“You mean when I first opened my eyes?” Mi Xiaobai thought back for a moment, sounding thoroughly unconcerned. “Well, that was a little more than I expected, and I wasn't exactly prepared for it. So I had no choice but to run.”
Yu Qing could hardly believe his ears. “You had no choice but to what?”
“Run,” the bastard on the other end of the line replied.
“The first thing you did when you opened your eyes wearing my face was run away with something chasing you?”
“Don't worry. I didn't look too undignified,” Mi Xiaobai said. “I thought you might be upset, so I made a point of putting on a mask.”
Yu Qing: “What, am I supposed to thank you?”
Mi Xiaobai said, “Oh, there's no need to be so polite.”
Yu Qing took a deep breath.
Three Ks, meanwhile, had already started gasping.
Standing beside the telephone, he watched helplessly as his “teammate”—whose identity was becoming increasingly dangerous to contemplate—grew more and more displeased. His expression darkened, and his lips pressed into an ever tighter line.
Three Ks was ready to drop to his knees and beg the person on the other end of the telephone.
Could he please stop pissing this guy off?
When you needed two sets of quotation marks just to describe someone, provoking him was a terrible idea. If he finally lost his temper, it would be the innocent bystanders standing closest to him who suffered.
Just as Three Ks was desperately trying to find an opportunity to interrupt, Mi Xiaobai spoke first.
“You sound like you're about to get angry. How about I change the subject?”
Yu Qing: “?”
Even Mr. Painted Skin, for all his worldly experience, had never encountered anyone who changed the subject quite like this.
Mi Xiaobai continued, “When was the last time you took a good look at the two room numbers beside the elevators? Do you remember?”
It was rare for this man to say anything sensible, so Yu Qing genuinely thought back over what had happened.
His expression grew even uglier.
“When I ended up sitting on the elevator floor.”
“…Well, damn.” Mi Xiaobai's soft voice drifted through the receiver. “That didn't work.”
Overhearing this, Three Ks collapsed against Just Plain Rude in despair, only to discover that his companion looked troubled and distracted.
“What's wrong?” he whispered.
“Huh?” Just Plain Rude snapped out of his thoughts and shook his head. “Nothing. I'm just a little worried we won't make it out.”
Three Ks was about to tell him not to worry. Even in the worst case, the extraction rate was still sixty to eighty percent.
But before he could say anything, he remembered that their instance was no longer the same as the ones other players had experienced.
How many of them would survive to the end was genuinely anyone's guess.
He had never been particularly good at comforting people. After struggling to find something reassuring to say, he suddenly remembered the Wish Slip among their special rewards.
“Hey, man! Don't forget about this. We've still got another chance to make a wish. We can get another round of buffs!”
He waved the thin slip of paper.
“I worship Lady Lu, so I can get more money. Shame we only get one chance to buy weapons. Otherwise, I'd definitely get the most expensive, most powerful one they had. Since we can't buy any more weapons, I'll go stock up on medicine instead. I'll buy enough for all of us. How's that sound?”
The reminder noticeably improved Just Plain Rude's mood.
“That's right! We've still got the Wish Slips.”
“Exactly! Which deity do you worship again?”
“The Martial God.”
“The Martial God! That's great! He's exactly who we need right now,” Three Ks said. “If you make two wishes, your Physical Strength will basically be higher than everyone else's—”
“Level four.”
“Higher than that!” Three Ks was determined to be as encouraging as possible. “I heard the Martial God only increases your Physical Strength on paper. In reality, he boosts your fighting spirit, competitiveness, courage, and all kinds of other stuff. There's a reason so many people worship him like he's the God of Wealth! With all those bonuses, your overall stats by the end will… Holy shit, won't they be higher than the NPCs here? What are you worried about? Of course we'll get out!”
“That makes so much sense!”
*
While the two of them were busy reassuring each other, Yu Qing had actually been reconstructing the entire timeline.
Mi Xiaobai might be a bastard, but he had reminded him of something important.
When Yu Qing had been forced to sit on the elevator floor, he really had glanced at the room numbers on his way back.
At the time, they had been exactly as they were when he first checked in: 1812 on the left and 1813 on the right.
Since the numbers decreased toward the left, he had naturally turned left to return to his room without noticing anything unusual.
Sometime after that, Three Ks and Just Plain Rude had posted photographs of the other Room 1811 in Team Chat.
According to them, when they came upstairs, the room numbers immediately outside the elevators had been 1813 on the left and 1812 on the right. The numbers decreased toward the right.
If someone had tampered with the room numbers, it could only have happened between those two points in time.
Who had visited the eighteenth floor during that interval?
The woman from the laundry department, who had also gone to the wrong room, and…
Housekeeping!
Yu Qing remembered the housekeeper: a young man with dark skin.
He had rung the doorbell just as Yu Qing emerged from the bathroom. There was no telling how long he had been in the corridor before that.
Apart from Yu Qing himself, he was the only person who had gone to the room on the left. And once inside, he had shown no surprise whatsoever at the strange traces left behind in the room.
The woman from the laundry department, Three Ks, and Just Plain Rude had all arrived on the eighteenth floor after him.
If he was the one who had switched the room numbers, the timing fit perfectly.
Yu Qing raised his eyes and looked at the hotel attendant they had pressed into service earlier.
The skin the attendant had been forced to wear was beginning to lose its effect. Half his head and face had already reverted to their original appearance, leaving him looking grotesquely divided between two different people.
He was staring at the changes in his own body in terror when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of someone appearing directly in front of him.
He jerked his head up and met a pair of eyes as eerie as ghostly flames.
The attendant nearly jumped out of his skin.
He was so frightened he would have confessed to anything.
“Does your hotel have a dark-skinned housekeeper?”
“I-I think so.”
“Either you do or you don't. What do you mean, you think so?” Yu Qing's expression turned cold.
The attendant hastily corrected himself. “Yes! Yes, we do!”
“Where is he?”
“Usually… usually in the housekeeping staff lounge on the first floor.”
There were so many rooms on the first floor that Yu Qing couldn't be bothered to ask any more questions.
He simply seized the attendant to use as a hostage and headed downstairs without further delay.
The moment he stepped out of his room, the telephone connection, which had remained open all this time, abruptly cut off.
Beep… beep…
The busy signal sounded twice before stopping just as abruptly, leaving nothing but silence.
*
Three Ks stood there in a daze for several seconds.
Then it suddenly occurred to him that this room was actually quite large. It was a family suite with a secondary bedroom concealed behind a hidden door, its dim lighting and winding layout making it difficult to see everything at once.
Judging by the reactions of the family of five, they had once stayed here.
They had died here, too.
He turned his head and caught sight of his reflection in the window.
The skin he had been forced to wear was half peeled away, half still clinging to him. His features were grotesquely divided, and the dress he wore looked pale and indistinct in the glass.
Three Ks scared himself so badly that he screamed and bolted for the door.
Only to discover that Just Plain Rude had already beaten him to it!
They had only been delayed by a few minutes, but those few minutes were enough to give them a profound appreciation of just how terrifying their “teammate” was.
By the time they reached the first floor and rushed into the housekeeping staff lounge, Yu Qing had already moved to the sofa with ghostly speed.
A dark-skinned man sitting on the sofa sprang to his feet and was about to make a break for the door.
Yu Qing seized him by the throat and slammed him back into the sofa.
The force was so tremendous that the man sank through the thick cushions and struck the hard base underneath.
Thud!
A muffled impact rang out. The man's eyes turned bloodshot, his face contorted, and he let out an agonized scream.
“…”
Three Ks and Just Plain Rude went deathly pale.
Without a word, they took a step backward and retreated through the doorway.
By the time they dared peek inside again, the man was already crying out for mercy.
“I don't know! I don't know! Someone told me to do it! They said all I had to do was switch the room numbers! I don't know anything else!”
“Who told you to do it?”
Yu Qing stood over him, his fingers clamped around the man's throat.
The housekeeper opened his mouth to answer, only to press his lips tightly together.
His eyes bulged with desperation, but he couldn't utter a single word. His mouth had taken on a strange appearance, as though someone had sewn his lips shut with needle and thread.
It was as if some unseen force had suddenly intervened to prevent him from speaking.
Yu Qing tilted his head, studying the man's peculiar mouth.
“I could help you tear them open,” he said coldly.
The housekeeper grew even more terrified.
Straining with all his might, he managed to force a few words through the narrow gap between his lips.
“A guest! One of the guests!”
Yu Qing frowned. “Name.”
“I don't know. I don't know.”
Whether from being strangled or sheer terror, the dark-skinned housekeeper's gaze had gone unfocused. He struggled to speak, his voice barely more than a breath.
“They registered a name at the front desk. I didn't look. I really don't know.”
“The front desk?”
Yu Qing turned toward the doorway.
His gaze had barely swept over Three Ks before the latter sprang into action.
“I'll check! I'll go check! I actually know how to do that!”
Just Plain Rude: “…”
Wait, what?
By the time Three Ks reached the reception desk, the puffy-faced middle-aged man was staring expressionlessly at the screen in front of him. Its glow cast a lifeless pallor over his face.
Three Ks skidded to a halt.
“Y-you! Move!”
The middle-aged man scratched his ear.
“What the hell do you want?”
Three Ks: “…Could you please move aside for a moment?”
“What's wrong with you?”
Whatever courage Three Ks had managed to muster promptly deserted him.
“Then could you tell me which guests are currently staying at the hotel? It's kind of urgent.”
The middle-aged man rolled his eyes.
“No.”
He had barely finished speaking when—
BANG!
Yu Qing dragged the dark-skinned housekeeper out of the lounge and slammed his head onto the reception desk.
The receptionist nearly jumped out of his skin.
He and the housekeeper stared at each other, their faces only inches apart, for several long seconds.
Then the receptionist looked toward Three Ks and the others.
After several attempts to work up the courage to object, he finally moved aside without a word.
Yu Qing jerked his chin toward Three Ks.
“Go on.”
Three Ks almost replied, “Yes, sir!”
He sat down at the reception desk with a thoroughly apprehensive expression and brought up the hotel management system.
Just Plain Rude leaned over and whispered, “Where did that sudden burst of confidence come from? You actually know how to use this thing?”
Three Ks gave an embarrassed smile.
“Well, I studied hotel management at university. I've used systems like this during my internship.”
The receptionist hadn't logged out of his employee account, so Three Ks could simply use it to investigate.
But when he opened the guest registration screen, he froze.
“…What's going on? That can't be right.”
Yu Qing had no patience for such vague remarks.
“Explain.”
Three Ks tapped the screen to turn it around, bringing the registration interface clearly into Yu Qing's view.
Most of the table was blank.
Only a handful of rooms had names and real-time voiceprints recorded against them.
Three Ks stared at the screen, his expression empty.
“We're the only guests.”
Apart from Lord Spicy Soup, who was already dead, the entire table listed exactly four guests:
^ ^, Three Ks, Just Plain Rude, and Sushi Bar.
Three Ks, who was always boasting about being a veteran gamer, gradually grew nervous.
“Actually, in the early stages of some games, players sometimes get matched with bots. If we apply that logic here, what if there are people from the game mixed in with our team?”
He rubbed his arms, trying to get rid of the goosebumps.
When he looked up, he found Yu Qing watching him with cold, solemn eyes.
Yu Qing appeared to be seriously considering what he had said, but he hadn't raised any objections, either.
Oh, shit.
Three Ks suddenly realized that, taken the wrong way, what he had just said sounded suspiciously like a veiled accusation against their “teammate.”
He thought for a moment and hurried to clarify.
“What if—I mean, just what if—one of the members of our team is actually the murderer from the instance's story?”
Just Plain Rude seemed stunned by the suggestion. He drew his neck in slightly and asked in a quiet voice:
“Wait… are you saying it could be Sushi Bar? The one who's been playing solo this whole time?”