The Man in Red

"How--"

Seeing that Hua Subai was not moving, Yu Xing was about to ask a question when the other party stretched out his arm and squeezed out a "Shh."

He immediately fell silent.

The divination practitioners behind them quietly walked up the steps and stood in a group behind the screen. Anyone could notice the abnormal drop in temperature on the second floor, not to mention the undisguised, dense ghostly aura.

This is a ghostly aura that cannot be directly confronted; it doesn't mean the ghost itself is particularly powerful, but rather that...

A certain set of enforced rules governs this place.

As the first person to step out from behind the screen, the rules will inevitably fall on Hua Subai first.

The terrifying ghost faces had oily, greasy mouths covered in scarlet food scraps. The two ghost faces smacked their lips and looked at Hua Subai as if he were an uninvited guest trying to steal food. Their fierceness was evident from the moment they met.

"You're here for dinner too?"

One of the vengeful ghosts grinned, its head, which was about to fall off, tilted to one side, as if only a thin piece of skin and flesh were connecting its head and severed neck.

It said, "You're too late!"

The other one chuckled, its face seemingly devoid of flesh, its thin skin wrinkling with every movement. It clapped its hands. "Too late! This seat is already taken!"

Hua Subai reacted extremely quickly; almost the instant he heard them speak, he turned around and ordered the few people who were peeking out, "Four of you go back. Only eight people can go up there!"

He thought, as expected, it was indeed a trap.

Gao Yiling said there were three tables upstairs, and since the travel agency had booked the entire venue, they naturally assumed that twelve people could sit upstairs.

But now, for some reason, two ghosts have occupied two spots, and the number of people who have come... has increased by two.

Furthermore, the ghost's table has already been served, leaving no room for new dishes. If the diviner chooses to sit at the same table as the ghost, it may not meet the conditions for the upcoming banquet.

Therefore, there are two pitfalls in total. Stepping into either one will result in someone dying. Only eight people are the safest.

"What?" The Fallen Path Deducer Rift was probably the most impatient one present. Upon hearing the ghost's voice and Hua Subai's command, his body and mind immediately wanted to obey.

He didn't know why this guy he'd never met before could make people feel an involuntary sense of obedience to him, just like when he occasionally faced Lingren; if they disobeyed, their heads might roll the next second.

But he quickly came to his senses and felt ashamed that his will had been affected.

This isn't Lingren, just someone from the other side of the broken mirror whom I've never seen before!

The rift then pushed aside the people in front and came to Hua Subai's side. "Oh? Two ghosts have taken our seats."

He sneered and said to Hua Subai, "This venue was booked by a tour group; they're the ones breaking the rules. We have nothing to be afraid of."

"If the tables and chairs are taken, just take them back!"

Hua Subai: "... Ha." He was in a bad mood anyway, and was happy to watch others court disaster.

It's a wonderful thing when someone is at the forefront and dies.

Unfortunately, only one rift was reckless. The few people squeezed at the back realized something was wrong the moment he warned them, but they hesitated because they didn't want to lose their chance to explore the second floor.

Only the Witch Doctor, already wary due to the deathly aura, grabbed the psychic and tried to run away without a word. It was unclear whether she was too efficient or had anticipated the situation and was ready to escape at any moment.

"Witch Doctor?" The psychic stumbled, nearly tumbling down the stairs, pulled along. He was annoyed. "Wait! Hey, are we just going to leave like this?"

The Witch Doctor's bells jingled, and her harsh, scratchy voice was the complete opposite of the jingling. "Hurry up and go, stop talking nonsense. I told you you can't go up to the second floor, but you insisted on coming."

People with the Mysterious Eye are simply not suited for direct combat! If the ghosts were spirits, they would have targeted methods to suppress them, but she saw that the two ghosts had physical forms.

The thought of joining in the fun vanished instantly. Knowing her own and her companions' limitations, the Witch Doctor was eager to escape!

The two of them slipped away, and Silver Sparrow fell to the back. The silver-haired girl fidgeted with her hands in a troubled manner, but ultimately did not move.

"Two are gone." Yu Xing had already figured out what was going on. His gaze fell on the two ghost faces, and he turned to Yan Li, saying, "Why don't you pick two more that you don't like and throw them down?"

But the chance to back out was fleeting. The "rules" gave them no further opportunity to hesitate. The waiter, wearing a ceramic hood, somehow teleported to the top of the stairs, extending his arm to block them. His perpetually open, dark eyes gleamed with an eerie cold light. "The food will be served in three minutes. Please sit down quickly, or else..."

"Kacha."

Just as the two from the Mysterious Eye were running away at top speed, the stairs they had just crossed suddenly groaned under the weight of the stairs. A worm-eaten crack appeared on one of the steps, and then it broke off abruptly.

The Witch Doctor and the psychic on the stairs lost their footing and instantly fell down the stairs.

"Ah--" the psychic screamed, Witch Doctor reached out to grab onto something, but only her long fingernails left a bloody mark on the wall.

The two were in the middle of the stairs when their figures were instantly swallowed up by the darkness below.

Strangely, no one heard the sound of a heavy object falling to the ground; where the stairs had been, there was only bottomless darkness.

The invisible space was completely sealed off at this moment, and the dim yellow light on the first floor could no longer be seen.

The waiter at the ceramic headgear shop said regretfully, "Otherwise, this sad thing would have happened; we'd lost two customers."

"?!" Silver Sparrow Que Tong shrank back, relieved he hadn't followed. A hint of sarcasm crept into his mind. "The Witch Doctor could predict others' death aura, but she couldn't predict when she herself would die. Hey, I'm talking about this... you surnamed Hua, you're not getting revenge on her, are you!"

Hua Subai shrugged. "Sorry, I didn't know the stairs would break."

The two ghosts in red laughed gleefully, "Two are dead! Two are dead! Enough, enough!"

The waiter urged again, "Please take a seat quickly."

Yu Xing witnessed the entire process and remained calm.

He didn't believe the Witch Doctor and the psychic were dead. When they went down the stairs, the second floor wasn't completely separated from the first floor, so they probably fell to the first floor when the stairs broke.

That height is nothing to worry about for most strategists— Yu Xing suddenly thought of Zhang Yu, who couldn't even climb a wall, and silently changed his mind—that height is nothing to worry about for most strategists.

The waiter and the ghost were merely deliberately misleading them.

The danger always lies with the people on the second floor.

The ghost said "enough," meaning there were enough seats; the remaining ten people could just fill all the seats.

But two people will sit with the ghost.

Yu Xing glanced at the system time; there was one minute left.

We can't afford to delay.

"Please take a seat quickly!" came a sharp warning from beneath the waiter's ceramic hood.

"He's sitting at the same table as us!" the red-clothed ghost started babbling again, pointing at Hua Subai with one hand and at the rift with the other.

Before the two people who had been invited could even react, the others immediately occupied the two temporarily safe tables.

The moment their bottoms touched the chair, a subtle, orderly force enveloped them, granting them a sense of peace that came with fulfilling their survival needs.

Yu Xing sat down and saw that his tablemates were Yan Li, Gu Xing, and the lone wolf "Bugui" whose real name he didn't know.

Medusa, along with two Fallen Path and the lone wolf "The Hanged Man," sat at another table.

That's strange, why are these two sitting separately?

He glanced at Yan Li, then at Medusa, and finally fixed his gaze on Boss Hua, who was being targeted by the ghosts.

With a faint, fake smile on his face, Boss Hua walked over and sat down opposite the red-clad ghost.

He seemed completely uninterested in the dishes that were about to be served, and instead wanted to devour the red-clad ghost alive.

Beside him, Crack also wore a sullen expression, seemingly very dissatisfied with his earlier arrogance.

"Those two in red, one is named Chen Yao, and the other is named Lu Jiazou." Gu Xing, who hadn't had any contact with Yu Xing since the start of the event, suddenly spoke up, making sure that only their table could hear him.

He looked up, a glint of light flashing in his dark eyes. "They're from a tour group, that's why they were able to eat at the Never Forget Dwelling."

Yan Li looked surprised. "I remember those two didn't come to the meeting."

Gu Xing nodded. "Yes."

The deducers who did not gather downstairs at Gao Yiling's house, dressed in blood-red clothes, ate in the Never Forget Dwelling, their mouths filled with the stench of blood, looking like vengeful ghosts.