The Puppeteer

"This is a gambling house, and it looks like there's more than one." Qin Rang passed the paper to the next teammate, motioning for them to take turns looking at it. "Some of the buildings are modeled after ancient architecture, and some are modern. The place is pretty big, too... Looks like this strange entity came into being quite a long time ago."

"I don't know what this strange entity's killing rule is, but since we're in a gambling house, we need to be careful around anything related to gambling."

Sheng Qingqiao scratched his brown hair in frustration and looked to the pink-haired girl for help. "Sister Tao, I'm out of my depth here. I don't know a thing about gambling houses."

Tao Yuan chuckled, leisurely pulled on her white gloves, and gripped the pink serrated chainsaw at her waist.

Sheng Qingqiao understood. His Sister Tao had everything under control!

"We won't find anything out standing around here. Come on, let's take a look," Tao Yuan said.

Without wasting any time, the group quickly got into gear. The livestream camera followed the four as they slowly entered the instance.

The streets of the instance were utterly silent.

The worn wooden boards creaked softly underfoot, and the light from the surrounding lanterns flickered in and out of the darkness. Apart from their faint glow, nothing was visible.

The group studied their surroundings intently, taking care not to trigger any death rules.

This seemed to be a place for market stalls. Many were closed, and the goods piled on them all looked fairly normal.

"Look."

As they passed a dilapidated lantern rack with only two lanterns still lit, Sheng Qingqiao, who had the best eyesight in the dark, suddenly gestured for silence.

The others followed his gaze and went over to look. Beside one of the lit lanterns was a line of small inked characters: Street rule one: Keep quiet. Shh—

They exchanged glances and carefully searched the area, but found no other rules. Without a word, they all fell silent and walked cautiously over the red wooden boards.

Before long, they arrived at a luxurious building at the end of the street.

Standing beneath it, they looked up and saw a plaque above the red wooden doors, under eaves carved with dragons and painted with phoenixes. It read "Gambling House · Spring."

The building also had a distinctly "spring" feel to it. It was brightly lit inside, with festive palace-style lanterns hanging on every floor. There was also an exterior spiral staircase on the fourth floor, winding around the entire casino like a vine to reach the top, while connecting every floor.

"Spring..." Qin Rang stared at the word and exchanged a glance with Tao Yuan beside him.

An Ying stepped back a few paces, his white hair dyed red by the lanterns. His gaze settled on a window on one of the floors. "Someone's on the third floor."

"Aaaaah—!!"

No sooner had he spoken than a scream pierced the darkness. Behind the antique-style door, a figure was clutching one hand and screaming in agony.

"Come on, save him!"

Meanwhile, on the third floor:

The Doll Master watched coldly as the man before him screamed and begged for mercy. The man had his back against the door, and the round weight in his hand had grown a mouth like a leech. It clung fast to his arm, sucking his blood as it tore through his flesh and burrowed into his body.

"Aaaaah—get off me, you damned thing! Aaaah!"

Every muscle in the man's body spasmed with pain, his limbs flailing unnaturally as blood poured from the wound and was absorbed by the weight.

As he desperately shook his hand, he quickly threw away the other living weights he held. One struck the Doll Master, who was hiding in the corner, on the forehead, making him hiss softly.

The weight rolled across the floor several times, then split open down the middle to reveal a mouthful of sharp teeth. It was about to leap at the Doll Master, but he reached out expressionlessly and pressed its mouth shut, clenching it in his palm and letting the thing struggle in his hand.

The weight struggled in its palm, but did not bite him.

At that moment, the man behind the door finally managed to dig several weights out of his flesh by force. The sound of tearing flesh rang out repeatedly, and blood streamed from the gaping holes left in his body.

The weights fell to the floor and went still.

The man pressed his hands tightly over his wounds and stared in terror at the weights on the floor. Still shaken, he panted heavily, not daring to make a sudden move.

He had only just arrived. How had he been unlucky enough to trigger a rule already? He clearly hadn't done anything...

Wait.

The man glanced in horror at the gambling table beside him.

The Doll Master stared at the weights on the floor, stained with the man's blood. They seemed to have eaten their fill, their colors much brighter than the one in his hand, with red and white patterns and a design in the middle resembling the Clubs on a playing card.

"Tap—"

The Doll Master glanced at the door and, without hesitation, tossed the weight beside the man. Already on edge, the man instinctively looked up in the direction it had come from and met the thin youth's dark eyes.

The youth gave him a harmless smile, and the man's eyes widened.

Before he could even react to the surprise of finding someone else here, a pitch-black hand suddenly pierced his chest.

The man stared blankly down to see countless black arms of varying sizes struggling out of his wound, tearing through his flesh as they crawled free. As if growing from his body, they kept prying apart his flesh and the bones in their way, seemingly searching for something.

"Ugh—" He wanted to call for help, but a hand reached out of his throat, completely blocking his voice and forcing his lips apart.

In mere seconds, the man's body had been filled to bursting with countless strange hands. His face was horribly distorted, and the whites of his eyes filled their sockets.

The footsteps outside the door drew closer and closer. The Doll Master stepped to one side and hid behind the gambling table, leaving only a small gap through which he could glimpse what was happening outside.

"Thud, thud, thud!"

As soon as they reached the third floor, An Ying was the first to see the scene inside. He instantly opened the bamboo umbrella in his hand and held it in front of everyone.

"Clang!"

The bamboo umbrella collided with the weight flying toward them. Its hard canopy knocked the weight back, embedding it in the wall.

The instant An Ying raised the umbrella, Sheng Qingqiao ducked underneath it, carrying his broadsword, and rushed to the man in a few strides. The man's body was now grotesquely swollen from the ghost hands inside him, and an intensely strange aura poured from every bloody hole they emerged from.

He cut off a ghost hand lunging at him, but an instant later, a new one reached out to grab him.

"Watch out!"

Tao Yuan cried out in alarm. Sheng Qingqiao reacted quickly, leaning backward to dodge a weight that had been about to leap onto his face, then slashed at it with his sword.

A sharp clang rang out. The impact numbed Sheng Qingqiao's arm, and he hurried backward, staring in disbelief at the weight wriggling on the floor. "Is this damned thing a strange entity too? It's even got a mouth? My sword can't cut it."

Sheng Qingqiao wanted to go forward again, but Qin Rang patted him on the shoulder and shook his head. "He triggered a fatal rule. There's no saving him."

As soon as he finished speaking, the dying man suddenly stopped struggling. His skin and flesh sagged to the floor like a deflated ball, and the arms vanished with his death.

After the arms disappeared, the man's corpse quickly flattened as well, leaving only a pile of skin where he had been.

"Someone triggered a death rule already. What an unlucky bastard." Sheng Qingqiao sighed and put away his sword.

"Every strange entity has different death rules. A lot of them can only be discovered at the cost of human lives," Qin Rang said. "We can't let him die for nothing. Look around and see what's here. He must have done something absolutely forbidden and triggered a rule that took effect immediately."

"What kind of strange entity is this, anyway? Those arms are something a normal strange entity would have, but what are these moving weights?"

After confirming there was no danger nearby, Tao Yuan went over to examine the corpse, then studied the surroundings carefully, sweeping her gaze over every corner.

Qin Rang used Sheng Qingqiao's sword to lift the man's thin skin and said in puzzlement, "It looks like the ghost hands killed him. So what's the deal with these weights? Two strange entities?"

Sheng Qingqiao said, "Seriously? We've run into the territory of two strange entities working together right off the bat? Just how good is our luck?"

His words silenced everyone.

"Has our luck ever been good?" An Ying asked expressionlessly.

Qin Rang shrugged, tossed the sword back to him, and got to his feet with a smile. "Right back at you. When it comes to luck, who can beat me?"

Tao Yuan took a moment out of her work to reply, "None of us can compare to you in that regard. You can trigger a strange entity's fatal rule just by drinking a cup of water, you unlucky fox."

"Hahahaha." Thinking of the Weird Worlds they had experienced before, Sheng Qingqiao laughed mercilessly.

A smile appeared on Tao Yuan's lips as well. Then she glimpsed a corner out of the side of her eye and suddenly sensed something was wrong.

She turned to look and met the gaze of a dark eye in the corner.