The Haunted Bar's Part-Timer

The events of the night did not affect Yu Xing's sleep quality. As he said, although he had been in great emotional pain, he was no longer the weakling he used to be.

After comforting Qu Xuanqing a few moments, he let her go back to her room and then went back to sleep.

It wasn't until the next day, when his WeChat call suddenly rang, that he finally sat up contentedly and answered the phone.

Ah... Autumn always swings back and forth between cold and warm, but today is a warm and pleasant day.

Comfortable.

Yu Xing glanced out the window, but the next moment, the sound coming from the phone made the temperature drop a notch.

"Zhao Mou said you're very strong now, and asked me to urge you to help me through the main storyline before you advance to the Differentiation Tier." Zhao Yijiu's cold demeanor became more and more obvious after experiencing several deduction Yugi. Yu Xing suspected that this was not only due to his temperament, but also probably related to his own abilities.

"Hmm... I haven't forgotten." Yu Xing got out of bed, feeling a little guilty about Zhao Mou's urging.

He promised to help Zhao Yijiu advance to a higher level, but so far, he's only ever done one Alice's Hell run with Zhao Yijiu, and that was with people automatically selected by the system.

That's really irresponsible.

After advancing to Differentiation Tier, one cannot perform simulations together with beginner, intermediate, or advanced levels. Zhao Mou probably watched his live stream last night—he saw Zhao Mou's name in the reward settlement on the big screen at the time—and felt that if he continued like this, he wouldn't be able to carry Zhao Yijiu at all, so he came to urge him.

Thinking of this, he suddenly remembered that he had gained over four thousand points last night. "Wait for me, I forgot to check the panel..."

Yu Xing brought up his Persona Mask. Other data didn't change much, except for the Identity column, where the data rose from [Intermediate Deducer (2228/3000)] to [Advanced Deducer (4152/5000)]. It can be said that the Rookie Tournament at least gave him a big springboard in terms of points, bringing him only one step away from the Differentiation Tier.

Seriously, if he doesn't bring Zhao Yijiu now, he really won't be able to manage anymore...

Breaking a promise is not a good habit, especially since Zhao Mou has helped him so much; he can't just stand him up.

Feeling good now, Yu Xing asked, "I can join you in the Combat Type storyline simulations. When do you plan to start?"

"..." Zhao Yijiu seemed to be silent for a moment, lost in thought, before replying after a few seconds, "I'll wait for you to have breakfast."

Oh wow.

He shouldn't have mentioned it, because as soon as he did Yu Xing started to feel hungry.

But how did Zhao Yijiu know he hadn't eaten breakfast?

I looked at my phone and... emmm, it's only eight o'clock.

Zhao Yijiu said, "The voice... it sounds like he just woke up."

As always, Zhao Yijiu was not talkative, but after Yu Xing kept asking her questions, she still revealed some information.

For example, Zhao Mou originally asked him to video call Yu Xing, saying that after watching Yu Xing's live streams for a few days, he found that Yu Xing liked to sleep in, and video calls would be more effective in waking her up.

However, Zhao Yijiu wanted to avoid seeing things he shouldn't see— Yu Xing didn't know what Zhao Yijiu meant, but he always felt that Zhao Yijiu thought of him as an improper person who would order some kind of special service when staying in a hotel.

For example, Zhao Mou also calculated that Yu Xing was currently following up on an unknown case, and had not yet found the key to it. Once he officially intervened, Yu Xing be much busier than he was now... so he should try to bring as many people as possible.

After meeting the "prophet," Yu Xing became even more curious about Zhao Mou's prophetic abilities. Zhao Mou was clearly much stronger in this area, and he had always been very curious about this ability.

After all, he didn't.

Yu Xing agreed to go into the Yugi with Zhao Yijiu after breakfast. He didn't think the frequency was too fast. In fact, he had been watching the real world for so many years... the simulation world was just another different world to him.

Going in and having fun is much more interesting than staying in a monotonous reality.

After changing her clothes, Yu Xing sensed the ghostly energy within Ling Heng's body and found that he was still the same as he had been a few days ago, listless and showing no intention of going out.

The weather is nice today, it won't rain, so the killer who likes to slit throats probably won't show up, at least not Yu Xing will need to go out temporarily to stop the murder.

He went upstairs and called Qu Xuanqing early, to have breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Then he told her about the Zhao family's situation.

Qu Xuanqing swallowed a mouthful of steaming porridge and thought for a moment, "... No wonder, when you were live streaming, Zhao Mou from the Zhao family spoke up for you."

"Speak up for me?"

"Not really, anyway, I think he's alright. Oh, you told me before that someone was investigating me, and it's also the Zhao family." Qu Xuanqing recalled that when she was doing her deductions a while ago, it seemed like someone was secretly investigating her, but she remembered Yu Xing's instructions and didn't take action.

Otherwise, those petty tricks of hers would have been enough for her to kill ten people already.

"Next time I run into someone from the Zhao family, I'll be more accommodating."

Yu Xing covered her face. Qu Xuanqing seemed to judge whether a person was good or bad based on how that person treated him.

Although he was still touched, and knew that Qu Xuanqing was just saying it casually and wouldn't be fooled by the condition, it also showed that her interpersonal relationships were really simple, she had no friends, and she was too lonely.

Yu Xing had tried to pull Qu Xuanqing out of the protective shell she had built, but before she could succeed, Qu Xuanqing moved away. When she returned, the situation had only worsened and was now fixed.

Well, everyone makes different choices. He really hoped that Qu Xuanqing and Zhu Yan could live well in this world and be happy every day, but there are many ways to be happy.

Zhu Yan was able to go to school and work like a normal person, and even get involved with the Criminal Investigation Detachment, eventually becoming a completely positive person.

As for Qu Xuanqing... she likes to hide in the darkness, abandon many emotions, and be feared by others. She likes this feeling; it is also a kind of happiness.

Yu Xing: I raised them myself, what else can I do but spoil them?

A little after nine o'clock, Yu Xing returned to her room, contacted Zhao Yijiu again, then summoned her Persona Mask and selected the last Main Quest.

[Start Main Quest?]

"Open."

[The system has detected that you and the deducer "Cold Wine" intend to team up. Would you like to enter the Yugi together?]

"Yes."

This was something Qu Xuanqing had explained to him. Although there was no team-up system, the system could identify team-up intentions, and these intentions would take effect when two or more people simultaneously chose to start the Yugi.

[The following is a list of information about the simulation Yugi]

It's still the familiar semi-transparent red lettering.

[Medium-scale simulation: The Haunted Bar]

[Type: Confrontation Deduction Game]

[Analysis: In Confrontation Deduction Game, players are always in a competitive relationship, and their ranking changes based on the points gained and lost. At the end of the game, the last place is eliminated, and the top place receives the rewards.]

This simulation Yugi is for eight Yugi.

[This simulation Yugi does not take up real-world time.]

After Yu Xing finished reading the deduction prompts, he heard a cacophony of conversations and music.

The voices grew louder, as if drawn closer from a great distance. His vision blurred, the colors distorted and shifted, and after a while, he felt himself stand up. Then the scene around him completely changed.

The loud music made him frown, and the flashing lights in front of him almost blinded him.

This is a bar.

The bar was large and luxuriously decorated. He was standing in the lobby, where men and women were swaying their bodies in the central dance floor, seemingly in a frenzy.

The DJ was a heavily made-up, long-haired woman with a row of earrings. She wore a sexy and cool black leather jacket, tapping out rhythms and occasionally clapping to encourage the audience to interact.

"So noisy," Yu Xing muttered in dissatisfaction, her voice drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.

But amidst the hustle and bustle, a chilling atmosphere permeated the entire hall, making it feel like a small ice cellar.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, so let's settle for something else: it's as cold as a graveyard.

Yu Xing touched the goosebumps that had risen beneath her long sleeves. "..."

He felt unwell again due to his special physical condition.

Fortunately, there was no source of the curse here; he was only a little cold, and the ghostly energy within him did not stir.

But that didn't stop him from immediately recognizing that the people on the dance floor... were all not alive.

Good heavens, the whole bar is full of ghosts.

Anyone else might have gone weak in the knees after reaching this conclusion, but he remained calm and even observed the ghosts' expressions with great interest.

Immersed in the revelry of music and dance, the ghosts revealed remarkably human emotions; otherwise, the eerie aura emanating from their bodies would have made them virtually indistinguishable from living people.

Yu Xing looked around and realized he was wearing the clothes he had worn in the hotel; all his other belongings were gone, but he had a cell phone.

Yu Xing felt a vibration in her hand inside her jeans. She reached up to shield her eyes from the shimmering light above, pulled out the unfamiliar phone, and unlocked it with her fingerprint.

The time displayed on the phone is 23:40.

A message popped up in a WeChat group; the person labeled as the team leader tagged everyone in the group:

Supervisor: Is everyone here? Hurry up and change in the locker room, the night shift is about to start.

"Night shift?" Yu Xing raised an eyebrow. This time, his role was a bar waiter?

However, since their appearance and clothing haven't changed, it means they are free to create their own persona and there are no restrictions on how they portray characters.

He tried replying with a "received" message.

-01: Received.

Soon after, others also received theirs.

-02: Received.

-03: Received.

-04: Received.

-08: Received.

There were eight people in the group besides the leader, which corresponded exactly to the strategists. The numbers in the replies were very neat, Yu Xing suspected that the numbers were temporarily assigned based on the order of the replies.

Sure enough, the notification came a moment later.

[Since you were the first to reply, your number in this simulation is 01.]

[Prompt: Proceed to the changing room to assemble and listen to the supervisor's instructions]

The system then gave Yu Xing a task, and subsequently, a blood-red arrow appeared in her sight, seemingly invisible to everyone else on the dance floor.

Yu Xing then followed the arrow.

Leaving the noisy dance floor, the other places were much quieter in comparison. The exquisite leaf-shaped bar looked expensive, and the bartenders inside were dressed elegantly in form-fitting uniforms, but their faces... were covered in heavy makeup.

It wasn't even the kind that looked good; rather, it had a bizarre style, with an unnervingly white foundation that made the face look bloodless, bright red lips, and smoky eye makeup around the eyes.

The chairs next to me were full. The customers looked normal, though they were dressed in various ways, but they didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with the bartender.

That's strange.

Yu Xing rarely frequented bars and was unfamiliar with them. He even began to wonder if this was some kind of peculiar aesthetic or fashion trend.

"Handsome, all alone?" After walking a few steps, a woman in a red dress from a corner booth approached him with a drink. She gave him a flirtatious wink, the meaning of which was self-evident.

"Sorry, I'm not alone." Yu Xing nodded politely to her, his aloof and serious demeanor conveying to her that he was not someone she could seduce.

The woman in the red dress smiled slightly, said nothing, gave him a suggestive look, and then went back.

Yu Xing stared at her back for a moment, and a thought popped into her mind: This is a vengeful ghost in red.

The red-clad vengeful ghost is a terrifying creature in Chinese ghost stories, full of resentment and highly aggressive, often committing suicide.

In this bar, the man in red didn't seem to have much of an aggressive streak.

Having made this a mental note, Yu Xing continued to follow the blood-red arrow in her eyes.

The path to the locker room was straightforward, and soon he saw several other people, dressed casually, walking in the same direction.

The group exchanged glances, understanding each other without saying a word.

The deducers were probably the most out-of-place people here.

After thinking for a while, he waited in place and sure enough, he saw Zhao Yijiu with a stern face.

Yu Xing almost laughed when she saw him. Zhao Yijiu's icy temperament blended in perfectly here. If you threw him into a pile of ghosts, no one would be able to tell who was alive.

Zhao Yijiu wore glasses on the bridge of her nose, which made her look much more demure and softened the sharpness in her eyes.

As he looked over, Zhao Yijiu seemed to sense something and looked back at him, then quickened her pace and walked towards him.

Yu Xing asked jokingly, "How are you? Have you ever been to a bar before?"

"I've been here." Zhao Yijiu replied coldly, sparing with his words.

"So she's been here before... Yu Xing thought Zhao Yijiu, with her icy personality, wouldn't come to a place like this."

I couldn't bring myself to say the next few flirtatious things.

Zhao Yijiu paused for a second, then added, "I was dragged here by Zhao Mou, a long time ago."

Yu Xing: "Oh~"

The changing room seemed to be at the very back of the bar, with a rather hidden door. It was a quiet, deserted spot, with hardly any customers.

The locker room door was ajar. The two pushed it open and entered, but before they could even take in their surroundings, a young man in a shirt and vest called out to them.

The young man was pale-skinned, his brows furrowed with impatience. Upon seeing their faces, he seemed to forcefully suppress his impatience, trying to calm his tone as he said, "01, 04, what are you dawdling for? You're the only ones left. Hurry up and change your clothes."

Besides them, the other six strategists had arrived and seemed to have just changed their clothes. There were two men and four women. The men were wearing trousers, suit shirts, and vests, all very fitted. The women wore the same tops as the men, but black skirts and black stockings.

One of the bolder male divination practitioners laughed, "Foreman, you were much fiercer to me earlier than this."

The young foreman glared at him. "How can you compare yourselves? I can tell at a glance that those two can sell a lot of expensive drinks. What about you?"

Some of the other participants laughed out loud, while others had mixed feelings.

Yu Xing overheard this and learned one thing—the ghostly guests here also judged by their appearance.

He took the opportunity to look around. The dressing room had two changing rooms with curtains drawn, and most of the space was arranged like a lounge. There was a row of chairs and a vanity against the wall.

"Your clothes are in the changing room, they have numbers on them. Change quickly, I have a lot of rules to tell you." The supervisor pointed behind the curtain, Yu Xing nodded, and she and the expressionless Zhao Yijiu went into a changing room respectively.

There was a stack of clothes in the changing room, with a piece of paper on top that read "01".

Yu Xing changed into his shirt, vest, and trousers, then put on the black leather shoes next to his clothes. He looked at himself in the mirror and had to admit that the supervisor's judgment that he could sell a lot of drinks was correct.

Shortly after he came out, Zhao Yijiu also lifted the curtain, without taking off her glasses.

The two stood in a row like the other divination users. To Yu Xing's left was a man who looked to be about twenty-five years old and about 1.75 meters tall. He had a gloomy expression and looked listless.

The man who spoke up to lighten the mood was in his early twenties, radiating youthful energy and possessing a stubborn streak.

Further to the left are four girls, of varying ages. The most mature one looks to be in her thirties, exuding a sophisticated and mature aura.

"Very good, six minutes left. Let me go over some points to note." The foreman paced back and forth calmly, hands behind his back. "First of all, I want to make one thing clear: although you are temporary workers, you still need to work diligently. If you don't meet your targets..."

"Ahem, otherwise, if the bar's original staff had gone out to play and ended up being kidnapped by exorcists, I wouldn't have hired you living people!" The manager seemed a little angry when he talked about this, and his gaze towards them became less friendly.

"What? What do you mean by being taken away by exorcists? What do you mean by 'we're all alive'?" a seemingly inexperienced girl with a ponytail asked nervously.

The guests looked too much like living people. Apart from Yu Xing, who had a special constitution, no one could tell that they were ghosts. At most, they just felt that the bar was very cold.

"Don't you understand? You're the only eight people alive in the whole bar. You're just temporary workers I hired to fill in for one day because I had no other choice!"

The supervisor's face hardened with a threat. "So, don't give yourself away and let the guests know you're human. I'll be punished, and I imagine you don't want to be recognized and then tortured by a bunch of excited ghosts, do you?"

"What behaviors would make you recognizable?" the woman in her thirties asked.

"You're quite clever. Let me tell you, whatever you do at work, don't laugh or cry. The ghost waiters here don't know how to laugh or cry. If a customer sees either of those expressions... congratulations, you're dead."

She couldn't cry, and she couldn't laugh... Yu Xing glad that she hadn't smiled when she rejected the woman in red, otherwise, if she encountered her again as a waitress, she would be in serious trouble.

The foreman waved his hand. "Alright, you can continue as usual, pair up and complete the rest of the work."