Chapter 45: Carnivore (Part 17) Menu

The moon hung in the center of the sky; the night was hazy.

Granny Su stepped out of the main house, cleared the leftovers from the dining table, and said, “You all came back late today. You must return earlier tomorrow.”

She stated this, then left it at that, unsure if it was a well-intentioned reminder or a warning issued in advance.

There were only so many clues; no matter how long they discussed, nothing new would come of it. After saying goodbye to each other, the players returned to their respective rooms.

As soon as Zhang Licai entered the room, he headed straight for the wooden table, grabbed the travel guidebook, and recited the five-character poem on it: “Roommates slaughter each other, no kin or friends pass by. Every house cooks their children, even gods and Buddhas are not spared.”

He looked left and right: “This feels similar to yesterday’s poem. That Cooking Ghost will likely come again tonight. Let’s not sleep on the bed; let’s sleep on the floor.”

“Fine, the floor is more spacious than the bed anyway. Last night, I was almost squeezed to death by you.”

Zhao Feng threw the bedding onto the floor and squinted at the poem: “Slaughtering each other in the same room? Fatty, you don’t think one of us will suddenly turn into a Ghost and hunt down our roommate, do you?”

“Damn it! Don’t do that!” Zhang Licai patted his chubby face. “I have elderly parents and young children to support. I don’t want to become a Ghost at all, much less be hunted by one…”

“Knock, knock, knock!”

A crisp knocking sound rang out from outside the door. Zhang Licai shuddered in fright: “Who is it? Human or Ghost? At this time of night…”

“It’s me, Chang Xu.” Qi Si’s voice was clear and calm.

Not daring to keep a member of the Sera Guild waiting, Zhao Feng immediately opened the door and asked solemnly, “Brother Chang, has something happened?”

“You should have seen the hint in the travel guidebook, right?” Qi Si said indifferently, “‘Roommates slaughter each other’—the meaning is very clear. Players staying in the same room will kill each other.”

“I suggest you stay in separate rooms. Wu Heng and Zhu Dafu died last night, so a room just happened to become vacant, didn’t it?”

Zhang Licai muttered softly, “Who would dare sleep in a room where someone died?”

Qi Si acted as if he hadn’t heard him, half-lowering his eyelids as he continued, “You need to go over as soon as possible.”

“What I can think of, other players can think of too. If that room is taken first, one of you two will have to die.”

“Rather than making a huge commotion at night and wasting energy, which would affect tomorrow’s exploration, it’s more convenient to just kill one person.”

He paused for a moment and flashed a grin of white teeth at Zhang Licai, the threat unmistakable.

Feeling the two piercing gazes, Zhang Licai’s rolls of fat shook violently: “Haha, I’m just kidding. It’s just two people who died, right? I reckon that’s not even as many as I lose when I jerk off… I’ll go claim the room right now!”

He scrambled out the door, trotted all the way, and nimbly slipped into the wing room closest to the courtyard gate, never to come out again.

Zhao Feng had easily obtained an empty room. A sense of gratitude toward Qi Si welled up in his heart; he felt more and more that being backed by a major guild was great.

He hadn’t even joined the Sera Guild yet, but with “Chang Xu” standing by his side and just saying a few words, the matter was resolved. It was just too comfortable.

He heard that Sera not only protected their own, but members could also form teams. Once he officially became a person of Sera, wouldn’t he be able to do as he pleased in the instances?

Thinking this, Zhao Feng became even more determined to perform well in front of Qi Si and strive to get a recommendation soon.

Then he heard Qi Si say lightly, “Zhao Feng, let’s go to the kitchen and take a look.”

…

On the other side, in a wing room with the door tightly closed, Zhou Yilin handed a fountain pen back to Zhu Ling, her head lowered as she mumbled, “I… I’m sorry, Sister Zhu. I was too useless; I couldn’t stay…”

【Name: Ordinary Fountain Pen】

【Type: Item】

【Effect: Write, rewrite text】

【Note: Some use it to record stories, some use it to weave lies.】

Before leaving in the morning, Zhou Yilin had insisted on staying in the courtyard, which was exactly under Zhu Ling’s instruction, requiring her to quietly modify the four-line poem in the players’ travel guidebooks.

In rule-based horror instances, written information is a player’s life. The clues in the travel guidebook were ambiguous; with a little modification and distortion, they could lead players to a dead end, and they wouldn’t even know how they died.

Zhu Ling prided herself on not being a bad person, and she had saved many players in the past two instances using her own knowledge, but this instance was ultimately different.

This was her third instance. Facing a mortality rate as high as eighty percent, to be safe, she had to use some extraordinary means, such as… killing everyone to trigger the minimum death count mechanism.

She had originally intended to seize a leadership position and trick other players into stepping on mines for her; but for some reason, Yang Yundong had become the leader by popular demand through a series of coincidences.

This person not only had formidable combat power but also upheld a troublesome sense of justice. She could only harbor resentment and lie low in the shadows to reformulate her plans.

Yet she hadn’t expected Qi Si to intervene…

“Yilin, this isn’t your fault. It’s all because that guy named Chang Xu is meddlesome.” Zhu Ling took the fountain pen and put it in her pocket, patting Zhou Yilin’s shoulder lightly. “You’ve already done very well. If it weren’t for him saying all that, you would have succeeded in staying.”

“Thank you, Sister Zhu. Tomorrow I’ll try again to see if I can stay…” Zhou Yilin tugged on Zhu Ling’s sleeve, looked up, and asked timidly, “By the way, should we sleep in separate rooms tonight?”

Zhu Ling laughed: “Why did you suddenly think of separating rooms? The rooms were already assigned on the first day; how would it allow us to divide them again?”

“But… that travel guidebook says we will slaughter each other…” Zhou Yilin lowered her head once again, her voice mixed with the “clattering” sound of her teeth chattering. “Sister Zhu, I don’t want to slaughter each other with you… I’m so scared, what should I do?”

“Yilin, nothing will happen.” Zhu Ling raised her hand to embrace the girl, patting her back soothingly. “The five-character poem in the travel guidebook records things that happened in Su Clan Village in the past. We are outside players, so what does that have to do with us?”

“Even if there really is some instance mechanism that confuses our minds, it doesn’t matter. I have great willpower; as long as I recite the Heart-Cleansing Mantra, I won’t be controlled. And you shouldn’t be able to hurt me either…”

Zhou Yilin then nodded with relief: “That’s good! Thank you, Sister Zhu!”

She paused for a moment and smiled embarrassedly: “Hehe, I actually don’t want to separate rooms either. There’s only one empty room, and someone died there; I wouldn’t dare go there…”

There were no lights in the room. As the moon outside the window shifted, the light grew dimmer and dimmer, gradually becoming pitch black.

Zhu Ling sighed in her heart.

She had lied to Zhou Yilin. Based on her experience clearing two instances, she could judge that tonight’s crisis was definitely related to “roommates slaughtering each other.”

But she didn’t dare let Zhou Yilin go. What if, because there was one less person in the room, the instance arranged a Ghost as a roommate for her to create a crisis?

By comparison, Zhou Yilin, being human, was easier to deal with. When something happened, a stab to the heart would be enough to kill her…

‘I’m sorry. I have no other choice. I just want to survive… I must survive, save up enough points, and save my daughter…’

Zhu Ling felt silently apologetic.

In the pitch darkness, she did not notice that the girl beside her had curled the corners of her lips, her smile sarcastic and mocking.

…

In the kitchen, Qi Si held up a ghostly green lantern, illuminating the darkness.

Zhao Feng found the lantern familiar no matter how he looked at it, and his eyelids twitched slightly: “Brother Chang, where did this lantern come from? Is it also an item?”

“No, it belongs to a villager.” Qi Si stroked his chin calmly. “At the time, a villager was scared off by me and dropped the lantern on the ground, forgetting to pick it up.”

“I thought the nights in Su Clan Village were quite dark, and the rooms didn’t have lights, so I figured light was quite rare, and I just happened to keep it for him.”

Zhao Feng:…6.

He remembered that at the time, Qi Si had covered his nose and mouth with God Meat, putting on a show of authority to scare the villagers, and it seemed a villager had indeed dropped a lantern.

His attention hadn’t been on that at all at the time, and he had even thought Qi Si’s morbid sense of humor was inexplicable. Only now did he realize that there was actually a hidden mystery to it.

No wonder he had been recruited as a full member of the Sera Guild after clearing only his second instance. With these methods, this courage, and this insight, he would surely occupy a place on the rankings in the future.

Zhao Feng secretly decided that he should learn more from Qi Si in the future and strive to adapt to the Sera Guild’s style of operation as soon as possible, so as not to drag down the average level of such a major guild.

Qi Si did not know what Zhao Feng was imagining. He had teased the villagers simply out of boredom, humor, and a morbid sense of fun; the lantern was just something he had pocketed along the way.

He stepped into the kitchen, held the lantern high, and illuminated the area inch by inch along the wall.

Woodpile, rice jar, vegetable basket, cupboard, pot rack, stove…

He saw that on the stove, a crumpled booklet sat quietly by the iron pot. The pages were curled and yellowed, looking as if they were frequently flipped through.

Qi Si saw several wisps of black smoke lingering on the surface of the booklet, exactly the same as the papyrus he had seen in the Rose Manor instance.

He blinked, and his vision returned to clarity. The black smoke was nowhere to be seen, as if it had been an illusion.

“Zhao Feng, I’ll hold the lantern; please help me turn the pages,” Qi Si said softly.

Zhao Feng did not dare to be slow. He walked over, stood still, and opened the booklet page by page.

On the title page of the booklet, the two large characters for “Atonement” were written in red ink, baring fangs and brandishing claws, looking exceptionally ferocious.

On the following pages, every page was filled with dense lists of names.

The names at the very beginning all started with the character “Su” and most had been crossed out with red ink; these were likely the villagers of Su Clan Village.

The last eleven names were exactly the names the eleven players had given when they introduced themselves, and the two characters “Chang Xu” were prominently listed.

Among them, the four names Wu Heng, Zhu Dafu, and Alan each had a fresh red mark over them, clearly crossed out just a short while ago.

If this were a menu, then the players were the dishes on the menu!

As Zhao Feng turned the pages, he scanned through them. Upon seeing his own name, his face turned ugly: “Damn it! That old hag Granny Su really has no good intentions. Is she trying to kill us all here?”

Qi Si did not respond.

He thought of the photo he found in Room 2 on the Third Floor in the Rose Manor instance.

It also marked the life and death of the players, and was also filled with the malice of wanting to kill all the players.

Annie had made a deal with a god; as long as she kept all the guests in the manor, she could help her sister, Anna, restore her beauty.

So, what about this instance?

Had Granny Su also made a deal with a god? And what was the content of the deal?

After a long silence, Qi Si turned his head to look at Zhao Feng and smiled faintly: “It’s getting late. I’m tired. Let’s go back to sleep.”