Chapter 81
Chapter 81
The previous night, the players had agreed to split the cost of the campfire.
Without fire, the first threat after dark was the sudden drop in temperature.
The second came from one of the rules.
Soulbugs emerged at night, and they had to be careful.
No one knew what a soulbug was, but anything that appeared in a horror game…
Could not possibly be good.
Sporting enormous dark circles beneath his eyes, Sun Xingye coughed twice. The sound rang unusually loud in the silence.
Some players looked at him, while others pretended not to notice.
Sun Xingye walked over to Xiao Huai.
“Um… A-Zhuolang, I know you don’t like me, but I’m one of them too. Since you’re willing to help him, I thought I could contribute as well.”
Xiao Huai met his gaze without emotion.
Human words were inherently untrustworthy.
Especially in a horror game, where anyone could disguise themselves as a gentleman eager to help.
Xiao Huai’s silence left Sun Xingye at a loss for words.
The memory of nearly dying at Xiao Huai’s hands yesterday still made his skin crawl.
He was both frightened and angry.
But since he could not defeat Xiao Huai, he had to yield.
That was not merely a rule for surviving games. It was a rule for surviving society.
Sun Xingye said, “He woke up last night and started looking for something. I think he was searching for water, or trying to collect it.”
His gaze drifted toward a large pit in the distance.
A cup and several sheets of plastic film had been placed inside.
It was a condensation device that used the desert’s enormous temperature difference between day and night to collect water.
Simply put, moisture in the sand evaporated into vapor during the day.
When that vapor rose and met the cooler plastic film, it condensed into droplets.
But the method was extremely inefficient and would produce only a few drops at most.
Those few drops were impossible to share, especially when they still had to travel to Aledi Village.
It was entirely understandable that the young man had secretly attempted the experiment at a distance.
People were selfish. When they could not guarantee their own survival, sharing supplies was almost impossible.
Ji Yelin also recognized the simple condensation device at a glance.
“I’ve examined this desert. It’s unusual. There is so little moisture in the sand that even after two days, no water may form.”
The woman who had summoned Xiao Huai nodded in agreement. “So he wasted all that energy on this last night?”
He had gained no water and exhausted even more strength.
No wonder he looked like this in the morning.
He had to be suffering from severe dehydration, a form of desert sickness.
“And then?” Xiao Huai suddenly asked.
His gaze settled on Sun Xingye.
Sun Xingye’s pupils widened. So Xiao Huai had been listening all along.
“He drank his own blood.” Sun Xingye held nothing back and described what he had seen the previous night.
The young man had probably been driven nearly mad by thirst, and Rule One had said:
[If you become desperately thirsty, you may drink your own blood. Nothing bad will happen.]
Xiao Huai turned toward the young man and rolled up his sleeve.
A bite mark appeared before everyone.
The blood had already dried, but Xiao Huai bent close and inhaled deeply.
A faint smile seemed to touch his lips.
Slash!
Everyone’s eyes widened. Their mouths fell open as they froze in confusion.
Beneath the blazing sun, Xiao Huai had cut a wound directly across his left hand. Blood welled out and dripped steadily.
He gripped the young man’s jaw and forced his own blood into his mouth.
As drop after drop landed on his tongue, the young man’s lips began to tremble.
Like someone falling from a cliff who had seized their final lifeline, he clutched Xiao Huai’s hand with all his strength.
Xiao Huai did not push him away. He let the blood drip slowly into the young man’s mouth.
Silence…
It was so quiet they could have heard a needle strike the ground.
No one dared speak.
Time seemed frozen, and the slightest movement might shatter the stillness.
Even Sun Xingye stared in shock. He could not believe such a powerful NPC would feed his blood to a player.
Feeding someone with his own blood.
Sun Xingye would never have believed it even in a dream.
Still less could he believe it was happening in a horror game where everyone feared for their own life.
Lu Yuanshi watched Xiao Huai silently, his eyes concealing a pool too deep to fathom.
When the blood flow slowed, Xiao Huai withdrew his hand.
He rose, blood dripping from his fingertips onto the sand.
Amid everyone’s shocked expressions, his unruffled face seemed utterly out of place.
It was as though he had done nothing more remarkable than eat or sleep.
“A-Zhuolang… What are you…?” Cheng Shan was the first to speak.
He had watched from the side for a long time.
He had visited deserts before. A player like that young man was dead weight a team would abandon without hesitation.
Xiao Huai raised his hand, parted his lips, and licked the wound. There was no reason to waste the blood.
“I’m curious about what he experienced,” he said softly.
Ji Yelin recovered. “They’re only hallucinations caused by desert sickness. You’re our guide. Are you trying to collapse before the rest of us?”
Xiao Huai raised his chin, mockery in his eyes.
“You’re worried about my safety now? I doubt that. Aren’t there people among you who wish I’d hurry up and die?”
He looked at no one, yet everyone knew whom he meant.
Sun Xingye’s expression darkened, and he instinctively looked away.
“But… why did you do it?” Ji Yelin could not resist asking.
Xiao Huai lazily glanced at the young man on the ground.
“He didn’t lose consciousness from dehydration alone. The more important cause was soulbugs,” Xiao Huai said carelessly.
A sinister gleam entered his eyes, and an eerie smile curved his lips.
“If you want to end up like him, feel free to drink your own blood.”
With that, Xiao Huai turned and continued forward.
The young man’s eyelids gradually opened as he regained consciousness.
Everyone hurriedly packed their belongings and followed.
Xiao Huai’s fingertips trembled faintly beneath his air of inscrutability.
He had forced out those words while enduring the pain of blood loss.
If he could not tell them his theory directly, he could at least make them respect the rules.
Without camels or water, ordinary humans could not cross a desert on foot for three days.
Sun Xingye had suffered no consequences overnight. The young man who drank his own blood had.
Therefore, both rules were false.
But he still lacked enough evidence to determine exactly where the problem lay.
Xiao Huai had smelled something on the young man that was not blood.
It was strongest around the bite mark on his arm.
The scent was faint, even strangely fragrant.
What if a soulbug had crawled into the wound?
Were his hallucinations caused by dehydration or by the soulbug?
A-Zhuolang had once told him:
“I don’t know what happens to you outsiders at night either. Sometimes you go to sleep and wake up dead…”
Why would someone die in their sleep?
One possibility was that they injured themselves, drank their own blood, and developed the same symptoms as the young man.
Lost in hallucinations, they could not awaken. They remained asleep while their dehydration worsened, leaving death as the only outcome.
If Xiao Huai wanted to learn exactly what was wrong with Rule One…
He might as well test what happened after shedding blood himself.
Xiao Huai walked slowly forward with lowered eyes. Suddenly, a figure appeared beside him and gently took his left hand.