Chapter 89
Chapter 89
“Everyone, today’s breakfast is steamed buns. We have sauced pork, fresh pork, and greens.” Meiya pushed the serving cart over. “What filling would you like?”
“Two greens,” Zhou Jie said without hesitation.
Everyone exchanged a look. Someone had died in this inn just last night, and they still had no idea how many Eerie Entity were hiding in the shadows. How could they dare eat the inn’s meat buns so casually?
So everyone on the Green Team ordered buns with greens.
Meiya went from table to table asking for orders. Wei Sen looked around at the people who had come down for breakfast. As expected, their numbers had dropped again.
Xu You gnawed on a bun and said, “We’re down five people.”
Liu Shuang yawned. “The group chat only shows two dead. The other three probably just haven’t come down yet.”
“Anyone not enthusiastic about meals has a problem with their mindset!” Xu You declared, taking huge bites of her bun. While she was at it, she grabbed two more from Meiya’s cart.
Huang Xinze also scanned the room and said, “The two who died were both from Blue Team. Aside from the woman Sister Sen mentioned, the other one should be a fat man. I remember him.”
“The one who said, ‘I don’t lack Merit Points,’ during dinner yesterday?” Xu You asked indistinctly, her cheeks stuffed.
“Yeah.”
Chen Lin pushed up her glasses and said quietly, “Of the other three who haven’t come, one is the Lone Wolf from the Black Team.”
“He left the inn early this morning,” Wei Sen said.
Everyone looked at Wei Sen in confusion.
“He shared a room with me last night. The inn’s Hidden Rule: there must be two people to a room. If you stay in a room alone, you die.”
Wei Sen’s simple statement made Xu You, Lin Xiaoxue, and the others freeze.
Guo Lan asked, “How are you sure there’s a Hidden Rule like that?”
“It’s a guess, but we’ll be able to prove it soon.” Wei Sen looked toward the empty seats. “If this Hidden Rule exists, then the woman who died last night should have been sharing a room with the Fatty Huang Xinze mentioned. And the light in their room must have been deliberately damaged.”
Guo Lan thought it over. “If there really is a Hidden Rule like that, it means that in this Instance, we don’t just have to ensure our own safety. We also have to ensure our roommate’s safety, because a person can’t make it through the night safely alone.”
He Xu narrowed her eyes slightly. “There is another way… change roommates.”
As they were talking, the twin sisters from Blue Team hurried down from upstairs.
“Brother Wang, something’s wrong!” The twin sisters ran to Lao Wang’s side. “Both teammates staying in Room 304 have disappeared!”
The younger sister added, “To be precise, their bodies are gone!”
Blue Team’s captain, Lao Wang, had shared a room with Huang Xinze. They had also briefly exchanged information about their respective team members in the room.
So now, Lao Wang did not hide the news about Blue Team. Instead, he directly had the members of both teams sit together and discuss it.
According to Lao Wang, early this morning, he discovered that the names of the two people on his team who were staying in Room 304 had turned gray. The other Blue Team members noticed it too. Since the twin sisters happened to be staying on the third floor as well, they volunteered to check Room 304.
The twin sisters told everyone what they had seen. The balcony door in the room was open, and there were no signs of a struggle. The lightbulb had been deliberately smashed, and shards of glass were scattered on the floor.
The man and woman staying in Room 304 had originally been teammates. This time, they had entered the Instance together and were randomly grouped with Lao Wang and the others.
The man had a big belly. According to the others, he really did have plenty of Merit Points, which was why he had been so cocky during dinner last night.
The woman was also a veteran of the Instance. The lightbulb in the room had most likely been smashed by her own hand, and there was only one reason she would have done that-she couldn’t turn off the light!
Wei Sen handed the press-on nail she had found by the door that morning to the Blue Team. They recognized it as belonging to the woman from Room 304.
“You really did guess right,” Guo Lan said, looking at Wei Sen with a little more appreciation in her eyes. No wonder Xiaoxue kept saying she was smart.
Guo Lan continued, “What happened in Room 304 last night should be something like this: for some reason, Fatty never returned to the room. As it got close to eleven, the woman inside had no choice but to find a way to turn off the lights first. But although the lights went out, Fatty still didn’t come back that night. The woman violated a Hidden Rule and was hunted down by the Eerie Entity that came in through the balcony.”
“The woman’s body was taken away by the Eerie Entity that killed her, but what about Fatty’s body?” Huang Xinze asked, puzzled. “Without a body, we can’t confirm whether the two of them were killed by the same Eerie Entity.”
After a moment of thought, Lao Wang offered an idea. “As for Fatty’s death, I suspect it was because he broke the rule of ‘Do Not Waste Food.'”
Xu You picked up where he left off. “Before dinner last night, Meiya said the innkeeper hated people who wasted food the most. But if I remember correctly, that Fatty left quite a few lamb chops on his plate.”
“So…” Lin Xiaoxue swallowed. “The one who killed Fatty was…”
“Everyone.” A white figure descended the stairs.
At the sound, the group looked over. A woman in a white dress stood on the staircase. Her black hair fell to her waist, her face was so pale there wasn’t a trace of blood in it, and an eerie smile hung at the corner of her mouth as she stared straight at them.
Wei Sen held her breath as she looked at the woman. That figure, that feeling… there was no mistake!
She was the one who had entered their room last night!
“Good morning, Innkeeper,” Meiya said, bowing deeply to the woman in white.
Meiya looked somewhat flustered. With her head lowered, she did not dare raise it for a moment.
“So that’s the innkeeper…” Huang Xinze rubbed his chin, looked her up and down, and whispered to Lao Wang, “Pretty!”
Lao Wang frowned. “Beauty can be the blade over your head. Use your brain.”
Guo Lan had also recognized the innkeeper as the person who had slipped into their room last night, but she wasn’t worried.
The Red Door had yet to appear. Even if the woman before them was an Eerie Entity, she wouldn’t enter slaughter mode yet.
“Isn’t she cold? She’s only wearing a dress,” Lin Xiaoxue whispered.
Xu You leaned close to her ear. “Ghosts don’t get cold.”
“!!!” Lin Xiaoxue clapped a hand over her mouth and nearly screamed. Although the innkeeper certainly did not look like a living person, she had been telling herself not to judge by appearances. Who would’ve thought… she really wasn’t alive!
The woman in white’s dress trailed along the floor, covering her feet. She came down the stairs and slowly approached the group.
Perhaps because her steps were extremely small and her skirt hid her feet, her entire body looked as if it were floating over the ground.
“Has everyone eaten their fill?” The woman in white came to the center of the dining room, her gaze sweeping over them before finally landing on Meng Zhenzhen, the female captain of the Red Team.
At that moment, Meng Zhenzhen was holding a steamed bun stuffed with sauced meat, half of it already eaten. The filling inside gleamed with oil and gave off a rich, savory aroma.
The smile on the woman in white’s face grew even stranger. She leaned close to Meng Zhenzhen and said, “I got up before dawn to mince the filling and wrap these buns myself. Are they good?”
The bun in Meng Zhenzhen’s hand fell to the floor.
She had minced the filling herself before dawn!