The Next One, Kill Me

Once you reach the bottom of the stairs, the layout of the lobby becomes immediately apparent.

They came down at a moderate pace, neither too early nor too late. Yu Xing glanced around and, unsurprisingly, Ren Yi was already there. Siren and Shafuri stood together; both women were stunningly beautiful. Siren's beauty was as natural as an elf's, and she was just as eye-catching Shafuri Saffron.

Qu Xuanqing sat on the waiting chair, two bloodstains appearing on her face. Her hospital gown was stained with blood, and her hair was loose and disheveled. Her long, black hair, reaching her lower back, made her look somewhat terrifying.

Yu Jing and Han Yan were whispering to each other; both of them had some injuries on them.

Yu Xing and the Rubik's Cube walked over together. The Rubik's Cube suddenly darted behind Ren Yi, like a nimble sphere, while Yu Xing sat down next to Qu Xuanqing. Looking at the wounds, she asked, "What happened?"

Qu Xuanqing glanced at him and said calmly, "I was on a mission when the lights went out. Someone ambushed me."

She suffers from night blindness.

Once the lights go out, theoretically she'll be like a blind person, unable to move an inch, making it the perfect opportunity to ambush her.

She didn't look well either, and seemed a bit listless. Yu Xing observed her for a while and suspected that it wasn't just because she was a patient. Night blindness wouldn't cause such physical weakness. It was likely that Shafuri had unknowingly poisoned Qu Xuanqing.

Qu Xuanqing himself should have known this as well.

They exchanged a knowing glance, but Zhao Yijiu and Zhao Mou had not yet appeared, which surprised him somewhat.

Finally, the elevator doors opened.

Yu Xing immediately looked over, then sat up straight in surprise.

Zhao Mou was still sitting in his wheelchair, but Zhao Yijiu seemed to be in a bad state. It was hard to tell whether he was pushing the wheelchair or the wheelchair was supporting him.

Zhao Mou had a knife wound on his shoulder. Yu Xing glanced at it and immediately knew it was caused by Brother Jiu's [Stop Killing] technique.

Zhao Mou looked very upset, as if he was angry, while Zhao Yijiu remained silent, appearing somewhat guilty.

Yu Xing got up and went over, supporting Zhao Yijiu with one hand and pushing the wheelchair with the other, smoothly escorting both of them to the vicinity of the waiting chairs.

It wasn't a good time to ask about their situation. Clearly, something had happened to Brother Jiu, causing him to become mentally unstable and even use Stop Killing Zhao Mou.

Yu Xing guessed that this must be related to Zhao Yijiu's condition, "Dissociative identity disorder." While delusions weren't too difficult for Zhao Yijiu, dissociative identity disorder was an open threat. Zhao Yijiu had a vengeful ghost inside her, essentially sharing a body with Zhao Yijiu. If this ghost were to be affected by dissociative identity disorder here, then...

When Zhao Yijiu has an episode, who is the other personality that emerges?

It can only be that vengeful ghost!

Yu Xing understands Zhao Yijiu, which is also a kind of understanding of Zhao Mou. In fact, because of Zhao Mou's intelligence, he is even better able to guess Zhao Mou's thought process.

Zhao Mou's anger likely stems from two points: first, he's angry that Zhao Yijiu, despite not being able to fully control the vengeful spirit, insisted on joining the live stream and risking her own health; second...

He was furious that someone had sabotaged him behind his back, and he had no way to retaliate.

Yu Xing patted Zhao Mou's back almost imperceptibly, signaling Zhao Mou to calm down. As for Zhao Yijiu...

Yu Xing could clearly feel Zhao Yijiu's body trembling beneath her hospital gown. It wasn't a trembling of fear, but rather a trembling caused by the excessive force exerted on her muscles, making each muscle feel like it was about to collapse.

He helped Zhao Yijiu to sit next to Qu Xuanqing, but Zhao Yijiu grabbed his arm. Yu Xing was startled and realized that Zhao Yijiu was using the long sleeves of his hospital gown as a cover to write on his arm.

"Down..."

"One..."

"Kill..."

"I."

Yu Xing's pupils contracted for a moment, then she withdrew her hand as usual, neither saying yes nor no, and sat down in silence.

How did Zhao Yijiu know he was the perpetrator?

Or was Zhao Yijiu actually asking him to find a way to make the perpetrator target him next?

Just as Yu Xing was about to give a response, the familiar static crackled, the annoying and eerie alarm finally stopped, and the dean's voice came from the loudspeaker above the hall.

This speaker looks remarkably like the kind of model that would be installed in factories back in the 1990s; it's quite retro, and it's not even in the morning mode.

"It's happening again... it's happening again..." the dean muttered. "When will this end? You guys... hurry up and find out who killed the person, and then destroy the murderer, otherwise, sooner or later... you'll all be killed."

This statement signifies that everyone is present for the first identification round.

Those who didn't come to the hall were the Pearl Seller and the Dark Thief.

[Another double death! But the Dark Thief is in a bit of a predicament; he's the first confirmed person to fail in both rounds.]

[Good grief, I thought Ren Yi found the body quickly enough, and that only one person would die in this round, right? I didn't expect the Pearl Seller to be killed too.]

[Make way, everyone! Watch me take down two wolves with my bare hands! The culprits must be the Siren and the Rubik's Cube!]

How did the person upstairs figure that out?

[Hilarious, how else could you watch it? Just randomly looking at it, of course!]

I think Yu Jing will definitely protect the Dark Thief to the death in the next round, after all, he's the junior he brought in.

Let's see if he can protect himself in this round.

Finally, we can see the other guests besides Ren Yi. The live chat is buzzing with excitement, with everyone talking about all sorts of things.

There were also viewers who said, "Waaah, my Miss Pearl Seller." They had all heard Xing and Han Zichuan chatting earlier. The Pearl Seller lost her sister, and she was a little Righteous Path brought by Han Zichuan from the Righteous Path. She was beautiful, pitiful yet powerful, practically a female boss in the making.

Who was so ruthless as to kill her?

The dean asked the guests to speak and give their self-introductions in the order they entered the hall.

Yu Jing was the first to enter. He lingered on the first floor while trying to complete his mission. Later, he went up to the second floor and encountered Qu Xuanqing, but Qu Xuanqing was already injured at that time.

He didn't know where the body was because he hadn't seen it.

Next was the siren, who was the one who sounded the alarm. She said the Dark Thief's body was on the second floor near room 208, next to the haunted room 207. When the Dark Thief discovered, he had just died, and his blood was still warm, flowing down.

After completing her task at the morgue, she went upstairs. She didn't dare to wander around the first floor because several haunted areas on the first floor were open terrain, and she could easily be affected. So she went up to the second floor and encountered Han Zichuan, and also saw Qu Xuanqing, Yu Jing and Shafuri in the distance.

Her testimony suggests that the people on the second floor were the prime suspects until she sounded the alarm, and she couldn't prove which route Yu Jing took after coming up from the first floor, or whether he might have met Qu Xuanqing after committing the murder.

The third to speak was Qu Xuanqing Qu Xuanqing. Clearly targeted by both groups, she smirked, "First of all, my mission was on the second floor, which involved some ghosts. So, the ghosts turned off my lights. I have night blindness, and when I was suddenly at a disadvantage, someone attacked me from the shadows. This person must have known I have night blindness and had been lying in wait around me. He might not be the perpetrator, but he certainly angered me."

The sinister tone at the end sent a chill down many spines. She continued, "Secondly, I've been poisoned. Shafuri should explain this properly, or I won't hesitate to cut you into a human stump after the identification."

After threatening two people, Qu Xuanqing finally got to the point. "I saw Rubik's Cube and Ren Yi on the second floor, but they separated quickly. I saw Rubik's Cube go up the stairs, and about five minutes later, Ren Yi... I guess he was explaining something to the audience, anyway, he was muttering something to himself, and he also went up. After that, I was ambushed, and when I came to the light, I met Yu Jing."

Ren Yi was next, and he nodded expressionlessly, confirming Qu Xuanqing's guess. "Yes, I have this habit of sharing some knowledge with the audience."

Audience. "..."

We don't want to hear your nonsense!

If your tone of voice had been even slightly more varied, I wouldn't have thought of my high school math teacher.

It was clear that the audience wasn't very interested in listening to the lecture.

Ren Yi's whereabouts became clearer. He and the Rubik's Cube wandered around the second floor for a while, and after completing the task, he went up to the fourth floor, intending to explore the dean's office.

Everyone knows there's a secret in the dean's office, but this secret isn't readily apparent. At first glance, the office looks no different from any other room, except that it's haunted by many ghostly figures that resemble human faces.

While explaining to the audience how the ghost mask is made up of several skins tangled together, Ren Yi searched the information in the dean's desk drawer and found a note written by the dean on a draft paper. The handwriting was messy and the whole thing was full of fear. The gist of it was that ghosts had been haunting him for the past two weeks, harming his family, employees and patients, and also harming himself.

Ren Yi generously disclosed all this information. If anyone doesn't believe it, they can verify it themselves later. Based on the timeline, Ren Yi likely didn't have the opportunity to commit the crime.

The audience could clearly see Ren Yi's innocence, but the guests could not. However, they could deduce that as long as Ren Yi was not lying, he had no opportunity to commit the crime, because he went downstairs very early.

Next was Han Yan. He mainly stayed on the first and second floors, and reportedly even went up to the third floor for a short while. During that time, he saw the Pearl Seller dart across the street on the fourth floor through an open corridor. Now that the Pearl Seller was dead, he guessed the body should be on the fourth floor. After that, Han Yan said he went back to the second floor, met Shafuri, and then the alarm sounded, so they came down together.

Han Yan smiled throughout, but his smile was somewhat distant, which fit the persona of a polite but righteous Righteous Path who was unhappy about the death of the Pearl Seller.

His facade remained impassive, as if he were unaware of his disadvantage. He died in the first round, and if he died in the next two, it would be a true death. But this didn't seem to matter to him; the probability of dying in all three rounds wasn't actually that high. At least in the eyes of the audience, his calmness was normal.

But he should know that his disadvantage is not only his own life, but also something more obvious: his enemies, Yu Xing, Qu Xuanqing, and even Zhao Mou Zhao Yijiu, have all obtained immunity from death. No matter what trouble he causes, he can at most protect himself, but he cannot let his enemies die.

Yu Xing felt that Han Yan's composure was somewhat inconsistent with the truth, and a sense of incongruity emanated from Han Yan.

Putting myself in Han Yan's shoes, the only reason he could be so calm and collected is that he has a way to kill the enemy.

Han Yan has a way to ensure that even if they don't lose all three rounds, they will still die after the game is over?

Yu Xing did not rule out this possibility; otherwise, Han Yan should not have given up so easily in the first round. He should have at least dragged one of their people down with him so that they would have something to worry about in the next two rounds.

With Han Yan's abilities, it wouldn't be difficult for him to drag someone down without being exposed.

Knowing the nature of the Single Prism, Yu Xing became more wary. He wanted to see how Han Yan would achieve something beyond the original rules.

Han Yan and Shafuri entered the hall one after the other, so Shafuri naturally spoke after Han Yan.

Shafuri was initially on the fourth floor; she stayed there for about ten minutes before going down to the second floor.

It's worth mentioning that... she doesn't deny poisoning Qu Xuanqing; on the contrary, she's very proud of it.

Because...

"I didn't just poison this Boss Qu~" Shafuri's gaze swept across everyone's faces with interest. Using poison was her means of attack; to her, it wasn't something shameful, just like others using knives or swords.

"I sprinkled poison wherever I went, and I also injected some special toxins into certain people. However, the poison was most obvious on Qu Xuanqing because I did it on purpose." Shafuri raised her chin arrogantly. "As for the others, you may already be terminally poisoned."

Immediately, everyone was moved. Even those who hadn't seen Shafuri before thought, "Staircases are places everyone uses, right? If Shafuri had poisoned the stairwell, or even the area around the lobby... wouldn't everyone be poisoned?"

Yu Xing raised an eyebrow. He wasn't sensitive to poison. If a near-desperate level strategist silently placed poison into his body, he probably wouldn't be able to sense it.

Maybe he was poisoned too?

Just then, his ban ended.

He and the Rubik's Cube entered the hall together, but he was a little ahead of the Rubik's Cube, so he was one place ahead of the Rubik's Cube.

"I initially went to the corridor near the nurses' station on the first floor out of curiosity, because I wanted to experience what it felt like to be haunted by a ghost," Yu Xing said with a smile, revealing something hard to understand. "The nurses' station happened to be right next to the stairs, so I went over there and had a friendly chat with the ghost, and even gave it a lesson on how to call emergency services."

"Then, unsurprisingly, because of my dissatisfaction with my explanation, the ghost chased after me, so I hid in a room on the third floor. By the way, my task was to wait on the third floor for fifteen minutes to shop."