Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Lu Yuanshi’s skin was flushed. Blood vessels had burst beneath it, and the torn flesh was ghastly to behold.

The insects Liu Tongtong released were not merely fast and lethal. Their slime was corrosive as well.

After Lu Yuanshi had taken the attack for him, Xiao Huai had not examined the wound closely, and his bandaging had been perfunctory.

It must have hurt even then.

Xiao Huai frowned slightly. He disliked owing anyone anything.

He soaked a cotton ball in alcohol and carefully swabbed the skin around the wound.

Lu Yuanshi’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and a faint shudder ran through him.

“Does it hurt?”

Xiao Huai’s voice stirred the air, sending countless tiny vibrations brushing against Lu Yuanshi’s auditory nerves. Even the nearly imperceptible warmth of his breath carried Xiao Huai’s body heat.

Lu Yuanshi raised his eyes to Xiao Huai, nodded, and said plaintively, “It hurts.”

One corner of Xiao Huai’s brow lifted. They were so close that when their gazes met, each seemed able to hear the other’s breathing.

Xiao Huai’s lips parted, revealing the barest glimpse of his tongue, like a spark flashing across a field of withered grass. He blew gently on Lu Yuanshi’s wound. The cool current of air was better than any painkiller, soothing the ache in the torn flesh.

Lu Yuanshi’s lips curved in the faintest of smiles, so slight it was almost invisible. But Xiao Huai’s keen eyesight caught it.

Don’t tell me this brat is faking it…

Then again, with a wound this severe, he would have to be ruthless indeed to fake it.

Once the injury was dressed, Xiao Huai intended to send his guest away. Lu Yuanshi, however, stretched out on his bed and released a long, contented breath.

“Planning to stay there and never leave?” Xiao Huai asked quietly.

Lu Yuanshi sprawled bonelessly across the bed. “I’m tempted. You’re here to look after me, after all. Besides, I’m afraid of ghosts.”

Back in the real world, Xiao Huai might have told him that ghosts did not exist, and that only those with guilty consciences had reason to fear them.

But this was a horror game. He could not be sure what lurked inside this manor.

“What did you see?” Xiao Huai asked. He walked to the window, folded his arms, and leaned against the wall as he looked outside.

The grounds beyond the glass lay deathly still. An iron fence encircled the entire manor.

Lu Yuanshi’s voice came from behind him. Somehow, without making a sound, he had already appeared at Xiao Huai’s side.

“What do you think?” he countered.

Xiao Huai glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “I think we’re the ghosts.”

“Oh?” Lu Yuanshi arched an eyebrow, apparently intrigued by the answer.

“Have you ever considered that the places in this horror game aren’t game worlds at all? That they’re real worlds, like parallel universes?”

Xiao Huai spoke calmly as he recalled everything he had witnessed inside the game.

Hanako and the dormitory matron had both been far too vivid. They had seemed less like game data and more like living, breathing human beings.

They were simply trapped in an endless repetition. Whenever players entered an instance, they went through it all again, performing the same roles.

But their memories were never erased.

No one except the players had gotten off the train at Diamond Town, and there had been something wrong with the way the NPCs in town reacted to them.

In other words, those NPCs seemed accustomed to seeing players. And the town appeared to have an unspoken rule:

Stay away from every player.

The players, in turn, had been instructed not to disturb the townspeople.

“Whatever you do, don’t go into town alone to buy anything. You never know where those filthy diamond fiends might pop out from.”
Victoria had said those words herself. They were not to enter town alone. If they needed anything, they could write a letter and drop it off downstairs.

But she had never explained exactly what a diamond fiend was.

If Liu Tongtong was a diamond fiend, what was her connection to the others?

First and foremost, she was a player.

But what if diamond fiends were what players became?

What if Liu Tongtong had been trapped in this instance for a very, very long time?

Victoria had said that anyone who failed the mission would remain a temporary worker forever.

Liu Tongtong was a temporary worker.

She had also been aboard the train.

And she had stolen the diamond.

So had her current identity been assigned when she entered the game, or had she remained inside the instance all this time, long since ceasing to be human?

When players were gathered for an instance, perhaps her identity existed somewhere along the boundary between player and monster.

Or perhaps monsters had been hidden among the players from the very beginning, taking up places in the group before the instance even began.

If his deductions were right, the implications were chilling.

Only when Lu Yuanshi said something beside him did Xiao Huai’s wandering thoughts return to the present.

He looked at Lu Yuanshi. “Did you just say something?”

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Both men held their breath and fell silent, straining to catch any movement around them.

Crunch. Crunch.

Crunch. Crunch.

It was a strange sound, like someone eating, chewing on something so hard that it ground against their teeth.

Xiao Huai frowned, then realized what it was. “The diamonds.”

He pulled on a coat and rushed into the hallway, calling over his shoulder, “Wake everyone up. Get them to the studios!”

Lu Yuanshi nodded, threw on a coat, and began knocking on doors.

It was nearly ten at night, and many of the others had not yet fallen asleep.

“Who’s there? I was just about to nod off.”

Old Mo opened his door. When he saw Lu Yuanshi outside, he blinked. “Oh, it’s you, handsome. What’s happened?”

Lu Yuanshi gave him a brief explanation.

Old Mo immediately swore. “Holy shit! Wait there. I’ll grab a weapon and be right down.”

He snatched up a baseball bat from his room and charged downstairs.

As he ran, he bellowed down the hallway, “Everybody up! There’s a thief in the studios!”

Thanks to that tremendous shout, the remaining doors opened one after another. Their occupants emerged to find Lu Yuanshi in the corridor.

“Lu Yuanshi? Did something happen?” Tang Weiqi asked.

Lu Yuanshi swept his gaze across them. “Yes. Something’s wrong in the studios.”

Tang Weiqi frowned. “Have Xiao Huai and Old Mo already gone down?”

Lu Yuanshi nodded.

Tang Weiqi suddenly sensed that something was amiss. “Does anyone know where Aunt Wang went? She’s not on this floor.”

Uncle Li stepped forward. “Wasn’t Wang resting in Room 205? She felt unwell after we got back.”

Tang Weiqi went to Room 205 and knocked, but no one answered even after a long wait.

When he finally gripped the handle, he discovered that the door had never been locked. He pushed it open. The room was empty.

“This is bad. The thief in the studios… might be Aunt Wang!”

The moment he realized it, he hurried downstairs, only to hear Old Mo scream from below.

“Aaaah! What the fuck!”