The moment the sun broke through the horizon, the middle-aged man in the student uniform materialized in the lobby of the student dormitory.
Realizing he had actually survived, he dropped to his knees and wept tears of joy. He had thought for sure he was a goner—especially given his terrible luck of running into the slasher. Yet, against all odds, his luck had held out, and he was still alive!
The other surviving participants hurriedly crowded around him to gather information.
“So, which executioner did you run into last night?”
“Was it the Headless Woman, the Conjoined Twins, or the Old Gardener?”
“Are you seriously the only one who made it out alive?!”
After taking a long moment to collect himself, the middle-aged man declared, “The executioner we ran into was the slasher.”
Everyone froze for a second. “Wait, that’s impossible! If you ran into the slasher, how on earth did you survive?!”
Naturally, the middle-aged man couldn’t admit that he had shoved someone else into the monster’s path to buy himself time. Brushing himself off and scrambling to his feet, he put on a profound, unfathomable expression. “Well, that’s obviously because I’m skilled. So what if it was the slasher? Didn’t I still run circles around him like he was a little puppy?”
Just then, everyone noticed another person appearing in the lobby. They turned their gazes in unison and began whispering among themselves.
“Is that a newcomer?”
“I’ve never seen her before.”
“She’s actually quite pretty. If I’d ever seen her, there’s no way I wouldn’t remember.”
Hearing the murmurs, the middle-aged man turned around to look—and immediately went pale with shock.
Xia Miao spotted him too. Striding right over, she delivered a swift, brutal kick straight to the middle-aged man’s crotch. He sucked in a sharp breath of air, clutched his groin, and collapsed to the floor. Hearing the metaphorical sound of shattered eggs, all the male onlookers instantly felt a chilling draft down their spines.
“Consider that kick a token of gratitude for pushing me out as bait yesterday.” Lifting her chin, Xia Miao looked down at the writhing man with the height of arrogance. Without sparing a single glance for anyone else, she tossed her hair back over her shoulder and strolled gracefully toward the stairs.
A key with a room number stamped on it had materialized in her pocket: 404. She figured her dorm room should be up on the fourth floor.
The other survivors stared at the man on the ground with thinly veiled mockery and ridicule. To be fair, everyone resorted to desperate measures to stay alive—there was no shame in that. What was shameful was how the man had been boasting like a hotshot just moments ago, only to get his face thoroughly slapped right after.
“What was that about treating the slasher like a puppy?”
“Looking at him, he was probably chased like a stray dog and had to throw someone else under the bus to save his own skin.”
“A slasher, my foot! Everyone knows the slasher never spares a single survivor. Since they managed to make it through last night, it’s obvious he’s lying. Yesterday’s executioner couldn’t have been the slasher at all.”
As the middle-aged man listened to the surrounding mockery, he found himself utterly unable to produce any evidence to prove his story. However, an even greater mystery gnawed at his mind: How on earth did Xia Miao survive?
He had clearly pushed her straight into the slasher’s clutches. How had she possibly made it out alive?!
Meanwhile, over at the executioner’s dormitory building.
Wearing a straw hat, the Old Gardener was using a pair of oversized pruning shears—taller than a grown man—to trim the surrounding flora. Under his meticulous care, the plants grew tall, vibrant, and lush, radiating a rich vitality that could easily put anyone at ease.
Yet, huddled in the middle of the flowerbed, a headless woman in a white dress was squatting on the ground, frantically clawing at the dirt to unearth a succession of rotting human skulls.
She felt her way through the skulls one by one. Finding none of them were her own, she ruthlessly tossed them aside.
With a mild and pleasant demeanor, the Old Gardener chuckled. “Your head isn’t here, you know. Would you like to go look for it somewhere else?”
“As expected, that woman was just lying when she said she had a crush on me!”
An angry voice echoed from not far away, causing the Old Gardener to pause and look up.
The bandaged boy squatted by the water’s edge, utterly devoid of any composure. His deadpan eyes brimmed with fury as he muttered curses under his breath. “She must have tried to use that… that scheme…”
Beside him, a humanoid monster with withered skin and zero body hair spoke up. “A honey trap.”
A gaping split tore across his chest, out of which protruded a smaller, half-formed monster that looked identical to him, making anyone’s scalp tingle at the sight.
The little monster echoed, “A honey trap.”
“Right, a honey trap!” The bandaged boy wasn’t the most well-read fellow, but once prompted, a lightbulb went off in his head. “That woman actually came up with such a vicious plot to bewilder my mind! She’s even more sinister and cunning than we are. Damn it, I have to kill her! I’ll shear off that pitch-black hair of hers that looks like silk, stab out those eyes of hers that sparkle like black gems, rip apart those lips of hers that are redder than roses, and peel away skin that’s whiter than snowflakes. Let’s see how she goes around tricking people after that!”
The conjoined twins—older and younger brother—shared a glance, deciding that the other staff members weren’t wrong for calling the bandaged boy an idiot behind his back.
The boy sprang to his feet, pacing in circles. Gnawing on his thumbnail, a brilliant spark of sheer genius flashed through his stark-white eyes. “Good thing I’m smart and didn’t fall for her tricks.”
The big monster remarked, “If you didn’t fall for her tricks, how come you didn’t kill her last night?”
The little monster chimed in, “Yeah, why didn’t you kill her?”
The boy shot them both a glare. “I was playing along with her scheme to make her think I fell for it, when in reality, I didn’t! The moment she lowers her guard, I’ll use my knife to slice open her throat. Her expression of utter despair will definitely make her heart taste even more delicious!”
The conjoined twins dragged out a long, unison, “Oh~”
The more the boy thought about it, the more convinced he became that he needed to “play along.” Working himself into an excited frenzy, he grabbed his knife and sprinted away into the distance, completely choosing to selectively forget the rule that executioners and survivors were forbidden from interacting during daylight hours.
The conjoined twin brothers spoke in sync: “Is he an idiot?”
Xia Miao hadn’t expected the role-playing experience here to feel so overwhelmingly realistic. Daytime meant sitting in a classroom following a strict school schedule. That middle-aged man happened to be in her class, which was how she learned his name was Lin Gaoshan.
Given how prematurely aged Lin Gaoshan looked, most of the classroom NPCs didn’t find anything unusual about having a classmate old enough to be their uncle.
Lin Gaoshan kept darting nervous glances over at Xia Miao, still completely baffled as to what magic trick she had pulled to survive the Slit-Mouthed Fiend.
When lunchtime finally rolled around, a crowd of people sprinted toward the cafeteria. Xia Miao drifted with the current, running along with them. As she stepped out of the teaching building, something felt off. Glancing down, she spotted a pair of deadfish eyes staring up from beneath a storm drain grate.
A creature hiding in the damp, gloomy shadows locked a heavy gaze onto her.
Slowly, his eyes narrowed, turning long, narrow, and dangerous.
“Hey, I’ve already seen right through you. You’re trying to deceive—”
Before he could finish, a woman’s shrieking voice cut him off.
“You’re peeping at me?!”
Xia Miao clutched the hem of her skirt and scrambled backward several paces in a flurry.
He looked a bit dumbfounded. “No, wait, I don’t have a peeping hobby.”
Yet she was far too emotionally overwrought to listen to his explanation. “The very first person I ever liked turns out to be a total pervert! I don’t want to date you anymore!”
She whirled around and fled, clutching her shattered maiden heart.
The boy hiding in the gloom sat there with a blank expression.
How strange.
Did he just get dumped?
Wait a minute, is something terribly wrong here?!