chapter 11

Li Baixing quietly followed the two of them.

Chu Yue turned his head and glanced at her. “Aren’t you going to check out what’s going on over there?”

“No need.” Li Baixing pushed her glasses up. “You two already checked it out yesterday. I trust your judgment.”

It was the kind of line that went down easy. Shen Yubi chuckled softly.

In this world, the stakes were human lives. Who could really trust whom?

The round trip to the Plaza took nearly an hour and a half. By the time the three of them came back, Li Ergou’s butcher shop was already closed.

“Doesn’t this strike you as strange?” Li Baixing suddenly spoke up.

“What’s strange?” Chu Yue asked.

“The Death Condition,” Li Baixing said. “For a butcher, whether a pig is fat or sick is just a priority condition for slaughter. Which pig actually gets killed depends entirely on the butcher’s whim.”

Even if he wanted to kill a fat pig, aside from the really obvious ones, who would weigh each pig one by one and then compare before making a choice?

Once the pigs were raised to about the right point, he’d just grab one, put it on the scale, calculate costs and profit, and that was that.

Shen Yubi smiled with that half-amused, half-ironic expression of his. “So this is a hundred-percent mortality Instance, sis.”

Chu Yue didn’t respond, but it was clear he agreed with him.

The last two nights, the Monster being willing to follow the priority order of the Death Condition was already decent of it. Who it would go for next was anyone’s guess.

It was a kind of mockery, too. Just when the players managed to summarize the Death Condition, it might decide not to follow it anymore.

In the real world, Chu Yue held the reins of a company and was unbeatable at the negotiating table. He was extremely sensitive to shifts in people’s moods.

Yesterday, when Li Ergou saw them, he’d greeted them with a big cheerful grin, looking honest and simple.

Today, when he saw them, there was a hint of something sour and off in his attitude.

Never mind the slightly cold manner in the Hall earlier. Even that seemingly casual glance he’d thrown at them when they passed the butcher shop had carried a trace of malice and displeasure.

Li Baixing paused for a moment, then fell silent.

Li Ergou’s Home was not hard to find-a small two-story house facing the street.

Whether the System had auto-reset it or Li Ergou had cleaned up last night, there was no sign the place had been turned upside down.

The three of them split up, taking one room each for a thorough, inch-by-inch search.

Shen Yubi and Li Baixing took the kitchen and the living room. Chu Yue went into the bedroom on the 2nd Floor.

Li Ergou really was good to Li Ergou’s Wife.

More than half of the wardrobe was empty. Li Ergou only had a few sets of clothes. There weren’t many women’s outfits either, all ordinary men’s and women’s wear, but the fabric of the women’s clothes was much better.

The vanity was lined with a full set of skincare products, all high-end brands.

But after looking around, Chu Yue didn’t see a wedding photo of the two of them.

He rifled through the drawers again. Forget wedding photos-there wasn’t even a single picture of the two of them together.

This should have been the most private space shared by a married couple, yet Chu Yue couldn’t find a single clue here.

When he came out of the room and saw the other two still busy, he turned and went into the study next door.

It was hard to imagine that in such a remote little town, a butcher’s home would actually have a study.

Chu Yue closed the door behind him and turned to look over the layout.

One wall was lined with bookshelves, crammed full of books. There were a few old volumes bound in green, as well as famous classics. The air was thick with a cultivated, scholarly feel.

Looking closer, though, most of the shelves were actually filled with all kinds of web-published novels, which made it feel more like the owner was an ordinary person putting on airs.

Chu Yue walked over and picked up the booklet lying on the desk.

It was filled with traditional Chinese characters written in neat regular script with a fountain pen-book reviews and reflections. The strokes were delicate and orderly, clearly not written by Li Ergou.

Chu Yue knew little about calligraphy, but just from the handwriting, it was obvious the writer had practiced.

No wonder the Woman on the 4th Floor had said Li Ergou’s Wife had good manners. Turned out she was an educated woman.

He didn’t waste too much time on that. His attention shifted back to the bookshelves.

After running his eyes over them a few times, he finally spotted the book Wang Meng had mentioned, the one about the town’s history.

It was pretty much as Wang Meng had said. The content was useless. The text didn’t include the wording of the town’s prayer at all.
Chu Yue pulled open the drawers in the desk. There wasn’t much inside.

He emptied out both drawers. Odds and ends scattered all over the desktop-fountain pens, notepaper, and even a small set of carving tools.

The only thing that seemed remotely mysterious was an exquisite wooden box.

He opened it. It was empty.

Chu Yue closed the lid again, uncertain whether it had always been empty or if someone had taken whatever was inside ahead of time and hidden it.

He put everything back more or less where it had been and pushed the drawers in. The left drawer jammed halfway, like something was blocking it from going all the way.

He paused. The wooden box that had originally been in the right drawer-he’d just put it in the left.

Which meant…

The space behind the drawers wasn’t the same height. Or rather, there was something else in the left-hand compartment.

“Chu Yue.” Shen Yubi came up from downstairs, poked his head in to take a look, then pushed the door open and walked in. “Find anything?”

“A little.” Chu Yue crouched down and peered into the hollow under the desktop. Sure enough, there was a patch of shadow stuck to the top above the drawer.

He reached his hand in and asked, “You? Anything?”

His fingers brushed a square object. It felt just like the wooden box from before, probably glued up there with something like adhesive.

He pinched the body of the box and pulled. With a soft crack, it came free into his hand.

Shen Yubi walked around behind the desk to watch what he was doing, and at the same time set something down on the table.

Chu Yue’s gaze swept over it, his brows drawing together.

On the desk lay a white Pearl Hair Clip. The style wasn’t anything special. The bead was synthetic, but it didn’t look cheap.

“You remember this too, right? This hair clip.” Shen Yubi propped his elbows on the desk and rested his chin in his hands, meeting the eyes of the crouched Chu Yue.

Chu Yue nodded, his frown deepening. It was a long moment before he spoke. “Where did you find it?”

His memory wasn’t bad. He wouldn’t forget something he’d seen just yesterday.

He’d seen this exact same Pearl Hair Clip yesterday on one of the sculptures in the Plaza.

That woman in Republican-era dress had been wearing a clip just like this on her head.

But according to what Shen Yubi had said, all those people were players-maybe even players who were already dead. So how had her item ended up here?

Thinking of the way the bedroom and this study were furnished, a bold guess surfaced in Chu Yue’s mind.

“In the corner of the living room. It’d fallen into the flowerpot by the wall,” Shen Yubi said, eyes shifting to the box in Chu Yue’s hand. “What’s in there?”

Chu Yue lowered his head. The box was a pair with the one from before. He lifted the lid. There was nothing particularly special inside, just a thin sheet of paper.

After they finished reading what was written on it, both of them fell silent.

Chu Yue folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket. “Looks like Li Ergou’s Wife really was a player.”

That being the case, there were some things they needed to clear up.

First, why had a player become Li Ergou’s Wife?

Second, was Li Ergou’s Wife actually dead?

Finally, did Li Ergou know his wife was dead? Or did he really believe she’d gone back to her parents’ home? After all, in this town, players were just Outsiders.

The two of them exchanged a look and thought of the same person.

“The Woman on the 4th Floor.”

“The Woman on the 4th Floor.”

If Li Ergou didn’t know his wife was dead, did the townsfolk know?

Chu Yue hadn’t forgotten what that person had said yesterday.

She’d said she didn’t reject Outsiders. The fact that she’d gone out of her way to clarify that meant that someone in town did reject them.

The day Li Ergou lost his Butcher Knife was the day his wife supposedly went back to her family. Chu Yue had a feeling that the way out of this Instance might lie with Li Ergou’s Wife.

Thinking of the Woman on the 4th Floor, Shen Yubi snickered. “If the Woman on the 4th Floor is still around, then next up it’s time for you to sell your body, big brother. Maybe we can even find out why they went crazy last night.”

Was it something inevitable built into this Instance, or a hidden scene in a 100% Fatality Rate Instance?