chapter 16

At the table, everyone was even more silent than the night before.

Near the end of the meal, someone finally couldn’t hold it in.

It was one of the male players from the 2nd Floor.

The moment he opened his mouth, his words went straight for Li Baixing. “Ms. Forensic Doctor, the Monster went to your room last night. Didn’t expect you to actually make it out alive. I really ought to congratulate you.”

Expressionless, Li Baixing stuffed a piece of bread into her mouth. Her voice was icy. “We all survived another night. Who here doesn’t deserve congratulations? Instead of wasting time on that, you’d be better off digging up more clues and thinking about how to get out of here.”

The back-and-forth between them boiled down to one thing: why did some people live, even after the Monster entered their room?

There had been two people in Wang Meng’s dorm. After the Monster went in, at least one Li Jia died.

But there was only one person in Li Baixing’s room. How had she managed to send the Monster away empty-handed?

Chu Yue knew perfectly well: he wanted to know what had happened in the other dorms, and the people in the other dorms wanted to know what had happened in his.

Everyone was hiding things, and no one was willing to lay their cards on the table.

When Li Ergou came by today, his attitude was even more obvious than yesterday. There wasn’t a trace of a smile left on his face.

“Did you find the knife?”

“Not yet.”

Li Ergou let out a cold laugh, turned, and left without even bothering with polite formalities.

The few of them looked at one another. After two days, everyone had a rough idea of what they needed to search for next.

The more people died, the less trust there was between them-especially those two men from the 2nd Floor.

Everyone had heard Li Jia’s voice last night.

Before, they’d been glad to have roommates. Now they all understood that when death came knocking, the only person who could stab you in the back was your roommate.

Most of the newcomers were dead or nearly so, and Wang Meng, the former leader, clearly no longer had any authority.

Without a group plan, everyone walked out the door and headed off toward whatever place they wanted to investigate.

“Let’s go to the altar.” Shen Yubi tugged lightly on Chu Yue’s hand.

“Haven’t we basically pieced the story together already? We still need to go to the Plaza?” Even as he said that, Chu Yue’s feet were already moving, following him forward.

“Yeah,” Shen Yubi said. “I found something new.”

Today, Li Baixing didn’t come along.

Maybe she felt awkward after they’d both hidden clues from each other yesterday. Maybe she had somewhere else she wanted to search.

Shen Yubi followed Chu Yue’s line of sight. “She probably found a Life-Saving Talisman at Li Ergou’s place yesterday.”

“Life-Saving Talisman?” That was a new term, but it was easy enough to guess what it meant.

“When you clear an Instance and want to keep playing, the System will tell you a lot of ‘common knowledge.’ One of those things is the Life-Saving Talisman.

You can think of it as a game item. No matter what level the Instance is, on the second day of the game, one Life-Saving Talisman will randomly drop somewhere in the scene. It might be a key item for the Instance, or something totally inconspicuous. It could even be a leaf by the roadside or a random blade of grass.

As long as you find it, it can be used to offset one death. But you have to be careful. There are players who kill for a Life-Saving Talisman.

Last night, Li Baixing probably should’ve died, but the Life-Saving Talisman she found took the hit for her.”

Shen Yubi patiently filled Chu Yue in.

“But that’s just my guess. It’s also possible Wang Meng is the one who burned his Life-Saving Talisman last night.”

Chu Yue stared at the road ahead, silent for a long moment. “This isn’t quite what I imagined.”

He’d thought it was just a real-person simulation game. He hadn’t expected it to be an online game.

Leveling up was one thing, but there were health packs, and you could even kill people and loot their gear!
He couldn’t help but admire whoever had created this System-perhaps it came from some far more advanced civilization. “If this System can run so many game Instances at the same time, that scale is honestly unbelievable.”

“Mm.” Shen Yubi answered softly. “It is enormous. You could even say it’s a little world of its own, independent of reality.”

You could also say it was an endless, inescapable cage that drove people to despair.

They walked in silence the rest of the way.

When they reached the Plaza, it was still completely empty of people, but the setup had changed dramatically.

The once-bare Plaza was now crammed full of chairs. The altar was ringed with plates of fruits and pastries, like the preparations for some grand celebration.

Looked like their earlier guess had been right-this was the place where the prayer ceremony was held.

Avoiding the chairs, Chu Yue went first to the statue of the Republican-era Woman he’d seen last time. He studied it carefully. The Pearl Hair Clip on her head was indeed identical to the one he’d found in Li Ergou’s house.

When he turned back, Shen Yubi was already standing at the edge of the altar.

Maybe because the Girl from the 4th Floor had been gnawed completely clean by the people downstairs, there were no remains of her here today. Only a single person’s four limbs lay on the altar.

“You said you’d found something else before. What was it?” Chu Yue asked.

Shen Yubi climbed up onto the altar. Just like last time, he swiftly kicked the four limbs off. The neatly arranged fruits around the altar were instantly smashed and scattered.

He crouched and tapped a few times on the altar’s lid with his finger.

“It’s definitely hollow underneath. And it’s packed full of dense, white skeletons.”

When Chu Yue first realized it was hollow, he’d already had all kinds of guesses. So hearing this now didn’t surprise him. “How do you know?”

“I have my ways.” Shen Yubi didn’t answer him directly. “And those white skeletons inside all have varying degrees of chipping and damage. If I’m not mistaken, those are marks left by being gnawed on-by teeth. As for who those bones belonged to…”

He looked up at the sculptures around them. Naturally, they were the Outsiders like themselves.

Chu Yue froze for a second. “You’re saying those are bite marks? All these people… were eaten?”

He was certain the Woman on the 4th Floor hadn’t lied. She truly hadn’t realized that the meat she’d bought that day was human flesh.

But if the town’s residents had eaten all the players, her reaction shouldn’t have been like that.

Sensing what he was thinking, Shen Yubi also found it strange. It was clearly another contradiction. “I’m very sure those are tooth marks from being chewed on.”

Chu Yue stayed silent. A chill crept over him, goosebumps prickling along his arms.

What kind of town was this, exactly?

A talking fox, he could accept.

A Monster killing people, he could accept.

The undead going wild at night, turning into a zombie carnival, he could accept.

He could even accept people unknowingly eating human flesh.

But he couldn’t accept a group of well-dressed, respectable-looking people sitting around like they were at a party, each holding a human leg or an arm, gnawing and chewing away like it was a lamb shank.

The town’s residents didn’t just reject Outsiders-they ate them.

Then how had Li Ergou’s Wife married him in the first place?

More importantly, after that woman married Li Ergou, she’d lived among the town’s residents for quite a while.

And in the end, she’d still been eaten?

Judging from the clues so far, Li Ergou had been very fond of his wife. If he found out the truth, what would he become?