Chapter 38 – Flesh-Eating (10): Deception

Qi Si fished a razor blade from his custom wristband and casually flicked it toward Zhao Feng.

“A weapon-type prop, and a modular one at that…” Zhao Feng caught the blade, his gaze complicated. “You’re lucky—my first instance was set in a medieval church; all I saw were crosses.”

Qi Si smiled, utterly sincere. “Really? I thought everyone started with a weapon. Don’t tell me you didn’t get one?”

“…”

Owing him a favor, Zhao Feng swallowed the urge to curse, pocketed the blade, and headed for the door.

A few steps later he froze; an idea struck him out of nowhere: if he truly had to kill someone, the youth called “Chang Xu” right in front of him was the obvious choice.

Alone, no teammates, and looking none too tough… Qi Si seemed to read his mind and chuckled. “What are you thinking? With your current strength, who could you even take on? Me?”

“Even if you did manage to control some poor soul through some trick, do you think Yang Yundong would let you off? From what I’ve seen, he’s quite the righteous type—he won’t tolerate a rotten apple.”

Zhao Feng cooled down; the wicked thought that had flared up was extinguished before it caught fire.

Right—there was still Yang Yundong, that meddling bastard. The moment someone died he’d rushed out to preach “cooperation,” probably just to seize the moral high ground and boss everyone around.

The jerk even policed his cursing; if he knew Zhao Feng had killed someone, who knew what he’d do… and the man had a knife—Zhao Feng wasn’t sure he could beat him. Qi Si lowered his eyes and sighed. “Zhao Feng, think: the instant you kill, everyone else will brand you a danger and eliminate you at the first chance.”

“Panicked by a momentary crisis, you’d blindly tear down the east wall to patch the west, only to drag yourself into a bigger whirlpool of danger. I never realized you were so shortsighted—and so foolish.”

“Besides, you can’t be sure the so-called ‘meat with a soul’ A-Xi wants has to be carved from a living person. You’d shoulder the risk only to find your very premise was wrong—wouldn’t that be laughable?”

Qi Si’s words tossed Zhao Feng’s emotions about until he had neither temper nor plan left.

He ruffled his messy hair in irritation. “So what do you say I do?”

“Aren’t you human too?” Qi Si countered with a smile.

He left it there; the implication was clear—listen or not, the choice was Zhao Feng’s alone.

And Zhao Feng knew full well he no longer had a choice.

Move against anyone else and he’d become public enemy number one; wait for Yang Yundong to find a solution and it would be too little, too late… He’d earned quite a reputation among the Grave-Robbers, knew plenty about handling Jiangshi, and had cleared his first instance through brute force.

Once he realized his methods let him steamroll even a Western-themed instance, he naturally stuck to the old path—attack A-Xi the instant he saw her.

Who could’ve guessed the Eerie Game would play dirty with a rule like “monsters beyond the village can’t be killed”?… And he excelled only at fighting, not at thinking through anything too complicated.

In the dawn light Qi Si wore a faint, unhurried smile as he waited for Zhao Feng’s decision.

Sadly, Zhao Feng made exactly the choice Qi Si had expected.

Clenching his teeth, he gripped the blade in his right hand and slashed at his own left arm.

Blood spurted; a chunk of flesh was carved off, dropping to the ground along with beads of sweat from his forehead.

Still biting back the pain, he tore a strip from his clothes to bind the wound, then gingerly picked up the fallen flesh and slipped it into his pocket.

Only after that did he reluctantly tear another small strip of cloth and slowly wipe the blood from the blade.

A weapon-type prop—just a plain blade with no special effects—was still a treasure in his eyes.

Who knew what future instances might bring? Without something sharp at hand, everything would be harder.

After all, a cross only works on ghosts; it can’t kill a person.

Qi Si watched Zhao Feng’s half-hearted cleaning and could easily guess what he was really thinking.

Glancing at the man’s calloused fingers, Qi Si smiled lightly. “Keep the blade for now; give it back when the instance is nearly over.”

Could anything so good really be true?

Suspicion flickered in Zhao Feng’s eyes. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll just keep it?”

Qi Si began counting on his fingers. “First, I’m a bit of a neat freak; now that you’ve touched it, I honestly don’t want it back.”

“You—” Zhao Feng bit off the curse, throttling the rest before it escaped.

Qi Si continued unhurriedly, “Second, I’m a full-fledged member of the Sera Guild—surely you’re not stupid enough to offend me over a blade with no special effects, right?”

As a player on only his second instance, Zhao Feng knew exactly what the Sera Guild represented.

It was one of the top-three super guilds, active ever since the Eerie Game first appeared, gathering thousands of veteran players and stocked with no small supply of powerful items.

Worse, plenty of their members were murder-happy maniacs—grudge-holding, faction-protecting psychos.

So “Chang Xu” is actually from the Sera Guild?

No wonder he could spout that amoral nonsense without a twinge of guilt—it’s just the natural extension of Sera’s creed… No wonder he kept himself apart from the crowd the moment he entered the instance; in his eyes the rest of us were already corpses. Zhao Feng’s mind raced, replaying everything that had happened since the instance began, and the more he thought the more it all fit. His gaze toward Qi Si filled with dread.

Getting recruited by a guild right after clearing your first instance means either you’re personally outstanding or you’ve got seriously deep backing… Can’t be provoked!

“Finally, I want this gesture to show my goodwill and my intent to cooperate.”

Qi Si smiled serenely; the 【Rose Heart】 pinned to his chest radiated a warmth that never scalded, proof that the item’s effect had activated.

“Zhao Feng, you’re ruthless enough and resolute enough. To be frank, I’m very interested in you, and I believe our guild leader will be too. If we work well together, I’ll recommend you.”

Zhao Feng’s breathing quickened, joy in his eyes he couldn’t suppress.

He himself had little moral sense; though he’d once joined forum crusades against Sera for padding post counts, deep down he’d always admired them.

For such a colossus to offer him an olive branch was something he hadn’t dared dream of.

If he could join Sera, future instances wouldn’t leave him isolated; he could even act wantonly under the guild’s banner… It all felt like a dream. Still dazed, he couldn’t help murmuring, “You… you’re really with Sera?”

Without changing expression Qi Si slipped a hand into his shirt pocket, pulled out a black ring carved with a butterfly, and tossed it in front of Zhao Feng.

He had lifted the ring from Liu Ajiu and kept it on him just in case; he hadn’t worn it for fear of being matched into a copy with other Sera members.

Right now, the little trinket came in perfectly handy.

Seeing the ring, Zhao Feng’s last doubts about Qi Si vanished.

Only Sera possessed the complete techniques to manufacture items that could be brought into instances.

The black ring was unmistakably Sera-made, and for a rookie the odds of obtaining a Sera product through any channel other than joining were minuscule.

He couldn’t have killed a Sera member and claimed it as spoils of war, could he?

By now Zhao Feng instead grew insecure: “Brother Chang, why choose to work with me? At the end of the day I’m just a bit bolder and I’ve seen a few more ghosts—I’ve got almost no instance experience…”

Then he saw the young man claiming to be from Sera show disappointment, shaking his head with a sigh: “I thought someone of your intelligence would have figured out the key points.”

“Last night, at the first death point, Zhu Dafu indirectly died because he didn’t eat the God Meat in time, and the God Meat is limited… The zero-sum nature of this instance is already surfacing.”

“You, Yang Yundong, and Allen all triggered the quest to find meat for the NPC. I’m sure there’ll only be more such situations, and we’ll have to provide more and more meat.”

“But the amount of flesh you can carve off a person is finite, and everyone’s seen how cutting it away weakens you. Sooner or later new disputes will erupt and someone will be picked as the unlucky sacrifice to satisfy the NPC’s demands.”

“After all, sacrificing the individual’s interests for the group’s survival is humanity’s unwritten rule; the collective drags the individual along, using the tribe’s future to justify the present brutality—so-called ‘justice’ and ‘morality’.”

Zhao Feng instinctively followed Qi Si’s reasoning, and the more he thought the more sense it made.

One reason he’d always acted timid, afraid to make choices that violated mainstream values, was fear of moral kidnapping—of being singled out as the sacrifice.

“Yeah, once someone raises the banner of justice and claims the moral high ground, everyone else can only bow their heads.” Qi Si watched Zhao Feng’s expression shift from bewilderment to resolve and smiled faintly. “I can see you’re the same sort as me—not one of those fools who get duped by hollow glory and praise, willing to sacrifice themselves for the majority.”

“During the rookie period, the first three instances, most people’s strength is about the same; as long as we eliminate the strongest few and form an overwhelming numbers advantage, we can decide anyone’s life or death and craft a new set of ‘rules of sacrifice’.”

“Yang Yundong and Allen have already forged a solid bloc, and I’m sure they won’t share my philosophy. So the only one I can conspire with is you.”

The fiend hiding among mortals, clad in human skin, smiled with teasing allure in its eyes. “Of course, right now I’m the only one willing to help you figure out how to get past A-Xi’s hurdle.”