chapter 83

Chapter 83

“Is there something in the hall besides us and the NPCs?” Luo Jia Bai looked around warily, then glanced at the plates, pondering, “Could what you heard be the screams of these animals after being made into food?”

“Was it chicken, duck, cow, or sheep?”

Mirella shook her head. “It wasn’t any animal I’ve ever seen.”

She stared at Luo Jia Bai through the White Cloth for a moment, then suddenly pointed at his shoulder and exclaimed, “Right-angled shoulders, visible collarbones.”

Then she pointed at his arm. “No excess flesh.”

“You look better in a dress than I do.”

Luo Jia Bai’s neck flushed red. “Thank you! But I don’t need that kind of compliment!”

He didn’t know where to put his embarrassed gaze, and suddenly saw Mirella’s cat, eager to shift the awkwardness. “What’s with your cat’s posture? Left foot on right foot-doesn’t it feel uncomfortable standing like that?”

Mirella showed her first smile since entering the hall. “He’s just too gentlemanly.”

“Gentlemanly?” Luo Jia Bai looked up at the cat’s backside. “Is it a male?”

Mirella nodded. “He’s a boy.”

Seeing Luo Jia Bai discuss gender so nonchalantly, Lu Li reminded, “I’ve heard birds are pretty petty. If you annoy them too much, they’ll hold a grudge.”

“Hey, how many times have I said it’s not a bird.” Luo Jia Bai waved his hand. “He’s a cat, he can’t understand what we’re saying.”

Black Bird was tense and awkward. Because Mirella had changed into a dress with less fabric on the shoulders, he had nowhere to perch and could only stand on one foot, looking rather miserable.

Suddenly, Luo Jia Bai called him out.

His body slipped and he almost fell.

Luo Jia Bai quickly reached out to catch him. “It’s fine, it’s fine, I’ve got you!”

Black Bird was extremely displeased, flapped his wings, kicked Luo Jia Bai hard, then returned to Mirella’s shoulder, turned his back to them in a sulk, and then tore through space to leave.

Luo Jia Bai suffered a heavy blow. He dragged his suddenly frozen, numb Arm and cried out, “Why is your cat so cold? Like an ice block! Damn! My whole arm suddenly can’t move, Lu Li, help me out. Am I going to freeze to death?”

Lu Li exchanged a few Items, heated a bottle of water, and helped Luo Jia Bai warm his Arm with a hot water bath.

Luo Jia Bai patted his still numb Arm, his face pale and his tone urgent. “Has my Ability disappeared again? It hasn’t recovered for ages! It never took this long before.”

“Because it’s not ordinary ice. It’ll be fine once it melts.”

Lu Li paused and asked, “Why are you so nervous about losing your Ability? Didn’t you tell me before that these powers are the least trustworthy, and you can only rely on yourself?”

No response for a long time.

He looked up and found Luo Jia Bai lost in thought.

Lu Li’s tone grew serious as he patted Luo Jia Bai’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

Luo Jia Bai snapped back to reality, his Heart pounding anxiously, and he started sweating. “Were you talking to me? I was just thinking… Yeah, that’s always been my belief, having or not having an Ability makes no difference, what’s there to be afraid of!”

He gave a dry laugh, but his mind was a mess.

He always said that, but when he regained his powers in the last Instance, he still felt relieved.

He felt he hadn’t let Lu Li down.

If there were a comprehensive Player ability assessment, with a full score of one hundred, he thought Lu Li’s ability would be two hundred, while he himself struggled just to pass.

Now, with the appearance of a Heavenly Ranking Seed Player, Mirella, whose Ability was unique.

He admitted he couldn’t be completely unafraid.

His fear was probably one in a thousand.

But for some reason,

After entering this Instance, as the hierarchy advanced layer by layer,

That insignificant fear seemed magnified a thousandfold, ten thousandfold.

The flavor of the side dishes, mixed with a unique scent of leaves, kept wafting over, making him even more restless.

“Don’t be too nervous, it’s an Ice Ability,” Mirella explained as well.

Luo Jia Bai’s thoughts were pulled back. “Can he really understand human speech?”

Mirella said, “He can.”

Luo Jia Bai was shocked. “Then why didn’t you correct me earlier? If I’d known, I wouldn’t have said that.”

“He knows you are my friends, he won’t kill you easily. Talking to you seems to make him move more and get emotional, so I’m testing it.” Mirella whispered, “It also helps me guess more clearly what he’s thinking.”

Lu Li was curious. “He’s always with you, don’t you communicate?”

“The thing he says to me most is ‘meow.'” Mirella looked troubled. “Sometimes I don’t know what he’s thinking either.”

Outside the glass dome.

Two Full Moons slowly moved until they overlapped perfectly, leaving no gap.

The Moonlight covering everyone in the hall was so thick it seemed it could drip.

The Noble Gentleman suddenly stood up, so excited he lost his composure and slapped the table. “Finally, it’s time to enjoy the main course. The main dish will be served!”

At his announcement, all the Nobles present began to applaud enthusiastically.

Their faces were filled with a kind of pathological fervor.

“Honored guests, we’ve also prepared a special dish for each of you. Trust me, once you taste it, you’ll fall in love with this wonderful, youthful, healthy flavor!”

Dozens of Servants pushed food carts in from the small door on the left.

This time, it was a different batch of Servants. They wore perfectly tailored clothes, gloves, and even full-face masks before the Masquerade Ball officially began, leaving no skin visible.

Luo Jia Bai whispered, “There are so many Servants here. Even though we’re all in the Noble District, the NPCs attending the Masquerade Ball are the highest tier-they get to sit and eat. The Noble District only has one hall, so the clue range isn’t large. Looks like there are two kinds of people here.”
The Servant placed the soup bowl on Lu Li’s plate. “Sir, your dish.”

“The Head Chef’s secret Sea Salt Thick Soup. Please enjoy.”

The beige soup was thick, steaming with a savory aroma. Deep red chunks of meat bubbled up within it.

As the Servant withdrew his hand, he accidentally knocked over the fork.

When he crouched down to pick it up, he bumped his head, nearly toppling all the dishes on the table.

Several glasses of wine were spilled, ruining the pleasant dining atmosphere. The Noble Gentleman, who could recognize this Servant even through his clothes, chewed his food irritably and shouted:

“Sean! How many times have I told you! You’re always so clumsy-if you keep this up, go back to your Rich District! Of all this batch of plate-carriers, your Red Coral is the smallest. Giving you this well-paid job is already more than generous! You know, with your build and physique, you should be stuck in the Kitchen chopping meat!”

A row of Servants bowed, apologizing to the distinguished guests under the barrage of criticism.

Lu Li took out a mirror and looked at the Sea Salt Thick Soup.

In the reflection, it was a bowl of blood.

He picked the bubbling chunks of meat into his plate, pushing aside the soup clinging to them.

Staring at the shape in the mirror, Lu Li paused.

It looked like a liver.

To the naked eye, it was a piece of red meat.

But in the mirror, it looked like a liver.

He shifted the mirror’s angle to the array of appetizers.

In the mirror, the chicken leg was half a human Arm.

The steak was a human rib cage.

“That’s a human hand, not a chicken leg?!” Luo Jia Bai was also looking into the mirror. He stifled a gasp, his stomach churning. “These are all human Corpses!?”

“Let me get you a new fork and clean the table.” The Servant named Sean replaced the utensils, then stood up and threw all the barely-touched appetizer plates in front of Lu Li into the trash on the serving cart.

Lu Li’s mirror inadvertently swept over the Servant.

In the reflection, there was a hand, completely bare, without skin-only flesh.

That hand made Lu Li instantly think of how Ye Jiachen looked before he died.

Ye Jiachen had been flayed alive by Mrs. Qiao; his face was gone, almost unrecognizable as a human being.

Lu Li turned the mirror, trying to look at Sean’s face, but Sean was already pushing the cart, disappearing into the crowd of Servants.

Luo Jia Bai was lost in the images he’d just seen and started guessing, “They eat people! But who are they eating? The poor or the Nobles?”

“I’ve been wondering, too. The Masquerade Ball invited so many Nobles and prepared so much food-where do they keep all their ingredients? How big would their Kitchen have to be?”

Not far away, after a hushed discussion with Feng Shan, Song Changrong went to ask the Noble Gentleman, “You just threw away all the appetizers. Don’t you think that’s wasteful?”

The Noble Gentleman said, “The sea is vast and endless; its resources are inexhaustible. There will never be a day when it runs out. So what if some is wasted?”

–

Lu Li’s shoe stepped on something.

He lifted the tablecloth and saw a card that had fallen where Sean had crouched to pick up the fork.

Picking it up, he noticed the card was also coated in a waterproof film.

On the front was a drawing of a severed hand on a dinner plate.

On the back, the text read:

[Red Coral is split in two. My Adoptive Father brought me into the Noble District. Every Noble here looks young and healthy; they don’t eat fruits or vegetables, only meat-a kind of red meat.]

[On our first day here, because our Coral was too small and we didn’t have enough money, we were designated Third-Class Nobles. We could only eat the leftovers from the First-Class Nobles and had to work in the Kitchen.]

[My Adoptive Father excitedly brought me some red meat, tore off a piece of skin from it and stuffed it in my mouth, saying that as long as I ate it, my hand would be healed. Strangely, after eating it, the hand that had been so crushed it seemed impossible to recover actually stopped aching through the night once I’d eaten the skin.]

[My Adoptive Father and I went into the Kitchen and saw a dried, sliced Corpse hanging inside. I screamed in terror, but the other Third-Class Nobles in the Kitchen weren’t surprised. They told us it was an ordinary Sea Demon caught twenty years ago.]

[Every full Moon, the legendary Sea Demons emerge from the sea to perform their solemn rituals. If humans ambush them in advance, they can capture a Sea Demon. The meat is sliced off bit by bit; the Nobles have been eating it for twenty years, so they can only have a very thin slice each time. Twenty years ago, the Noble who caught the Sea Demon is now the highest-ranked among the First-Class Nobles, holding the wealth and power of the entire Noble District. Everyone bows and scrapes before him.]

[The Sea Demon was his kin, and I actually ate its flesh! The skin I’d just swallowed burned in my stomach like fire. I tried to gag and spit it out, but my Adoptive Father slapped me. He said-]

“He said, the skin of a Sea Demon can halt disease, and if my hand hadn’t healed, it was because I hadn’t eaten enough.”

After Lu Li finished reading, he remembered where he’d seen a similar sentence before.

It was in the bedtime storybook Mrs. Qiao prepared for the children, Seaside Stories. There was another half-sentence after it: “The flesh of a Sea Demon can slow aging, its Heart can turn back time, granting life as eternal as the Moon.”

“So…” Luo Jia Bai swallowed with difficulty, looking at the table of Nobles eating elegantly with knives and forks. “Everything they’re eating is Sea Demon flesh?”

“Then what’s the main course?”

“The organs of the Sea Demon.” Lu Li handed him the mirror. “Pick out what’s in your bowl and see what organ it is.”