Chapter 95
Chapter 95
At Lu Zhi’s suggestion, the pimple-faced man immediately raised his hand.
“I know the way to the basement. Why don’t we look there first? The more clues we find, the better.”
Xiao Huai lowered his eyes. The smell of that room still clung to his hand.
Gunpowder and gasoline.
Why had there been a smell of gunpowder?
And why was Ji Yelin so eager for them to burn that room down?
Xiao Huai’s brow relaxed. The name “Ji Yelin” should have been placed inside quotation marks.
He was eighty percent certain that someone else had already replaced “Ji Yelin.”
Sometimes, what the eyes saw was not necessarily real.
For example, this “Ji Yelin” was left-handed. She had eaten with her left hand throughout lunch.
Yet when Ji Yelin first entered the inn and copied down the rules, she had used her right hand.
She had also eaten the crow meat with her right hand.
Another point was that Ji Yelin’s personality had changed, though only slightly.
If he thought back carefully, however, he could still detect something unusual.
She was cautious. She would never demand that someone burn a place down simply because she disliked it.
Unless she had an objective.
And that objective was connected to her identity.
Finally, Xiao Huai had caught one revealing word. It did not make him one hundred percent certain, but she unquestionably had a problem.
When the pimple-faced man obtained the treasure map, Ji Yelin immediately dismissed his clue.
She had also said, [Don’t forget whose treasure you’re actually supposed to find.]
Why had she said “you” instead of “we”?
With that one sentence, she had automatically excluded herself from the group.
Ji Yelin had been the first player to encourage everyone and insist that they could complete the collective mission.
Someone with such a strong sense of the group possessed the personality of a leader.
People with a leader’s personality tended to use words such as “we,” “everyone,” and “together” more frequently than most.
Yet she had spoken that way. Afterward, Ji Yelin had also shown little interest in group activities.
Once every other possibility had been eliminated, the most unlikely and absurd conclusion
was the truth.
The witch had been inside the inn from the beginning, and after one night, she had disguised herself as a player.
Just as Xiao Huai was pretending to be an NPC, the witch was pretending to be a player.
The real Ji Yelin was not dead because Xiao Huai had not felt her death.
The Holy Father’s debuff could be repurposed as a way to track the number of survivors.
On the first night, the witch had attacked Xiaoxue. Was Xiaoxue’s current inability to speak connected to “Ji Yelin”?
Had the witch Xiaoxue saw worn Ji Yelin’s face, or had she appeared in her true form?
Rule Seven’s appraisal result was true.
Based on his experience at Ivy Girls’ School, even crucial NPCs had to obey the rules of the game.
For the players, Rule Seven was a notification. For the witch,
it was a mission.
[7. The children invited to the Witch’s House are all naughty. Every night, the witch will randomly punish the bad children.]
The witch had to act every night.
* * *
The pimple-faced man led everyone to a hidden room in the inn. Wooden boards were piled everywhere, making it look from a distance like nothing more than a place for storing junk.
He quickly moved the boards aside and said, “The entrance to the basement is right here. I found it by pure luck. Who would have thought it was hidden so well?”
He pointed at an open wooden panel in the room. The space beneath it was the basement.
A ladder led down.
“This already counts as a major discovery. I never expected an inn to have a basement,” Cheng Shan remarked.
To him, an inn was merely a place to eat and sleep for the night. Usually, there would be nothing built below it except perhaps storage space for miscellaneous items.
After their experience in the room full of hair, the players had learned their lesson.
They covered their noses before descending.
Once inside, they slowly breathed a sigh of relief. Fortunately, there was no strange smell.
Just as Cheng Shan had expected, the basement contained only an assortment of miscellaneous objects.
Pots, bowls, and cooking utensils; children’s toys; and a few cleaning supplies.
Aside from the treasure map found by the pimple-faced man, there did not appear to be anything valuable.
They searched through the basement with flashlights for a while. Just as they were about to leave, a man’s deep voice came from behind them.
“There’s food here.”
Everyone looked back.
Xiao Huai stood silently in a corner of the basement, his presence reduced to almost nothing. They had not even noticed him moving there.
Cheng Shan asked, “Food? I don’t see any. Can you?”
Xiao Huai shook his head. “No.”
Cheng Shan was speechless. “Then why did you say there was?”
Xiao Huai casually pointed at his nose. “I smelled it.”
The other players raised their eyebrows. He had smelled food down here? That was too ridiculous.
Just as they were about to question Xiao Huai, Lu Yuanshi crouched and began playing with a roly-poly doll sitting on a bookcase.
His fingertip touched the doll and gave it a gentle push.
Suddenly, the sound of turning gears came from beneath the floor.
It seemed the roly-poly doll was connected to some kind of mechanism.
“What’s happening?”
The vibrations beneath their feet grew increasingly violent, and dust billowed through the room.
Xiao Huai half covered his nose. A bottomless fissure opened less than two inches from him.
The floor continued to shake. His foot slipped, and his body involuntarily pitched toward the darkness.
He closed his eyes, already prepared to be the first one to fall.
They would have to go down and investigate anyway. How he got there did not matter.
But the anticipated sensation of weightlessness never came.
Instead, a large hand wrapped around his waist. With a light pull, it changed his forward fall into an embrace with someone.
Xiao Huai opened his eyes wide and met Lu Yuanshi’s gaze.
Teasing amusement filled Lu Yuanshi’s eyes as he leaned close and whispered in Xiao Huai’s ear.
“How does it feel to be protected?”
Xiao Huai pulled free of his arms. “I wanted to fall down there.”
Lu Yuanshi raised an eyebrow. “That’s one of your interests?”
Xiao Huai dusted off his clothes and looked up at him. “I have a wide range of interests.”
As he finished speaking, the basement stopped shaking. Everyone waved their hands, trying to clear the dust blocking their view.
After several coughs, the situation in the basement soon came into focus.
They froze.
“What the hell… is that?”
Everyone’s gaze settled on the enormous, bottomless black hole beside Xiao Huai.
Several people shone their flashlights inside, and their pupils contracted. “There are stairs!”
Another room was connected beneath the basement.
How it had been discovered was almost impossible to believe.
Only Xiao Huai looked at Lu Yuanshi, as if telling him: You found it.
Lu Yuanshi smiled faintly and once again whispered in his ear.
“Just lucky.”
He had touched a random roly-poly doll and opened the mechanism leading underground.