Chapter 40
Chapter 40
“Hou Yong would often stay away from home for three to five days at a time, making you grow increasingly suspicious until you finally discovered the heartbreaking truth: your husband was addicted to gambling.”
“You confronted Hou Yong and told him to leave the Gambling House. But by then, Hou Yong had already been corrupted. For the first time, he raised his hand against you.”
“Driven to desperation, you blamed everything on your own infertility. You did everything in your power to adopt Hou Yuanyuan from an orphanage, but to your disappointment, Hou Yong was completely repulsed by her arrival…”
-Isn’t this just straight-up CPU-ing?
-No, this is clearly ICU-ing.
-He’s KTV-ing Li Xiaoqin!
-No, no, no, this is called CCTV~
-Sadako: I’m done. This entire comment section can’t even scrape together the three letters for PUA.
“You didn’t understand why things had turned out this way. You thought Hou Yong still held a grudge over your infertility, but in reality, the moment Hou Yong saw Hou Yuanyuan, he was reminded of everything he was hiding from you. He became increasingly afraid to face you because he couldn’t imagine how disappointed you would be if you ever found out.”
“Due to his own flaws, Hou Yong became more and more insecure, terrified of losing you. The prolonged psychological torment meant that the more he feared losing you, the more desperately he tormented, beat, and verbally abused you-all to see if you would actually leave him.”
“Finally, one day, your mind could no longer take it. You began to resent Hou Yong; you began to resent everything. These negative emotions made your already precarious mental state even worse. In the end, you couldn’t even distinguish between dreams and reality.”
“First, you killed Hou Yong in a dream. Then, you dressed up in your finest clothes and bought Hou Yuanyuan’s favorite food, intending to die with her. But when you returned, you saw Hou Yong, who had just come home. You finally realized your mental state had reached its breaking point, and your visits to Doctor Zhuang for psychological counseling became more and more frequent.”
“Soon, you were completely hypnotized by Doctor Zhuang. Unable to distinguish between dreams and reality, you killed Hou Yong over and over in your dreams, while in reality, you were offering up all the chosen Sacrifices one by one. Room 4009 was strangulation, Room 4008 was decapitation, Room 4007 was electrocution… Room 4002 was freezing.”
“Once all these Sacrifices had been offered, not a single tenant in the apartment survived except for you and Hou Yuanyuan. Doctor Zhuang finally lifted the hypnosis he had placed on you.”
“Unable to find Doctor Zhuang to vent your rage, you went completely insane. Wanting to take Hou Yuanyuan with you in death, you went to the pharmacy to buy sleeping pills. However, sleeping pills are prescription-only, so you settled for melatonin instead. Melatonin generally isn’t lethal, but it can overload the liver. So, you fed the entire bottle to nine-year-old Hou Yuanyuan, letting her die in her sleep first.”
“Then, Doctor Zhuang appeared and used you, having lost your mind, as the Array Eye for the sacrifice. After your death, your resentment turned you into a vengeful specter, and only then did you take complete control of Ping’an Apartment.”
[System scanning…]
[The accuracy rate of the streamer’s plot reconstruction is…]
[91%]
[The Live Stream Room determines that the streamer Man-Eating Crocodile-Reconstruction Successful!]
The reconstruction was a success!
And with such a high accuracy rate!!
[Detected that streamer Man-Eating Crocodile has met the promotion requirements. Now promoted to Blue-Name Streamer.]
Man-Eating Crocodile looked up in surprise, his entire being surging with excitement.
A Blue-Name Streamer. This… was he really not dreaming?
“It worked! The reconstruction was a success!”
The other streamers felt as if a massive weight had been lifted from their shoulders the moment they heard the system notification. Everyone felt a wave of relief.
Qiao Yu coughed twice, reaching up to rub his throat, which had gone dry from talking so much.
Why was it only 91%? Where exactly did it go wrong?
Qiao Yu couldn’t figure it out. As he pondered, the laughter around him gradually faded. His downcast eyelashes trembled as he looked up in confusion at the group, who seemed to have been hit by a pause button. He raised an eyebrow slightly. “What’s wrong?”
Pozhan stood frozen in place, his voice laced with a rare hint of panic. “The review was successful… Why are we still in the Instance?”
Almost the next second, the notification chime of the Live Stream Room rang out in everyone’s minds simultaneously.
[Ding-An Aberration Source has been detected within the Instance. The streamers’ escape has failed.]
What?!
An Aberration Source…
Could it be that they couldn’t get out?!
Crack-crack-crack!
Pozhan instinctively looked up at the ceiling where the sound was coming from. He saw Li Xiaoqin hanging upside down from the roof, her mouth slowly splitting open as she flashed him a spine-chilling smile.
The threat of death instantly loomed over everyone. The moment Li Xiaoqin lunged at them, Pozhan reflexively threw out the last remaining Review Card in the Instance and shouted, “I want to review!”
But Li Xiaoqin didn’t even glance at the Review Card on the floor. She swung her kitchen knife down toward them.
Terrified by the scene, everyone fell into a panic, their minds going blank as they even forgot their survival instincts.
-Tsk, I really don’t know if I should call these streamers unlucky, unlucky, or just plain unlucky.
-Hahaha, a measly Beginner Instance actually has so many twists. I love it~
-Never mind the Aberration Source for a second. I remember a ghost made a bet earlier, saying if the streamer successfully reviewed, he’d bark like a dog on stream. You! Are you going to keep your word?
-…In this entire comment section, you’re the most intrusive one!
-Sadako: I’ll be the witness. Please start barking like a dog as soon as possible, or be careful I don’t come and get you!
-Hahahahaha.
Seeing the Review Card fail, Pozhan closed his eyes in despair. However, the expected blow from the kitchen knife never landed. He slowly opened his eyes to see Qiao Yu holding a small scalpel, barely managing to block Li Xiaoqin’s blade.
Li Xiaoqin’s attention shifted instantly to him.
The scalpel had been swiped from Doctor Zhuang. He had pulled it out just now to block Li Xiaoqin on instinct, and it was because of this scalpel that Qiao Yu saw the horrifying hatred on Li Xiaoqin’s face.
The things he couldn’t figure out earlier were gradually becoming clear.
The caster of the Eternal Life Curse was Doctor Zhuang. As the medium, even if Li Xiaoqin turned into a vengeful spirit, she should have been under Doctor Zhuang’s command.
But the Instance Boss was Li Xiaoqin!
And as the Instance Boss, Li Xiaoqin harbored such intense hatred for Doctor Zhuang. How could she tolerate his peaceful existence in Room 4001? It was clearly impossible.
Which meant… Li Xiaoqin couldn’t kill him!
But why?
Why couldn’t Doctor Zhuang control Li Xiaoqin?!
Because Qiao Yu was too deep in thought, his focus drifted. In the next second, Li Xiaoqin seized the opportunity and slashed down with force. The scalpel fell to the floor with a clang.
Qiao Yu looked at his index finger, which had been sliced by the blade. Deep red blood seeped from the wound, and his pale fingertip was instantly stained with a decadent, vivid crimson.
As if suddenly enlightened, Qiao Yu turned to the streamers who were still frozen in shock. “What are your blood types!”
He shouted the question, his volume loud enough to snap the panicked streamers back to their senses. Though they didn’t understand why Qiao Yu was asking, they still answered honestly, “Type O.”
Man-Eating Crocodile followed suit, nodding half a beat late. “Type O.”
Qiao Yu looked back at Li Xiaoqin, who was shrouded in a faint black mist, and let out a soft chuckle. “What a coincidence. It seems this body of mine is also Type O.”