"Assuming my deduction is correct, the time loop has already happened. There were nine players who entered this instance the first time..." Qi Si crumpled the photo in his hand, tossed it to the floor, and looked out at the rain streaking past the window.
"Knowing myself, when faced with a one-in-three death rate, I'd probably make sure I didn't break any rules, then wait for three unlucky idiots to break them and die before breezing through."
He had only told half the story. The truth was even worse.
It was his first time in the game, yet he was pretending to be a veteran. To carve out a sliver of hope in such a tight spot, he had to be more cautious than everyone else, planning every step.
After learning about the Eerie Game's "Minimum Death Quota" mechanism, which was like raising poisonous insects to devour one another, he would inevitably have struck first and seized every opportunity to reduce the number of players, so he wouldn't become someone else's sacrifice. The three bodies in the garden might well have been his doing.
Of course, this was all speculation. In the end, he had no memories of the so-called "first round" of the game.
Qi Si suddenly recalled that he had opened his eyes in the garden outside the castle, while the other players had been sitting safely inside.
Since he had arrived late, he had been forced to sit in the seat closest to the head of the table—in other words, the most dangerous one.
So, with the attitude that he had nothing left to lose, he had brazenly lied and tested the waters.
Then, when Miss Anna had approached him first, he had taken the opportunity to shake her hand, drawing her attention.
Only then had he decided to explore the third floor and unravel the world's underlying truth, hoping to find a way to survive under the NPCs' close scrutiny.
It was as if someone had arranged everything in advance. And that person had understood his mindset with uncanny precision...
The only person who had ever truly understood him was himself.
In an instant, the clues fell into place. Qi Si felt he had understood something. The fog abruptly cleared, and everything came into focus.
He gathered his thoughts and smiled brightly. "It looks like the 'let someone else die instead of me' approach has most likely already failed. Otherwise, we wouldn't have started a new cycle. The only way to clear this instance is to unravel the world's underlying truth."
Chang Xu was silent for a moment before saying, "My gut tells me my first choice would have been to unravel the world's underlying truth and keep the death toll as low as possible."
Qi Si sneered inwardly, but had no intention of arguing.
He often spouted grand, righteous words himself. When the police questioned him in real life, he could casually spin a whole speech that perfectly upheld his image as a "law-abiding, upstanding citizen."
"Looks like unraveling the world's underlying truth is pretty difficult, Brother Chang. You failed two cycles in a row." Qi Si needled him, then ignored Chang Xu's baffled expression and headed straight for the innermost room on the third floor.
It was the last room they hadn't investigated. Compared with the other two rooms, it looked much tidier. The door was spotless, and the keyhole had been polished until it gleamed. Clearly, someone was living inside.
Qi Si pushed aside the vines swaying in the still hallway and walked through the branches and leaves scattered across the floor. He stopped in front of the door and stared at the dried petals scattered in the crack.
"Someone's inside." Chang Xu pointed at the long, slender marks on the doorknob. "We might run into Miss Anna."
In this context, the "Miss Anna" he meant was naturally the one the players had seen at the dining table—the younger sister in the melodramatic story.
Even with the instance's background, both the older and younger sisters were "Miss Anna," and running into either of them on the third floor would violate the ninth rule. Still, the sister in black was more dangerous.
"We probably won't. She should be in the garden right now. If we do run into her, then we're out of luck." Qi Si smiled and stroked the special bracelet on his right wrist. "Anyway, the penalty for breaking the rules won't be settled until tonight. We have plenty of time to unravel the world's underlying truth, don't we?"
He curled a finger and rapped on the door three times, unhurriedly.
Last night, the monsters had knocked on his door. This morning, he was knocking on theirs. The thought was both dramatic and amusing, and he couldn't help the slight curve of his brows.
Chang Xu saw that the young man had chosen to knock politely rather than pick the lock with a piece of wire. His lashes lowered, and he made no comment.
It might alert whoever was inside, but being polite could perhaps lower the NPC's hostility.
Most likely, the room held the real "Anna," the "Miss Anna" in red mentioned in the rules. She could be trusted and was, more or less, a relatively safe NPC.
As Qi Si knocked on the door again, a drawn-out creak sounded, and the tightly shut door slowly swung outward from within.
A stench of decay, mingled with the heavy scent of flowers, surged toward them. Vines and branches twisted together inside the room like tangled dragons. Almost every inch of space was filled with black and green; only a glimpse of red could be made out between the stems and leaves.
A wrinkled old woman stood there, half her face already rotten. There was nothing beautiful about her. She moaned, barely conscious, as if she could die at any moment, yet her cloudy eyes stared straight at Qi Si.
She asked, "What time is it?"
Qi Si glanced at Chang Xu. The latter took out the Pocket Watch and replied, "Two-oh-two in the afternoon."
The Old Woman tilted her head, struggling to understand what she had heard.
After a long pause, she chuckled. "One o'clock this afternoon is longer than it was yesterday."
After saying this, she lowered her head and drifted off to sleep, clearly unwilling to entertain the two unwelcome visitors any further.
Qi Si watched her quietly for a while, then suddenly smiled gently.
He pushed aside the vines in the room and walked step by step toward the Old Woman. Crouching in front of her, he asked, each word distinct, "Do you want to see him?"
The Old Woman woke at the sound of his voice. She raised her head and stared blankly ahead, her eyes reflecting no one.
Qi Si smiled, his eyes taking on the hue of memory. His voice was gentle and slow. "After that day, he left the manor and returned to his own estate, but he never forgot you. It took him years to persuade his father before he dared come back to find you. Unfortunately, you were already gone."
As Qi Si spoke, the Old Woman's eyes, once as still as dead water, gradually began to ripple.
She grabbed his sleeve and murmured, "I want to see him... I want to see him... Where is he?"
"I don't know." Qi Si lowered his eyes, smiling warmly. "But two of my companions might know where he is. Do you want to see them?"
The Old Woman stared fixedly at him.
Qi Si smiled and coaxed her gently. "You only need to say that you want Zou Yan and Liu Qingye to come up to the third floor and see you."
"I want Zou Yan and Liu Qingye to come up to the third floor and see me..."
The instant the Old Woman finished speaking, Qi Si ruthlessly pulled his sleeve free and gestured to Chang Xu. "Done. Let's go."
Chang Xu thought it over for a moment, then understood what Qi Si had done. He frowned. "You want Zou Yan and Ye Zi to break the rules too?"
The Old Woman was also Miss Anna. Having her order that she wanted to see Zou Yan and Ye Zi on the third floor had put them both in an impossible position.
If they came, they would violate the ninth rule:
[Please try not to go to the third floor. If you do, make sure Miss Anna doesn't find you.]
If they didn't, they would violate the fourth rule:
[Do not refuse Miss Anna's requests. Try to fulfill everything she asks of you. Miss Anna dislikes disobedient guests.]
Either way, they would break at least one rule, putting them on an equal footing with the two who had already gone upstairs.
Qi Si walked out of the room and looked back with a malicious grin. "The law doesn't punish everyone. We've already chosen the thankless path of unraveling the world's underlying truth. I don't want to be the only one who dies all alone."
Chang Xu followed him and asked, "Why did you spare Lin Chen in particular?"
"Ah, sorry. I forgot to tell you earlier that Lin Chen went up before we did. So, in theory, everyone has now broken the same number of rules..." Qi Si closed the door behind him and looked up, his expression innocent. "Sigh, it's not easy making everything even."
Chang Xu: ...6.
Only now did he finally realize that the harmless-looking fellow beside him never said a single truthful thing!
If he hadn't agreed to explore the third floor together, Qi Si's order to Miss Anna would probably have included his name too...
Qi Si saw Chang Xu's wary expression and smiled unconcernedly.
He had never been some noble soul willing to bear everything alone. From the moment he decided to explore the third floor, he had planned to spread the risk around, determined to drag every player down with him.
In fact, from the moment he sent Lin Chen to investigate the third floor and laid a verbal trap to lure him into breaking a rule, every subsequent choice and turn of events had unfolded according to his plan.
Now, he had undoubtedly succeeded.
One risky exploration had yielded a great deal of useful information, and the instance's mechanics had become clear in his mind.
The Old Woman could sense the anomaly in time and claim that "one o'clock this afternoon is longer than it was yesterday," yet she somehow remained half-rotten, neither fully decayed nor fully preserved, through the endless time loop.
This proved that in this instance, an individual's ability to act was separate from their physical condition.
A body's condition would rewind to its original state along with time. But once someone became a monster, they could retain their memories during the rewind and even move freely.
For monsters, the hour that time rewound was extra time, granted without cost.
By now, the way to clear the instance was obvious.
Qi Si looked at the seventh rule on the system interface.
[7. Only monsters can kill humans. You must believe that you are human.]
At first, he had thought this was a restrictive rule meant to keep players from killing one another. He had even wondered why the Eerie Game, which encouraged players to devour one another like poisonous insects, would suddenly show such kindness.
Now he saw that the standard answer for clearing the instance was written right there in the rule.
The main NPC, Miss Anna, who was hostile toward the players, had been made human. The rule even went out of its way to specify that "monsters can kill humans." The hint couldn't have been any clearer.
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