The instant several claws came down, the blanket covering Xu Yuanjin was torn to shreds, along with every stitch of her clothing. Bloody gashes instantly appeared across her skin.
The pain jolted her awake. Xu Yuanjin stared at the Vengeful Ghosts lunging at her, her face deathly pale and blood dripping from her body. She rolled off the bed, but there was nowhere left to run in the room.
A trace of disbelief appeared on her tightly furrowed brow. "How is this possible? When did I trigger a killing rule? How can you Ghost Slaves touch me?"
Before she could say another word, the ghostly shadows and female ghosts pounced at the same time. Thoughts raced through Xu Yuanjin's mind. At the brink of death, a flash of insight struck her, and the word "enjoyment" surfaced.
Had she performed too poorly at the banquet and failed to enjoy herself? So that was it. Xu Yuanjin coughed up blood violently. Her limbs were torn off in an instant, and as flesh fell away, her bones cracked with a crisp snap.
Xu Yuanjin's face was ghastly. Understanding it now was already useless. Her breathing was faint, and her eyes were full of unwillingness. "I hate..."
Before the words had faded, the female ghosts and ghostly shadows thrust out their hands, hacking her into pieces that littered the floor. The entire room was instantly stained crimson with blood, and all manner of organs and viscera fell away and spilled across the floor.
As the female ghosts devoured her, even their clothes were stained red, and their pale faces were flecked with scarlet!
The ghostly shadows twisted and crawled across the floor, extending their heads and bending them through the air at an exceedingly bizarre angle. Finally, their heads descended and devoured every scrap of flesh on the floor.
They did not even spare the strips of clothing. Xu Yuanjin was eaten clean, and all her unwillingness became an empty illusion.
The female ghosts and ghostly shadows quickly withdrew, as though they had never appeared in the room at all!
Only thin, shocking trails of blood remained, smeared across the room.
Among the other passengers, some had kept looking in mirrors, met their deaths, and become food for the Ghost Slaves.
Streaks of bloody light spread across the surface of the sea for dozens of miles! As the seawater churned wildly, schools of fish leaped up from beneath the surface and plunged back down, seemingly forming an arched bridge!
A figure emerged, treading on the water. It was hunched over, streams of water swirling around it and ripples running down its torso. Its face was covered in blood, which dripped down in thin streaks.
The seawater stretched out and fell upon the cruise ship. It was a true ghost! As it set foot on the ship, the ghostly shadows and female ghosts in the cabins, whether they were feeding or waiting quietly without feeding, all knelt and bowed in its direction.
Those who were already fast asleep seemed to have had their senses blocked and were completely unable to perceive such a commotion.
Even hunched over, it stood three meters tall and could not possibly enter the cabin corridor. It immediately wound its way along like a sea snake, passing straight through the doors.
It surveyed the prey one by one, lingering a little longer in the rooms of the five participants.
During this, an ordinary person woke up, and after noticing the scene, screamed and fainted. Unfortunately, screaming was not one of their killing rules.
After inspecting the cabins, it was about to go upstairs when it saw a surge of golden light. Beneath it was an even more chilling aura! It was like a layer of protection.
It cast a cold glance at the light. The blood on its face rippled, outlining a dark cyan vertical pupil, utterly devoid of emotion! As it gazed at the golden glow, hunger welled up in it, but it hesitated. After repeated consideration, it slipped beneath the water, seemingly waiting for an opportunity.
The disturbance on the sea gradually faded away.
The golden light on the fourth floor slowly dissipated, while the remaining Ghost Slaves continued clearing out those who triggered the killing rules in the cabins on the third floor. Blood stained room after room red.
Time flew by amid the slaughter. As dawn approached, the Ghost Slaves vanished in an instant. If not for the blood covering the floors, one would have thought they had never appeared.
The ordinary people who had seen the Ghost Slaves the night before were all dead. The cruise ship's staff also began cleaning the rooms. Everything the dead had left behind vanished completely, as though they had never existed in this world.
Those who remained alive would simply carry on with their lives as usual.
Si Yehan was still in a boundless dream and had yet to wake.
On a vast expanse of glaciers and snowfields, a young man in a loose black sweater walked across the ice. He held a crossbow, and not far away, people were fleeing at a run.
There were elderly and infirm people, women and children, as well as young and middle-aged men. Utterly ruled by fear, they fled swiftly into the distance as snow fell thickly, covering their tracks.
Holding the crossbow, the young man casually raised it, took aim, and fired a sharp bolt. His aim was extraordinarily precise. Even from a hundred meters away, each shot killed.
From back to front, the bolts pierced skulls or necks!
Drops of blood splattered across the snow, blossoming into vivid flowers! But the falling snow soon buried them. Snow settled on the young man's brows and eyes, making him look even more severe, like a god of death who held power over life and death, mercilessly harvesting lives.
Every bolt claimed a life.
Each was accompanied by a scream, clearly audible even through the wind and snow.
Only after he had shot everyone in sight dead did a smile spread across the young man's face. Perhaps because it was a dream, the crossbow bolts were inexhaustible.
The young man was Si Yehan. As he watched the corpses covering the ground disappear beneath layer after layer of snow, he only felt that the dream was becoming more lifelike.
Suddenly, the snow beneath his feet grew much softer. Si Yehan put away his smile and threw out the crossbow in his hand.
If nothing unexpected happened, the scene in the dream was about to change.
He was already thoroughly familiar with the whole process.
Sure enough, the snow beneath his feet abruptly turned to water, and the sound of an avalanche came from afar. As the snowballs rolled down, they gradually transformed into boundless flames!
The scenery in the dream was truly magnificent.
In the distance, flames rolled, burning everything in every direction; nearby, the flying snow melted into water, forever becoming a vast ocean!
Before Si Yehan sank beneath the water, he saw flames billowing on the horizon and layers of ghostly mist tearing through the sky.
His consciousness broke through the water, about to awaken from the dream.
The faint morning light pierced the sea, slipped through the window into the room, and fell across Si Yehan's face. His eyelids lifted.
He turned his head. In the scene before him, birds seemed to skim over the ocean, startling a flock into flight, while warm sunlight shone down without scorching.
It was a comforting scene, yet Si Yehan felt that if the sea were covered in floating corpses and blood clouded its clear waters, it would have pleased him more.
"Quite a few people probably died last night. Of the participants, Xu Yuanjin was sure to die. She kept a cold face the whole time and showed disgust toward her surroundings, so she had already triggered one of the five killing rules. If she died, this killing rule is real; if not, it's false. As for the other four, they're rather difficult to verify. There are four people left, so one rule per person would be good."
Si Yehan got up and dressed. His expression was indifferent as he walked into the living room, turned on the television, and found some random programs to watch.
There was no need to show himself just yet.