State Rollback

Knocking came from inside the black coffin. The corpse seemed to have awakened, and the coffin lid trembled under the impacts, as though it was about to be thrown open.

Xu Hong hurriedly pressed his body against the coffin lid while keeping an eye on Painter San's side.

This was terrifying. Why was someone about to die just because of a disagreement?

Honestly, this was definitely the most hardcore and least reproducible request he had ever heard since becoming a Deducer!

In Yu Xing's hazy consciousness, he could still hear Zhou Yongsheng's questioning roar. "Why did you destroy the candle!? Don't you want to leave? Don't you want to break the curse!?"

He paid no attention to the exasperated voice. Using all his strength to keep his blood-teared eyes open, he encouraged the bewildered Xiao Xuechen with an almost bewitching gaze. "Do it."

If he had not been out of strength, Yu Xing probably would not even have bothered asking someone else for help.

"No, you..." Xiao Xuechen held the knife, completely at a loss.

Was he serious?

She stared blankly at Yu Xing, who looked like he could drop dead on the spot at any moment, yet his commanding tone still carried undeniable weight.

The striking contrast between his beautiful eyes and bloody tears gave her Spiritual Sense. In that instant, inspiration came to her.

Combining the scene before her eyes, Yu Xing's ghost-like appearance, and his absurd request, Xiao Xuechen came up with a bold guess.

Did Yu Xing possess some kind of powerful sacrifice that could revive him by borrowing the power of ghosts?

Although anyone placed in the same deduction game as him could at most be an Advanced Deducer, making the odds of possessing such an absurdly powerful sacrifice extremely low, San had already brought her far too many surprises.

Maybe he really did have something like that.

Should she do it?

The knocking inside the black coffin became increasingly frantic as Xu Hong and Xu Yuan desperately held down the coffin lid.

They knew that this had to be the "boss" of the deduction.

Now that the village chief had replaced the old with the new and the funeral had been interrupted, the ending of this deduction should not be too bad. As long as they found a way to deal with the ghost inside the coffin, they should be able to end it!

Xiao Xuechen thought so too. She believed San had already learned the truth and the solution, but had triggered some bizarre injury condition and needed the power of a sacrifice to escape the predicament.

There was no time to delay.

She believed an expert would have a backup plan!

As Carlos watched the show, a small knife appeared in his hand as if by magic. It carried no special aura and was just an ordinary object. "Do you dare do it? If you hesitate, I can do it instead."

Ordinary people—or rather, most Deducers—entered games to uncover the truth, find a way to survive, and fight ghosts. Very few directly killed people.

Especially among Deducers of the beginner, intermediate, and advanced ranks, if combat-type deductions were excluded, "very few" became even rarer.

So judging from Xiao Xuechen's expression, she had definitely never killed anyone. Many people were deeply traumatized by their first murder and would spend the days afterward haunted by nightmares.

Such people would hesitate when asked to kill.

"Go away. I can do it!" To everyone's surprise, Xiao Xuechen whispered to Carlos, then began gesturing toward Yu Xing with the dagger in her hand.

"Not the face..." Yu Xing seemed to have a final flash of life as he forced out one last request.

"Understood." Xiao Xuechen could not bring herself to strike that face either. She lowered the dagger slightly, then aimed its tip at Yu Xing's vulnerable throat.

"Boom!"

At that moment, an accident occurred.

The impacts from inside the black coffin suddenly intensified, throwing the unprepared Xu Hong and Xu Yuan to the ground. The heavy coffin lid slowly shifted aside, and a corpse sat up inside.

"A corpse has risen!!!" Zhou Qinghai had countless questions, but that did not stop him from screaming the instant he saw the corpse sit up. He tried to flee backward, only for Carlos to grab him one-handed and pull him back several steps.

Wei Fan and Xiao Xuechen also cautiously retreated some distance.

Zhou Yongsheng was still swollen and stiff. After sitting up, he turned his head in jerking motions, like machinery that had not been lubricated for years.

He did not attack them immediately. Instead, his gaze wandered for a while, first landing on Yu Xing, who was in agonizing pain, and then on Xiao Xuechen, who was supporting him.

A sorrowful expression appeared on his face. His vocal cords could somehow still function as he rasped, "Why? Why didn't you do as I said? Why did you make something simple so complicated? Why wouldn't you let me leave this place? Why did you make my consciousness wake up inside this corpse? I don't want to see myself like this!"

As he spoke, he began bracing himself against the side of the coffin with arms that could barely bend. He seemed to want to climb out.

Xiao Xuechen froze for a moment.

Had San cutting the candle increased the difficulty of a deduction that they could originally have ended?

No, there had to be a reason.

The obedient image of Zhou Yongsheng standing outside the window last night remained vivid in her mind. Although she did not know why the aura emanating from the black coffin had become so much more dangerous, she knew there was no time to hesitate. Her gaze hardened.

Between a ghost and an expert, of course she trusted the expert!

"Quick..." At that moment, Yu Xing murmured again.

She turned her head and looked at Yu Xing with a trace of sympathy. Then she forcefully slashed the dagger across his throat.

Blood instantly splashed in every direction like a rapidly blooming flower.

A few drops of blood splattered onto Xiao Xuechen's face. She slightly turned aside to avoid getting any in her eyes, then let out a breath of relief.

She had seemed confused and uneasy before swinging the dagger, but when she did, her strike was clean and decisive. Her posture did not look like that of a novice.

A flash of appreciation passed through Carlos's eyes. He had misjudged her. When this woman was ruthless, she was actually quite useful.

Corpse Zhou Yongsheng could not understand what they had done. He stared incredulously at the living people "killing each other," first going blank before reacting and flying into a rage.

"Who gave you permission—to take my things!"

That incomprehensible roar was the last sound Yu Xing heard.

After his throat was slit, he felt the life force within him rapidly draining away.

This was different from the torment of negative states. If negative states punished his soul, then this fatal attack from outside severed his path to life through his body.

It hurt.

It hurt terribly.

Along with the sensation of air leaking from his throat, he could no longer draw breath. Warm liquid gushed from the wound in streams, dyeing his white fuzzy sweater blood-red.

Yet at the same time, the icy aura inside him receded like a tide, as though it had left together with his life force.

His pupils dilated, his breathing stopped, and by every measure, Yu Xing was dead.

Xiao Xuechen and Wei Fan continued supporting Yu Xing, watching him with concern.

While keeping part of his attention on Yu Xing's corpse, Carlos questioned Zhou Yongsheng's words. "Your things? San is one of your things?"

He had naturally seen what the candle in the plate looked like before it was cut in half, and the explanation behind that "Lu" surfaced in his mind.

It was not a surname. It was a number!

The formal character for six!

And there were exactly six Deducers among them.

"I see." Carlos's quick thinking gave him exceptional reflexes. "Not just San—you regard all six of us as your possessions. Allow me to guess—if Zhou Qinghai lit that candle, the six of us would essentially be sacrificed, correct?"

"What?"

"Sacrificed?"

The Xu family brothers, who had climbed back to their feet, voiced their shock in unison.

"Hahahahaha... If that candle had truly burned, it would have burned our lives away." Carlos could actually still laugh at a time like this.

Zhou Yongsheng froze again, then roared in grief and indignation, "What are you talking about!? The candle reveals the way. As long as it is lit, everything will end! Why are you all being so clever..."

Just then, the wind stirred the loose hair over Yu Xing's forehead.

At a certain moment, his unfocused pupils became lively once more, flashing with a startling gleam.

With the candlelight on both sides of the ancestral hall reflected in his eyes, Yu Xing moved and broke free from Xiao Xuechen and Wei Fan's support.

He stood steadily.

The gruesome wound on his neck visibly vanished. In an instant, Yu Xing's neck was restored to normal, without leaving the slightest trace.

"You!?" Xiao Xuechen stared at Yu Xing as his wound rapidly healed, her shock breaking through all restraint and appearing plainly on her face.

Yu Xing wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve, sighed softly, then smiled at Xiao Xuechen. "Well done."

Then he stretched lazily, looking extremely comfortable.

Since the environment had not changed and the supernatural source was still present, that chilling aura wrapped around him once more, continuing to devour Yu Xing's vitality like maggots clinging to bone.

But if the negative state were compared to a clock, then resurrection after death was like resetting its hands to the starting point.

The weakness just now had left Yu Xing unable to move, his thoughts nearly stagnant. But now, he still had anywhere from several minutes to over ten minutes before reaching that irreversible state again.

He had traded one real death for a chance at State Rollback.

And now, he had enough time.

Though no one was not curious about which sacrifice had allowed him to die and come back to life, it was obviously a secret. They could not ask.

Xiao Xuechen, who had been praised, rubbed her face and handed the dagger back to Yu Xing before asking the real key question. "What should we do now?"

"Carlos was right. If that candle had been lit, the six of us would have become grave goods for this 'funeral.'" Yu Xing spoke quickly and glanced at Zhou Yongsheng's corpse, which was slowly approaching them. "Didn't it say it did not want to see itself as it was now?"

He smiled gently, and everyone nearby inexplicably shivered. "What it wants to see... is itself looking like a living person."

"Right? Our lives can give you the traits of the living. Now that the candle specially prepared for this is gone, you can only do it yourself—kill us and take the vitality from our bodies one by one... Even at this point, just to make that easier, you are still pretending to be an innocent victim."

The dagger in his hand pointed at Zhou Yongsheng from afar. "It's true that you hate Zhou Facai for strangling you to death. So you arranged to meet Zhou Qinghai in town. If one of us brought him along, that would be an unexpected bonus for you. If not, you lost nothing."

Zhou Qinghai was dumbfounded. Small, pitiful, and helpless, he poked his head out from behind Carlos. "Th-th-this has something to do with me too?"

"It does, little one. Look carefully at this corpse..." Yu Xing turned and smiled at Zhou Qinghai. "Doesn't he look like Zhou Yongsheng, the classmate who asked you to come play in town, then claimed he had something to do and would arrive a day or two later?"

"Zhou Yongsheng!? He's Zhou Yongsheng?" Zhou Facai's eyes widened as he stared at the risen corpse in suffocating disbelief.

He had never known the corpse's identity. He had only heard Yu Xing mention it now.

Looking at it this way... he really did look rather...

Zhou Qinghai did not know what words could describe his feelings. What exactly had he done wrong?