Yu Qing wasn't entirely unfamiliar with the name Sushi Bar. At the very least, he had seen it countless times in that noisy Team Chat.
But every time the name appeared, it was because Three Ks and Just Plain Rude were desperately tagging him. Sushi Bar himself had never said a single word.
“He's still alive?” Yu Qing asked.
It was a perfectly serious question, but perhaps because of his indifferent tone, it sounded remarkably like mockery.
Just Plain Rude faltered for a moment before opening Team Chat on his phone and pointing to Sushi Bar's avatar.
“He is. When someone dies, their avatar turns black and white. His is still in color.”
Sushi Bar's avatar showed a hand holding an apple, one half rotten and the other a vivid bloodred.
Yu Qing glanced at it, then asked, “Have you met him?”
“Once,” Three Ks replied. “When we were checking in. Sushi Bar and Just Plain Rude were both at the reception desk when I got there.”
Just Plain Rude nodded. “He was in line behind me. I was almost finished checking in.”
Three Ks turned to Yu Qing with the aggrieved air of someone lodging a complaint.
“I only saw him that once, and his looks completely fooled me! He's got a buzz cut, a slit through one eyebrow, and a bandage across the bridge of his nose. He looks like some tough guy straight out of an edgy action game.”
“Seriously,” Just Plain Rude agreed. “Like he'd just finished a fight, wiped the blood off his face, and walked straight in.”
“I run into lone-wolf teammates all the time,” Three Ks complained. “Sushi Bar practically had LONE WOLF tattooed across his forehead. So when he went completely silent afterward, I didn't think there was anything strange about it.”
Looking back, though, everything about it was strange.
The hotel might be enormous, but its layout wasn't particularly complicated.
Apart from the main building full of guest rooms, there were only three small shops downstairs and the altar in the rear courtyard. Whether a player wanted to complete quests or collect rewards, there was no avoiding those places.
If Sushi Bar was an ordinary player, was it really possible that he had never once crossed paths with anyone else?
The chances were vanishingly small.
It seemed far more likely that he had been deliberately avoiding the other players.
And in an instance like this, who could avoid every single player so perfectly while remaining alive and completely unharmed?
It would be difficult for an ordinary person.
But if Sushi Bar was actually an instance boss, everything would make sense!
The more Three Ks thought about it, the more convinced he became. He immediately checked Sushi Bar's registered room in the hotel management system.
“He's staying in 202.”
“202? Fine.”
Yu Qing promptly held out his hand.
Three Ks failed to grasp what His Lordship wanted.
“Huh?”
“The key card for Room 202.”
Three Ks stared at him.
“We're going there right now?!”
“Why wouldn't we?”
Yu Qing's gaze was so cold, and his tone so matter-of-fact, that Three Ks immediately bent over the computer and busied himself making a key card.
Just Plain Rude stared at him.
“…You know how to do that too?”
Three Ks whispered almost inaudibly, “Wish I didn't.”
Years of gaming had left him with a particular habit: before fighting a boss, he had to upgrade his weapons, take every useful potion he could get his hands on, and make sure all his stats and buffs were maxed out.
Charging straight into a fight with nothing but a blade in hand?
He didn't know how to do that!
More importantly, he didn't dare.
They said Rose Island recreated physical sensation almost perfectly. Dying in the game supposedly felt terrifyingly real, and he had absolutely no desire to experience it.
Besides, the game had been running for three days, yet not a single player who had died inside an instance had come forward to describe what it felt like.
Presumably, it was so awful that they still hadn't recovered.
Just thinking about the possibility of dying made Three Ks genuinely nervous.
He handed Yu Qing the key card and ventured, “Are you going to Room 202 to find Sushi Bar right now? Could I possibly…”
He licked his lips, glanced at Just Plain Rude, and decided to drag his companion into it too.
“Could we go to the altar and use our Wish Slips first? I'd like to buy some more medicine, too.”
“Are you sick?” Yu Qing asked.
Three Ks: “…”
Smiley, you're really starting to sound like an NPC. That robotic way of talking is getting harder to hide.
Three Ks didn't dare explain any further. He simply answered, “Yeah.”
Yu Qing asked no more questions and made no attempt to force them to accompany him.
In fact, he paid the two of them no further attention at all. He took the key card and headed toward the elevators, disappearing around the corridor's corner in the blink of an eye.
One entire wall of the elevator was covered in mirrors, allowing him to see himself clearly.
As Yu Qing stood inside, he happened to notice that the skin concealing his right hand had quietly begun to peel away.
He found it rather strange.
Such a thing was exceedingly rare.
The only times his skin had ever slipped off without his noticing were during his first few years as Painted Skin and when he was weakened.
He thought back for some time before remembering a notification that had appeared on the holographic screen when he was first dragged into this place.
Appearance set mismatch detected. Correcting…
Had the game corrected his abilities along with his appearance?
Although it didn't interfere too much with his ability to wear human skins, Yu Qing was still deeply displeased.
He continued examining the condition of his right hand until he reached Room 202.
Out of courtesy, he raised his hand and knocked three times.
The room was utterly silent. Not a single human voice could be heard.
Yu Qing knocked another three times as a final gesture of politeness, then raised the key card and unlocked the door.
The door slammed against the wall.
Yu Qing stepped inside and quickly frowned.
The duvet lay across the bed in the usual hotel arrangement, its four corners tucked in tightly without a single wrinkle. Neither the sofa nor the chairs showed any sign of having been moved.
A damp, dusty smell hung in the air.
Yu Qing was particularly sensitive to such things. One breath was enough to tell him that nobody had occupied this room for a long time.
Sushi Bar wasn't here.
Had he registered a false room number? Was he actually staying somewhere else?
Several possibilities flashed through Yu Qing's mind.
He didn't linger. He turned and walked straight out.
His figure appeared in the corridor like a ghost. One moment he was at this end, and the next he was deep inside it.
With a perfectly calm expression, he traversed the long corridor, sensing the presence of anyone within each guest room as he passed.
He searched every floor in the same manner.
Just a few minutes later, Yu Qing's tall figure appeared on the eighteenth floor.
He had searched the entire hotel without finding any trace of Sushi Bar.
The skin he was wearing was also on the verge of disappearing completely. He could hardly continue wandering around in a bathrobe, so he had no choice but to return to his own room.
The suit that the laundry attendant had brought back was draped over the back of a chair. Although it had only just been cleaned, it was already stained with blood again.
Yu Qing no longer had any faith in the hotel's dry-cleaning service. Instead, he took care of the suit himself, applying stain removal and quick-drying treatments.
He was buttoning his shirt when the phone on the table suddenly vibrated.
Yu Qing casually swiped the screen, assuming Three Ks or Just Plain Rude had posted something else in Team Chat.
Instead, he discovered that the little red notification dot had appeared in his Friends tab.
Yu Qing: “?”
He tapped Mi Xiaobai's avatar.
Two new messages had appeared in their chat.
^ ^: You're back in your room? I just woke up in this Room 1811 again.
^ ^: I suddenly realized I can send you messages this way, too.
Yu Qing: “??”
^ ^: I was going to pick up the telephone and call you, but I don't actually have anything to say. It's just that the room is terribly stuffy, and I'm getting a little bored.
^ ^: There isn't even any spare notepaper to keep me entertained. I had to fold the note you left behind to scold me.
Yu Qing remembered the pile of origami beside his pillow when he had first opened his eyes.
He could almost feel the other man's boredom.
^ ^: [Image]
The bastard had taken a photograph of a little cat's head folded from notepaper. He had even used a pen to draw two hollow, black skeletal eyes on it.
Yu Qing opened the picture, enlarged it, and held the screen right in front of the little white skeleton's face.
“See that? He's insulting you.”
The little skeleton hissed at the picture.
At the end of his patience, Yu Qing called Mi Xiaobai.
“Stop sending me this nonsense. It's irritating having my phone vibrate constantly.”
Mi Xiaobai considered this for a moment before offering his assessment.
“You sound angrier than before. I take it the hunt isn't going particularly well.”
Yu Qing fell silent.
The little skeleton seized the opportunity to hiss fiercely into the telephone.
“Ah, hello,” Mi Xiaobai said. “I think I just heard your kitten saying hello.”
The little skeleton was so furious that all its white fur stood on end.
The bastard remained blissfully unaware.
“I think I overheard you looking for that mysterious teammate who's never shown himself?”
Yu Qing finally spoke.
“He wasn't in his registered room. In fact, he wasn't in any of the rooms.”
“That is strange. The doors in this hotel are quite thick, but the soundproofing isn't particularly good. Avoiding you while you're right there, without you noticing anything, would be awfully difficult.”
Naturally.
Otherwise, what was the point of him being a Ghost Deity?
So thought Mr. Painted Skin.
But the instant that thought crossed his mind, another possibility occurred to him.
What if it had happened before he entered the hotel?
What if all the hiding and evasion had taken place before he checked in, and Sushi Bar hadn't moved at all since his arrival?
In that case, Yu Qing wouldn't have detected any traces of his movements.
Even so, there would still be a risk of discovery.
After all, nobody could guarantee that the hotel's guests wouldn't suddenly open a particular door while searching for clues.
Unless…
The person hiding wasn't worried about that possibility.
“Somewhere you could open the door and still be unable to see whether anyone was hiding inside…”
Yu Qing murmured the words under his breath.
Before he had even finished speaking, a particular place sprang to mind.
Mi Xiaobai's remark about someone hiding right under his nose had reminded him.
There really was such a room.
Even with its door wide open, the room would never reveal its true appearance. It, too, wore a layer of disguise, presenting the furnishings and appearance of another room, just as Painted Skin could wear someone else's skin.
A flicker passed through Yu Qing's eyes.
At that moment, he heard the person on the other end of the telephone let out a soft “Ah.”
“So he's hiding in my room. You're very clever.”
Yu Qing: “?”
He had barely said anything.
But the other man continued with perfect composure.
“Of course, I'm not stupid either.”
Yu Qing couldn't bear to listen to him any longer.
“Then why don't you keep proving how clever you are and strip the disguise off that room?”
The other Room 1811 had been copying everything inside Yu Qing's room from the very beginning: its furnishings, its arrangement, the traces left behind, and even the people inside it.
Only by finding whatever had been used to tamper with the room and removing it could they restore the room to its original appearance.
“I suppose I could.”
Mi Xiaobai agreed readily.
His voice gradually receded from the telephone, as though he had already begun searching the room.
“Something like this would usually be placed on the threshold or the main door—”
“I checked both places last time. There's nothing there,” Yu Qing interrupted.
“If it's inside the room, things get a little more troublesome. My room is a perfect mirror image of yours. That means the place where the trick was set up—the starting point of the entire arrangement—should be the one place in the room that doesn't appear as a mirror image.”
“I've been meaning to say this for ages, but whoever decorated this room had terrible taste. The wallpaper's too dark, and the carpet is far too busy. Searching through all this is really…”
His voice came from farther away, as though he were lifting a corner of the carpet somewhere. He finished his complaint in a lazy drawl.
“…hard on the eyes.”
The bastard clearly had no intention of allowing Yu Qing to rest in peace.
Every time he checked somewhere, he recorded a short video and sent it over, accompanied by a message.
^ ^: You can compare this with your room to double-check.
^ ^: Come on, supervisor. Time for your inspection.
^ ^: My eyes are going blurry.
^ ^: Have you fallen asleep? Why aren't you saying anything?
Yu Qing: “…”
Why would anyone type messages while talking on the phone???
Didn't he ever get tired?
Yu Qing certainly hadn't fallen asleep.
He hadn't even sat down to rest.
He played every video Mi Xiaobai sent him with the sound muted, silently comparing every corner of the room.
If Uncle Yuan had witnessed this scene, he would probably have thought the sun had risen in the west.
They searched for a long time, examining every corner of the enormous room, yet found nothing.
Even the patterns in the carpet and the water stains in the corners were mirrored perfectly.
They still hadn't found the starting point.
That shouldn't be possible.
There was no way to accomplish something like this without leaving a trace.
And yet they really had searched every corner of the room…
Yu Qing pondered the problem as he walked across the room.
Suddenly, he caught sight of a figure out of the corner of his eye.
He turned his head.
In the corner of the room stood a mirror, reflecting his own image.
“Wait.”
He spoke softly.
He was some distance from the telephone on the table, and the voice from the other end sounded equally distant.
He couldn't see what was happening in the other room, so he had no way of knowing that, at that very moment, he and Mi Xiaobai had almost simultaneously stopped in their tracks before their respective mirrors.
“It's the mirror.”
“Ah, here it is.”
Their voices collided over the telephone, then dispersed into the silence of their separate rooms.
In a room with such elaborate furnishings, if there was one place that wasn't mirrored, yet blended so seamlessly with everything else that it created no visible discrepancy, there could only be one answer.
The mirror itself!
“Looks like we shouldn't be wrong this time. Whatever's being used to create the copy should be hidden inside the mirror. Break it, and the room should return to its original appearance. Sushi Bar is most likely hiding here.”
Mi Xiaobai's voice came through the telephone, slightly muffled.
Yu Qing placed his palm against the mirror and gave it a gentle jolt.
Crash!
The mirror shattered instantly, scattering glass across the floor.
A thin talisman was stuck inside it.
The sound of breaking glass came from the other end of the telephone as well.
“Found it,” Mi Xiaobai said. “Shall I peel it off?”
The instant he finished speaking, Yu Qing felt the entire room shudder violently.
He could clearly sense a certain power dissipating and fading away as the talisman was removed.
At the same time, the telephone call that had remained connected for so long abruptly ended once again.
With the copying talisman removed, the person occupying the duplicated room would naturally disappear.
Yu Qing paused.
For some reason, he found himself momentarily unaccustomed to the sudden silence.
He stood there for a little while, then peeled away the talisman in front of him and strode out of the room.
He unlocked the door to the other Room 1811 and entered.
The little skeleton caught up with him in a few quick steps, leaping onto his shoulder just as he crossed the threshold.
The first thing Yu Qing saw was the shattered glass scattered across the floor.
Among the fragments lay a talisman that had quietly fluttered down.
He picked it up, turned, and passed through a narrow doorway inside the room.
There, on the sofa in the secondary bedroom, he found someone.
Just as Three Ks had described, the man had tanned skin, a buzz cut, and a bandage running across the bridge of his nose.
There was no doubt about it.
This was Sushi Bar.
But he certainly didn't look like someone who had hidden himself here of his own accord.
He was bound to the sofa, unable to move, and completely unconscious.
No matter how Yu Qing looked at it, someone else had hidden him here.
Which raised the question…
Who?
Yu Qing frowned at the unconscious Sushi Bar.
Finally, he unfolded the two talismans that had been used to create the copies and examined them closely.
The talismans bore unusual patterns, their characters joined together in continuous strokes. An ordinary person would have had great difficulty identifying what was written on them.
But as a Ghost Deity, Yu Qing knew that the talismans actually bore the signature of the person who had drawn them.
He recognized the signature on both.
These were two talismans of the Martial God.
Only someone who worshipped the Martial God could obtain such things.