Chapter 88
Chapter 88
The inn was already in complete chaos, filled with players’ muffled sobs and screams, along with repeated cries of,
“What do we do? What do we do? She’s going to bleed to death!”
“Instead of letting her die from blood loss, why don’t we…”
Why not kill her themselves and complete the side mission?
But at that moment, Xiao Huai opened the door and appeared before them.
The air reeked strongly of blood. Xiao Huai frowned and walked to the center of the crowd.
A girl missing her left arm lay on the floor. Tears mixed with blood as she struggled in agony, her face twisting, yet no sound would come from her mouth.
Xiao Huai cast a cold glance at a man beside the girl.
A trace of viciousness had flashed through the man’s eyes just now.
When Xiao Huai glared at him, the man hurriedly hid the knife tucked inside his sleeve.
Xiao Huai said, “Move. She can still be saved.”
Most of the players there knew nothing about first aid. They had wrapped the gauze around her in a complete mess.
Without pressure, certain wounds would never stop bleeding.
Players like Sun Xingye, who knew emergency medicine, had little desire to help anyone else.
They knew the game’s difficulty had increased because too many people were still alive.
If more people died, the difficulty might decrease.
Sun Xingye held Cheng Shan back, stopping him from going over. Standing at the edge of the crowd, he lowered his voice.
“Hot-blooded rookies like you annoy me the most. Cheng Shan, take a good look at what that NPC is doing.”
Xiao Huai asked someone for a roll of bandages, then carefully began emergency treatment to stop the bleeding.
The bandaging was not especially neat, but the pressure and placement of each wrap were just right, minimizing the blood loss as much as possible.
Although the girl was in excruciating pain, she visibly stopped crying.
Cheng Shan’s eyes widened, and he muttered in disbelief,
“My God. I’ve never seen an NPC treat a player before.”
Sun Xingye said, “Who knows what he’s plotting? There was such a huge commotion last night, but he never came out then.”
Most of the players had not slept the previous night.
It was for no other reason than those damned witches roaming at night.
Starting at nine, shrill female laughter had sounded continuously beyond their doors.
Fireworks and firecrackers had gone off without pause in the previously deserted village, which would have been bad enough on its own.
Worse still, the people outside kept knocking on the inn’s doors and asking the same question over and over.
[Do you have any rooms left? Please take us in.]
Only a lunatic would have opened the door for them.
Hadn’t Rule One said it clearly?
Witches were vile, lowly, and disloyal. They were not to be pitied.
Besides, in a horror game, those witches might be ghosts or monsters.
If the players opened the doors and were dragged away, they might not even know how they had died.
While Xiao Huai treated the girl’s wound, the surrounding players held their breath.
Sometimes, when a ruptured blood vessel sprayed blood, they did not even dare to keep their eyes open.
Xiao Huai, however, treated everything without changing expression. Even when his clothes became covered in sticky blood, he did not utter a word.
The girl who had lost her left arm eventually passed out. Once Xiao Huai withdrew his hands, everyone let out a long breath of relief.
Their opinion of A-Zhuolang changed yet again.
It almost seemed as though a holy light shone around Xiao Huai.
He inspired an inexplicable sense of security.
Xiao Huai looked at a girl standing nearby. Her face was covered in blood, fear lurked in her eyes, and her swollen eyes and tear-streaked cheeks showed how hard she had been crying.
He stood and walked over to her.
The girl raised her head. Xiao Huai towered over her, his presence so imposing that she barely dared to look into his eyes.
Yet once she met his gaze, she found herself unable to look away from his face.
Her body trembled slightly.
Xiao Huai said softly, “It’s all right now.”
His deep, magnetic voice carried just the right amount of reassurance.
“You’re her roommate, aren’t you?” Xiao Huai asked.
The girl nodded rapidly.
He had guessed correctly.
“Can you tell me what happened last night? The more detail, the better,” Xiao Huai continued.
The girl’s complexion worsened, and her gaze turned hollow. She seemed to sink into her memories and return to that terrifying night.
Her voice trembled. “All right. My name is Li Yao, and she’s Xiaoxue, my best friend. Last night, when the witches began roaming, the fireworks and firecrackers wouldn’t stop. We were terrified, so we stayed inside our room and never went out.
“But it was too noisy outside for us to sleep. Xiaoxue was scared and asked to share my bed, and I agreed.
“At first, she was crying in fear and still talking to me. But at some point, she lost the ability to speak and kept pointing at the ceiling. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes…
“She must have been so terrified! Then I followed her gaze and looked up.”
The fear in Li Yao’s eyes intensified as though she had suffered an unbearable shock.
Everyone remained silent and listened to her account.
Seeing her expression, they swallowed and felt as if they were there themselves.
Her body trembled, and she suddenly clutched her head with both hands.
She screamed, “A woman! A woman dressed in black and holding a scythe! She smiled at us in the most terrifying way and said we had been naughty and needed to be punished! Then, in the next second, Xiaoxue suddenly floated into the air, and her arm… Her arm was cut right off! I was so scared that I kept screaming, but…”
She raised her head, revealing the deepest, most hopeless fear.
“But the door was locked, and there were no windows! How did she get into our room?”
Li Yao’s breathing grew faster and faster. If she continued, it seemed she might suffocate to death.
Ji Yelin had been listening nearby. She stepped forward and gently patted Li Yao’s back.
“It’s all right. It’s over now, isn’t it?”
Xiao Huai glanced at Ji Yelin without saying anything.
Sun Xingye, who had been watching the drama from the sidelines with his arms crossed, spoke up.
“So Rule Seven is true?”
[7. The children invited to the Witch’s House are all naughty. Every night, the witch will randomly punish the bad children.]
The door had been locked, there were no windows, and the room was sealed.
The fact that a witch had appeared in a sealed room meant she had been administering punishment according to the rule.
“Of course it’s true. Just look at what happened to Xiaoxue,” Ji Yelin said.
Lu Zhi, who was hiding at the edge of the crowd, raised his hand. “Um… can I ask a question?”
Lu Zhi had always had little presence. It was only when he raised his hand that everyone noticed he had been in the crowd all along.
Everyone looked at him.
Lu Zhi asked, “Um, what did the witch… Miss Witch look like?”
The players stared at him in silence.
The corner of Xiao Huai’s mouth curved ever so slightly.
Of the only two people who had seen the witch, one could no longer speak and was unconscious, while the other had nearly been driven mad by terror.
Who could possibly know what the witch looked like?
More importantly, Lu Zhi had even respectfully called her “Miss Witch.”
It was hard to tell whether he was innocent or adorably foolish.