Chapter 45: Carnivorous Delights (Seventeen) The Menu

The moon was high in the center of the sky, casting a hazy, dim glow over the night.

Old Woman Su stepped out of the main house, cleared the leftover food and scraps from the dining table, and said, "You came back late today. You must come back earlier tomorrow."

She stated the words flatly, leaving them hanging without context—whether it was a well-meaning reminder or a premature warning remained unknown.

With only this much information, no amount of discussion would yield any new breakthroughs. After exchanging farewells, the players returned to their respective rooms.

The moment Zhang Licai stepped inside, he marched straight to the wooden table, snatched up the travel guidebook, and read aloud the pentasyllabic poem inscribed on it: "In the same room they slaughter each other, coming and going without kith or kin. Every household cooks its children, what sin did the gods and Buddhas bear?"

He looked around anxiously and said, "This feels pretty much the same as yesterday's poem. That cannibalistic ghost is most likely going to show up again tonight. Let's not sleep on the bed; let's sleep on the floor instead."

"Fine by me. The floor is wider than the bed anyway. Last night, I was almost squashed to death by you."

Zhao Feng tossed his bedding onto the floor, narrowed his eyes at the poem, and muttered, "Slaughtering each other in the same room? Fatso, none of us is going to suddenly turn into a ghost and hunt down our roommate, right?"

"Damn it! Don't even joke about that!" Zhang Licai slapped his chubby face. "I have elderly parents above and young children below; I don't want to turn into a ghost at all, and I certainly don't want to be hunted down by one..."

"Knock, knock, knock!"

A crisp knocking sound echoed from outside the door. Zhang Licai shuddered in fright. "Who's there? Human or ghost? At this time of night..."

"It's me, Chang Xu." Qi Si's voice was clear, crisp, and composed.

They certainly wouldn't dare keep a member of Sheol waiting. Zhao Feng immediately opened the door and asked with a solemn expression, "Brother Chang, has something happened?"

"You should have seen the hint in the travel guidebook, right?" Qi Si said indifferently. "'In the same room they slaughter each other'—the meaning is very clear. Players staying in the same room will kill one another.

"I suggest you split up and stay in separate rooms. Wu Heng and Zhu Dafu died last night, leaving a room vacant, isn't that right?"

Zhang Licai muttered under his breath, "Who on earth would dare sleep in a room where people just died?"

Ignoring his words, Qi Si lowered his eyelids slightly and continued, "You need to head over there as soon as possible.

"What I can think of, other players can think of too. If that room is claimed in advance by someone else, one of the two of you will have to die.

"Instead of making a massive uproar at night, wasting your energy for nothing, and ruining tomorrow's exploration, it's far better to simply kill one of your own to save the trouble."

He paused for a moment, baring a flash of white teeth at Zhang Licai, making the implicit threat unmistakably clear.

Feeling two pairs of piercing gazes fixed on him, Zhang Licai's layers of fat trembled violently. "Haha, I was just joking! So what if two people died? In my mind, that's no different from the casualties of a wank... I'll go claim the room right now!"

Hurriedly scurrying out the door, he broke into a jog and deftly darted into the side chamber closest to the courtyard gate, never to emerge again.

Zhao Feng had effortlessly acquired an empty room, and a wave of gratitude toward Qi Si welled up in his heart, making him feel all the more that having a major guild's backing was truly fantastic.

He hadn't even officially joined the Sheol Guild yet, but just by having "Chang Xu" stand beside him and say a few words, the problem was completely solved. This was simply too comfortable!

He had heard that Sheol not only protected its own fiercely, but also allowed members to form teams. Once he officially became a part of Sheol, wouldn't he be able to walk sideways unhindered in any instance?

With this thought, Zhao Feng became even more determined to perform well in front of Qi Si, striving to earn an official recommendation as soon as possible.

Then, he heard Qi Si say casually, "Zhao Feng, let's go take a look at the kitchen together."

...

Meanwhile, inside a tightly shut side chamber, Zhou Yilin handed a fountain pen back to Zhu Ling, lowered her head, and whimpered, "I... I'm sorry, Sister Zhu. It's just that I was too useless and couldn't stay behind..."

[Name: An Unremarkable Fountain Pen]
[Type: Prop]
[Effect: Writing and rewriting text]
[Remarks: Some use it to record stories, others use it to weave lies]

Before heading out this morning, Zhou Yilin had insisted on staying behind in the courtyard precisely at Zhu Ling's instigation, tasked with secretly altering the four-line poem in the players' travel guidebooks.

In rule-based bizarre horror instances, textual information was a player's lifeline. The ambiguous clues in the travel guidebook, with even a slight modification and distortion, could easily lure players down a path of no return, leaving them dead without even knowing how it happened.

Zhu Ling did not consider herself a bad person, and in her previous two instances, she had saved quite a few players using her own knowledge, but this instance was ultimately different.

This was her third instance. Faced with a mortality rate as high as eighty percent, just to be safe, she had to resort to extreme methods—such as... killing everyone to trigger the minimum guaranteed casualty quota mechanism.

She had originally intended to seize a leadership position and trick other players into stepping on landmines for her; yet for some reason, Yang Yudong had inadvertently become the universally favored leader.

Not only was that man fiercely strong in combat, but he also held an obnoxious sense of justice. She had no choice but to nurse her resentment, lurk in the shadows, and formulate a new plan.

She just hadn't expected Qi Si to meddle in affairs...

"Yilin, this isn't your fault. Blame that meddling fellow named Chang Xu." Zhu Ling took the fountain pen, slipped it into her pocket, and gently patted Zhou Yilin's shoulder. "You did very well. If it weren't for his little speech, you would have successfully stayed behind."

"Thank you, Sister Zhu. I'll try again tomorrow to see if I can stay..." Clutching the sleeve of Zhu Ling's garment, Zhou Yilin raised her head and asked timidly, "Right, should we sleep in separate rooms tonight?"

Zhu Ling chuckled softly. "Why on earth would you suddenly think of splitting rooms? The rooms were already assigned on the first day; how could they possibly allow us to divide them again?"

"But... the travel guidebook says we'll slaughter each other..." Zhou Yilin lowered her head once more, her voice accompanied by the chattering sound of her teeth clicking together. "Sister Zhu, I don't want to kill you... I'm so scared. What should I do?"

"Yilin, nothing will happen." Zhu Ling raised her arms to embrace the girl, stroking her back reassuringly. "The pentasyllabic poem in the travel guidebook only records past events that occurred in the Su Family Village. We are outsiders; what does that have to do with us?

"Even if there really is some instance mechanic designed to cloud our minds, it doesn't matter. My mental fortitude is strong. As long as I recite the mind-clearing mantra, I won't be controlled; and you shouldn't be able to harm me either..."

Only then did Zhou Yilin nod with relief. "That's good! Thank you, Sister Zhu!"

Pausing for a moment, she smiled sheepishly. "Hehe, actually I didn't want to split rooms either. There's only one empty room left, and someone died in it—I wouldn't dare go there anyway..."

There were no lights in the room. As the moon outside shifted, the light grew dimmer and dimmer until pitch blackness consumed everything.

Zhu Ling sighed inwardly.

She had lied to Zhou Yilin. Based on her experience clearing two instances, she could deduce that tonight's crisis was definitely related to "slaughtering each other in the same room."

Yet she dared not let Zhou Yilin leave. What if, due to a missing person in the room, the instance assigned her a ghost as a roommate simply to manufacture a crisis?

By comparison, Zhou Yilin—who was still human—was much easier to deal with. If anything went wrong, a single knife thrust to the heart would kill her...

*I'm sorry, I have no other choice. I just want to survive... I must survive, accumulate enough points, and save my daughter...*

Silently, Zhu Ling felt a pang of apology.

Amidst the pitch darkness, she failed to notice that the girl beside her had curved the corners of her lips into a sarcastic and mocking smile.

...

Inside the kitchen, Qi Si held a dim green-lighted lantern, illuminating a patch of darkness.

The more Zhao Feng looked at the lantern, the more familiar it seemed, his eyelids twitching slightly. "Brother Chang, where did this lantern come from? Is it also a prop?"

"No, it belongs to the villagers." Qi Si stroked his chin with unperturbed composure. "A villager got so scared by me earlier that he dropped his lantern right on the ground and forgot to pick it up.

"I figured nights in the Su Family Village are quite dark, and the rooms don't have lights either, so illumination must be a rare commodity. I just casually kept it safe for him."

Zhao Feng: ......6.

He remembered when Qi Si had used divine meat to muffle his nose and mouth, putting on a bold facade to frighten the villagers—there did indeed seem to be a villager who had dropped a lantern.

At the time, his attention wasn't focused on that at all, and he had thought Qi Si's morbid sense of humor was utterly inexplicable. Only now did he realize there was a deeper mystery behind it.

No wonder that having cleared merely his second instance, he had already been recruited as a full member of the Sheol Guild. With methods, courage, and insight like this, he was bound to secure a prominent spot on the rankings in the future.

Zhao Feng secretly resolved to learn more from Qi Si moving forward, striving to adapt to the Sheol Guild's style of conduct as quickly as possible so as not to drag down the average standards of such a major guild.

Qi Si had no idea what kind of elaborate inner monologues Zhao Feng was having. He had teased the villager purely out of idle humor and mischievousness; the lantern was merely a convenient theft.

Stepping into the kitchen, he raised the lantern high, sweeping the light inch by inch along the walls.

Piles of firewood, rice jars, vegetable baskets, cupboards, pot racks, stove counters...

Right there on the stove counter, a tattered booklet sat quietly beside the iron pot. Its pages were curled and yellowed, looking as though it had been flipped through frequently.

Qi Si noticed wisps of black smoke lingering over the surface of the booklet, identical to the papyrus he had seen in the *Rose Manor* instance.

He blinked, his vision returning to crystal clarity, and the black smoke vanished without a trace, as if it had merely been an illusion.

"Zhao Feng, I'll hold the lantern. Would you mind helping me turn the pages?" Qi Si said softly.

Not daring to slack off, Zhao Feng walked over, stood firm, and began turning the booklet page by page.

On the title page of the booklet, two large characters reading "Atonement" were scrawled in red ink, looking aggressive and exceptionally grotesque.

On the subsequent pages, every single sheet was densely packed with names.

The names at the very beginning all started with the surname "Su," and most had been crossed out with red ink—they were presumably the villagers of Su Family Village.

The final eleven names happened to be the self-introductions given by the eleven players upon arrival, with the name "Chang Xu" prominently listed among them.

Among them, the four names belonging to Wu Heng, Zhu Dafu, and Allen each bore a fresh red slash, clearly marked not long ago.

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

As Zhao Feng flipped through the pages and scanned them, his expression turned ugly upon spotting his own name. "What the hell! That old hag Old Woman Su really didn't harbor any good intentions. Is she trying to get us all killed here?"

Qi Si did not pick up on his remark.

He thought of the photograph he had found in Room No. 2 on the third floor of the *Rose Manor* instance.

It had similarly marked the life and death of the players, and similarly harbored the malicious intent to wipe out all the players entirely.

Annie had made a deal with a god: as long as all the guests were kept trapped in the manor, her older sister Anna's beauty would be restored.

Then what about this instance?

Had Old Woman Su also made a deal with a god? And what was the content of that transaction?

After a prolonged silence, Qi Si turned his head toward Zhao Feng and smiled faintly. "It's getting late. I'm tired, let's go back to sleep."