Chapter 15
Chapter 15
Xiao Huai approached Hui Yulian. “So when you asked about my identity in the cafeteria, it wasn’t only because that god had made you suspicious of me.
“You also knew you would probably have teammates, because your mission is actually harder than what you just told me. Am I right?”
For the sake of fairness, the game could not pit a lone werewolf against so many enemies.
Unless her abilities were truly enough to match them all.
Hui Yulian’s pupils contracted. A shudder ran through her, and her hands clenched into fists. Her jaw tightened as though she were enduring some unspeakable pressure and anxiety.
“How much truth can you expect from a werewolf? Haa…” Xiao Huai turned his back to her and gazed at the sky. “This game is slowly becoming interesting. But…”
He tilted his head and glanced at Hui Yulian from the corner of his eye. “Miss Werewolf, whether or not you have companions, you’ll need to tread carefully from now on. Those three harbor quite a grudge. Watch out; Mercury might be in retrograde.”
He stretched and left the classroom without caring how many eyes followed his back.
The novices were still confused. The veterans, however, felt chills running through them.
If an instance containing identity cards truly worked as Xiao Huai described, then the game rules were far from the only danger they had to guard against.
The fat man could not help cursing. “Fuck! How did a first-floor instance turn into this? Our luck is complete shit!”
* * *
The third day.
The night passed, and something happened that no one had expected.
Hui Yulian died.
She was found inside a bathroom stall in the dormitory. A bloodstained white teddy bear had been placed before the mirror.
There were no wounds on her body. Her death looked more like… she had been frightened to death.
Early that morning, the girls in Hui Yulian’s room began screaming. A large number of players soon gathered in the dormitory.
Dark circles shadowed Xiao Huai’s eyes, as though he had slept poorly. By the time he arrived, the room was already crowded.
When the others noticed him, they moved aside of their own accord to make a path.
He did not stand on ceremony. He walked straight to the front and saw Hui Yulian’s corpse and the toy placed before the mirror.
Her body lay on the cold floor. Her features were contorted, the terror of her final moment frozen across her face. Her eyes were hollow and fearful, her mouth slightly open.
When someone was literally frightened to death, a surge of blood overwhelmed the heart and damaged its function, accompanied by tremendous pain and terror. That was why Hui Yulian’s expression was so grotesque.
Xiao Huai crouched and found a broken Red Finger on her body. An ancient character had been written on it.
There were no signs that the corpse had been damaged, so the finger was most likely an item.
[Red Finger]
Item Description: A single-use summoning item. Write down the cursed target’s name to summon a female ghost in red to claim their life.
[Note: Never provoke a woman who loves red. Once dead, they make the most badass vengeful ghosts around.]
He quietly pocketed the finger, rose, and approached the toy.
The moment his fingertips touched it, he squeezed hard. A faint rustling came from inside.
Xiao Huai asked in a low voice, “Who has a knife?”
A fruit knife cost three hundred Survival Coins in the System Shop. He suddenly found himself rather envious that Ning Gaoqiang had arrived with a dagger.
Among all the players, Ning Gaoqiang was the only one who had ever displayed such a weapon.
As luck would have it, he stood in the middle of the crowd. Under the pressure of everyone’s stares, he irritably pulled the dagger from his pocket and handed it over.
“Make sure you give it back.”
Xiao Huai took it. Before anyone else could react, he sliced open the toy’s body.
Ning Gaoqiang had just opened his mouth to curse when a torrent of white rice spilled from the bear.
The grains hissed against the floor. Every player stared wide-eyed at the mound.
Xiao Huai tossed the dagger through the air. It nearly stabbed Ning Gaoqiang in the foot, making his knees buckle in fright.
But when he met Xiao Huai’s icy gaze, he did not dare complain.
At least Xiao Huai had returned the weapon.
Pan Qing stood at the edge of the crowd. The moment he saw the teddy bear, an urban legend came to mind.
Xiao Huai’s next words confirmed that the two had reached the same conclusion.
“She played hide-and-seek, then the rules killed her.”
The girls who shared Hui Yulian’s room immediately protested.
“Impossible! After you exposed her identity yesterday, you told us to watch her. She stayed in the dormitory all night. None of us spoke to her. How could she have played hide-and-seek? How does anyone play hide-and-seek alone?”
Pan Qing stepped forward. “No. A person can play hide-and-seek alone. Haven’t you heard the urban legend called One-Person Hide-and-Seek?
“The ghost is that toy.
“Some say One-Person Hide-and-Seek is less a game than a curse, and the person being cursed is the player.”
As Pan Qing explained how the game worked, Xiao Huai crouched and searched through the pile of rice.
At last, he pinched a strand of hair between his fingers.
Hair was common in a women’s restroom. Hair buried in a pile of rice was not.
Pan Qing saw the strand in Xiao Huai’s hand, and his eyes lit up. “Right! According to the legend, once part of a person’s body is placed inside the toy, it becomes that player’s substitute.”
Hu Jiang spoke timidly. “But why would Hui Yulian make herself play hide-and-seek?”
Xiao Huai looked up at him. “Her hair being inside doesn’t mean she was the one who wanted to play. If I wanted to curse someone, how difficult would it be to secretly obtain a single strand of her hair?”
A woman’s hair was especially easy to collect. Women generally had more of it than men, and it shed easily.
By comparison, the people with the easiest access to Hui Yulian’s hair were her roommates.
Seeds of suspicion began to sprout, devouring the basic trust between them.
“Why are you looking at me? How would I know how to make that toy?”
“Me? You suspect me? I’m not the only person who hated Hui Yulian. Why blame me?”
…
The dormitory erupted into argument.
Everyone suspected, doubted, and defended themselves against everyone else. The more they explained, the guiltier they sounded.
Xiao Huai closed his eyes and frowned slightly.
He clicked his tongue. “Looks like the killer achieved exactly what they wanted.”
His abrupt voice reached every ear. The room went quiet again.
“Compared with Hui Yulian, the other identity-card holders still hiding among us, whether one, two, or three of them remain, are smarter and far better at concealing themselves.
“They also know far better how to make this game entertaining.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t join them. I’m only an ordinary civilian player. If you still want to argue, go ahead. Once you die, no one will be left to collect your corpses.”
The instant he finished, an obese woman appeared in the doorway. Smiling and drooling, she made her way into the crowd.
“If none of you are going to eat this, I’ll take it away.”