Here He Comes

While it's described as a human head, it's not entirely accurate; to be precise, it's a skull.

The skull was not human bone; it gleamed with a metallic luster, covered with countless engravings, both eerie and exquisite, like a precious work of art.

Of course, the owner of this artwork didn't seem to cherish it much. Yu Xing had only glanced at it once when the human head was almost on his face, the skull's mouth open, as if emitting a silent roar.

He instinctively used the back of his hand to block, and in doing so, he slapped the skull away. To Carlos, who was following behind, it looked like a spherical object flying through the air, its trajectory changed by Yu Xing's slap, and it crashed into the stone wall.

In an instant, everyone—from Yu Xing and his two companions to the bats flying in the air and the people being attacked by the bats—fell silent. The only sound was the skull rolling down the stone wall, rumbling back the direction it had come from.

"Damn, young hero, you've got some skill." The next moment, a slightly irritating voice rang out. Yu Xing looked up and saw a man wrapped tightly in thick clothes looking at them like he'd seen a savior amidst the swarm of bats. "Regardless of which path you gentlemen belong to, it's fate that we've met. How about saving my life?"

As they were talking, the bats realized what was happening, and some of them abandoned their attack on the man and pounced on Yu Xing and the other two.

It seems that... whether we save their lives or not, we have to deal with the bats first, or at least drive them away.

Yu Xing raised his hand; the spray bottle was heavy, indicating a substantial capacity. He pressed the nozzle, and a burst of water mist drenched the incoming bats.

The bat screamed in terror and anger, not loudly, but sharp and piercing. Carlos responded with a snort of displeasure, spraying the bat with even more furious breath than Yu Xing.

"It's so noisy." He sprayed the bats for a while, then stopped when he saw them all flying back. "Tsk, the bats in this tomb are much bigger than those in other tombs. Looks like there's been some kind of mutation."

"Help me, friends!" The man over there was still surrounded by bats. No one knew how he did it. He didn't even have a bag, but he managed to hold off the bats for a while with his thick clothes. His head was also covered by a hat, and his arms were protecting his face. His voice was muffled.

"Want some help?" Lin asked.

Yu Xing stood by indifferently for several seconds, watching the man's disheveled appearance. The man must have been running to reduce the bats' attacks, but he stopped in place after seeing them, wanting to run but unwilling to.

Since someone has come here, if he leaves again, he will repeat the fate of being chased by bats. It's better to wait for someone to rescue him.

Only when the man seemed about to give in and run away did Yu Xing sigh, "What kind of question is that? Of course we should help! Helping those in need is a virtue, isn't it?"

Man: "... Yes, a fine virtue, brother, come quick!"

Carlos sensed Yu Xing's wickedness and, with a smile, sprayed water mist at the man. Lin also helped, and after a while, the bats flew away into the dark passage in the distance, leaving behind only a few corpses that had "drowned" in the water.

The man was finally free, yelling as he took off most of his clothes, revealing the windbreaker underneath. Yu Xing felt hot just looking at him.

Although the tomb was cold and damp, it wasn't so cold that you had to be wrapped up like you were climbing a snow-capped mountain, almost like a ball.

"Thank you, brothers. Hehe, where did you come from?" The man finally managed to get himself in line, turning his face towards Yu Xing was taken aback; the man's eyes were covered by a white cloth—he was blind?

"Before you ask us, since you've received our life-saving grace, you should at least be a little more self-aware and introduce yourself, right?" Carlos narrowed his eyes, trying to test the man's eyes. A prop gun appeared in his hand, perhaps a magic prop. He pretended to attach a "silencer" and aimed it at the man.

The man showed no reaction. He smiled and said, "That's right. My name is Zheng Zhan, from Oster Company. Since you've made it this far, you must know about our company, right?"

"So you're from Oster Company? That's a legendary big company! How come you're all alone? Also, are your eyes alright? Do you need any help?" Yu Xing "very concerned" about Zheng Zhan's physical condition, his tone somewhat exaggerated, as if afraid Zheng Zhan wouldn't be able to tell that he wasn't being sincere.

Hearing Yu Xing's voice, Zheng Zhan moved his head as if to determine the direction, and then walked towards them.

"I'm fine. My eyes have always been like this. Cough, I accidentally stepped on a spatial mechanism and got abandoned by the main force. What about you guys?" He was originally about five or six meters away from the three of them, but now he had moved to about three meters away. His steps were steady, and he didn't look like a blind man at all.

Carlos raised his gun, and everyone heard a clear click of it being cocked.

Zheng Zhan paused, his face, a third of which was covered by white cloth, still showing a somewhat terrified expression. "No way? A gun?"

"With Oster Company's financial resources and strength, getting a gun shouldn't be difficult, right? Why are you so surprised?" Carlos aimed at Zheng Zhan with a wicked grin. "Stop right there and don't move, or your head will be blown off!"

Zheng Zhan paused for two seconds. "I feel like I've just escaped one danger only to fall into another. None of you sound like good people."

Indeed, especially Carlos, when he threatens people, he exudes a mature villainous aura, just like when he kidnapped Zhou Qinghai in the Coffin Village scenario, Zhou Qinghai had a deep-seated fear of him.

After he finished speaking, he bent down and picked up the skull that had rolled past him from the ground. "I didn't intend to get close to you. Look, I was just picking up my things."

Zheng Zhan held the engraved skull in his hand, its two black hole-like eye sockets staring at everyone. Yu Xing noticed that not only the skull, but even Zheng Zhan's index fingernail was covered with engravings, and the nail plate of the index finger was one-third longer than the other fingers, with a pointed end that looked very sharp.

Carlos sensed a terrifying power in Zheng Zhan's skull and the inscription on his fingernails, and asked with a smile, "You little blind man, you're quite agile. How do you find your way? With your hearing?"

"How could that be? We just arrived, and he already knew there were three of us." Lin was more direct, stating definitively, "This person can definitely see; he's pretending to be blind. He has malicious intentions."

"Hey, hey, hey, you can't just condemn me like that! Look at this cloth, it's so thick. Even if my eyesight is fine, I can't see anything through it!" Zheng Zhan quickly objected. "That's right, I really can't see, but I can sense living things. When the three of you came, I could sense three blurry images in my mind, so I really didn't know that the guy who looked so shaky had a gun."

He spoke very quickly, as if afraid Carlos would shoot him dead. Seeing this, Yu Xing knew what was going on. "You are... an outsider?"

Zheng Zhan paused for a moment. "What outsider? Of course, everyone who goes into a tomb is an outsider. Otherwise, would I be a corpse?"

"There's no need to rush into denial; there's no one here to hide anything from." Carlos subtly conveyed the message that everyone here was an outsider, then said in a commanding tone, "Now that you're in our hands, don't even think about running away. Confess everything you need to, and we'll safely return you to your company. Otherwise... haha, do you think you'd rather have just died in that swarm of bats?"

Lin stared at Carlos in shock. He had only known that Carlos was crazy and unpredictable, often doing dangerous things that the tomb raiding team couldn't understand. He never expected that Carlos was such a good actor. The sense of danger in his tone made even his teammate believe it was real.

Carlos is not a man who kills innocent people indiscriminately; Lin could sense this from the feng shui field. Therefore, he knew that Carlos was just trying to scare Zheng Zhan.

But Zheng Zhan had no idea. He stood there with a bitter face. "So it's three of our own kind... I don't know if this is good or bad luck. Even if I wanted to fight back, I couldn't beat all three of you by myself."

"However, since you're outsiders, we shouldn't have any conflict of interest, right? To be frank, my mission is to find a human head in the demon daoist's tomb to feed to my Xiaoman. That shouldn't interfere with your mission, right? I have no sense of belonging to the Oster Company. Do whatever you want; I won't stop you."

Zheng Zhan fully demonstrated what it means to be a wise man who knows when to yield. His cowardice was very logical. After quickly assessing the difference in strength between the two sides, he chose a conservative approach, which was to cooperate temporarily.

"Your eyes can do more than just perceive. Can you 'see' when you're close enough?" Yu Xing suddenly asked.

Zheng Zhan exclaimed in surprise, "Wow! That's impressive! How did you figure that out?"

"You used the excuse of picking up your little Man—that skull—to get closer to us. Even if you ambushed us after getting close, you couldn't possibly incapacitate all three of us at once, unless you're very confident in your close combat skills."

Yu Xing said, "But you can't even drive away bats, so your strength is probably not combat-oriented, even if you have a super short weapon like fingernails. So, you're not approaching us to fight, so all things considered, the only way you can get closer is to make your perception clearer, at least as clear as if you could see them."

"There's another reason. If you can't see your surroundings, you won't be able to find your way amidst the noise of bats. We clearly heard the movement of the bat swarm as we came here. You were running them away." Carlos put down his prop gun, and with a flick of his finger, the gun vanished.

Zheng Zhan gave Yu Xing and Carlos a thumbs up. "Awesome, brothers, you're right. I really didn't mean any harm. I just wanted to see what you guys looked like and observe you. After all, you're from another faction, and I didn't know you were outsiders. It's normal to do that, right?"

"That's normal. So, we saved you, and you happen to be an outsider without any sense of company honor. In that case, it's not unreasonable for us to ask for all the information you have about the members of the Auster Tomb." Carlos countered.

"Of course, of course, there are eleven of us going down into the tomb this time..." Surrounded by three "villains," Zheng Zhan shamelessly revealed all the information about his company.

For example, the types of mechanisms they discovered in this level of the tomb, the partial map they've drawn, and the abilities of the few people from the Oster Company who came...

"Well, before my walkie-talkie malfunctioned, five of us, including myself, had broken away. I kept walking along the road and suddenly I was surrounded by a huge swarm of Aridia Bat flying towards me. I figured I hadn't done anything to them, so I just kept running. My walkie-talkie broke down too. Actually, you guys came at the right time, otherwise I would have been all alone." Zheng Zhan was quite the chatterbox. After giving Yu Xing the information they wanted, he started complaining again.

"You've drawn a map?"

"Did the walkie-talkie malfunction around this area?"

"Your company only survived because of a man named Chen?"

The three questions, raised by Lin, Carlos, and Yu Xing respectively, interrupted Zheng Zhan's incessant chatter, which showed no sign of being "captured."

"Yes, that's right," Zheng Zhan replied with three words.

Yu Xing's lips curled into a smile, "Is Chen wearing a trench coat?"

Zheng Zhan said, "Yes, you've met him? Come to think of it, I think he's the key NPC in this deduction Yugi, it's just a pity I didn't get to have much contact with him."

The conversation paused midway, Yu Xing instantly understood that Zheng Zhan was a deducer, not an experiencer.

Moreover, Zheng Zhan was also aware of the experience tester system, but because he was unsure of their identities, he changed his tone before speaking.

He was cautious, but Yu Xing wasn't very interested in Zheng Zhan; he was more concerned with the meaning behind Zheng Zhan's affirmative answer.

The illusory figure he saw when he picked up the black-suited doll was indeed a member of Oster Company, addressed as Shen! Moreover, Zheng Zhan, as a predictor, did not recognize Shen's identity, indicating that Shen was probably not a famous predictor. According to Yu Xing's previous assessment of Shen's strength, Shen should be very strong.

The strong will become famous. Unless he uses items that alter his appearance and abilities, he is most likely an experience tester.

The tester... no wonder I had no recollection of them.

After guessing Shen's identity, Yu Xing did not overlook another memory in her mind.

Alice's Park 2.0, The Old Butler, The Arsonist.

He and Shen were indeed destined to meet. Shen had entered the Alice's Park that he had opened, and now they were about to meet again in the demon daoist Tomb Palace.

"He's not a key NPC, and he's an outsider too." Yu Xing told Zheng Zhan this with a mischievous intent. "The reason he's so high-profile and different is probably because his level is too high, and his mission is fundamentally different from ours."

Zheng Zhan didn't ask him how he knew; after all, he was a prisoner now.

He didn't even know what these three people looked like or their names.

"Chen, Zheng Zhan..." Carlos thought for a moment. There were three outsiders in their team, and the Oster Company should have about the same. "Can you tell who else in the Oster Company looks like an outsider?"

Zheng Zhan shrugged. "I can't tell, I'm blind."

"If you can't tell, don't bother looking, it's a waste of time." Suddenly, a clear, cold voice came from around another corner.

Carlos and Lin were startled; they hadn't even noticed who had arrived!

Yu Xing's heart skipped a beat. She realized that because Zheng Zhan was not allowed to approach them, the blind man had unknowingly pressed himself against the side of the stone wall, and the cold voice was coming from that side.

It seems there's another passage behind the stone wall.

Zheng Zhan's many instructions to them were actually a delaying tactic! He probably called for help as soon as he was surrounded by bats, and then pressed himself against the wall to shorten the straight-line distance to the passage behind it, in order to meet the conditions for "sensing".

Zheng Zhan probably already knew someone was coming to rescue him, but he's still pretending to answer their questions.

Sure enough, as Yu Xing analyzed many things in an instant, Zheng Zhan happily greeted the newcomer, "Chen~ I was just talking about you. There's a guy here who seems quite interested in you. Come on, why don't you make friends with him?"

They pretend to be friends, but the real message is, "Beat him up, beat him to death!"

"Shen?" Yu Xing's eyes lit up. Even though Zheng Zhan showed some malice, he still focused his attention on Shen.

Footsteps approached, unhurriedly.

A man in a coat emerged from the darkness and came to the spot illuminated by a flashlight.

The face, delicate as a doll, lost some of its realism, appearing exaggeratedly pale.

The man looked very young, even younger than Yu Xing's apparent age, seemingly just over twenty. He reached out and pushed up his thin-rimmed silver glasses, meeting Yu Xing's suddenly excited gaze.

"So happy?" Yu Fengchen did not follow Zheng Zhan's suggestion to fight with the other forces as soon as he appeared. Instead, he looked at Carlos, then at Yu Xing, and finally gave Yu Xing a faint smile.