“Don’t you find this survival count notification interesting?”
Fu Songcheng withdrew his thoughts and turned to the two beside him. “In the very first announcement, the player count was 8/7. Now one person has died, and it’s become 7/7. That extra person—who is it?”
He looked straight into Yu Huaiting’s eyes, clearly guiding him to think.
Yu Huaiting frowned and irritably pushed at the stray hair on his forehead, blurting out as he leaned against the balcony doorframe: “That red-clothed female ghost from before? She’s counted as a player too?”
Lu Xiao carefully chimed in from the side: “But… I still haven’t seen her even once…”
Yu Huaiting had been nursing a bellyful of fire from failing to catch that red shadow. Hearing Lu Xiao’s meek voice now, he immediately turned and shot her a fierce glare.
Under Yu Huaiting’s murderous stare, Lu Xiao’s scalp tingled. She immediately shut her little mouth, eyes on her nose, nose on her heart.
Inwardly, though, she was furiously grumbling: Yu Huaiting, there you go getting impatient again.
Fu Songcheng patted Yu Huaiting and nodded lightly. “I also think it should be her. But how did she get counted as a player?”
Source Star bullet comments:
[SOS why is watching an instance also giving me a love triangle…]
[I can’t—Lu Xiao’s life is so hard. Who remembers she made the Power Ranking too?]
[Quiet, does that female ghost player have a livestream room from her perspective? I want to see the answer ahead of time!]
[No, this instance disabled other players’ perspectives.]
[So anxious, so anxious, what’s going on—I’m scared and curious at the same time.]
Just as the atmosphere on the balcony grew somewhat tense, a light sound of footsteps came from the stairwell.
A man and a woman—two players—came up from the second floor.
They’d clearly heard the huge crash of Yu Huaiting kicking the door earlier, as well as the system death announcement that followed, and both wore heavy wariness on their faces.
The two walked into the wrecked living room. Seeing the three on the balcony, the woman suddenly froze.
Her gaze lingered on Yu Huaiting’s highly aggressive face for a few seconds, then her eyes widened in surprise.
“Number one on the Power Ranking, Yu Huaiting?”
The woman tentatively called out his name.
Yu Huaiting raised an eyebrow and gave her a cold glance, his tone carrying a hint of careless arrogance. “You know me?”
The woman nodded repeatedly. “You entered the same instance as me before. In that round, the moment you went in you picked a fight with the NPCs. Later that whole group of NPCs went crazy and all chased you alone. I hid in a closet and didn’t do anything—in the end I watched you tear the instance apart and it cleared.”
Hearing this, the corner of Lu Xiao’s mouth couldn’t help twitching violently.
She looked at Yu Huaiting, whose face plainly read “I’m number one under heaven,” then at the woman opposite, who looked utterly sincere. Silently, she shifted her steps and retreated two paces behind Fu Songcheng.
Are there any normal people left in instances?!
“Save the reminiscing for after we clear.”
Fu Songcheng cut in at the right moment, interrupting this somewhat eerie reunion. His gaze swept over the man and woman. “Since everyone heard the commotion and came up, let’s exchange information. Tell us what clues each of your rooms has.”
The woman took a deep breath and spoke first. “I’ve been staying in my room observing. There’s a woman in red in my room—she’s been walking back and forth the whole time, seeming to search for something.”
Fu Songcheng thought of Fang Yu clutching something to his chest.
Perhaps the female ghost was looking for what he held—which was why he was so especially afraid, not even daring to leave his room.
After hearing the woman’s clue, Fu Songcheng, Yu Huaiting, and Lu Xiao behind them all tacitly turned their gazes to the man beside her who hadn’t spoken, waiting for him to confess.
The man’s face was somewhat pale, his expression extremely complicated. He swallowed, his lips trembling a few times, seemingly unsure how to organize his words.
“My room…”
He paused, looked up at everyone, his expression complicated. “There’s no female ghost, but… maybe you’d better come see for yourselves.”
The group descended the dim, cramped stairs.
Because someone had just died, the atmosphere was somewhat oppressive.
To break the silence, Lu Xiao took the initiative to strike up conversation with the two newcomers, quickly introducing their own lineup.
Through brief exchange, they learned the man and woman lived in rooms 201 and 202 on the second floor respectively.
The man was named Du Yunhao, the woman Zhu Xiang.
After hearing Yu Huaiting and Fu Songcheng’s introductions, the wariness in Du Yunhao’s eyes eased somewhat, replaced by a complex emotion mingling awe and curiosity.
He’d evidently heard of Yu Huaiting’s glorious “demolition crew” deeds too, and exchanged a glance with Zhu Xiang.
Lu Xiao keenly sensed the tacit understanding between the two and couldn’t help asking, “You two have known each other a long time, haven’t you?”
Zhu Xiang nodded. “We were already very good friends in real life, entered the instances around the same time, and after recognizing each other we’ve been teaming up ever since. When the ‘identity system’ launched, we bound the ‘Close Friend’ identity.”
“The Close Friend identity?”
Yu Huaiting, walking ahead, suddenly stopped and turned around.
“Does it have any identity buffs?”
Zhu Xiang didn’t sense the latent danger in Yu Huaiting’s tone and answered honestly: “The buffs are quite practical. If we participate in combat together, we get random attribute buffs—like enhanced agility or strength. And most importantly, we have the ‘Damage-Selective Sharing’ privilege.”
“What’s Damage-Selective Sharing?”
Now even Fu Songcheng, who’d been walking at the very back silently calculating clues, took an interest.
He lifted his eyes to the two, his gaze deep.
By now, the group had just followed Du Yunhao to the doorway of room 201 on the second floor.
Du Yunhao pushed the door open while turning back to add by way of explanation: “It means that when we’re attacked in an instance, we can actively choose who bears the damage. For example, if Xiao Xiang takes a fatal attack, I can activate the privilege to transfer the damage onto myself, or we can split it evenly. In short, it maximizes the chance both of us survive.”
The air suddenly fell silent for three seconds.
Yu Huaiting slowly lowered his head, staring at the cold black wristband on his wrist.
He gritted his back teeth, the corner of his mouth curving into an extremely twisted cold smile.
Other people’s bound identity: random attribute buffs, arbitrary damage transfer, mutual protection, clearing hand in hand.
Him and Fu Songcheng: damage doubled, and even a slight touch triggers all kinds of disgusting random negative effects.
Yu Huaiting was now so jealous he practically wanted to kill someone.
His vicious eyes swept back and forth over Du Yunhao and Zhu Xiang, and then he thought of Lin Feng’s punchable face, and Quan Heng, who’d been beaten half to death and then taken away by Fu Songcheng.
He now felt everyone in the world deserved to die!
Fu Songcheng stood to the side, watching Yu Huaiting’s expression as if he were about to eat someone. No need to guess—he knew what the puppy was thinking.
He himself was extremely displeased too.
Fu Songcheng still maintained his refined-scum calm on the surface, but inwardly he’d already silently pulled out a little notebook and heavily recorded an entry.
The next time he saw the culprit who’d made him and Yu Huaiting a Bitter Couple, Quan Heng, he was absolutely going to beat that guy properly!
“Ahem, let’s go in and look at the clues first.”
Fu Songcheng unobtrusively took a deep breath, suppressed the fire in his heart, stepped past the others, and led Yu Huaiting forward by the hand.
As they talked, the group had already passed through the somewhat cluttered living room under Du Yunhao’s lead and arrived at the balcony edge of his room.
Outside, the sunlight remained pale and glaring. The balcony was empty, save for a few withered plants—nothing else.
Nothing happened.
Du Yunhao froze, quickly walked to the balcony edge, and looked down, his brows tightly knitted. “Strange… before I left the room just now, that thing was clearly still here. How is it gone now?”
“It’s fine. Let me.”
Lu Xiao sighed, resignedly took out her treasured candle item from her backpack.
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