In the hall, the Thief Eerie endured the Players' repeated attacks. The twisted, horrifying face skins covering its body wailed and writhed.
Large numbers of Eerie Worms fell from the Thief Eerie's body, yet they showed no intention of fleeing. Instead, they sped up their destruction of the walls and their gnawing at the residents' flesh embedded within them...
Boom!!
Something struck the Thief Eerie, blowing its head apart. Countless Eerie Worms fell like raindrops.
The Players were startled.
They turned to see Long Yuan standing by the railing on the second floor, a hunting rifle in his hand, smoke still curling from its muzzle.
"It's that Long bastard again!"
"I was wondering why he hadn't shown himself yet. So he'd been hiding all along!"
The moment Huang Ran saw Long Yuan, his expression darkened first.
As the person ranked second in raid progress, he had always regarded Long Yuan as his greatest rival because the latter had kept him pinned beneath him.
"The main quest boss lost its head, so it should be dead—"
Before a Player could finish speaking, the Thief Eerie's head began repairing itself bit by bit, while the wails of the Eerie Face Skins on its body grew even more piercing...
"Looks like we have to smash every Eerie Face Skin on it to kill this eerie!"
Perhaps it had achieved its goal, or perhaps it sensed the danger. The Thief Eerie stopped destroying the walls and turned to leave the scene.
"It's running!"
"Can it get away? As long as it's in the Apartment, it has nowhere to hide!"
The barrage of attacks had clearly worked. The Thief Eerie's aura rapidly weakened, which meant it could be injured and killed!
The remaining Players excitedly gave chase.
Watching the pursuing players, then the walls all around as they gradually cracked and seeped blood, Long Yuan narrowed his eyes, a faint smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
But then, his smile abruptly vanished.
He saw that in the hall, there was still one Player who had not followed the crowd to chase the Thief Eerie.
Stepping through the blood pooling on the floor, Ji Yan entered the battlefield after the fight.
All he saw were the battered Eerie Face Skins that had been torn off, barely clinging to life.
He crouched down and reached out to touch them one by one.
As his talent triggered repeatedly, Ji Yan obtained information that the other Players did not have.
My children have been polluted... I want to protect my children and let them grow up healthy.
What pitiful outsiders. Foolish and laughable, they believe only what they see before them.
They desperately dig a deep pit, tirelessly believing it to be a shelter from disaster, never realizing it is a grave meant to bury them!
Who will save us? Save our families. We have done everything we could, yet we are gradually losing strength. In the end, we can only helplessly watch everything cease to exist.
Holding an Eerie Face Skin in his hand, Ji Yan's expression grew increasingly grave.
He looked at the Eerie Worms scattered around in death and suddenly guessed something...
"Ji Yan, aren't we going after it?" Liu Yitong asked.
After every Eerie Face Skin withered and died, Ji Yan rose to his feet.
He looked at the dense web of cracks across the first-floor hall and the walls smeared with thick blood.
He walked over and reached out to touch the flesh squeezing out from within the walls.
Then his gaze sharpened.
He said to Liu Yitong, "I'm going to the Eighth Floor!"
"If you trust me, go back to Room 404 and stop taking part in the main quest."
Liu Yitong was stunned. "Did you find something?"
Ji Yan did not answer. He turned and ran upstairs. He had no time to explain. Whether Liu Yitong listened was up to her. As Players living under the same roof, he had already done enough for her.
As he made his way up the stairwell, Ji Yan paused on every floor, observing something before continuing upward.
Soon, he reached the eighth floor.
The door to Room 801 was knocked on.
The door opened, and Xi Xi was the one who answered it.
She was still dressed in that plain white outfit, her face still bearing that severely depressed expression.
"Sister said you would come."
"And you came even earlier than she predicted."
After entering the room, Xu Xin, Miss Xu, was still reclining on the lounge chair in the same lazy, relaxed posture, reading the book in her hands.
"Shouldn't you be hurrying to catch the thief right now?"
"How do you still have the mood to come here?"
Miss Xu flipped a page and asked indifferently.
Ji Yan walked over without immediately explaining himself. Instead, he asked, "Miss Xu, you clearly hated that resident thief who was secretly digging into you last night."
"Why do you look so detached now?"
Miss Xu did not look at Ji Yan. She smiled faintly. "What good would panicking do?"
"Better to take it in stride. If the culprit destroying the Apartment isn't stopped, every resident will die in the end anyway."
"On second thought, with so many residents keeping me company, I'm not really losing out, am I?"
Ji Yan shook his head. "Actually, you knew from the beginning that the thief would break into your Room 801."
"But you wouldn't stop it."
Miss Xu closed her book and lifted her beautiful eyes. "Why?"
"Because that 'Multi-faced Eerie' breaking into the room wasn't secretly digging into you as a resident. On the contrary, it was doing everything it could to save this building."
"Or rather, the entire Apartment!"
"From the start, our target was misdirected."
"The real thief was never the Multi-faced Eerie. It was someone else."
"The Apartment has suffered severe damage. An eerie has been constantly gnawing at the Apartment's 'lifeblood' while continuously polluting the residents inside its walls. The Multi-faced Eerie's appearance was actually that of a 'doctor.'"
"It tirelessly wandered through every corner of the Apartment, tearing open walls, ripping away residents' flesh, and taking 'rent.' In truth, those were all disease sources that had been 'polluted.' If they were not removed, the cracks in the walls would continue worsening and the Apartment's collapse would accelerate."
"But the Players and most eerie residents don't know that."
"They have all pinned the blame for the cracking walls and the Apartment's damage on the Multi-faced Eerie!"
Ji Yan's expression darkened. "That creates a grim situation."
"A doctor who was clearly trying to save a patient gets mistaken for a murderer by the family members just because they see the knife in his hand and the blood covering his hands, and they attack him like mad."
"The patients think they are stopping a murderer and saving the patient on the bed."
"But they don't know that by stopping him, they are hurting the patient instead. They may even miss the best window for rescue!"
Ji Yan's expression was solemn.
In truth, he had already had this suspicion after receiving that hidden information.
But it had only been a guess.
After what happened in the first-floor hall, it could now be confirmed.
More than that, his sixth sense told him something was wrong. Everything had gone far too smoothly.
After listening to Ji Yan, Miss Xu tossed the book in her hand aside, a faint smile appearing on her exquisite face. "That was quite a thorough analysis."
"You really do sound like a great detective."
"Then let's say your deductions are all correct."
"Where, then, is the real culprit devouring the walls' lifeblood and pushing the Apartment into the Abyss of destruction?"
Ji Yan thought for a moment.
Then he asked, "My guess is that the Apartment has a Basement, right?"
Before you continue