The greatsword slammed the last security NPC that lunged at him viciously into the wall.
Bang!
The dull crack of breaking bones and the sound of the wall collapsing came at the same time.
Yu Huaiting expressionlessly pulled out the greatsword.
He walked forward a few steps, stopped in the center of the corridor, and looked coldly around.
No monster dared lunge again.
Under Yu Huaiting’s violent oppression, all the rustling movements vanished.
The hotel security NPCs that had been endlessly surging in were frightened out of their wits. They shrank back into the darkness; no one dared step forward to block this god of death anymore.
[Family, I signed up as an NPC to experience life, not to get cut in half at the waist.]
[Better than being swatted to death. When he swings that greatsword at me, I roughly know what a fly sees when a flyswatter comes down.]
[You all have such rich lives.]
[Just watch the livestream, why experience it at all.]
Yu Huaiting raised his hand and casually wiped the blood spattered on his jaw with the back of his hand.
Only the shrill alarm and the flickering emergency lights overhead remained.
Yu Huaiting had killed every guest he came across and knocked down over a dozen walls—if Fu Songcheng were still lucid, there was no way he wouldn’t have found him with this much commotion.
Just then, Xu Zhun’s voice came into his mind.
“Brother Yu, can you hear me?”
“I checked everyone’s status. Everyone else is still in contact, no casualties.”
Yu Huaiting answered coldly in his mind: “What about Fu Songcheng?”
“…Still no information on Brother Fu.” Xu Zhun’s voice sank. “I can’t reach him.”
Yu Huaiting cut off the skill communication.
He lowered his eyes, staring at the pool of blood on the floor, his chest heaving violently once.
Then, holding his greatsword, he strode toward the corner at the end of the corridor.
Meanwhile, in the stairwell below.
Chen Yu’s breathing gradually steadied.
Leaning on Lin Feng’s shoulder, he’d also received Xu Zhun’s mass status report through his skill.
“No word on Mr. Fu…” Chen Yu murmured low.
Chen Yu straightened up and looked at Lin Feng. “Do you think Mr. Fu is the same as me?”
Lin Feng put his hands back in his pockets and looked at him calmly. “Probably. Didn’t he take the elevator alone to find Yu Huaiting? Searching and searching, he lost himself.”
Chen Yu pondered a moment, brows knitting. “If he fell for it while taking the elevator, there should be clues in the elevator. Go check the elevator?”
“Sure.” Lin Feng agreed crisply.
The two hesitated no more—they pushed open the stairwell’s heavy fire door and stepped into this floor’s hotel corridor.
The corridor’s lighting was very dim; the calming incense scent in the air had been diluted considerably by the smell of blood.
Some guest room doors on both sides were wide open—left ajar by panicked guests who’d heard the alarm.
Lin Feng walked in front, Chen Yu close behind. Following the signs on the wall, hands clasped tight, they headed for the elevator bay.
“Be careful.” Lin Feng warned in a low voice.
Chen Yu nodded.
Turning a corner, the elevator bay came into view. Lin Feng walked to one of the elevators and pressed the up button.
The 728th floor.
Boom!
Yu Huaiting kicked open the heavy wooden door of a suite.
The suite was empty.
Yu Huaiting stood in the center of the living room and irritably scrubbed his hair.
He’d turned every room he came across upside down—smashed whatever could be smashed, hacked whatever could be hacked.
But there was still no Fu Songcheng.
He had a vague intuition.
Fu Songcheng was nearby. Though he was loath to admit it, the Bitter Couple’s sense really was somewhat useful—and he could also feel that Fu Songcheng had taken off his wristband.
They were both trying to find each other through the system’s intuitive, malicious identity curse.
Fu Songcheng was somewhere between the 728th and 729th floors.
But the number of rooms on each of this hotel’s floors was unbelievably vast, the corridors winding like an endless maze.
Yu Huaiting dragged his greatsword, stepping over the shattered glass on the floor, and walked out of the suite.
He came before the stairwell and pushed open the fire door.
The air in the stairwell was stifling.
The motion-sensor lights were broken; only a sliver of faint light seeped through the door crack.
Yu Huaiting stood at the stairwell entrance and looked up toward the 729th floor above.
He took a deep breath and stepped onto the stairs.
He’d barely climbed two steps when he suddenly stopped.
Tap-tap-tap.
Hurried footsteps.
Not his own footsteps.
The sound was very light, coming down from above the stairs.
Someone was descending.
And extremely fast.
Yu Huaiting’s grip on the greatsword tightened sharply, his gaze turning razor-sharp in an instant, fixed dead on the dark corner above.
The footsteps drew closer and closer.
Tap-tap-tap.
Already at the corner.
Yu Huaiting tensed every muscle, ready at any moment to swing a lethal strike.
However, the next second.
A gust of wind swept past him—carrying that faint pine scent he knew so well, brushing right past him.
Yu Huaiting’s pupils contracted sharply.
He whipped around, looking toward the descending stairs behind him.
“Is it you?” Yu Huaiting blurted out.
His voice echoed in the empty stairwell.
And at this moment, Fu Songcheng was still descending.
Who knew how many floors this was now.
His pace wasn’t as urgent as at the start.
Tap, tap, tap.
His footsteps seemed especially clear in the stairwell. Suddenly, he felt an extremely faint touch on his shoulder.
As if someone had brushed past him on the narrow stairs—someone carrying an unresolvable scent of blood, wrapping around him, briefly clearing his dizzy head.
It was the scent Yu Huaiting always carried after killing until his eyes went red.
He turned his head in some confusion.
Behind him were endlessly ascending stairs.
Empty, so quiet one could hear a pin drop.
That instant of contact just now seemed to be an illusion born of his extreme exhaustion. In this space, aside from himself, there was no second living thing at all.
Fu Songcheng stood in place for a moment, brows slightly furrowed.
“Wasn’t it?” He murmured low.
His voice was very soft, as if asking himself, or as if confirming with the void.
He turned back, preparing to keep walking down.
In the stairwell, Yu Huaiting jerked his head up.
He’d heard it.
“Wasn’t it?”
The voice was extremely faint, but how could Yu Huaiting fail to recognize it?
It was Fu Songcheng’s voice.
He absolutely couldn’t have misheard!
“What wasn’t?”
Yu Huaiting pressed eagerly.
“Fu Songcheng? What wasn’t?”
No response.
“I heard you! You’re right here!”
Yu Huaiting shouted into the stairwell, slamming his greatsword into the floor, smashing out a deep pit. “Where are you? Speak!”
Still no response.
[Yu Huaiting: Asked a hard question and went silent again.]
[Kind of funny, who gets it.]
[Why can they still sense each other? Yu Huaiting hasn’t found Fu Songcheng’s true body yet—how can he enter his first dream layer?]
[Is it the Bitter Couple’s ‘Heart’s Reprieve’?]
The sensation of brushing past vanished; the air turned stagnant again.
Yu Huaiting stood in place, chest heaving violently. Looking at the ashen walls around him, he suddenly realized something.
They were standing in the same place—they’d even just passed right by each other—but they were in different spaces.
He couldn’t see Fu Songcheng, and Fu Songcheng couldn’t see him.
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