A thick stench of blood rushed at them—the foulness was suffocating.
Even Yu Huaiting, accustomed to bloody scenes, couldn’t help frowning.
Fu Songcheng covered his nose and mouth, carefully observing the bloodstains and bits of flesh on the floor. The flesh was like a watermelon dropped on the ground, bursting and splattering blood and meat everywhere.
Lu Xiao kept the display up for about ten seconds, then blew out the candle.
The room plunged into darkness again, and then the lights came on.
Those bloodstains and chunks of flesh vanished instantly, the floor returning to a spotless, brand-new appearance.
“This is my room’s clue.”
Lu Xiao held the half-length candle and looked at Fu Songcheng.
Fu Songcheng praised sincerely, “This item is quite interesting—it can reveal the crime scene?”
Lu Xiao felt a chill under that look of his. Almost by conditioned reflex, she waved a hand and, with the hand speed of someone single for twenty years, stuffed the candle back into her system backpack—terrified that a second’s delay would give Fu Songcheng an excuse to snatch it.
Hearing Fu Songcheng’s praise, Yu Huaiting really had intended to just grab it outright, but he was standing a little too far from Lu Xiao and couldn’t catch up with her hand speed as she stowed the item.
He clicked his tongue in displeasure.
A high-level player after all—Lu Xiao’s vigilance in protecting her property was maxed out.
“What about you two?”
Lu Xiao warily widened the distance. “Any clues?”
Fu Songcheng felt some regret that his silly dog had reacted a bit slowly—he’d actually wanted to snatch the item too, but hadn’t made it in time.
“We saw a red-clothed female ghost in our room. No physical body. Just now in the room next to yours, we heard footsteps—don’t know if it was her.”
“Also, there’s a new player in 102 across the way.”
Fu Songcheng didn’t mention that he and Yu Huaiting had discovered this player was still hiding something.
“Let’s go take a look outside.”
Fu Songcheng suggested.
The three walked out of 101 together and came to the small garden on the first floor.
It was a very peculiar architectural structure.
The garden sat at the very center of the first floor. Looking up, one could clearly see the corridors and balconies of every floor above—like a massive, deep well.
It happened to be high noon, sunlight pouring down brightly onto the three, bringing a trace of long-missed warmth.
Yet in the garden, no scent of soil or flowers or plants could be smelled.
Instead, there was a stench of blood a hundred times stronger than what had been in Lu Xiao’s room just now.
Baked by the sunlight, this smell had fermented into a nauseating foulness.
“Someone died here.”
Yu Huaiting stood at the center of the garden, his nostrils flaring slightly, his tone utterly certain. “And more than one. The blood’s seeped into the cracks between the floor tiles.”
Fu Songcheng looked around, his gaze sweeping over those seemingly ordinary plants and benches.
Suddenly, he felt his eyes dazzled by something.
He immediately looked up, following the direction of the reflection.
On a fourth-floor balcony stood a young man in a gray hoodie, using his watch face to catch the sunlight and repeatedly flash it down at them on the first floor.
Fu Songcheng’s gaze sharpened, and he immediately withdrew his eyes.
He gestured to the two beside him. Yu Huaiting and Lu Xiao understood.
The three made no sound, heading quickly up the stairs toward the fourth floor.
As they ran, Fu Songcheng glanced at the image relayed by the Peeping Mirror. The player called Fang Yu was still maintaining his previous posture, shrunk motionless in the bedroom like a frightened quail.
Fu Songcheng gave it a cold glance for a second.
The layout of the fourth floor was completely different from the first.
The moment they stepped onto the fourth-floor corridor, Lu Xiao’s brows knitted tightly together.
This place didn’t look at all like somewhere people lived. The corridor was piled full of all kinds of old cardboard boxes, discarded furniture, and black garbage bags, giving off a faint musty smell.
Especially the unit that had sent the distress signal—the area before its door was even more cluttered, with several trampled picture frames, glass shards scattered across the floor, as if it had just been violently wrecked.
The door was locked dead tight.
Fu Songcheng tried pressing the doorknob—not a budge.
He stepped back half a pace, his gaze turning to Yu Huaiting.
Yu Huaiting chuckled. This was what he was most practiced at.
He stepped forward, not even bothering to wind up, and directly raised a long leg, kicking the heavy security door with utmost dominance.
Bang!
With a huge crash, the security door’s lock core gave out an extremely piercing shriek of breaking metal—the entire door was kicked out of shape by that monstrous force, springing inward.
The scene inside was even more miserable than outside.
The sofa was overturned, the coffee table shattered, books and clothing scattered all over the floor, toppled this way and that—even the wall plaster bore traces of something violently clawing at it.
“Careful.”
Fu Songcheng warned in a low voice, his right hand already gripping a short blade gleaming with cold light.
Before the words faded, a streak of extremely glaring dark red flashed in the depths of the living room.
A red-clothed figure with a blurred face was drifting at extreme speed toward the balcony in an utterly eerie, gliding posture.
Yu Huaiting’s eyes sharpened. Instinct kicked in instantly, and he gave chase.
The three quickly crossed the wrecked living room and rushed toward the balcony.
Yet they were still one step too slow.
The young man in the gray hoodie, who’d signaled them for help with his watch reflection, was now straddling the balcony’s edge.
Hearing the commotion behind him, the young man turned to look.
Fu Songcheng made out his face.
His expression was twisted, his muscles convulsing uncontrollably, his eyes full of despair and terror.
“Save me…”
The next second, before the three of them, the young man—as if violently shoved—fell straight down.
[Six hours remaining. Survivor count (7/7)]
The cold mechanical system voice sounded in everyone’s minds at once.
The three rushed to the balcony’s edge and looked down.
On the stinking floor tiles of the first-floor garden, a pool of fresh blood had now appeared.
The young man’s body had smashed into the ground in an extremely inhuman, twisted posture—flesh bursting open just like what they’d seen in Lu Xiao’s room, red and white mingled, a horrifying sight.
Fu Songcheng stared dead at that puddle of mangled flesh below, his brain racing.
Wrong. Too abnormal.
A player who could enter an A-rank instance had a physical constitution that had long since been strengthened to varying degrees by the system.
Falling from the fourth floor, even without using any life-saving item, an A-rank player’s body strength should at most suffer severe injuries and broken legs—it was absolutely impossible to smash apart like an unenhanced ordinary person, as if his body had already become fragile tofu midair.
But what exactly had he done to trigger the death condition?
Had that red-clothed figure pushed him down?
Why?
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