Chapter 36: Eating Flesh (Part VIII) - Casualties

A loud crowing pierced the morning sky, and the eastern horizon turned pale.

Qisi opened his eyes, greeted by the endless expanse of the gray sky.

He had somehow fallen asleep by the well last night, his final memory being the phantom projection of past events unfolding right beside it.

The young girl who made a deal with a god was most likely Granny Su in her youth. The god had foreseen her future, anchoring her soul in advance, and ultimately constructing this instance named "The Carnivore."

Yet, it remained a mystery: knowing that her final meeting would result in surrendering her soul to the divine, why had Granny Su cast herself down the well without a second thought?

Whether she was hunted and eaten by others or her soul harvested by a god, the destination was death either way. Why take such a roundabout path?

Qisi scrambled up from the ground, brushing the dust and mud off his white shirt and black trousers, resolving to take a proper bath once he left this instance. If conditions permitted, washing up within the instance itself wasn't entirely out of the question, either.

Standing by the washbasin, he rinsed his hands under the tap while casting a sidelong glance at the row of guest rooms on his left.

None of the other players had emerged at this hour. Aside from the southernmost room with its wooden door standing wide open, the rest remained tightly shut.

Qisi walked over and caught a heavy, pungent stench of blood, confirming that this was the very room which had provided food for the human-cooks last night. The occupants inside appeared to have perished utterly.

A creaking sound came from the front gate of the courtyard as the heavy wooden barrier was pushed open from the outside.

Yang Yundong and Allen staggered in looking thoroughly exhausted, coated in a layer of gray dust and a smattering of dried bloodstains.

A section of Allen's T-shirt sleeve was torn away, and his right hand was wrapped in makeshift cloth bandages that were still seeping blood.

Noticing Qisi's curious gaze fixed upon him, Allen threw up his hands. "You have no idea how terrifying last night was. If Yang hadn't brought along the divine flesh, I probably would have ended up eating myself."

Looking at Qisi, Yang Yundong asked, "Little comrade, did anything happen on your end? We ate the divine flesh last night and drifted off to sleep unconsciously, but thankfully nothing went wrong."

Combining this with his own experience, Qisi essentially confirmed that the divine flesh possessed a sedative effect, causing players to fall into an uncontrollable slumber a short while after consumption.

In other words, the divine flesh was best saved until one was practically starving, otherwise falling asleep in the face of danger meant losing the ability to wake up—effectively lying down and waiting for death.

"I didn't eat the divine flesh immediately after the meal; I waited until I felt hungry in the second half of the night," Qisi said softly. "During the first half, a shadow-ghost went from room to room, smashing doors open and hacking blindly with a blade. From the sounds of it, someone died."

In truth, he hardly needed to elaborate. Once Yang Yundong finished speaking, he caught the scent of blood, spun around, and strode directly into the open-doored guest room.

Qisi and Allen followed closely behind him.

A thick sea of congealed blood met their eyes. Zhu Dafu's corpse lay crumpled near the doorway, his clothes soaked through with gore. His rugged face was smeared with blood, and a crimson ring stained the skin around his mouth.

His right arm was a jagged crater; the flesh and skin had vanished entirely, leaving only a lattice of fascia clinging to bare bone, weeping pale pink bloody fluid that pooled into a human-shaped lake.

Yang Yundong squatted down and pried open Zhu Dafu's jaw. Seeing the oral cavity overflowing with fresh blood and shredded meat, he instantly deduced what had transpired the night before.

"Driven by the instance's mechanics, Zhu Dafu tore off his own flesh bite by bite last night, and ultimately bled to death," Yang Yundong concluded.

Allen muttered, "I remember now... God, he didn't take any divine flesh last night, so once hunger set in, he had no choice but to feed on himself..."

A full portion of divine flesh was required to sustain a person through a single bout of hunger, and the day before, Granny Su had distributed a total of eleven portions to the players.

Every extra piece of divine flesh claimed by someone meant that another would inevitably fail to endure the hunger, resorting to consuming their own flesh and dying a wretched death.

Strictly speaking, everyone who took more than their share of divine flesh was an accomplice to murder.

Qisi had no desire to be cornered with moral accusations or made the scapegoat for someone else's rhetorical trap.

He discreetly pushed the cloth-wrapped divine flesh deeper into his pocket, adopting an expression of profound pity while his eyes clouded with sorrow for the fallen.

"What about Zhu Dafu's roommate? Where is he?" Yang Yundong swept his gaze around the room, finally locking onto a wooden bed where both the sheets and the mattress boards were stained a shocking crimson. His expression turned peculiar.

"Perhaps he is still right here in this room." Stepping over Zhu Dafu's corpse, Qisi walked toward the wooden bed in the corner, picked up the bone fragments scattered across the surface, and began assembling them according to the structure of a human skeleton.

He recalled that Zhu Dafu's roommate was a young man named Wu Heng—the very person who had first argued that the divine flesh was forced upon them, and later insisted that taking it was tantamount to sin, yet had eagerly devoured his own share.

The bed full of shattered bones resumed a human shape under Qisi's deft hands. Picked completely clean without a single shred of meat remaining, the bare skeleton lay flat upon the bed, gleaming under the morning light.

Witnessing this, Yang Yundong's already grim countenance grew even darker. "Wu Heng is dead as well. Only one night, and two people are already gone..."

"Indeed," Qisi said with a heavy tone. "He ate his divine flesh too early last night, so he failed to wake up when the shadow-ghost roamed. He was hacked to death in his bed and devoured to the bone."

He concisely recounted the events of the previous night to Yang Yundong, including the behavioral rules governing the human-cook ghost.

This information was already public and transparent to any player who had survived the slaughter. Rather than keeping secrets, it was far wiser to disclose it early to earn the trust of Yang Yundong, a seasoned veteran skilled in combat.

"Brother Yang, do you remember the four-line verse in the travel brochure?" Qisi lowered his gaze, his voice tinged with lingering fear. "'Granaries empty and devoid of grain, how to soothe the starving pain? For leagues around they feast on men, flesh and blood consumed in vain.' This matches the exact nature of the death traps we encountered last night.

"The human-cook ghost had no provisions and gnawing hunger, so it emerged to slaughter and feed; the players grew hungry, and without the divine flesh, they had no choice but to devour their own flesh and blood, ultimately perishing. In the trials ahead, we must pay close attention to the information within the travel brochure."

Yang Yundong nodded in understanding. "When everyone gathers later, make sure to share this with them as well. Being able to anticipate the source of these fatal triggers ahead of time means we won't be nearly as passive tonight."

"Understood," Qisi replied smoothly, his expression shifting to one of hesitation. "Brother Yang, there is one more matter, though I'm unsure whether I should bring it up now..."

"What is it?" Allen leaned in. "In the movies, anyone who keeps secrets until the last minute always ends up dead."

Qisi looked toward Yang Yundong, and upon receiving a nod of assent, a bitter smile touched the corner of his lips. "I wonder if you've noticed: if two people die each day, exactly ten people will perish over five days, leaving precisely one survivor in the end.

"It is highly probable that this instance expects us to trigger a minimum-casualty mechanism to clear it. The last instance was similar—everyone hoped for the others to die first, and if I hadn't deciphered the worldview in time, we probably would have been whittled down to the very last person.

"Brother Yang, I was isolated on the first day and live in a room by myself. If things descend into mutual slaughter later on, I am certain to be the first to die... Brother Yang, I don't want to die..."

He faithfully replicated the expression Lin Chen frequently wore in *Rose Manor*, striking the exact balance between timidity and sorrow.

Yang Yundong's expression instantly turned solemn. "Little comrade, you needn't worry. I won't allow such a thing to happen.

"I am a reserve member of the Kyushu Guild. You must have heard of Kyushu; our faction has always advocated for solidarity among players to jointly resist the bizarre games, and we will never tolerate mutual slaughter."

"Really? That's wonderful." Chasing away his anxiety, Qisi smiled gratefully. "For the remainder of this instance, I shall place all my hopes in you, Brother Yang!"

By this time, the remaining players were waking up one after another, pushing open their doors, crossing the courtyard, and entering the blood-scented guest room.

Zhu Ling and Zhou Yilin were the first to arrive.

The moment she laid eyes on the corpse, Zhou Yilin turned deathly pale and nearly screamed.

Fortunately, Zhu Ling maintained her composure, stepping in front of her just in time to offer soft, soothing words of comfort.

Zhang Licai and Zhao Feng emerged right behind them. As veterans who had already cleared an instance once before, though their complexions were equally grim, they managed to keep their composure.

Zhao Feng clearly hadn't slept well; his eyes were deeply sunken amidst dark circles, giving him the ghastly appearance of a roaming specter.

He cursed aloud, "Dammit, that little bastard was ungrateful and refused to eat the divine flesh... Damn it all!"

The tattooed woman and the scrawny man arrived last.

The scrawny man kept his head bowed ever since entering the room, while the tattooed woman relentlessly mocked him. "Coward! What are you afraid of with me covering you? You can't even bear to look at a dead body—what will you do when you run into a ghost?"

"Apologies, I'm squeamish around blood," the scrawny man muttered.

Once everyone was assembled, the players spoke over one another, recounting the events of the courtyard the previous night, which aligned closely with what Qisi had already told Yang Yundong.

Qisi also reiterated his hypothesis connecting the five-word poem in the travel brochure to the nocturnal death triggers, omitting only his analysis of the minimum-casualty mechanism.

Scanning the group, Yang Yundong said in a deep voice, "You've all seen it: two people died on the very first day. If we fail to decipher the worldview beforehand, we still have four full days left in this place.

"The minimum casualty threshold is unknown; who can guarantee they will be among the lucky few to survive? Only by deciphering the worldview as quickly as possible and ending this instance early can we ensure more people live."

The players nodded in agreement one after another.

Yang Yundong continued, "Last night, Allen and I scouted the village. All the locations marked on the map were obscured by dense fog. When we tried walking through, we simply ended up back where we started. It seems these areas require us to explore them during daylight hours."

He fished a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket—a map torn straight from the travel brochure.

Pointing a calloused finger at a landmark, he explained slowly, "Later, we wandered around the areas free of fog, primarily the western side of the village. There, we saw many villagers out laboring in the fields.

"For the most part, they behaved no differently than ordinary people, but upon seeing us, they crowded around demanding meat. We had to fake agreement just to get away."

At this, Yang Yundong glanced at Zhao Feng. "Allen, you, and I now face the same predicament. Since there's no way to resolve it immediately, we'll have to set it aside for now and figure something out based on our subsequent exploration..."

This was undoubtedly an effort to comfort Zhao Feng, preventing him from doing something irrevocable in a panic.

Zhao Feng was unimpressed, offering a cold sneer. "I have to find meat for that little brat today, and what am I supposed to do if I can't? It's easy for you to stand there talking since you aren't the one being used to test the waters."

How could it possibly be hard to find meat? Two people had just died—there was plenty of meat to go around...

Several players swept their gazes toward the corpse on the floor, though none of them voiced their thoughts aloud.

Having been snatched mid-air from an orderly reality and tossed into a bizarre death game, very few people could complete the transformation of their worldview in such a short span of time, casting aside the law-abiding habits ingrained in human society.

Even natural-born sociopaths and serial killers, upon first arriving in a lawless sanctuary of sin, would instinctively conceal themselves in the shadows out of sheer habit.

Furthermore, with the minimum-casualty mechanism hanging over their heads, the relationship between players could devolve into a zero-sum game at any second.

Any action that exposed oneself to the scrutiny of the crowd could easily become the justification for being prioritized for elimination.

Observing each player's expression, Qisi silently calculated the headcount and power dynamics, adjusting his pre-existing plan accordingly.

He said casually, as if thinking aloud, "Zhao Feng, why don't you hand Zhu Dafu's corpse over to Axi? If the shadow-ghost can eat, surely Axi can as well."

All eyes converged on him. Only then did he seem to notice the abrupt change in atmosphere, his expression instantly shifting to one of baffled innocence, as though he couldn't comprehend why no one else had thought of such a simple solution.

Amidst the heavy silence, he offered a faint, fleeting smile and countered with a question:

"Humans are animals too, and human flesh is meat, isn't it?"