Compared to the others, Lin Yu trusted Xia Yue more.
Rather, among the six people currently present, Lin Yu felt that the person least likely to be a werewolf was, of course, the somewhat silly-looking Chen Zhuo.
The second least likely was probably this delicate Xia Yue!
But no matter what, Lin Yu could not completely trust Xia Yue.
Just as Xia Yue apparently did not completely trust him either.
What was more, to maintain his persona as a "confident detective who had everything under control," it would be inconvenient for him to start searching around in front of Xia Yue.
And Lin Yu really did have something he wanted to find!
"The letter mentioned that there are chests inside the ancient castle, but there are two kinds of chests: human chests and werewolf chests..."
Lin Yu began searching the engineering room, wanting to see if there was a chest here.
Apart from the engine, the engineering room also contained various other devices and facilities, making it somewhat cluttered.
According to the letter, human chests should contain "supplies" and "items," which would be of great help to the human faction.
If he could find a chest and obtain some useful item from it, Lin Yu would feel much more confident.
Lin Yu made a rough search of the room and found that although the engineering room looked crammed with clutter and was extremely messy, in reality...
That clutter really was completely useless.
But Lin Yu could not say he had gained nothing at all.
The smell of incompletely burned diesel from the generator filling the air, the alarm ringing incessantly in his ears, and the choking layers of old dust kicked up as he rummaged through the piles of debris gave Lin Yu the miserable experience of dizziness and a splitting headache.
"I've already wasted two minutes... No, I can't keep wasting time in this room!"
Lin Yu opened the door to the engineering room.
After walking out, he immediately felt refreshed.
Then he focused on the room opposite the stairwell.
"This door looks pretty big."
Lin Yu muttered to himself.
There were two staircases in the ancient castle. One was a spiral staircase in the center, running through all three floors of the castle. The other was a zigzag staircase along the edge of the castle.
The ancient castle was enormous, and the entire second floor alone had more than a dozen different rooms or secret chambers.
Time was pressing, so Lin Yu could only choose a nearby location.
That was also why they had been forced to split into groups—because the ancient castle was too large. If they all ran around together, even with a route planned out, they would inevitably be pressed for time, leaving very little room for error.
When he approached the large door, Lin Yu could also clearly see the name of the room written on the plaque.
"Kitchen."
Lin Yu did not hesitate and pushed open the kitchen door.
As soon as he entered the kitchen, Lin Yu smelled a faint stench of blood.
"Damn, how long has it been since this kitchen was cleaned?" Lin Yu could not help wrinkling his nose. "No wonder one of the later items on the schedule is cleaning the kitchen."
"But who knows what mechanism will be triggered, or what danger will appear, if the kitchen isn't cleaned..."
There were blackish-red marks on the kitchen walls that looked somewhat like blood that had dried long ago.
There were even more bloodstains on the floor, and it was filthy.
The countertops were covered not only with a great deal of chopped raw meat, but even severed limbs hanging from hooks!
At the sight of this, Lin Yu shuddered with revulsion.
Especially those limbs—they were shriveled and twisted, somewhat human, but not entirely.
It gave Lin Yu a full-blown amusement-park horror effect.
"Why is the kitchen like this? No one takes care of these limbs and pieces of flesh? The owner of this ancient castle is way too into this kind of thing..."
"Living in such a huge house, they can't afford a cleaner? Then at least hire a chef who likes keeping things clean."
Suppressing his disgust, Lin Yu moved closer to the severed limbs and examined them.
They were covered in blood and already somewhat rotten and dried out, so Lin Yu really could not determine what kind of creature they had come from.
From a distance, they looked somewhat humanoid, but up close, they seemed less so.
Lin Yu did not want to stay there any longer and left immediately.
However, after leaving the kitchen, he discovered a brown chest in a corner right beside it.
"A chest—a brown chest!" Lin Yu was pleasantly surprised.
Red chests belonged to werewolves... The letter had mentioned that.
His identity was human, so he probably could not open a werewolf chest.
But the chest before him was brown, which meant that humans could open it!
Lin Yu stepped forward and flipped the switch on the chest. The chest seemed to sense him; the switch clicked, and the chest opened.
Inside was a perfectly packaged loaf of bread and a bottle of water.
"It's food... Looks like whoever left the chest knew that, with the kitchen in such a filthy state, there probably wouldn't be much food in this ancient castle either."
Lin Yu picked up the bread, tore open the package, and wolfed it all down with the water.
Only after eating and drinking his fill did he return to the engineering room.
He did not want to reveal to Xia Yue that he had opened a human chest. Although being human was a good identity... there was one crucial point: the two werewolves most likely did not know each other's identities.
The letter had hinted at this as well.
"A werewolf's disguise will often deceive even its own kind."
In other words, in this game, the werewolves did not know who their other teammate was.
Therefore, Lin Yu had no need to prove that he was human by opening a chest.
That would not benefit him—assuming Xia Yue was a werewolf, she definitely would not attack before confirming whether he was her fellow werewolf.
"But why hasn't Xia Yue returned yet?"
There was not much time left now.
Lin Yu had been estimating the time mentally from the moment he left. Xia Yue had now been gone for around eight minutes—more than two minutes over his estimate of five and a half.
This made the time available for completing the task even more pressing.
If Xia Yue did not return soon, they might not even be able to finish the task.
"Could she have run into some kind of accident?"
Lin Yu had begun debating whether he should go to the first floor to look for Xia Yue.
But before Lin Yu could make up his mind to leave...
"Bang!"
The engineering room's door was thrown open.
Xia Yue appeared at the doorway, panting heavily, carrying a bucket of small bottles of lubricating oil.
Her hair was disheveled, there was sweat on her temples, and her white lab coat was dirty.
Xia Yue hurried forward and said apologetically, "Sorry... The lubricating oil was stored rather high up, so it took me quite a bit of effort to get it."
When she came closer, Lin Yu noticed that Xia Yue's face was flushed as well. She kept tugging at the collar of the round-neck shirt beneath her lab coat and fanning herself, looking rather pitiful.
Lin Yu instinctively wanted to comfort her, but he immediately realized...
His current persona was that of a cold and arrogant "detective."
So veteran actor Lin Yu got into character in one second and merely snorted.
"Fortunately, you didn't delay things for too long."
As he spoke, he took the lubricating oil from her, easily found the malfunctioning part of the nearby engine that needed oil, and completed the task with ease.
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