Chapter 82: Hopeless Sea |
Unlike the journey here, there was no clock tower to guide them back. The two-story inn vanished easily among the coconut palms, its location lost.
Qi Si followed the path from memory, but soon caught the faint scent of blood in the air.
Without breaking his stride, he veered off the path, pushing aside palm fronds and circling several sand dunes. He stopped where the metallic tang was strongest, and the view before him opened up.
It was a small clearing, a patch of sand untouched by the grove. A young man in a black tracksuit lay in the very center.
It was impossible to tell how long he'd been there, but a pool of blood had formed beneath him, staining the sand a deep crimson.
Chang Xu was the first to approach. He knelt beside the young man and checked for breath. "He's dead," he confirmed.
Qi Si waited a full ten seconds, ensuring there was no immediate danger, before moving closer. He stopped at the edge of the bloodstain. "Judging by the coagulation," he observed, "he's been dead for at least three hours."
The young man had a clean-cut, unremarkable face—not the kind that left a lasting impression.
His eyes were wide, staring sightlessly. His pupils were dilated, and his tongue lolled from his open mouth. It was not a pretty death.
Chang Xu complied.
As he began to roll the body over, Qi Si saw something dislodge from the back of the corpse's head. It was a fragment of bone. The shattered pieces had been matted together with dried blood, obscuring the injury from a frontal view.
Qi Si whistled softly. "Impressive strength. Half his skull is caved in. Looks like the killer was at least a head taller than the victim."
Chang Xu caught the implication. "You mean a person killed him? Another player?"
"It's just a theory," Qi Si replied, careful not to overstate his case. Absolute certainty was a quick way to lose credibility.
He offered his analysis in a casual tone. "Two people died last night. One simply vanished, the other was mauled by some kind of fish creature. This doesn't match either of those. Besides, Gao Musheng and Xu Maochun's rooms were flooded with seawater. This spot is bone dry—not even a hint of salt in the air."
Chang Xu's brow furrowed. "Why would the killer murder him? A side quest?"
"Who knows? Robbery, maybe..." Qi Si glanced in the general direction of the inn and added with a slight jest, "Or perhaps they knew each other. Settling an old score."
Chang Xu didn't find it the least bit amusing.
Once one player started killing others, the zero-sum nature of the instance would be laid bare. The fragile balance they had managed to achieve would be shattered.
A free-for-all of paranoia and betrayal was the last thing he wanted to see.
Qi Si lowered his gaze and sighed. "The real problem is, we don't know who the killer is."
He suddenly raised an eyebrow at Chang Xu. "Chang Xu, you ever play Werewolf?"
"Never played it myself, but I know the basic mechanics. Watched a few games," Chang Xu said, recalling the rules. "It’s usually a twelve-player game, split into two factions: werewolves and villagers. The villagers have to identify and vote out all the hidden werewolves to win, using their special roles and abilities. The werewolves hide in plain sight, killing a villager each night and trying to mislead everyone during the daytime votes."
It seemed to have nothing to do with the faction-based game they were currently playing.
Chang Xu looked at Qi Si, waiting for him to continue.
"In a group of non-rational actors, the probability of lynching an innocent is over fifty percent."
Qi Si stated his conclusion with a knowing smile. "Chang Xu, if everyone became convinced I was the mastermind... would you believe them?"
...
The inn kitchen.
The hallway was long and narrow, like the gullet of some monstrous beast. An unbearable stench of fish hung in the air, so thick that after only a moment, your skin felt coated in a greasy film that made you itch.
Strange fish skeletons hung from the wooden walls on either side. They were half the height of a man, with spines as thick as human ribs. If not for the intact heads and tails, one might have easily mistaken them for human remains.
The deeper they went into the kitchen, the fresher the skeletons became. Some still had scraps of meat clinging to them, hanging down like tattered rags.
Zhang Hongfeng led the way with Liu Yuhan close behind, exploring the depths of the kitchen.
From somewhere ahead, they could hear the faint gurgle of running water, like a faucet left on.
The blood on Zhang Hongfeng's hands had nearly dried. A viscous mixture of blood and brain matter caked his skin, cold and sticky to the touch.
A voice screamed in his mind: *Wash your hands! Get the blood off!*
His instincts screamed that it was the right thing to do, and he hurried toward the sound of the water.
He rounded a corner and saw it: a long sink with a row of faucets. It had never looked so inviting.
One of the faucets in the middle had been left on, water gushing out in a wasteful torrent.
Zhang Hongfeng strode to the sink and began to scrub his hands furiously under the running water... From the moment they'd entered the kitchen, Liu Yuhan had been trailing behind him, clutching her notebook.
She lost focus for only a second, and when she looked up, the blood-soaked man had bolted, running forward as if possessed.
Something was wrong!
"Mr. Zhang!" Liu Yuhan called out tentatively.
But Zhang Hongfeng gave no sign of hearing her. He kept moving forward and vanished around the corner within seconds.
He was in a trance!
Gritting her teeth, Liu Yuhan ran after him.
She knew it was foolish to follow him, that she would likely be dragged down with him, but she did it anyway.
If she went after him, there was a chance he might live. If she turned back, he was sure to die.
It had been her decision to enter the kitchen. If Zhang Hongfeng died here, it would be her fault.
She would never be able to forgive herself if that happened...
After only a few steps, Liu Yuhan was already gasping for breath.
Her stamina was poor to begin with, and the rising tide of fear and tension made her legs feel like jelly, turning every step into a struggle.
Finally, Zhang Hongfeng's figure came into view again. The middle-aged man was hunched over the sink, head down, scrubbing his hands.
As Liu Yuhan approached, her shoulder brushed against a wooden shelf in her haste.
A soft *clatter* echoed in the silence as a rectangular object fell at her feet. The sound struck her like a blow to the chest, and her heart began to pound.
Without thinking, Liu Yuhan instinctively bent down and picked it up.
It was an oil painting in an ornate frame. A woman in a long blue dress stood in the middle of a dark sea, leaning against a statue that was half-fish, half-human. The serene, gentle smile on her face was utterly horrifying in this context.
For some reason, the painting's composition felt familiar. It was just like the religious artwork she'd seen on the wall in her room at the inn, only the central figure had been replaced with Yuna.
Religion... metaphor... faith...
She felt she was on the verge of a breakthrough, but the disparate pieces of information were a tangled mess, like her grandmother's knitting yarn, impossible to unravel on such short notice...
"Why won't my hands come clean?"
Zhang Hongfeng's trembling voice echoed from the sink.
*Not coming clean?*
Alarm bells screamed in Liu Yuhan's mind.
Clutching the oil painting, she took one cautious step after another, moving closer to the sink.
"It just won't wash off..."
Zhang Hongfeng repeated himself, his fear as stark and bright as a flame in the darkness, growing more intense with every word.
"There's more blood now... the more I wash, the more there is..."
Adjusting her thick glasses, Liu Yuhan could see from a distance what was flowing from the faucet. It was blood—bright red and thick as pus, its coppery stench sharp and overwhelming.
*No wonder it wouldn't wash off...*
She sucked in a sharp breath, her feet freezing to the floor as her gaze slowly traveled upward.
That wasn't a faucet at all.
Propped up behind the sink was a corpse. Its head was thrown back, hanging upside down, and blood was gurgling down from it!
The corpse had the face of Xu Maochun—the player who had gone missing!
A pair of ice-cold hands touched the back of her neck, then withdrew as quickly as they'd come.
Liu Yuhan turned her head, her movements stiff with terror.
The beautiful woman in the long blue dress stood in the pool of blood, smiling at her. Her hands moved, gesturing one word at a time:
"Why... have you... come... to my... kitchen?"