"Help... help me... hrrk..."
The man screamed toward the guesthouse for rescue, but the only answer he got... was dead silence.
Ning Qiushui slipped carefully out of bed, went to the wooden door, and turned the bolt. Only then did he move, step by step, to the window, and look down by the cold, clear moonlight.
He saw a dark figure stumbling out of the woods, hands clawing furiously at its own neck!
It was the screaming man!
The man shrieked toward the guesthouse for help even as he tore madly at his neck, as if... something were on it.
He tried to stretch a hand toward the guesthouse, but the hand snapped back as if beyond his control, and returned to clawing wildly at his neck!
And the man himself only spun in circles in the courtyard, seemingly unable to come any closer to the guesthouse.
His screams grew more and more horrible, until the sound alone made the scalp crawl!
But through it all, not one person came out of the guesthouse to save him.
Perhaps no one heard.
But even if someone heard—no one would dare go out to him.
They all knew what kind of place the world behind the Blood Door was!
Rushing out to save a man might not save him—and could bury you alongside him!
At last, after a dozen minutes or so, the man outside stopped screaming.
Ning Qiushui thought that was the end of it—but what happened next made his eyes go wide, and very nearly wrenched a shout out of him!
He watched, under the pallid moonlight, as the man knelt there in the open courtyard, gripped his own head in both hands—and tore it clean off his living body!
Blood erupted in great gouts, spraying as high as the second floor!
And more horrifying still—having torn off his own head, the man did not die. His mouth went on wailing its ghastly plea:
"It hurts... save me... I'm begging you... someone save me..."
"It hurts... it hurts so much..."
"Why... why won't anyone save me... why..."
And then, carrying his own dripping head, he began to turn, slowly, toward the guesthouse—as if inspecting it, window by window, room by room!
Ning Qiushui's instincts fired; he withdrew his gaze at once and stepped, one careful pace at a time, back to his bed!
His heart was slamming at a furious pace!
Only after a long, long while did the noise outside finally cease.
And Ning Qiushui, too, finally drifted into a hazy sleep.
The next morning, he was woken by knocking at his door.
He rose and opened it: Bai Xiaoxiao, already dressed.
She looked the same as ever—her face almost bare of makeup, save that one stroke of vivid red on her lips.
"Get dressed. After breakfast we'll go walk the nearest scenic spot. We might turn up a useful lead on the path to survival."
Ning Qiushui nodded and said no more.
He dressed quickly and went downstairs to find Liu and Bai already waiting by the entrance.
A crowd had gathered there.
Ning Qiushui counted, and his brow suddenly creased.
Three people short.
Had they set out early? Not gotten up?
Or else...
"What's going on?"
Reaching the two of them, Ning Qiushui asked.
Neither spoke. Bai Xiaoxiao tipped her delicate chin, motioning for him to look toward the open ground of the courtyard.
There lay a corpse.
A mangled mess of blood and flesh.
With no head.
It was the man Ning Qiushui had watched last night.
He pushed through the whispering crowd and walked toward the body.
The man's head was gone; only the headless corpse remained. The neck was covered in raw red claw-marks, and under his fingernails there were still shreds of flesh!
"Does anyone here know him?"
Ning Qiushui turned suddenly and called to the crowd.
At that, a young girl stepped out of the crowd, face ashen, and answered in a small, frail voice:
"He—I think he's my friend... but I can't be sure, because his head is gone."
Ning Qiushui beckoned to her.
"Then come take a closer look."
The girl panicked at that, waving her hands frantically, her voice edging toward tears:
"No... I—I can't..."
Ning Qiushui was at a loss for words.
But after a moment's thought, he let it go.
This was his second Blood Door, so most of the people matched into it would be newcomers like him.
Seeing a corpse this gruesome for the first time—of course they'd react badly.
At that moment, someone in the crowd seemed to give the girl a shove. She shrieked, staggered several steps forward, and fell to her knees right in front of the headless corpse!
The girl clapped her hands over her eyes, not daring to look at the body before her.
Fortunately, a night in the open wind had thinned the corpse's stench of blood; otherwise Ning Qiushui would have worried she'd vomit outright.
He stood, positioned himself at an angle, and said to the girl behind her hands:
"There. I'm blocking the bloody part. Now look at his clothes and the other details—can you confirm who he is?"
At his words, the girl cautiously opened a slit between her fingers, looked for a few seconds, then nodded and quavered:
"It's... it's him!"
Ning Qiushui's brow furrowed.
As he'd thought.
The dead man was one of theirs.
"Do you know what he went off to do yesterday?"
The girl drew a deep breath, and it took her a long moment to steady her terror.
"Last night... he—he wanted me to go with him to the temple on the hill behind the village, to look around. He said if that NPC Hou Kong wouldn't let us go there, the path to survival had to be there. But I was scared, so I didn't go..."
"He went alone. And after that... he never came back!"
The temple?
At her words, Liu Chengfeng's face in the crowd went a shade whiter.
Clearly, the same idea had crossed his mind.
Only Bai Xiaoxiao's veto had kept him from acting on it.
Otherwise...
There might well be one more headless corpse lying in that courtyard right now!
"You see? That's what comes of moving rashly at night..."
Bai Xiaoxiao's voice was soft, but it made Liu Chengfeng beside her shudder hard.
"All right. Let's go eat."
Her red lips parted around a yawn, and with that she led the way out of the guesthouse, skirting the corpse, heading for the village canteen.
Behind them, someone in the crowd said, wide-eyed:
"Hold on—the body's just lying there... and we do nothing?"
Bai Xiaoxiao didn't look back:
"If your heart aches for him, you're welcome to bury him. But it's all meaningless."
"Inside a Blood Door, the bodies of the dead... vanish soon enough."
Ning Qiushui examined the corpse carefully a while longer—then seemed to find something. From inside the dead man's clothes he slipped out a small object, palmed it quietly, rose, and followed Bai Xiaoxiao and Liu Chengfeng toward the canteen...