Carnivore (21): The Decisive Moment

"Yilin, from here on, we have to work together to kill Chang Xu." In the room, Zhu Ling looked into Zhou Yilin's eyes and spoke earnestly.

Because Qi Si had said all those things to shirk responsibility earlier, she still didn't know that Zhou Yilin had already teamed up with him.

After all, if the two of them had formed an alliance, Qi Si could have simply used his influence to force her hand. There would have been no need to lie and clear himself of blame.

In her eyes, the situation was clear enough. Qi Si had first allied with Zhao Feng, then killed him and framed someone else, all while keeping a straight face as he tried to recruit Zhang Licai...

He was simply... a temperamental, unscrupulous lunatic!

Just thinking about that young man in the white shirt made Zhu Ling shudder. Before, she'd focused almost entirely on Yang Yundong, nearly overlooking her other opponents and making a terrible mistake...

"Chang Xu might be a Slaughter Style player. He might be trying to kill every one of us..."

She got halfway through the sentence before the rest of her words caught in her throat. Zhu Ling realized she seemed to have been strangled; she couldn't say a single word.

She struggled in vain, staring in terror at the amusement and mockery in the girl's eyes.

Before she could react, the girl pulled a strand of thread from her pocket and swiftly flicked it toward Zhu Ling's right hand.

The thread wrapped around her little finger. Her mind went blank for a moment, and her body stopped obeying her, like a Puppet on strings.

Zhou Yilin was smiling at her—a satisfied smile, like someone who had just watched a hilarious play.

"Ling, have you ever heard of a gunslinger's game? Only fools reveal their strength. The wise know how to disguise themselves as weak... Oh, and an eye for an eye, blood for blood. I bring you greetings from Sariel."

"You..." Zhu Ling's eyes widened. She suddenly remembered what she'd gone through in the previous instance.

Back then, she'd allied with a young man and tricked him into revealing that he was a member of Sariel. After much inner turmoil, she'd ultimately chosen to put him forward for execution.

It had been a team instance, but the players had grown suspicious of one another because of the so-called "Minimum Death Quota" mechanism. The execution of that Sariel member had perfectly dissolved their misgivings, allowing them to unite under her leadership...

"You like pretending to be a good person, don't you? You like judging Sin, don't you? Have you ever considered that one day, you might be the one on trial?" The girl suddenly leaned in close to Zhu Ling and grabbed her hair. With mock tenderness, she pressed her lips to Zhu Ling's ear. "Don't worry, Ling. I'll give you a beautifully crafted ending."

Zhu Ling's lips trembled. She wanted to apologize, to explain her helplessness, to beg for forgiveness. But she couldn't make a single sound.

She couldn't even control her own thoughts, expressions, or movements. All she could do was let the girl manipulate her into all sorts of bizarre poses...

"...We can't clear the instance by following the standard route. Zhu Ling or Zhou Yilin will have to trigger the Minimum Death Quota mechanism and kill everyone else."

In the room, Qi Si was still holding Zhang Licai's hand, smiling faintly. The smile never reached his eyes. "When that happens, you'll really die."

Zhang Licai opened his mouth, then asked after some hesitation, "Chang... Chang Xu, since you already know how to figure out the world's rules, why not tell everyone?"

Qi Si withdrew his hand and looked at him as if he were an idiot. "Because—I don't want to, of course."

A sudden, urgent pounding came from the door. Zhou Yilin's voice, broken by sobs, drifted in. "Ling... She seems to be trying to kill me! I'm so scared..."

After talking with Qi Si, Zhang Licai already knew the girl's apparent helplessness was all an act.

But he'd rather not know a thing.

Now he had no choice. He could only pretend to be clueless and throw himself into this absurd comedy, playing a farcical role with no control over his own fate.

"Hey, don't panic! Come on in!" Zhang Licai had always been good at playing dumb.

He pushed the door open with an innocent expression, gesturing as if to let Zhou Yilin inside.

Zhou Yilin shook her head slightly. "Ling's acting kind of strange. I... We should go restrain her together..."

Zhang Licai hesitated. Then he turned and saw Qi Si's smiling gaze, and could only follow warily.

He'd barely gone a few steps outside when Zhu Ling, her face twisted in a snarl, charged at him. Startled, he raised his hand and punched almost on reflex, flailing wildly.

The two of them fought for a while for no apparent reason. Then, just as inexplicably... Zhu Ling collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

The players in the Novice Pool weren't that different in strength, but Zhang Licai still found it unbelievable that he'd taken down a veteran player so easily.

A faint sense of something being wrong crept over him. But when he felt Qi Si and Zhou Yilin staring fixedly at him from either side, he didn't dare think too deeply about it.

"So, we're accomplices now, right?" Qi Si joked, but no one present laughed.

He looked at Zhang Licai and ordered, "Go to the woodshed and find a rope to tie her up. Better safe than sorry."

Knowing that a minor player on this stage had no say in the matter, Zhang Licai simply summoned the enthusiasm he'd once shown when waiting on his senior colleagues and hurried off to do as he was told.

Beside him, Zhou Yilin's eyes were red as she kept wiping away her tears. "I'm sorry. Earlier, she made me stay behind to alter your Travel Guide. She said she'd kick me out at night if I didn't... I was so scared, I had no choice but to do what she said..."

Hearing this, Zhang Licai spat at Zhu Ling on the ground too. "That bitch was up to no good. If Brother Yang hadn't lost an arm that night, nothing would've happened..."

"It's all my fault! Waaaah..." Zhou Yilin cried with heartbreaking sincerity. "Brother Yang wouldn't have died if I hadn't been there... Waaaah..."

The truth didn't matter. In the later stages of an instance, someone might have to die at any moment to fill the quota. If the rest didn't want to end up like fish on the chopping block, they had to take control of the veteran player most likely to dominate the group.

The current situation was nothing more than a tacitly understood slander and an opportunistic murder. The perpetrators stood on the moral high ground to condemn an imperfect victim—for their own benefit.

Qi Si looked west. The sun had already begun to slant; it was afternoon.

Interrupting the two actors beside him in the middle of their committed performance, he said, "I got some information out of Granny Su earlier. From what I can tell, the God's corpse mentioned in the instance's backstory is in West Village. The dangers over the next few days will come from the ghosts sealed in the Ancestral Hall."

He selectively repeated what Granny Su had told him, then said in an unquestionable tone, "I suggest we split up. Zhang Licai, come with me to the Ancestral Hall and bring a wooden bucket. Those ghosts are 'hungry at all times,' so leaving some meat outside might buy us a little time."

He didn't say what Zhou Yilin should do, but his meaning was unmistakable.

Zhou Yilin glanced at Qi Si timidly and said in a small voice, "I think I left something at the Ancestral Hall... Brother Chang, let me go with you. It'd be safer with three of us..."

"Together?" Qi Si scoffed. "If we run into danger, we'll just have to see who gets lucky enough to be favored by the 'Minimum Death Quota' mechanism."

"Then... should I go with Brother Zhang?" Zhou Yilin ventured. "You're stronger than either of us, Brother Chang. You'd be better able to handle anything that happens..."

She'd made up her mind not to explore West Village.

After all, Yang Yundong and Allen were the only two who'd gone there, and both were dead. No one knew what the place was like.

Qi Si seemed to be persuaded, his brows drawing together slightly. "In that case, hurry back. Once we've gathered a few more clues over the next day or two, we'll go to West Village."

"Okay! No problem!" Zhou Yilin looked as if a great burden had been lifted. She reached out and tugged at Zhang Licai's sleeve.

He didn't know what was going on, but she pulled him out the door anyway. He muttered, "Why are you in such a hurry? It's not even dark yet..."

Qi Si watched with a smile, seeing straight through Zhou Yilin's thoughts.

As experienced veterans, Zhu Ling and Yang Yundong had to be eliminated first. But Qi Si, the leader who'd stepped into the role for now, was just as much a target, wasn't he?

Zhang Licai's presence was actually optional when it came to dealing with Zhu Ling. Even if Qi Si and Zhou Yilin had attacked her in front of him, Zhang Licai wouldn't have dared to speak up in her defense.

Qi Si knew that Zhou Yilin insisted on keeping Zhang Licai around because her dramatic show of concern for Zhu Ling was just a pretext. Her real purpose was probably to prepare to deal with him.

If he had no backup plan, so much the better for her. If he did, then she could use Zhang Licai's life to find out what it was.

Just as Qi Si had kept Chang Xu and Lin Chen around in the Rose Manor instance to keep Zou Yan in check.

Zhou Yilin thought she'd laid a flawless trap, unaware that Qi Si was an equally masterful puppeteer behind the scenes.

Under the pretense of splitting up, Zhou Yilin planned to catch Zhang Licai off guard and turn him against Qi Si.

In her mind, Qi Si would never expect her to go that far when there was no conflict of interest.

But Qi Si was no less of a lunatic, no less of a pervert with blood on his hands.

He'd deliberately given himself a chance to act alone, and he'd never intended to let his teammates survive.

He watched Zhou Yilin and Zhang Licai leave the courtyard, one after the other. Their figures gradually shrank, swallowed up by the jagged rooftops of East Village. A trace of tenderness crept into Qi Si's gaze.

He counted the time, estimating that they'd gone far enough, then dragged Zhu Ling's unconscious body across the threshold and headed toward West Village.

Zhou Yilin and Zhang Licai had both fallen into the same blind spot. Neither had considered that the instance could end early, or that a player's allegiance could shift away from the human faction.

Qi Si had indeed deliberately reinforced their assumptions, creating ample gaps in time and information and making tonight the perfect opportunity to break the deadlock.

Gray mist shrouded the road in West Village. Dry sand, stirred into the air by a wind from nowhere, scattered, drifted apart, and gathered again, mixing with the fog to form a vast curtain.

The gray-white sunlight spread through refraction and reflection. The western sky and land began to fade from view, gradually turning into an endless expanse of white.

Qi Si dragged Zhu Ling deeper into the fog. He walked for who knew how long, until he could no longer make out the shapes of his surroundings. Then he stopped and murmured to an unseen presence:

"All the rules are clear now. I only need to eat God Meat every day and make an offering at the Ancestral Hall on the final day to clear myself of guilt and finish the instance safely. But that would be too boring. I don't like it."

"If I just leave like the players before me, you'll probably have to wait many more years. And I've always been greedy, happy to cash in on a favor or kick someone when they're down."

"If I'm going to pay an extra price, I'll need to get something more valuable in return before I'll be satisfied—so what price are you willing to offer?"

The sun hadn't set, and the dangers of night hadn't yet arrived. Yet the dangerous creatures already waited with half-lidded eyes for nightfall, preparing for a long-planned offering.

With no visibility or landmarks, Qi Si raised his Pocket Watch and held it to his ear.

Listening to its steady, even tick, he seemed to hear his own heartbeat—or perhaps that was only his imagination.

Every boundary blurred along with the vast mist, then turned to drifting mountain haze that scattered through the wind and frost.

Qi Si's eyes drooped, neither fully open nor closed. He enjoyed this chaos, this blankness and quiet, like closing his eyes to doze in a dark room filled with demons and ghosts, pretending he was one of them.

In the deathly stillness of the gray-white expanse, he heard the hour hand click into place, a little more clearly than the ticking of the second hand.

It told him that the sun had set.