The banging outside the door was dull and rhythmic, like a heavy hammer striking, blow after blow, on Fang Yu’s already fragile nerves.
“Don’t open it! Please, don’t open it!”
As if suddenly triggered by something enormous, Fang Yu shot up from the floor and scrambled toward the bedroom door.
His originally pale face was now flushed red with terror, his eyes bloodshot as he pressed himself dead against the wooden door.
“Whatever’s outside is a ghost—don’t open it…”
Yu Huaiting had already been poised to strike, the prey about to walk right into the trap, when this meddlesome fool forcibly broke his rhythm.
“Tsk.”
A sound of extreme displeasure rose from his throat. Those cold, star-like eyes shot a chilly glance at Fang Yu, as if looking at a piece of trash.
He couldn’t even be bothered to waste a word. His long leg lifted, and without mercy he drove a kick into Fang Yu’s side.
Bang!
Fang Yu was sent flying by the force, crashing heavily into the bed leg with a pained wail, clutching his stomach and curling up on the floor, unable to get up for a long while.
“Meddlesome thing.”
Yu Huaiting coldly withdrew his leg, his gaze returning to the wooden door.
Fu Songcheng stood to the side, frowning as he watched Fang Yu. After confirming Fang Yu was still conscious, he calmly looked at the still faintly trembling door and reached for the doorknob.
“Ready.” Fu Songcheng spat out two low words.
Yu Huaiting gripped the sword hilt with both hands, blade tip angled slightly downward, body leaning forward—already in an attacking stance.
Click.
The lock turned, and Fu Songcheng yanked the wooden door open.
Outside the door—empty and bare.
Dead silent. The “thing” that had been frantically banging, singing that mournful little tune—had vanished without a trace, as if evaporated into thin air.
Yu Huaiting frowned. “Ran pretty fast.”
Fu Songcheng’s gaze swept the empty corridor, a trace of deep thought flickering in his dark eyes.
He didn’t immediately let down his guard, but turned to Yu Huaiting and said, “Search.”
Yu Huaiting nodded and immediately began rummaging through the room like an agile leopard.
From the wardrobe to under the bed, Yu Huaiting kicked and stomped, his movements rough—he nearly took the room apart.
Yet apart from some old furniture and moldy, ragged clothing, there was nothing.
By now Fang Yu had recovered a little. Watching Yu Huaiting’s house-demolishing posture, he shrank into the corner trembling in fright.
He didn’t dare approach Yu Huaiting again, so he could only cast his pleading gaze toward Fu Songcheng, who looked slightly more “normal.”
“There… there really isn’t anything in this room,”
Fang Yu, clutching his still-throbbing stomach, his voice weak and trembling, his eyes darting shiftily. “I’ve been here since I came in, I haven’t touched anything. You… you two go somewhere else, don’t waste your time here.”
Hearing this, Fu Songcheng turned and quietly looked at Fang Yu—this ordinary person.
His gaze was calm without a single ripple, yet it made Fang Yu feel inexplicably panicked.
A player in extreme terror, who’d just been begging them not to open the door—now that the crisis was temporarily over, his first reaction was to urgently urge them to leave?
Stranger still, A-rank instances in the past had always been full of veteran players. Fang Yu, from physical constitution to psychological quality, looked very new—as if he’d never been hammered by Death Party.
The eighth person out of the total count of 8/7—could it be him?
Fu Songcheng narrowed his eyes slightly, but he didn’t expose him on the spot. Instead, he nodded along.
“Seems there really aren’t any valuable clues here.”
Fu Songcheng said flatly, turning to look at Yu Huaiting, who was still tearing the place apart searching for clues. “Huaiting, stop looking. On to the next room.”
Yu Huaiting put away his long sword and walked to Fu Songcheng’s side. The two walked shoulder to shoulder toward the door.
Just at the moment of turning around, Fu Songcheng’s finger lightly traced across the table behind him—so fast it seemed like an accidental touch.
A small metal piece, like a contact lens, silently adhered to the table’s corner.
[A-rank Item: Peeping Mirror]
[Function: After placing this item, it can continuously spy on the situation at a designated location.]
The two walked out of the room. Fang Yu remained curled in the corner, showing no intention of following.
In the corridor, a small floating image appeared in the lower right corner of Fu Songcheng’s vision.
He shared this image with his Bitter Couple, Yu Huaiting.
In the image, after Fang Yu confirmed the two had thoroughly left, his previously terrified expression instantly reined in somewhat.
He nervously glanced around, then quickly crawled under the bed, fished something out from beneath a loose floorboard, clutched it to his chest, and shrank back into the bedroom corner, motionless.
“He’s hiding something.”
Yu Huaiting sneered. “Want me to go back and hack him down, snatch the thing over?”
“No rush,”
Fu Songcheng shook his head. “Since it’s a clue, leaving it with him and leaving it with us makes no difference for now. Let him keep it—see what he’s actually trying to do.”
This was only the first player they’d met. Fu Songcheng wanted to know whether the remaining players were like him too.
If what Shen Ning meant by “no risk” was dropping him into a trash instance with inflated rank but actually full of newbies, then Fu Songcheng felt there was no need to play seriously.
The two walked to another apartment door on the same floor. Just as they were about to push it open, the tightly shut door was suddenly opened from the inside.
A familiar face appeared behind the door.
It was Lu Xiao.
Seeing her, the corner of Fu Songcheng’s mouth immediately lifted into a smile. “What a coincidence.”
The moment Lu Xiao clearly saw the two standing outside, her expression froze.
If she could, she’d slam the door shut right now and pretend she’d never appeared.
Uncontrollably, her mind flashed back to the Offering of Peace instance—the painful experience of being brutally killed by them, and in the end having her S-rank item extorted away.
Skinflint!
Bloodsucker!
Refined scum!
Lu Xiao cursed Fu Songcheng’s entire ancestral line in her heart, yet on the surface she had to squeeze out a smile uglier than crying—that bitter, deeply wronged look practically identical to Chen Ke, tortured half to death by work at Dawn.
“What… what a coincidence, Mr. Fu. Running into you two in an instance again—truly… fate.”
Lu Xiao smiled apologetically.
Watching the two “making eyes at each other,” Yu Huaiting felt displeased. He silently stepped forward, his tall frame inserting itself between Fu Songcheng and Lu Xiao, blocking Lu Xiao’s line of sight.
He stared down at Lu Xiao with a fierce look, his tone carrying undisguised hostility. “What are you looking at? Look again and I’ll take your life.”
Lu Xiao trembled with anger at this lunatic’s remark—she’d only said one sentence to Fu Songcheng!
But under the absolute suppression of combat power, she could only swallow her anger back down and keep smiling apologetically.
Fu Songcheng helplessly raised a hand to press Yu Huaiting’s shoulder, patting it reassuringly. Then he poked his head out from behind him, looked at Lu Xiao, and cut straight to the point: “Since you came out of this room, you’ve presumably already searched it. What clues do you have? Share them.”
Lu Xiao took a deep breath, didn’t beat around the bush, and stepped aside, opening a path. “Come in.”
The three walked into her room.
Lu Xiao deftly drew all the curtains, plunging the already dim room into pitch-blackness where you couldn’t see your own hand.
Click.
Lu Xiao turned off the lights and took a candle from her backpack, lighting it.
It wasn’t an ordinary candle—the flame glowed an eerie, miserable green, the leaping shadows casting twisted shapes on the walls.
“Look at the floor.”
Lu Xiao held the candle up, casting that ghostly green light onto the floor at the center of the living room.
Under the miserable green flame, the originally clean-looking wooden floor actually revealed a bone-chilling sight.
Large swaths of dark red bloodstains covered the entire central area of the living room, as if someone had just been disemboweled here, the blood still slowly flowing.
Even more nauseating, scattered within that pool of blood were chunks of flesh—warm and reeking.
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