considerably.
Fewer and fewer people remained. Old Zhao no longer spoke. He shrank into the crowd, red eyes lowered, like a lamb waiting for slaughter.
Some people walked until they lost the courage and conviction to continue.
Cheng Miao spent the entire night reviewing what the survivors had told her about the games.
After breakfast, when no Longtime Tenant was present, she gathered the remaining players.
“I think I understand the rule behind the nightly games.”
The dispirited group immediately perked up.
Cheng Miao counted off her thoughts on her fingers. “This instance has two threads. The main one is uncovering how Shen Xin died, which is the condition for escaping Apartment 444. The second consists of the taboos and the nightly games.
“There is little we can do about the taboos. China has countless customs, and they vary from place to place. No one knows them all. But we can prevent deaths in the nightly games.
“On the surface, each game has forbidden actions. Follow the rules and you survive. Every player knows that, yet someone dies each night. What does that tell us?”
The failing students stared blankly at Teacher Cheng.
Some had followed her reasoning, but the good students were too independent to humor the teacher.
Only top student Lin Zhu cooperated. “Something uses different methods to induce players to break the taboos.”
Cheng Miao gave him an approving look, then continued prompting the others. “On the first night, Mohawk kept his eyes closed and survived. On the second, Little Green… no, that young woman triggered her death after muttering throughout the game. Last night, every player heard the voice of someone familiar. What hidden rule connects those events?”
Freckles eagerly raised an answer. “Concentrate while playing?”
Yang Ke followed. “Shen Xin’s ghost knows us extremely well and attacks each person’s weakness. She’s an intelligent ghost, one with the ability to break through ghost abilities!”
Cheng Miao stared at him. She was tired. Someone carry her off to rest.
Gu Jian, who had been playing with his fingers, snorted with laughter. “Handsome Yang, you’ve got quite an imagination.”
Yang Ke flushed and fell silent.
Cheng Miao sighed and turned to the high-quality students on her own team. “Can’t look, can’t speak, can’t listen… Combined with the hint, what does that make you think of?”
Lin Zhu’s and Qi Jiajia’s eyes lit up.