chapter 20

The situation was strange enough that neither of them needed to say anything. They just naturally followed.

They weren’t sure if it was a coincidence or if Li Ergou was doing it on purpose.

After trailing behind him for five or six minutes, they realized every route Li Ergou chose was down smaller, quieter streets and alleys.

They barely ran into anyone the whole way, and no one stopped to greet him. The risk of Chu Yue and Shen Yubi being noticed while tailing him dropped drastically.

As they walked, the scenery ahead gradually started to look familiar.

“Isn’t this the road we took when we first came into the village?” Chu Yue whispered.

When they’d arrived, they’d met that old man smoking at the village entrance. He’d led them in, and they seemed to have passed by here then. But it had already been dark at the time, so the details were fuzzy.

“Yeah.”

Li Ergou was leaving the village?

Chu Yue couldn’t help feeling puzzled. What was he going out for?

Li Ergou seemed to have something on his mind. He walked quickly, and in no time at all he’d passed the village entrance.

The two following him came to a stop.

“He’s heading up the mountain?” Chu Yue lifted his head to look into the distance. “Isn’t that the mountain we came down from? What’s he going there for? Are we still following?”

They’d come down from that mountain. Wang Meng had said before that their mission location was this small town. Chu Yue didn’t know if they were even allowed to leave before the mission was completed.

“We’re not going. We’ll wait here for a bit,” Shen Yubi said. As he spoke, he casually flicked out a small lump of something black.

Chu Yue didn’t catch the movement. He agreed with the plan-caution was the priority right now.

The sky grew darker and darker. When the streetlights along the road finally flicked on, a vague figure appeared on the mountain path.

Li Ergou was back.

The two of them hurried to hide themselves again, then quietly tailed him all the way back until they saw him enter his own house. Only then did they turn and head toward the dorm building.

“Li Ergou went to the mountain where we gathered earlier,” Shen Yubi said on the way. “He kept staring toward the other side of it.”

“Huh?” A puzzled noise slipped from Chu Yue’s lips. He ran the words through his mind, then fell silent.

Why would Li Ergou go there for no reason?

The answer wasn’t hard to guess.

There was no particular why. He was just waiting for someone.

Outsiders had come from the other side of that mountain. Li Ergou’s wife’s family was probably over there too. Who knew how long his wife would stay mad? So after he finished selling meat early every day, he’d just close up the shop and go to the mountain to wait.

If he waited long enough, he’d see her again someday.

That was probably what Li Ergou was thinking.

Chu Yue didn’t ask Shen Yubi how he knew. Over the past few days, he’d already realized that Shen Yubi had his own channels for getting information.

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

When they got back to the dorm building, Wang Meng and Li Baixing were both sitting in the Hall.

Whatever had gone on between the two of them, the atmosphere was downright bizarre-“at each other’s throats” wasn’t an exaggeration.

When she saw them come in, Li Baixing visibly let out a breath.

“You’re finally back. Where did you go? Why are you so late?”

She’d been the first one to return and had waited a long time before Wang Meng showed up. They’d barely exchanged a few words before they were snapping at each other, then stopped talking altogether.

She’d originally thought the others would be back soon, but she’d waited and waited, and still not a single person appeared.

Faced with four living, breathing people suddenly vanishing in broad daylight, even someone with Li Baixing’s mental fortitude found it hard to cope.

This Instance was clearly a nighttime slaughter mode!

Across from her, Wang Meng didn’t look any better. With just the two of them left, their odds of survival had dropped even further.

So when he saw Chu Yue and Shen Yubi coming in from outside, how could he not be relieved?

But when Li Baixing saw the bloodstains on the two of them, her step toward them suddenly stalled, and she instinctively backed up.

Her gaze swept over their faces again and again. “What… happened to you two?”
With that reminder, Chu Yue finally remembered he was still splattered with quite a bit of that effeminate man’s blood, even on his face.

He hadn’t thought much of it before, but now that he was aware of it, the stench made his stomach churn.

He frowned quickly and headed for the washroom. “I’m going to wash my face first.”

Shen Yubi followed right on his heels.

The situation inside the dormitory building had changed as well.

As they stepped into the 1st Floor hallway, they heard snatches of conversation.

People in the building were waking up too.

But everyone was moving around only inside their own rooms; no one came out. The room at the far end of the 1st Floor was empty as well.

After cleaning up, all they managed was to scrub the blood off their skin; there was nothing they could do about the stains on their clothes.

“Where are those two? Did you see them?” Wang Meng sat motionless in his chair, his suspicious gaze landing on the two of them.

“No,” Shen Yubi answered.

Once all four of them were standing in the Hall, dinner immediately appeared on the dining table.

There was no need to say anything. Those two weren’t coming back.

It was obvious this had something to do with them, but at the moment Chu Yue and Shen Yubi had been moving together the whole time.

Wang Meng and Li Baixing, on the other hand, didn’t trust each other.

Accuse someone? Question them? Force answers out of them?

None of that would work. Chu Yue and Shen Yubi were practically a package deal now, and they were already the biggest faction among the four.

To have survived this long, the ones left were all smart.

After they finished eating, no one said anything. They each returned to their own rooms.

Chu Yue and Shen Yubi had already decided they were going to act tonight.

Once back, they didn’t rest at all, keeping a close eye on the situation outside the window.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when the noise out in the corridor started to swell.

Groups of people, twos and threes, were walking together through the dorm building, each carrying a small bag, chatting and laughing as they headed out.

They were going to the prayer meeting.

Chu Yue really wanted to know what that prayer was about, but for now it was more important to wait for Nighttime Li Ergou.

After his pajamas had been splattered with so much blood, wearing them again felt unbearable.

Chu Yue went around to nearby rooms to borrow two sets of clothes.

Shen Yubi still had thermal underwear on beneath his clothes, so he wasn’t afraid of the cold. He took off his outer layer, crawled into the quilt, and looked blissful.

“Put your clothes back on,” Chu Yue shot him a look. “We might have to run for our lives later. Tonight is not for sleeping.”

Waiting was always the hardest part.

The last two nights, they’d just woken up and the Monster had appeared, but tonight they didn’t dare sleep.

They endured like that until there was finally some movement outside.

Heavy footsteps slowly climbed the stairs, and Chu Yue heard that familiar sound of a blade scraping across the concrete floor.

“It’s here.”

Would tonight’s Monster kill again?

He had just thought that when noise rose from downstairs.

The Monster had gone to Li Baixing’s room again!

Shen Yubi said, “Save her.”

There were prohibitions in this Instance; Chu Yue didn’t dare challenge them. All he could do was shout loudly from his own room: “Stop! I’ve got a Pearl Hair Clip here. Don’t you want to come take a look?”

There were only the four of them left in the entire building, plus one Monster. Chu Yue’s voice carried, echoing back and forth through the halls for a long time.

His words clearly had some effect. The crashing sounds below stopped for a few seconds, but then started up again.

Obviously, a Pearl Hair Clip wasn’t that enticing to it.

Chu Yue shouted again, “There’s also the study. I found something in Li Ergou’s study too. In the left drawer, inside the hidden box, there’s a letter Li Ergou’s wife left for him. Do you want to read it?”

This time, it actually worked. The sounds downstairs cut off, and the Monster quickly left the 2nd Floor and came up to the 3rd Floor.