Chapter 20: Rose Manor - Innocent Murder |
Zou Yan stood outside Room 2 for five minutes, waiting for a response from Lin Chen that never came.
It was as if the room was deserted.
But she was certain she'd seen Lin Chen enter the room, and he hadn't emerged since.
In her years as a psychologist, Zou Yan had developed a keen eye for character. A brief interaction was enough for her to get a read on someone. She knew Lin Chen wasn't one for schemes or strong opinions; he was soft-hearted, a natural do-gooder who would never stand by and watch someone die.
So what had gone wrong? Did he know something?
Zou Yan's gaze sharpened. She could sense an unforeseen variable creeping into her plans.
She felt a prickle of unease, but the sight of her vine-wrapped right hand quickly calmed her.
It didn't matter. She had already mastered this instance's greatest secret. Even if she couldn't kill Lin Chen, killing someone else would work just as well...
What a shame. Qi Si was clearly the type of person perfectly suited for the Weird Game. But since he was unwilling to accept her olive branch, death was his only other option.
Inside the room, Lin Chen's palms were slick with sweat, his grip on the slippery key precarious. He listened as the footsteps outside faded away, then let out a sigh of relief.
So Zou Yan was trouble after all. Thank god he hadn't opened the door...
So this was the Weird Game? You had to stay constantly on guard, unable to trust anyone, not even other humans...
Lin Chen felt a dawning realization. The very foundation of his twenty-year-old worldview began to fracture.
He took a deep breath and let it out. Just as he was about to step back toward the bed, another knock echoed against the door.
Miss Anna's voice drifted from the other side. "Is anyone in there? Please, could you open the door?"
The hairs on Lin Chen's arms stood on end. He couldn't suppress an exasperated thought: *Why is everyone picking on me? Do I really look that gullible? At least come up with a better routine!*
...
On the third floor, Qi Si stopped at the head of the stairs, peering down from behind the banister.
Dark green vines crept along the handrails, slicing the view below into a distorted web. It was impossible to see the path clearly through the tangled leaves; one could only guess at what lay ahead from the shifting phantoms in the gloom.
Qi Si clicked his tongue. "What a waste of good terrain for an ambush. You think someone's waiting to welcome us down there?"
Chang Xu knew exactly what he meant.
They had already spent an hour on the third floor. There was no telling what might have transpired downstairs in that time.
The appearance of Hermes' Eye suggested that at least one of the women—Zou Yan or Yezi—was a veteran player who knew everything about them.
An hour was more than enough time to set a trap.
"Lend me one of your blades," Chang Xu said to Qi Si, his tone matter-of-fact. "I'm trained. A weapon in my hands will be far more effective."
Handing your weapon to someone else was a fool's move, especially when trust was in such short supply.
Qi Si pretended not to hear. He drew a blade from his own bracelet, pinching it between his fingers, and took half a step back, gesturing for Chang Xu to go first.
He followed it up with a shameless bit of moral blackmail. "Chang Xu, the capable man does the lion's share of the work. And I've always had the utmost respect for police officers—so I'll be counting on you for the path ahead."
Chang Xu shot him a look but didn't argue. He raised a hand, pushed aside the vines flanking the stairs, and took the lead.
Qi Si followed half a step behind him, maintaining a perfect distance from which he could either attack or retreat.
After everything that had happened, their partnership was hanging by a thread.
In the dog-eat-dog environment of the Weird Game, trust between players was a rare commodity. Qi Si and Chang Xu had only formed their temporary alliance out of mutual necessity.
After Shen Ming's death, Chang Xu had become a pariah. Unable to find allies and lacking the information needed to decipher the instance's lore, he had no choice but to press deeper into the manor.
Qi Si, on the other hand, had little understanding of the Weird Game and even less combat prowess. He desperately needed a capable fighter to act as a meat shield during his explorations.
For the purpose of exploring the third floor, they had been the perfect pair.
But now that their exploration was complete, the alliance was no longer so crucial. Especially since Qi Si had openly admitted to withholding key information...
Chang Xu might be socially inept, but he wasn't a fool. He was slowly piecing things together. Looking back, he could see Qi Si's subtle linguistic manipulations at play when he'd first become the group's scapegoat... He had now firmly labeled Qi Si: *Not a good person*. He'd let it slide for this instance, but if he ever ran into this man again, he wouldn't trust a single word out of his mouth.
The staircase wasn't long, and even with the vines in the way, the descent was easy enough.
Rounding the landing, they could see the second floor. Unlike the wild overgrowth of the third, this corridor was eerily clean, imbued with the quiet tension of the calm before a storm.
Whether Chang Xu had slowed his pace or for some other reason, the gap between him and Qi Si shrank until they were only half a step apart—close enough to touch with an outstretched hand.
"Chang Xu! Qi Si! Yezi is trying to kill me! Help me..."
From behind a screen of vines, Zou Yan appeared. Her white coat was splattered with brownish-red blood, and she stumbled toward the stairs, her voice a desperate cry.
Qi Si's eyes fixed on the right hand she kept hidden behind her back. He gave a short, mocking laugh. "Didn't you already kill Yezi? What's this little drama? Her vengeful spirit come back to haunt you?"
Zou Yan froze for a second, then the surprise vanished from her face.
It wasn't surprising that he'd seen through her act. Even without the element of surprise, she wasn't necessarily at a disadvantage in a direct confrontation.
Zou Yan knew the average skill level of players in the novice pool, and she was well aware of her own capabilities.
She slowly brought her right hand into view. A dense thicket of vines erupted from the blood vessels in her arm.
"Oh, my apologies. That was just a wild guess," Qi Si said, his smile widening at the sight. "I didn't expect you to give yourself away so easily."
Yezi was dead, yet the photograph in the second room on the third floor hadn't shown her face. Did that mean Miss Anna wasn't omniscient in this instance?
The guests, snatched from thin air and dropped into the manor, seemed to be at a disadvantage, but perhaps there was a way to turn the tables after all.
Qi Si watched Zou Yan's transformation, reciting in a low, haunting voice, "My chest decays, my flesh spreads upon the earth, where roses make their home, to live on with me tomorrow..."
"Fusing roses with your own flesh and blood to gain power on par with a ghost? So that's what my little poem meant. Thanks for testing it out for me..."
Zou Yan remained silent. She exploded with inhuman speed, crossing the distance to the stairs in a few bounds and thrusting her right hand toward Qi Si.
Nourished by flesh and blood, the vines grew with monstrous speed, twisting through the corridor like savage, grasping limbs.
Danger set off an alarm in his instincts. Chang Xu reacted without thinking, crouching low, fists clenched, poised like a leopard ready to pounce.
He'd been different since he was a child, born with a natural ability to suppress certain supernatural phenomena. And *they* had always deliberately groomed him to be a machine, an instrument for dealing with the weird.
Even if Zou Yan now wielded some of the instance's unnatural power, he still believed he stood a chance...
Chang Xu entered a state of strange, heightened focus. Zou Yan's form fractured in his vision, breaking down into angles and cross-sections. He found his opening, kicked off the ground, and lunged.
But in the next instant, a chill ran across the back of his neck, followed by the searing, unmistakable pain of a blade slicing clean across his artery...
His pupils blew wide, then constricted. Only then did Chang Xu's mind catch up to what had just happened.
A spray of warm blood soaked his neck and collar, but it was followed by a deathly chill, as if he'd been plunged into a cavern of ice.
Death closed in, relentless and irreversible...
Through his fading consciousness, he heard Qi Si's voice, laced with a faint smile. "As expected of a trained martial artist. Your carotid artery is so much more pronounced than a normal person's."
The voice was so unnervingly casual it triggered the primal instinct of a prey animal facing its predator. He collapsed weakly to his knees, struggling to turn his head.
In the dim light, a fresh spray of blood splattered across the young man's already stained white shirt.
The killer gently wiped the blood from the side of the blade, his smile growing ever more innocent, as if he hadn't been the one to strike at all. "Sorry, Chang Xu," he said. "I'm afraid I'll have to trouble you to die, just this once."
He paused, then added in a jesting tone, "But since you probably won't remember any of this in a little while, I'll spare you the lengthy apology."
That same infuriatingly flat sense of humor...
Chang Xu didn't know what he was supposed to feel. Rage? Hatred? Indignation? Or should he be as he always was—detached, feeling neither joy nor sorrow, as if it were all happening to someone else?
All he could feel now was an overwhelming exhaustion, urging him toward sleep, as if he were sinking into the stagnant, lifeless waters of the Dead Sea.
He managed one last look at Qi Si before the final ounce of his strength drained away. His head slumped forward, and his eyes closed.
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