Chapter 49: The Outcome is Set |
“Yilin, we have to work together to kill Chang Xu,” Zhu Ling said, her gaze fixed intently on Zhou Yilin's eyes.
Thanks to Qi Si’s earlier words, which had so skillfully deflected all blame, she was still unaware that Zhou Yilin was already working with him.
After all, if they had truly formed an alliance, Qi Si could have simply used his influence to overpower everyone else. There would have been no need for him to lie and clear his name.
In her mind, the sequence of events was perfectly clear: Qi Si had first allied with Zhao Feng, only to kill him and frame someone else for the murder. Then, without batting an eye, he’d moved on to win over Zhang Licai...
The man was... nothing short of an unpredictable, utterly reckless madman!
A shiver of fear ran through Zhu Ling just thinking about the young man in the white shirt. She had been so focused on Yang Yundong before, she’d nearly overlooked her other opponents—a mistake that could have been fatal.
“Chang Xu... he's most likely a slaughter-stream player, aiming to kill every last one of us...”
Her words died in her throat. Zhu Ling felt as if a hand were clamped around her neck, strangling her, and she couldn't force out another syllable.
She struggled fruitlessly, her horror mounting as she saw the playful, mocking light dancing in the eyes of the girl before her.
The thread coiled around her little finger. In that instant, her consciousness blurred, and her limbs went slack, no longer under her command. She had become a marionette.
Before her, Zhou Yilin was smiling—the satisfied, self-congratulatory smile of someone who had just enjoyed a particularly amusing farce.
“Zhu Ling, have you ever heard of the gunfighter's dilemma? Only fools reveal their strength. The wise are masters of feigning weakness... Oh, and by the way—an eye for an eye, blood for blood. The Sila Guild sends its regards.”
“You...” Zhu Ling’s eyes widened as she suddenly recalled an experience from her previous instance.
She had allied with a young man and tricked him into revealing he was a member of the Sila Guild. After a period of agonizing deliberation, she had ultimately chosen to have him executed.
It was a team-based instance, but a "minimum death count" mechanic had sown suspicion among the players. The execution of the Sila member had been the perfect catalyst to make them put aside their suspicions and unite under her leadership...
“You love playing the hero, don't you? You love judging others for their sins? Did it ever occur to you that one day, you might be the one being judged?” The girl leaned in close, grabbing a fistful of Zhu Ling's hair. In a deceptively intimate gesture, she pressed her lips to Zhu Ling's ear. “Don't you worry, Zhu Ling. I'll be sure to give you a truly beautiful ending.”
Zhu Ling’s lips trembled. She wanted to apologize, to explain how she’d had no other choice, to beg for forgiveness, but she found she couldn't utter a single syllable.
She couldn’t even control her own thoughts, her expressions, her actions. She could only follow the girl's lead, her body contorting into bizarre poses...
...
“...If they can't clear the instance through the standard route, then Zhu Ling or Zhou Yilin will have no choice but to trigger the minimum death count mechanic—by killing everyone else.”
Inside the room, Qi Si was still holding Zhang Licai’s hand. A faint smile played on his lips, but it never reached his eyes. “And when that happens,” he added, “you will die. For real.”
Zhang Licai opened his mouth, then closed it, carefully choosing his words. “Chang... Chang Xu,” he asked, “if you've already figured out the key to clearing this instance, why not just tell everyone?”
Qi Si withdrew his hand and gave him a look one might reserve for a simpleton. “Because,” he said, drawing out the word, “I don't want to.”
Just then, a frantic pounding echoed from the door. Zhou Yilin’s tearful voice drifted through, broken by sobs. “Zhu Ling... she... I think she’s trying to kill me! I’m so scared...”
After his conversation with Qi Si, Zhang Licai knew the girl’s apparent frailty was nothing but an act.
But he wished he knew nothing at all.
Now, he had no choice but to play along, to throw himself into this farcical play as the oblivious, comic relief character whose fate was not his own to decide.
“Don't you panic, miss, come on in!” Zhang Licai, a master of playing dumb, called out.
He pushed the door open with a look of pure innocence, gesturing for Zhou Yilin to enter.
Zhou Yilin gave a slight shake of her head. “Zhu Ling's acting strangely... We... we should go and restrain her together...”
Zhang Licai hesitated for a moment, but a glance back at the amused look in Qi Si’s eyes convinced him. He had no choice but to follow cautiously.
He’d barely taken a few steps outside when Zhu Ling, her face twisted in a ferocious snarl, charged at him. Startled, he threw up his hands reflexively, flailing with a few clumsy punches.
The two of them grappled bizarrely for a moment before, just as bizarrely... Zhu Ling collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
While the power levels between players in the starter instances didn't vary much, Zhang Licai still found it incredible that he’d taken down a veteran so easily.
He sensed that something was deeply wrong, a strange dissonance to the whole affair. But when he felt the piercing stares of Qi Si and Zhou Yilin on him, he didn't dare to dwell on it.
“Well, I suppose that makes us accomplices now, doesn't it?” Qi Si joked, though no one else was laughing.
He turned to Zhang Licai and commanded, “Go to the woodshed and find some rope. Tie her up, just to be safe.”
Knowing a mere pawn on this stage had no say in the matter, Zhang Licai summoned the same eager-to-please energy he used to serve the senior members of his comedy troupe and scurried off to obey.
Nearby, Zhou Yilin, her eyes rimmed with red, was wiping away tears. “I'm so sorry,” she sobbed. “She made me stay behind to alter your travel pamphlets. She said if I didn't, she'd throw me out into the night... I was so terrified, I had to do what she said...”
Hearing this, Zhang Licai spat on the unconscious Zhu Ling. “That damn woman,” he cursed. “She was up to no good. If Yang hadn't lost his arm that night, he'd still be alive...”
“It's all my fault...” Zhou Yilin wailed, her performance utterly convincing. “If it weren't for me, Yang wouldn't have died... he wouldn't have...”
The truth didn't matter. In the later stages of an instance, a scapegoat was always needed to fill the death quota. If the others wanted to avoid becoming lambs to the slaughter, they first had to neutralize the veteran player most likely to dominate the group.
This was simply a silent conspiracy of slander, a mutually beneficial plot. The perpetrators stood on the moral high ground, judging an imperfect victim, all for the sake of their own self-interest. Qi Si glanced to the west. The sun was beginning to dip; it was now afternoon.
He cut through the dedicated performance of the two actors beside him. “I managed to get some information out of Su Po earlier,” he announced. “From what I can tell, the 'divine corpse' from the instance's backstory is somewhere to the west of the village. The danger for the next few days will come from the spirits being suppressed in the ancestral hall.”
He selectively repeated what Su Po had told him, twisting her words to fit his narrative, then declared in a tone that brooked no argument, “I suggest we split up. Zhang Licai, you and I will take the wooden bucket to the ancestral hall. Considering those spirits are described as 'perpetually hungry,' leaving a bucket of meat outside might buy us some time.”
He said nothing about what Zhou Yilin should do, but the implication was perfectly clear.
Zhou Yilin shot Qi Si a timid glance. “I think I might have left something at the ancestral hall...” she said softly. “Chang Xu, let me come with you. It’ll be safer with three of us to watch each other’s backs...”
“Together?” Qi Si scoffed. “If we run into trouble, it'll just come down to which one of us is lucky enough to be chosen by the 'minimum death count' mechanic.”
“Then... what if I go with Zhang?” Zhou Yilin proposed tentatively. “You're more capable than either of us, Chang Xu. If something happens, you'll have a better chance of dealing with it...”
She was clearly determined to avoid exploring the west side of the village.
After all, the only two people who had gone west, Yang Yundong and Allen, were now dead. No one knew what was waiting over there.
Qi Si seemed to let himself be persuaded. His brow furrowed slightly. “Fine. In that case, you two go, but be quick about it. We'll gather more clues tomorrow and the day after, then we'll head west.”
“Right! No problem!” Zhou Yilin replied, visibly relieved, and reached out to tug on Zhang Licai's sleeve.
He didn't understand the urgency but let her pull him out the door, muttering, “What's the big rush? It's not even dark yet...”
Qi Si watched them go with a faint smile, her intentions as clear to him as day.
Zhu Ling and Yang Yundong, as experienced veterans, were the first targets that had to be eliminated. And now, as the group's de facto leader, wasn't he next?
To deal with Zhu Ling, Zhang Licai's presence had been dispensable. Even if Qi Si and Zhou Yilin had moved against her openly, Zhang Licai would never have dared to speak up for her.
Zhou Yilin had insisted on keeping Zhang Licai around, and Qi Si knew why. Staging that little performance to take down Zhu Ling was just an excuse; her real goal was likely preparing to make a move against him.
If he had no tricks up his sleeve, perfect. If he did, she could use Zhang Licai's life to probe for them.
It was the same tactic he himself had used in the Rose Manor instance, keeping Chang Xu and Lin Chen alive to keep Zou Yan in check.
Zhou Yilin believed she had laid a flawless trap, unaware that Qi Si was an equally brilliant playwright pulling the strings from behind the curtain.
Under the pretext of splitting up, she planned to catch him off guard and turn Zhang Licai against him.
She likely assumed Qi Si would never expect such a ruthless move when there was no immediate conflict of interest between them.
But she had miscalculated. Qi Si was every bit as much of a madman, a monster with blood on his hands.
He had deliberately created this opportunity to act alone. He never intended for his "teammates" to survive.
He watched as Zhou Yilin and Zhang Licai left the house, one after the other. Their figures shrank in the distance until they were finally swallowed by the jagged maze of houses to the east. A strange tenderness crept into Qi Si’s eyes.
He silently counted off the seconds. Once he estimated they were far enough away, he hauled the unconscious Zhu Ling to her feet, crossed the threshold, and started walking west.
Both Zhou Yilin and Zhang Licai were operating under a flawed assumption. They never considered that the instance could be cleared ahead of schedule, nor that a player could abandon the human faction entirely.
In fact, Qi Si had deliberately reinforced this misconception, creating a crucial gap in both time and information. He had engineered this evening to be the perfect moment to make his move.
A gray fog hung heavy over the road to the west. A sudden wind, born from nowhere, lifted dry dust from the ground, sending it spiraling into the air. The particles scattered, separated, then regrouped, mingling with the fog to draw a thick curtain across the landscape.
The pale, gray sunlight refracted and reflected through the haze, smudging the world with a diffuse light. The sky and earth to the west began to fade, bleeding together into a vast, blank whiteness.
Qi Si dragged Zhu Ling deeper into the thickest part of the fog. He walked for what felt like an eternity, until the outlines of the world around him dissolved completely. Only then did he stop and murmur to some unseen presence:
“All the mechanics are clear now. I could simply eat the divine meat each day, pay my respects at the ancestral hall on the final day, and clear the instance with my 'sins' washed away. But that's so terribly boring. I don't like it.”
“If I leave, just like all the players before me, you might have to wait many more years for another chance. And I have always been a greedy man. I enjoy collecting on my debts... and exploiting a weakness when I see one.”
“If I'm to pay an extra price, I must receive a greater reward. Only then will I be willing. So, I wonder... what price are you prepared to offer?”
The sun had not yet set, and the dangers of the night had not yet descended. But the dangerous creature was already waiting, eyes half-closed, for night to fall, ready to perform a long-awaited ritual.
With no landmarks, no point of reference in the whiteout, Qi Si raised his pocket watch and held it to his ear.
Listening to the steady, even ticking, he felt as if he could hear his own heartbeat. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the senses.
All boundaries blurred and dissolved within the endless fog, transforming into a flowing mountain mist that scattered on the wind.
Qi Si's eyes were half-lidded. He savored this chaos, this blankness, this silence. It felt like feigning sleep in a dark room filled with monsters and ghouls, pretending he was one of them.
And in that dead, gray-white silence, he heard a distinct *click* from the watch, sharper than the soft ticking of the second hand.
It told him the sun had set.