What a Wonderful Person—Shame About the Mouth

Alice's Central Plaza was located at the very center of the entire amusement park. Yu Xing had already confirmed that while running around everywhere.

Yu Xing could also understand why Ling Heng had brought him to Central Plaza. Theoretically, it was equally accessible from every direction, and if anything happened, this was the easiest place to find.

Of course, that was only the purpose Ling Heng wanted him to see and understand.

Yu Xing looked at the hand gripping his arm, then listened to Ling Heng's incessant chatter and his seemingly overly excited tone. A hard-to-read smile appeared on his blue-gray, expressionless face.

The killer was one of the couple.

In fact, he had reached that conclusion long ago. Leaving Zhao Yijiu and Wang Jue's little group to come before these three had been for the purpose of observing Chen Jiu and Ling Heng.

Every Single Prism member had negative emotions lurking within their personality.

Violence, cruelty, disorder, and so on, including... fervor that had already lost all restraint.

When these people advanced to Differentiation Tier, they all followed the Fallen Path.

The wheel of the mundane world was stripped away from consciousness, carrying all morality and goodwill with it as it fell into boundless darkness. From then on, there was only chaos and collapse.

Even some weaker members who had not reached Differentiation Tier showed traces of corruption at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced stages.

Yu Xing had learned of Zhao Yijiu's detective identity on the drop tower.

At the time, he had gotten the slip of paper containing the clue and had begun observing Zhao Yijiu. The clue concerned the detective. After reading it aloud, he casually tossed the paper away and never let Zhao Yijiu see it.

Zhao Yijiu was not the sort of person to be so careless. Yu Xing also knew that, in Zhao Yijiu's eyes, he was probably someone who lied anytime and anywhere. A clue was so important, and given the nature of their relationship... blindly believing him without even questioning it was not something Zhao Yijiu would do.

Unless Zhao Yijiu could confirm the clue was correct without seeing the slip.

To someone like him, who had lived for so many years, the ways of the world and human nature had long ceased to be unfamiliar. Some things did not require digging to the bottom of them or irrefutable evidence. All he needed was one detail.

So, while catching dolls, he had discussed something with Zhao Yijiu.

Originally, Yu Xing did not know the killer's identity, so he had planned to pretend to be the detective and test the others' reactions.

Then Wang Jue had shown up halfway through, and together with the new clue, he had given them a much broader view.

When the clue "The detective and the killer have never traveled together" appeared, Zhao Yijiu had quietly told him the victim's identity, making it easier for him to trick people next—no, test people.

So his task had actually been completed already. He knew the identities of the two special cards and had obtained four clues.

Now, he was simply acting on a whim and helping Zhao Yijiu out along the way. Besides... he had vaguely sensed the true significance of Alice's Park.

Yu Xing's candlestick had disappeared, turning back into a black mark attached to his invisible Persona Mask.

Forced to sit on a stone bench outside the plaza, Yu Xing watched as Ling Heng stood before him, lowered his head, and inspected him all over again.

Yu Xing truly did not know what was worth looking at in his neither-human-nor-ghost appearance. He had no mirror, but he knew his hair had grown longer. If this happened a few more times, he would probably resemble those corpse puppets from ancient legends.

Of course, if his hair did not shorten after he returned to normal, he would get it cut.

"Wonderful..." Ling Heng murmured.

"You can ask whatever you wanted to ask now," Yu Xing said. Seeing the other man's expression, he found it quite interesting.

"How is your body temperature?"

"It dropped quite a lot."

"When you undergo Ghostification, does your body experience any other sensations? Discomfort, nausea, things like that?"

"No."

"Do you feel any urge to hurt others?"

"No."

The more Yu Xing answered, the brighter Ling Heng's eyes became.

"That is practically possessing the power of Ghostification while retaining complete control over one's mind." Ling Heng muttered under his breath. His voice was so low that Yu Xing could not hear most of what followed. He only saw Ling Heng start pacing back and forth, a common action many people made while thinking.

Yu Xing closed his eyes and remained silent, using the stiffness he had put on as an excuse.

Ling Heng's research direction was remarkably similar to the projects Single Prism had always worked on. Yu Xing could almost certainly conclude that Ling Heng was a researcher who had not yet reached Differentiation Tier.

He really had no favorable impression of researchers like these...

As he idly pondered, he suddenly felt an itch at the back of his neck.

He did not reach up to touch it. He heard Ling Heng's footsteps stop, followed by a faint sigh. "What a pity."

Yu Xing opened his eyes.

Ling Heng bent down close before him. The fervor in his eyes had faded somewhat, though it seemed more like it had been forcibly concealed. He resumed a mild and gentle expression. "Although you are an exceptionally good research subject, you cannot remain here."

"Are you going to make a move against me?" Yu Xing asked.

Ling Heng froze for a moment.

But he quickly smiled and nodded politely. "Yes. My apologies, but I suspect you are the victim—I can see Zhao Yijiu's detective identity. He was with you from the beginning, then he sent you over halfway through in an attempt to confuse me."

The rules did not permit him to reveal his identity directly, so he used such wording to admit that he held the killer card.

Yu Xing looked at Ling Heng's face. One moment, he was so eager that he disregarded all manners. The next, he was almost refined. It was as though one soul had been split into two extremes.

"Zhao Yijiu is the detective?" Yu Xing asked, then shook his head. "I don't know what clues you possess, but people's actions do not follow inevitable logic. The same team arrangement can be interpreted in any number of ways, like that... whatever it was, mille-feuille."

His arms had begun to itch as well, but he still did not lower his head. His pitch-black eyes merely stared at Ling Heng's face. "Which layer do you think you're on?"

Ling Heng smiled. "What if these words are only meant to shake my intent to kill? In truth, it does not matter if you are a suspect. No one currently knows my identity, so I have a certain margin for error."

As long as no more than two people knew the killer's identity, the killer could still win even after killing the wrong person.

"Besides, I think you resemble the victim. At the coffee chairs, you overheard the conversation between A-Jiu and me, so you deliberately calculated the volume and wanted to use Xie Ze to draw away our attention." Ling Heng spoke unhurriedly, as though he had no intention of killing anyone at all. "You acted suspicious of Xie Ze. Even if normal people did not say it aloud, they would vaguely suspect Xie Ze was the killer card. The real killer, on the other hand, would not take it seriously. You wanted to use that to observe A-Jiu and me."

"That interpretation isn't impossible." Aside from the basic maneuvers Ling Heng had mentioned, Yu Xing had genuinely seen bloodstains on Xie Ze. Although Xie Ze could not be the killer, it seemed he had indeed done something he should not have in reality.

The numb itch in his back, chest, and legs grew increasingly distinct.

The current situation was that he had followed Ling Heng to Alice's Central Plaza, a place with no one around.

If Ling Heng killed him here, no one would see it. It would only look like there was one more dead person who knew the killer's identity.

Unfortunately... he could not die.

Yu Xing finally lowered his head and raised an arm to look at it.

Cracks had appeared beneath his flesh without him knowing when. Not only his arms—the places that had been itching just now had all been affected.

Countless cracks seemed to possess wills of their own as they burrowed deeper and deeper. His wounds grew deeper as well, until bone could be seen. It was a gruesome sight.

The cracks spread across his entire body, as though someone had sliced him open again and again. Ling Heng calmly watched the scene, smiling as if he had expected it all along. He even murmured, "Pain sensitivity decreases after Ghostification. While that is more beneficial in combat, it also weakens the instinctive sense of impending danger. Hmm..."

"Is this a curse?" Yu Xing stood up and asked curiously. Not a drop of blood had flowed.

He did not know whether the flesh within had rotted due to his Ghostification state or because of this thing embedded in him. Either way, his blood had turned into black, viscous matter that clogged the cracks, making for a deeply unpleasant sight.

Seeing that Yu Xing was not frightened in the slightest, Ling Heng knew Yu Xing likely had another trick up his sleeve. But he was not worried, because for a Deductionist who had not reached Differentiation Tier, this curse was almost impossible to solve.

"You aren't afraid?" Ling Heng asked politely.

Yu Xing smiled as well. He reached behind his neck and touched two lips.

They were real lips. His fingers could even slip between them and touch the teeth opening and closing inside.

Every time the teeth moved, another crack appeared on his body. Put simply... a mouth had grown on the back of his neck.

He had no idea when it had appeared. After Ghostification, he was not as perceptive as usual and had not noticed it.

Facing Ling Heng's question, Yu Xing said, "Honestly, you won't like the answer."

A zombie's fingers were very hard. The moment he finished speaking, he forcefully drove them into the back of his neck and, with a rip, tore away the skin and flesh containing that mouth.

Once the mouth disappeared, the cracks stopped multiplying and deepening, as though the curse had lost its control center.

"I'm not afraid."

A scream came from the chunk of flesh in his hand. Yu Xing threw it away in disgust and noticed that Ling Heng's expression had turned rather ugly.

There was no solution below Differentiation Tier... because the core of the curse was on the neck. To tear that mouth off, one would generally lose one's life in the process.

Could neck flesh be ripped away so casually?

Ling Heng nearly suspected that Yu Xing was even crazier than he was.

Then he realized that perhaps... that was indeed the case.

Yu Xing frowned from the pain of forcibly ripping off such a large chunk of flesh, but that was all.

He controlled his Ghostification state and let it fade. The blue-gray color slowly vanished, replaced by pallor—Yu Xing's usual complexion.

At the same time, the cracks and the missing flesh on his neck actually wriggled and rapidly healed.

The black viscous matter turned back into blood, then was neatly wrapped beneath his skin again. Before long, Yu Xing had recovered completely.

"You have more than one sacrificial offering." Ling Heng's face darkened as he looked at Yu Xing, this "monster." "I underestimated you."

"Mm-hmm~" Yu Xing flexed his fingers. "I'm the victim you believe I am, and you're the killer. Since you failed to kill me, what do you plan to do now?"

Ling Heng's gaze flickered. "Naturally, I will continue trying to kill you. However, your research value is even higher than I thought. I will find a way to take your corpse away."

Yu Xing was amused by his overestimation of himself.

Research value?

Ling Heng was not the first person to say that.

The last person who had said it had gone around in circles for many years and was probably nothing more than a handful of yellow earth by now.

So Yu Xing nodded. "Right. If it were really as you said, then you would indeed have to keep trying to kill me."

However, after lowering his head to assess how badly his clothes had been dirtied, he suddenly became unhappy.

Not having a cleanliness obsession did not mean he enjoyed moving around in sticky clothes, so he felt rather irritated.

"Ling Heng, if your girlfriend learns you're the killer, what will she think of you?" Yu Xing asked.

Ling Heng shook his head. "I won't let her find out."

"Hahaha... hahahahaha..." Yu Xing had heard something hilarious. He laughed until his phoenix eyes curved, and the upturned corners of his eyes suddenly carried a ghostly, elusive gleam with the curve of his smile. One look told anyone he was about to do something bad.

"You really do like her. I thought there wouldn't be love between two lunatics." Yu Xing was not in great physical condition. He coughed twice while laughing before barely managing to stop. "That's too funny."

"What do you mean?" Hearing the words "two lunatics," Ling Heng stepped closer, his expression darkening further.

"Kid, setting everything else aside, your acting is pretty decent." Yu Xing met Ling Heng's sharpening gaze. "You know perfectly well that I'm not the victim, and you're not the killer. Yet you went this far just to help her. Impressive~"