Chapter 201
Chapter 201
Xiao Huai cast a cold glance at the clown pattern on the ground.
“Xiao Huai? You’re the real one, right…?” The fake Lu Yuanshi from moments ago had shaken even Zhong Jiangyuan’s confidence.
“What do you think?” Xiao Huai countered.
Zhong Jiangyuan burst out laughing. There it was, Xiao Huai’s classic counter-question.
“Aren’t you worried that Lu Yuanshi was real and you killed him by mistake?”
“He wasn’t real,” Xiao Huai answered without the slightest hesitation.
Shen Yun raised an eyebrow. “You’re that sure? We only caught on at first because we didn’t think you would ever ask for help. How did you figure it out?”
Xiao Huai merely pointed at his nose. “His scent.”
Lu Yuanshi’s scent was the most deeply etched into his memory of any he had ever encountered. He would never forget that faint, clean fragrance, much less mistake someone else for Lu Yuanshi.
No matter what Lu Yuanshi became, Xiao Huai would recognize him.
Shen Yun was briefly at a loss for words. Did Xiao Huai’s nose have some kind of special attribute? Shen Yun had certainly never smelled anything unusual on Lu Yuanshi.
“Then where did the real Lu Yuanshi go?” Zhong Jiangyuan asked.
Xiao Huai said calmly, “Since the eight wells are connected, they must eventually converge into a single passage. I think he has already made it there.”
“You’re that certain?” Zhong Jiangyuan asked.
Xiao Huai smiled faintly. “Because if it were me, I would have found that passage directly.”
Running into Zhong Jiangyuan and Shen Yun had been pure chance.
If they had not run into Xiao Huai, however, they would probably have been in grave danger.
“Oh, right. That woman cut our ropes earlier and severed our way back, but you didn’t seem surprised at all.”
Zhong Jiangyuan and Shen Yun were both rather filthy from their fall, yet Xiao Huai was clean. There was no sign on him that he had fallen at all.
“Oh, that. It really wasn’t much of a surprise.”
“How so?”
Xiao Huai briefly explained his intuition and deductions to them.
First, any player who could reach the fifth floor had already proven that they were capable enough to attend the gods’ banquet.
To some extent, every player at that level had a god watching them from behind the scenes.
The bald man in the suit had died first because he had been far too conceited.
One look at him was enough to tell that he was the sort who had no fear of death and loved courting disaster. He lacked the ability to back it up, yet insisted on testing the rules on the very first day. If he did not die, who would?
The god behind him had probably been waiting to watch him die for a long time.
That was why his death had been so absurd. He had eaten away his own physical body and remained trapped in the instance forever.
Second, the blonde woman had acted far too cowardly in the game. It had been rather obvious.
She had been the first to discover that there was a corpse in the well.
Xiao Huai said evenly, “How could someone who identified the stench of a corpse at the bottom of a well from smell alone have only seen a few bodies in her life?”
The blonde woman had stated it plainly at the time: “I… I don’t know who died, but there’s a terrible stench in there. I know that smell! I can’t be wrong. Someone died inside.”
Shen Yun’s pace slowed slightly. Xiao Huai was right. The stench of death could have come from a dead rat or some other animal, but she had been certain it was a human corpse.
Was it possible that someone like her had rarely seen a corpse?
“You could be sure from that alone?” Shen Yun asked softly.
Xiao Huai shook his head. “There was more. She kept trying to stay at the Yang Residence. Even when we had a group activity, she still wanted to remain behind.”
Bringing it up once would have been understandable. Perhaps she was simply timid. But she had raised it again and again.
They could not help wondering whether she had something she absolutely needed to do at the Yang Residence and therefore wanted to stay there.
When a shared interest existed between an identity card player and an NPC, there was no reason Butler Yang could not have helped the blonde woman.
She had disguised herself as a frightened, anxious girl, but she had forgotten that some players were exceptionally shrewd.
Chen Chong had pointed it out directly.
He had clearly noticed that something was wrong with the blonde woman.
If the blonde woman had truly made it this far through luck, her later reactions would have made sense.
But how could a player who could identify a human corpse by smell possibly be ordinary?
She had been anything but ordinary from the very beginning.
Naturally, some of the players had become more wary of her.
Xiao Huai and Chen Chong, for example.
After hearing Xiao Huai’s deductions, Zhong Jiangyuan started to get goosebumps. He asked quietly,
“Xiao Huai, you didn’t deliberately suggest in the courtyard that each of us jump into a different well, did you?”
Xiao Huai met his gaze and smiled faintly. “More or less.”
More or less…
This time, Zhong Jiangyuan was not the only one with goosebumps. Shen Yun had them too.
Xiao Huai truly enjoyed playing with other people’s minds.
Xiao Huai gave a casual yawn. “If identity card players come with certain buffs, why shouldn’t we pry a little information out of them?”
He had guessed that there might be something inside the wells.
The blonde woman had been willing to expose her identity to cut all their ropes. That indicated just how dangerous the bottoms of the wells were.
She believed the danger was great enough to kill all four of them without her having to worry.
Naturally, that would leave her as the one who stood to gain the most.
The greater the danger, the more valuable the information here would be. There was a strong chance it would provide a new breakthrough toward completing their mission.
Thus, this operation had not only allowed Xiao Huai to prove that the blonde woman was a mole, but had also brought him to a crucial location for gathering information.
The only difficulty was how they should explore this place next. Whether they could get out alive was another question.
Xiao Huai had been leaving marks on the walls throughout their journey. Partly, it was to keep them from getting lost. It was also so Lu Yuanshi could follow the marks if he came along behind them.
“Take these.” Xiao Huai suddenly turned and handed them two long blades made of Black Diamond.
He could use [Black Diamond Shaping] to make weapons every day.
Xiao Huai had hardly missed a single day. He had diligently made weapons day after day, so whether they needed concealed weapons or swords and blades for self-defense, he had more than enough.
“Three hours should be enough for us to get out,” Xiao Huai said softly.
After all, whenever someone other than him took one of the Black Diamond weapons he made, it would automatically vanish three hours later.
Shen Yun knew that if Xiao Huai was giving them weapons for self-defense, there had to be dangerous creatures here.
“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask. When you fell down here, didn’t you hear something?” Zhong Jiangyuan accepted the long blade Xiao Huai handed him, his expression turning serious.
Shen Yun searched his memory.
Of course he had heard it.
It had been a rather memorable sound.
“A baby’s laughter,” Xiao Huai answered quietly.
The three exchanged looks. So none of them had misheard it.
They still remembered one of the house rules Butler Yang had told them.
“If you hear a baby crying at night, it is nothing to worry about. Please ignore it.”