Chapter 36: Carnivore (8) Casualties

A rooster crowed loudly in the distance, and the eastern sky began to lighten.

Qi Si opened his eyes to see an endless gray sky.

He had unknowingly fallen asleep by the well last night, his last memory being a phantom vision of a past event that occurred by the well.

The young girl who made a deal with the god was likely Granny Su in her youth. The god saw her future, anchored her soul in advance, and ultimately constructed this instance of Carnivore.

It’s just that he didn’t know why Granny Su, knowing that she would deliver her soul to the god at their last meeting, still jumped into the well without hesitation.

Whether she was killed and eaten by others, or her soul was taken by the god, the outcome was inescapable death. Why did she choose the long way around?

Qi Si got up from the ground, brushing off the dust and dirt from his white shirt and black trousers. He decided that after leaving the instance, he would take a good bath. If conditions allowed, a wash in the instance wouldn’t be out of the question either.

He stood by the sink, rinsing his hands under the faucet, while glancing at the row of rooms on his left.

At this hour, the other players hadn’t come out yet. All the room doors were tightly shut, except for the southernmost one, which was wide open.

Qi Si walked over, smelled the strong, pungent scent of blood, and confirmed that this was the room that provided food to the Cook last night. It seemed everyone inside was dead.

A creaking sound came from the direction of the manor’s entrance, and the wooden gate was pushed open from the outside.

Yang Yun dong and Allen walked in, looking tired, covered in dusty dirt, and with a few scattered bloodstains.

A section of Allen’s T-shirt sleeve was missing, and his right hand was bandaged with cloth, still oozing blood.

Seeing Qi Si staring at him curiously, he spread his hands: “You don’t know how terrifying last night was. If Yang hadn’t brought God Meat, I would have eaten myself.”

Yang Yun dong looked at Qi Si and said: “Little Comrade, nothing happened here, did it? Last night, we ate the God Meat and then unknowingly fell asleep. Thankfully, nothing went wrong.”

Combining this with his own experience, Qi Si basically confirmed that God Meat had a sedative effect. After eating it for a while, players would uncontrollably fall asleep.

In other words, God Meat should only be eaten when one is extremely hungry; otherwise, if danger arises, it would be difficult to wake up, essentially lying there waiting to die.

“I didn’t eat God Meat immediately after the meal; I only ate it when I felt hungry in the middle of the night,” Qi Si said softly. “In the first half of the night, a Shadow Ghost broke into rooms one by one, slashing with a knife. From the sound, it seemed people died.”

In fact, he didn’t need to say much. After Yang Yun dong finished speaking, he detected the smell of blood and turned to walk into the open room.

Qi Si and Allen followed, one after the other.

What met their eyes was a thick crimson color. Zhu Dafu’s body lay by the door, his clothes soaked in blood, his rough face covered in bloodstains, and a ring of blood smeared around his lips.

His right arm was pockmarked, the flesh completely gone, leaving only a layer of fascia wrapped around the bone, with light pink blood flowing down and pooling into a human-shaped lake.

Yang Yun dong squatted down, pried open Zhu Dafu’s mouth, and saw it filled with fresh blood and meat scraps, understanding everything that had happened last night.

He made a judgment: “Under the influence of the instance mechanism, Zhu Dafu bit off his own flesh piece by piece last night and eventually died of blood loss.”

Allen murmured: “I remember now, God, he didn’t take God Meat last night. After getting hungry, he could only eat his own flesh…”

A whole piece of God Meat was needed to survive one bout of hunger. Yesterday, Granny Su only gave the players eleven pieces of God Meat in total.

For every person who took an extra piece of God Meat, it meant one person would not survive the hunger, would eat themselves, and die tragically.

All those who took extra God Meat were, in a strict sense, murderers.

Qi Si didn’t want to be caught with a handle, to have others make a fuss and morally blackmail him.

He casually tucked the cloth bag containing the God Meat deeper into his pocket, putting on a look of compassion, his brows tinged with the sadness of a rabbit’s death causing a fox’s grief.

“Where is Zhu Dafu’s roommate? Where is he?” Yang Yun dong looked around, his gaze falling on the wooden bed, where the sheets and bed frame were stained blood-red, and his expression became strange.

“Perhaps he’s in this room,” Qi Si stepped over Zhu Dafu’s corpse, walked towards the wooden bed in the corner, and reached out to pick up the scattered bone fragments, piecing them together according to the structure of a human skeleton.

He remembered that Zhu Dafu’s roommate was a young man named Wu Heng, who first proposed that “God-given meat is not voluntary” and then advocated that “taking God Meat is tainted with sin.” Yet, he himself was quite eager to eat God Meat.

Under Qi Si’s hands, the scattered bones on the bed regained a human shape. A skeleton, gnawed clean without a trace of flesh, lay flat on the bed, gleaming in the morning light.

Yang Yun dong witnessed all this, and his already grim expression became even more so: “Wu Heng is also dead. In just one night, two have died…”

“Yes,” Qi Si said with a heavy expression. “Last night, he ate the God Meat too early. When the Shadow Ghost appeared, he couldn’t wake up, was cut down in bed, and completely eaten.”

He briefly described the situation from last night to Yang Yun dong, including the Cooking Ghost’s rules of action.

This information was open and transparent to all players who survived the Cooking Ghost’s attack. Rather than hiding it, it was better to say it early to gain the trust of Yang Yun dong, an experienced combat player.

“Brother Yang, do you still remember the four lines of poetry in the travel guide?” Qi Si lowered his eyes and said in a tone filled with lingering fear, “The granaries are empty, how can hunger be appeased? A hundred li are cannibals, flesh and blood perish in the belly. This precisely corresponds to the death point we encountered last night.

“The Cooking Ghost has no food and is starving, so it comes out to kill and eat people; if players feel hungry and don’t eat God Meat, they can only eat their own flesh and blood, eventually dying. In the following instances, we must pay more attention to the information in the travel guide.”

Yang Yun dong nodded in understanding and said: “When everyone gathers later, you should tell them too. It’s good to be able to predict the source of the death point in advance; then we won’t be so passive tonight.”

“Okay,” Qi Si readily agreed, putting on a hesitant expression. “Brother Yang, there’s one more thing I don’t know if I should say now…”

“What is it?” Allen leaned over. “In movies, those who don’t speak up early get their lunchboxes.”

Qi Si looked at Yang Yun dong, and after getting his approval, a bitter smile appeared at the corner of his lips: “I wonder if you’ve noticed that if two people die a day, then ten people will die in five days, leaving one survivor in the end.

“This instance likely wants us to clear it by triggering the minimum death toll mechanism. The last instance was also like this; everyone wished for others to die early. If I hadn’t deciphered the world view in time, I’m afraid only one would have been left.

“Brother Yang, I was isolated on the first day, living alone in a room. If it comes to a situation of mutual slaughter, I will definitely be the first to die… Brother Yang, I don’t want to die…”

He copied the expression Lin Chen often wore in Rose Manor, perfectly conveying a hint of fear and sorrow.

Yang Yun dong’s expression indeed became serious: “Little Comrade, you don’t have to worry. I won’t allow such a situation to happen.

“I am a reserve member of the Jiuzhou Guild. You should have heard of Jiuzhou; we always advocate for players to unite and jointly resist the Eerie Game, and we will never tolerate mutual slaughter.”

“Really? That’s wonderful!” Qi Si’s worries vanished, and he smiled gratefully. “For the rest of this instance, I’ll rely on you, Brother Yang!”

At this moment, the other players also woke up one after another, pushing open their doors, crossing the courtyard, and arriving at the pungent, bloody room.

The first to arrive were Zhu Ling and Zhou Yilin.

The moment she saw the corpse, Zhou Yilin’s face turned pale, and she almost screamed.

Fortunately, Zhu Ling remained calm, promptly stood in front of her, and gently offered comfort.

Zhang Licai and Zhao Feng came out after them. As players who had cleared an instance once before, although their faces were equally grim, they did not lose their composure too much.

Zhao Feng clearly hadn’t slept well; his eyes were deeply sunken with dark circles, giving him the instant impression of a ghost.

He cursed: “Damn it, that brat is so ungrateful, he actually didn’t eat the God Meat… Son of a bitch!”

The Tattooed Woman and the Gaunt Man were the last to arrive.

The Gaunt Man kept his head down ever since he entered the room, while the Tattooed Woman kept mocking him: “Coward! What are you afraid of with big sis protecting you? You don’t even dare to look at dead people, what will you do if you encounter a ghost?”

Gaunt Man: “Sorry, I’m afraid of blood.”

Once everyone was present, the players described what happened in the courtyard last night, largely consistent with what Qi Si had told Yang Yun dong.

Qi Si also repeated his speculation about the connection between the five-character poem in the travel guide and the night-time death point, omitting his analysis of the minimum death toll mechanism.

Yang Yun dong looked around at everyone and said in a deep voice: “As you can see, two people died on the first day. If we don’t decipher the world view in advance, we will have to stay here for a full four more days.

“The minimum death toll is unknown. Who can guarantee that they will be one of the lucky few who survive? We can only let more people survive by quickly deciphering the world view and striving to end this instance early.”

The players nodded in agreement.

Yang Yun dong continued: “Last night, Allen and I went to investigate the village. The places marked on the map were all covered by fog. We tried to walk through, but we ended up back where we started. It seems these places need to be explored during the day.”

He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, a map torn from the travel guide.

He slowly pointed at the landmarks with his rough finger, explaining: “We later explored areas without fog, mainly the west side of the village. We saw many villagers working there.

“Most of the time, they acted no different from ordinary people. When they saw us, they all gathered around asking for meat to eat. We only managed to get away by pretending to agree.”

At this point, Yang Yun dong glanced at Zhao Feng: “I, Allen, and you are currently facing the same predicament, which cannot be resolved immediately. We can only put it aside for a while and find a solution after further exploration…”

This was undoubtedly to comfort Zhao Feng, preventing him from doing something irreversible in a moment of desperation.

Zhao Feng wasn’t convinced and sneered: “I have to find meat for that brat today. What if I can’t find any? You’re talking without feeling the pain, anyway, I’ll be the first to test the waters for you.”

How could they not find meat? Two people just died, there’s plenty of meat… A few players’ eyes swept over the corpses on the ground, but they didn’t speak.

Having just been snatched from an orderly reality and thrown into the Eerie Game, few people could complete a transformation of their worldview in a short time, changing the ingrained habits of following rules developed in human society.

Even innate sociopaths and serial killers, upon first arriving in a paradise of rampant sin, would instinctively hide themselves in the shadows due to their fixed mindset.

Moreover, with the minimum death toll mechanism in place, the relationship between players could at any time evolve into a zero-sum game.

Any action that exposed oneself to public scrutiny could become a reason for being prioritized for elimination.

Qi Si observed the expressions of each player, silently calculating the numbers and strength comparisons, and adjusted his existing plan.

He said casually: “Zhao Feng, give Zhu Dafu’s body to A-Xi. Since the Shadow Ghost can eat it, then A-Xi should be able to eat it too.”

Everyone’s eyes focused on him. He seemed to just realize the atmosphere was wrong, suddenly revealing a bewildered and innocent expression, as if he didn’t understand why no one else had thought of such a simple answer.

In the silence, he smiled very faintly, then retorted: “Humans are also animals, and human flesh is also meat, isn’t it?”