The Black Rose

Two pronouncements appeared simultaneously: the first was encouraging, the second was a judgment of despair.

The blood on the stairs of the Bridge of Bridge of Helplessness slowly wriggled and spread, revealing the steps again.

At the same time, Yu Xing heard a woman's scream, a scream filled with terror that seemed to pierce her very soul.

Yu Xing removed her mask, and as if sensing something in the wide-eyed eyes of the surrounding ghosts, looked towards the stairwell.

"It's him! He's the waiter!"

We've been scammed!

Although the ghosts were surprised and angry, none of them attacked him.

Yu Xing stared at the stairwell without saying a word.

A few seconds later, a woman appeared at the end of the stairs, wailing; it was Xiao Yan.

She was covered in blood, as if she had just been pulled from a pool of blood. Seeing Yu Xing's gaze, she screamed, "Help! Help me--!"

Xiao Yan's leg seemed to be broken. She stumbled and fell to the ground, starting to crawl down. Just as she was about to fall through the gap in the stairs to the first floor, a black hand reached out from behind her, grabbed her hair, and dragged her into the darkness.

Her fingers gripped the steps, but only left a few bloody finger marks on them.

"Ah--"

A scream rang out in the darkness; no one knew what had happened to Xiao Yan.

"..." Zhao Yijiu also took off her mask and witnessed a small part of the "annihilation" process together with Yu Xing.

They didn't know what was behind that black hand, but it was something that could kill Xiao Yan. Even though Xiao Yan tried her best to escape and survive, she still couldn't escape her fate of being wiped out.

"If we can't save them, we'll do our best to avoid the same fate," Yu Xing said to the silent Zhao Yijiu, then caught a wisp of smoke drifting from afar.

The wisp of smoke lingered in front of him for a moment before seeping into his body.

Yu Xing intuitively knew that Yi Qing had entered the Dream of the Sheqing Dreamscape.

The simulation system's notification sounded at that moment.

[About to leave the simulation]

After a moment of distortion, Yu Xing heard the settlement from the darkness.

[Hint: The Confrontation Deduction Game "Haunted Bar" has ended]

[Ranking: 1]

[First Place Winner Bonus: Item "Evil Ghost Mask"]

[Since this simulation was a non-direct conflict type of Combat Type simulation, in order to ensure fairness, the system has retrieved the shattered Persona Mask of deceased simulation participants.]

[Increase in Personality Assimilation Degree: 0]

[Rating: A]

[Gained Deduction Points: 850 (Rating Bonus) (Ranking Bonus) (Ghost Buster) (Bonus from the Sheqing Ghost)]

[Main story completed: 4/4]

[All Main Quest have been completed. You can now choose any type of deduction.]

[Received Offering: Sheqing Dreamscape]

[Exiting simulation]

As dawn broke, the wall clock started ticking again. Yu Xing opened her eyes. Having grown accustomed to the dim lighting of the bar, standing in such a bright space immediately gave her a sense of clarity and openness.

He paused for a moment, regained full sensation in his body, picked up the electric kettle, filled it with water, turned it on, and looked at himself amidst the sudden noise.

Good, there are no holes in the head.

The pain disappeared, leaving only a lingering illusion that I didn't want to experience again.

He sat on the edge of the bed, looked at the deduction prompt panel that suddenly had a lot more information, rubbed his temples, and looked at it carefully.

[You have met the requirements for advancement to the Differentiation Tier. The next simulation will be forcibly started in three days. It will be a special single-player simulation. Successfully surviving will complete the advancement.]

"Hmm... I do have enough points. I didn't do any special calculations when I advanced to intermediate or advanced levels before, so things should be quite different after the Differentiation Tier." Yu Xing squinted and thought for a moment, feeling that it was just like updating a version of an online Yugi.

Special single-player simulations are equivalent to downloading an update package.

"Is setting the timeframe to three days in advance to give the participants time to prepare? Perfect timing, I can ask Xiao Ququ if there's anything I should be careful about in this simulation." He quickly decided to get the information for free and was very much looking forward to the simulation.

He then glanced at his current Persona Mask template.

[Persona Mask • Xing]

[Owner: Yu Xing]

[Basic Information: Male, Height 185cm, Weight 65kg, Age *#€*# (Error occurred)]

[Identity: Advanced Deducer (5002/5000)]

[Mask Weighting: Calm 18%, Madness 21%, Kindness 9%, Gentleness 9%, Indifference 10%, Evil 8%, Carefree 2%, Lazy 1%, Resilience 7%, Chaos 14%.]

[Holder's description: After several simulations and observations, I finally understand what's wrong with you. You're an unkillable person; your Personality Assimilation Degree has exceeded the limits of conscious human thought. So how can you maintain your rationality? Or rather... you don't actually have any rationality at all. Hiss, that's terrifying to think about.]

[Personality Sacrifice: &#*-*^(Data Error), Tears of the Underworld Candle, Strange Doll, Sheqing Dreamscape (Weared 4/6)]

[Personality Assimilation Degree: 51% (Personality Assimilation Degree exceeding 20% will negatively impact the deducer's personality. Your Personality Assimilation Degree high; please suppress your evil.)]

[Deduction Mall: Select to enter]

[Wish List: 1 item entered]

[Yugi Direction Selection Market: Select Available]

Yu Xing hadn't paid much attention to the data other than points and sacrifices after the previous few simulations, but today she took a good look and found that many things had changed.

The most obvious change is in the holder's description; the system no longer just says "Something's wrong with you."

Looking at the new description, Yu Xing let out a laugh, muttering to himself without denying it.

In addition, another data point that changed was the proportion of his Persona Mask.

Madness and chaos each increased by one percent, while kindness and gentleness each decreased by one percent.

Yu Xing raised an eyebrow and thought for a moment, then realized there seemed to be no problem.

After entering the Absurd Deduction Game, he saw ghosts much more frequently, and most of them were ghosts and people burdened with sin. Constantly dealing with these things would indeed subtly influence him.

But...

Why does his personality score add up to 99%? Who took the remaining 1%?

He was very interested in this because, based on his past experience, there were far too many possibilities for the reason that it was less than one percent.

Isn't that interesting?

Yu Xing looked ahead, her gaze unfocused, as if she were just casually looking at a point in the void.

After a long while, he came to his senses and sighed softly.

The Haunted Bar rewarded him with an item called the Evil Ghost Mask, which he examined and realized was for disguise.

[Evil Ghost Mask: When worn on the face, it can disguise one's appearance as a demon in the current deduction Yugi. However, the mask is not visible and will become ineffective once removed. It can be used 5 times.]

It's a fairly useful item. Adding to that the [Meng Po's Soup) ] which restores Personality Assimilation Degree, the [Alice's Ruby] which can activate the Alice's Hell Deduction Yugi, and the [Time Imprint] whose function is still completely unknown, he now has four items.

It's worth mentioning that, at his current level, items cannot be embedded in his Persona Mask, so he always carries these items with him. He glanced at the Meng Po's Soup packaged in a cyan box. Fortunately, it wasn't a real bowl of soup, but a translucent, oddly colored pill.

Yu Xing estimated that it wouldn't be long before Zhao Mou came to him to buy Meng Po's Soup. At that time, he would see how much the Zhao family asked for. If the items offered in exchange were sincere enough, it wouldn't be impossible to sell.

The Zhao family should be able to find out about his current living situation. He is not short of money, so the Zhao family would not do something as foolish as using money as a bargaining chip. Otherwise, they would truly be unworthy of the reputation of being one of the Three Great Families.

After organizing this information, Yu Xing poured the boiled water into a cup and waited a while until it was drinkable before taking a sip to soothe his throat.

Hmm... It's not as good as Yiqing's hot tea.

Ruffled her clean hair, feeling relieved that the sticky, blood-stained feeling from the bar was gone, and sighed Yu Xing. Just as she was about to remove the dagger from her Persona Mask and let Yi Qing go out for a stroll and see the new world, she heard a soft knocking sound coming from the window.

The sound was neither too loud nor too soft; it was loud enough for him to hear, but not loud enough to be perceived as aggressive or destructive.

He was startled and looked towards the window, but could only see the glass and no one.

He then chuckled softly, "My room isn't on the first floor, so how could I possibly see anyone looking over there?"

If we actually saw it, it would be like a horror movie, but it's broad daylight now. Even if it were a horror movie, it wouldn't cause much of a stir.

"Thump, thump, thump."

The knocking continued, as if he wouldn't stop until he looked. The sound was rhythmic, so it couldn't have been some bird that had accidentally bumped into him.

Yu Xing squinted, stepped forward, and opened one of the windows and the screen to face the sunlight.

There was no one or any ghosts outside, but on the outer window frame, a card and a black rose were weighed down with a stone.

The moment Yu Xing saw these two items, her expression changed drastically, and she decisively closed the window as if she had seen a ghost in broad daylight.

"Oh my god..." Yu Xing muttered, his expression strange, a rare hint of helplessness and reluctance appearing in his narrow phoenix eyes. After a full minute, he finally opened the window again.

A breeze blew in, carrying a comfortable warmth that brushed against Yu Xing's perpetually pale face. With a blank expression, he picked up the card, weighing his options between throwing away the black rose and the stone or taking it back inside.

"I can't hurt passersby..." Yu Xing muttered to herself, but still picked up the roses and the stone, closed the window, and immediately turned around and threw the roses into the trash can as if they were burning her hands, before opening the card.

The card contained only one sentence, written with a beautiful brushstroke. The ink was still wet, indicating that it had been written recently, and the tone carried a hint of familiarity.

"Long time no see, I've found you again, Yu Xing. Don't throw away the flowers I gave you so quickly next time!"

"Why keep it and get scammed?" Yu Xing glanced out the window again.

He was very curious about how this person had put the thing on his windowsill; to be honest, he had never wanted to deal with a person so much.

And he will never "accept" another flower from the other party again.