Chapter 50: Carnivore (22) Murder

Inside the ancestral hall, Zhang Licai quickly recovered from his fright, wailing as he threw himself against the tightly shut main doors, pushing outward with all his might.

The doors creaked under his pressure but didn’t reveal even a sliver of a gap, as if some force were blocking them from the outside.

With a mournful face, he muttered in a low voice, “It’s over, these doors are shut tight. I can’t open them…”

【rules have been refreshed】

【3. The Ghosts of the ancestral hall are always hungry. It is best to prepare sufficient meat before coming to worship; the total amount should be the meat of one adult, more is acceptable but not less.】

Two lines of system prompts popped up, visible and audible to all players.

As if to corroborate this rule, the faces from all directions opened their mouths in unison, shouting in different tones:

“Choose one person… give us the meat…”

“One person… only one person…”

The sinister voices brushed against their backs and crawled into their brains, making their skin crawl.

Zhao Feng held a crucifix in one hand and pinched a blade in the other, not forgetting to shift his gaze to scrutinize the several people around him.

The candidate for death was already certain for him. Jiuzhou Guild and Sera Guild had always been at odds; he was going to kill Yang Yundong as a tribute to join the Sera Guild.

However, offending Jiuzhou Guild was not wise; it would be best to act without anyone noticing…

Zhu Ling drew the dagger from her waist and gave a timely, bitter smile. “The system prompt is already very clear. We’ve triggered a key plot point; someone must die, otherwise there’s no solution.”

“Let’s discuss it. Should we vote, or what? One person dying is better than a total wipeout…”

Her gaze fell on Yang Yundong, as if waiting for the latter’s approval.

Should they sacrifice one person for the sake of the majority, or should everyone confront the sudden crisis together?

If it were the former, who should be sacrificed?

Yang Yundong held his plain blade horizontally in front of him, gazing gloomily at the faces on the ceiling without saying a word.

Qi Si’s words echoed at the bottom of his mind, issuing questions across time and space:

‘Brother Yang, survival and profit-seeking are the laws that best fit biological instincts. Under natural laws, how are justice and morality judged? Looking around, everyone is eating people. Someone is served on the table, someone picks up the knife and fork—who can truly stay out of it?’

The bloody choice was laid bare before his eyes by the Eerie Game, yet Yang Yundong knew in his heart that no one should be sacrificed.

—Even if the situation forced people to eat people, he was unwilling to be the one doing the eating.

“Meat… meat… give us meat…”

In the void above, the ugly faces turned into bursts of black smoke, circling the four trapped people. Within the gathered smoke, there seemed to be countless pairs of eyes—painful, greedy, resentful, sorrowful—layered like fish scales.

Zhao Feng and Yang Yundong, one holding a crucifix and the other a plain blade, managed to defend two directions.

Zhu Ling pulled a handful of tattered yellow talismans from her bosom and scattered them in a circle on the ground, forming a defense line that was better than nothing.

Zhang Licai, being the largest, had his arms grazed several times by the faces. His voice began to tremble. “Everyone, think of something! Does someone really have to die? I have elders and children to support, I can’t die…”

He cried out in fear, but instead of squeezing into the trio’s defensive circle, he scurried to a corner.

He knew he was the weakest; any one of them could kill him with one stroke to break the current deadlock…

“Let’s vote,” Zhu Ling declared, bypassing Yang Yundong. “There are still three days left. To let as many people as possible survive, we must avoid needless attrition. I hope we can pass through this death point in a peaceful manner.”

Zhang Licai understood Zhu Ling’s subtext. The phrasing “avoid needless attrition” was clearly inciting the players to vote out the person who was already injured.

He looked at Yang Yundong, then at Zhao Feng, and shuffled behind Zhu Ling step by step, raising his right hand. “That makes sense. Let’s have a peaceful vote. Don’t… don’t let those Ghosts reap the benefits!”

Thick black smoke permeated every corner of the ancestral hall, and the wrinkled faces scrambled to lick the players’ arms.

Zhao Feng held the crucifix before his chest. The white light it emitted grew increasingly dim under the assault of the black smoke; it was visible to the naked eye that it wouldn’t last much longer.

He inconspicuously moved closer to Yang Yundong. Hearing Zhang Licai’s movement, he looked back and met Zhu Ling’s piercing gaze, quickly understanding the key point.

Qi Si had told him long ago that as long as the strongest few were dealt with and an absolute numerical advantage was formed, they could decide the life or death of any individual.

More than one person held this thought, and the only name Qi Si had placed on the opposing side in his words was—

Yang Yundong.

“Quick… give us meat…”

The faces crowded closer and closer, letting out wails for food like insatiable beggars pestering a lost traveler, refusing to give up until they reached their goal.

Yang Yundong gripped his plain blade tightly and swung it in front of him, dispersing the faces in the black smoke. Veins bulged on the back of his hand from the excessive force.

Zhu Ling looked around at everyone and said calmly, “Jiuzhou Guild has said that sacrifice on the path to victory is necessary.”

“Every one of us who survives is willing to swear that we will remember the deceased. After clearing the Final Dungeon, we will demand that the Eerie Game resurrect all the sacrificed.”

“You are all people who look at the big picture; you certainly won’t fear death in a moment of crisis. Time is running out. In a moment, we will all point to the person to be voted out. Whatever the result, I hope everyone takes it with a calm mind.”

The yellow talismans scattered on the ground perfectly formed a boundary line, isolating Yang Yundong as if heaven had made the decision on behalf of the players.

Yang Yundong gave them a deep look, and Qi Si’s cold whispers rang in his ears once more:

‘The law-abiding starve after paying their grain, while the opportunistic and self-interested lord over the granaries. Using standards like class, stance, and ideology to tear the group apart, inciting one group to exert tyranny against another—this is the essence of what humans call public order and good customs.’

‘Brother Yang, I can see that you still cannot accept this set of rules. The conflict between truth and experience causes your heart immense pain. Since that’s the case, why let yourself continue to suffer? Instead of morally kidnapping others, why not martyr yourself to that outdated and conservative morality…’

Zhao Feng was already standing behind Yang Yundong. With just a lift of his hand, the blade held between his two fingers could slit the latter’s throat.

And Yang Yundong never once looked back…

…

【rules have been refreshed】

【3. The Ghosts of the ancestral hall are always hungry. It is best to prepare sufficient meat before coming to worship; the total amount should be the meat of one adult, more is acceptable but not less.】

Qi Si saw the new text refresh on the system interface, and a bright smile bloomed on his lips.

Beside him, Zhou Yilin immediately crouched down, hugging her knees and shaking like a leaf while weeping.

Qi Si glanced at her sideways. “Always pretending to be weak and cowardly—is this some kind of sick hobby of yours?”

Zhou Yilin sniffled and nodded. “Mhm, it’s very interesting.”

“…”

A minute later, the doors of the ancestral hall were pushed open from the inside, and Zhao Feng and Zhu Ling walked out side by side.

Zhang Licai sat slumped next to a skeleton, looking as if he had been scared witless.

The skeleton was rather tall, gnawed clean from torso to limbs without a single shred of meat left. The dark plain blade was held in the skeleton’s hand, resting quietly across its neck.

What happened inside the ancestral hall was obvious: Yang Yundong was dead, having become the meat to fill the Ghosts’ bellies.

In a zero-sum game, a character like this—who surpassed others in prestige and strength but didn’t hold an absolute advantage—was bound to be collectively eliminated.

What Qi Si had done was nothing more than using words to push him into becoming the target of public criticism, leaving him in a dilemma and without help.

This way, when Zhao Feng dealt the killing blow, the others would tacitly allow each other to stand by during this murder, or even add fuel to the fire.

“Now you know, good people don’t live long.”

Qi Si looked down at the skeleton on the ground and sighed.

There had been room for maneuver. After realizing there was something wrong with Zhou Yilin, he had thought about cooperating with Yang Yundong.

And as long as Yang Yundong agreed to cooperate, he could have controlled Zhou Yilin and Zhu Ling in advance and filled the requirement with either of their lives at this moment.

Even if he missed that chance, inside the ancestral hall, Yang Yundong could have easily killed anyone to serve as the sacrifice for this death point instead of himself.

Unfortunately, Yang Yundong chose the third path: to die himself, allowing the remaining two-person alliances to reach a stalemate.

Not only that, judging from the condition of the three players who came out, this man hadn’t even struggled before dying to take someone like Zhu Ling down with him—most likely, he had tacitly allowed himself to be killed out of some sacrifice complex.

“Clearly possessing the power to break the rules, yet bound by invisible shackles to the point of recklessly throwing away his own life… Are there really such fellows in the world? Interesting.”

Qi Si tapped his chin with his finger, truly wanting to slice open Yang Yundong’s brain to see its structure. However… the Ghosts in the ancestral hall had faithfully carried out a ‘clean plate’ operation.

He crouched by the corpse, watching for a while, then suddenly revealed a strange smile. “But what made you think a scumbag like me would tell you everything?”

“I suddenly remembered that I seem to have forgotten to tell you—Zhou Yilin and Zhu Ling most likely have a grudge…”

In the top right corner of his vision, the Identity Card rolled with grey mist. The red-eyed evil spirit extended black tentacles, slowly cracking an eight-toothed smile, both compassionate and mocking.

“Self-righteously sacrificing oneself, only to push the situation in an uncontrollable direction and plunge even more people into the vortex of death—a very humorous joke, isn’t it?”

The sun had already dropped to the horizon, slanting through the cracks in the ancestral hall’s doors and casting pale shadows on the ground. A few beams of light fell on the skeleton, devoid of warmth and cold as ice.

The newly dead corpse lay on its back, its white eye sockets staring hollowly at the sky, as if trying to catch one last glimpse of sunlight while a breath of life still remained.

After a long silence, Zhu Ling wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and said with no small amount of sorrow, “The death point has passed. Let’s go into the ancestral hall to worship and redeem our sins… Let’s not waste Brother Yang’s sacrifice.”

No one raised an objection.

The players returned to the ancestral hall in silence, taking incense from the altar and kneeling to worship one by one, as devout as believers.