Snap!
Dim, warm light suddenly came on inside, revealing the room's entire layout to everyone.
The enormous oval glass culture chamber was just large enough to hold a person. A complicated tangle of tubes connected Chu Rong to the laboratory equipment, and Blood-Red Rose Vines climbed over the top of the glass vessel.
They were feeding on a living person's flesh and blood.
The horrifying sight made Wen Meng gasp. Slowly, she said, "Why is he here..."
No one answered that question.
Perhaps this was the punishment for losing the hide-and-seek game.
At this sight, Shen Ru became certain of one thing: whether they entered the game through the front or the back of the building, they could all reach this scene.
Only the information on their identity cards differed.
Inside the culture chamber, Chu Rong could now make out their faces. A faint, breathy voice escaped his trembling lips:
"Help... help me."
Shen Ru raised an eyebrow. Being conscious meant he could communicate. That could be useful.
Under Wei Lanxing's astonished gaze, the young man nodded without hesitation. He stared straight at Chu Rong and spoke rapidly. "I can save you, but afterward, you have to tell me everything you know, exactly as it happened. Otherwise, I'll find you a new home. Understood?"
Faced with that blatant threat, Chu Rong had no time to bargain. He hurriedly nodded his agreement.
"Are you crazy? If you save him, we'll lose Zhao Cheng as an NPC lead!"
Wei Lanxing frowned. She couldn't understand what he was thinking. He had clearly been hoping they would kill each other just moments ago, and now he was playing the merciful saint?
She had intended to turn around and ask Mo Yu to say something, only to see the man narrow his eyes, his black pupils fixed firmly on Shen Ru. His expression was like a child finding a new toy, and it sent chills down her spine.
Ah, so that was it.
They were the same kind of person.
Not long after Wei Lanxing finished speaking, Zhao Cheng came in from outside.
"Well? Can he still be saved?"
Shen Ru pretended to ponder for a moment before saying, "The situation certainly doesn't look good, but it's not hopeless."
"What can we do?" Zhao Cheng asked urgently.
The young man's lips spread into a grin, a hint of danger in his dark red eyes. His syrupy voice rose at the end as he delivered his parting words:
"Replace the nutrient bag."
With that, he stopped time. In that brief interval, he raised the stun baton in his hand and smashed it hard into the back of Zhao Cheng's head.
The young man's sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, which gleamed white even in the dim light.
In just two seconds, the smooth, intact skull caved in at a horrifying angle.
To the others, all they saw was Shen Ru smashing Zhao Cheng's head open at incredible speed.
Blood splattered everywhere, and its heavy metallic stench immediately filled the air.
The beautiful rose seemed to have found a source of amusement. He struck again and again without the slightest sign of fatigue, bright red droplets sliding over the bridge of his nose and down his neck into his collar.
"As long as I smash his head to pieces, he won't be able to disobey, right?"
Then Shen Ru removed Zhao Cheng's name badge and pinned it to his own chest. His lips curved as he pointed at himself. "From now on, I'm Zhao Cheng."
In the livestream chat:
[Holy shit, holy shit!!!! So fucking hot!!!!]
[Hahahaha, he actually had that fucking trick up his sleeve. I was wondering why he was so fearless about cracking Zhao Cheng's skull open.]
[You can actually fucking do that???]
[So this was the solution my wife meant... gotta say, it really works.]
Mo Yu produced a sharp knife from somewhere and sliced through the tubes and vines connected to Chu Rong, then yanked him out of the culture chamber.
Shen Ru stripped Zhao Cheng bare and tossed his clothes to Chu Rong, telling him to hurry up and change.
When they first entered, the young man had noticed there were hardly any staff on this floor. Most researchers stayed in their own laboratories and rarely came out.
So he gently pushed the door nearly shut, leaned against the wall, and asked lazily:
"Go on. What happened after you entered the game?"
The experience had already scared Chu Rong out of his wits. As he dressed, he tried to piece together his scattered memories:
"It wasn't a hide-and-seek game at all. The system gave us one minute to hide, but it never said what the seeker was. The whole second floor was covered in rose vines. We hid in the gaps between them and didn't dare move."
At this point, Chu Rong seemed to recall something horrifying and suddenly began to dry-heave.
Wei Lanxing had never been on good terms with the Dawn Guild, and she held particular contempt for this guild leader who had gained his position through connections. Seeing his cowardly display, she snorted:
"So the vines were the seeker, then. You hid right in its lair."
Chu Rong lowered his head, hiding his expression. His voice was quiet. "There weren't any clues at all. I passed out after losing the game, and when I opened my eyes again, I was here."
Since he had escaped the vines' control in time, his body was gradually recovering. He had also immediately redeemed a lifesaving item from the shop, so he was now in fairly good condition.
Bang!
A large crater was smashed into the floor beside Chu Rong. He stared in horror at the person responsible.
"What are you doing?"
Shen Ru smiled brazenly. His dark red eyes and the bright blood on his face were especially striking under the light.
"Guild Leader Chu, we're all adults here. How about a little honesty?"
Mo Yu was somewhat displeased. Even with death at his doorstep, Chu Rong was still playing dirty little games.
Although Chu Rong had acted panicked after escaping danger, his words had been deliberately misleading. Rather than directly identifying the seeker, he had left a gap where the key clue should have been, inviting them to speculate.
Was this his idea of a clever provocation?
Chu Rong still tried to play dumb, feigning confusion. "I don't understand what you mean."
Mo Yu looked at him. An eerie glimmer shone in his pitch-black eyes, like deep pools, making the man's intentions impossible to read.
"Why do you think you're still alive?"
Without giving Chu Rong time to react, the man looked at him contemptuously and said, "Because you still have value. If you can't turn that value into something tangible, why should I let you live? Anyone could lead the Dawn Guild. You know that too, don't you?"
Mo Yu bent down and patted his face insultingly. "Do you know what to say now?" he teased.
In the livestream chat:
[Holy fuck! My husband is turning on the charm. Everybody, get out of the way!!!]
[Aaaaaah, don't pat him! Pat me, pat me!!!]
[Why does this feel like a married couple playing off each other...]
[That's a guild leader for you. Wei Lanxing doesn't look surprised either. Guess they were all watching Chu Rong's nasty little performance.]
[I seriously want to know how he became a guild leader...]
Chu Rong knew Shen Ru. A mere B-rank was nothing to fear, but Mo Yu was different.
This man was a devil.
He excelled at toying with people, a pervert who could get off on watching them struggle desperately, suffering and suffocating.
He couldn't die like this. Absolutely not.
Pale-faced, Chu Rong swallowed and confessed:
"The games look separate from outside, but inside, all the game scenes are connected. There aren't really any rules. Only four out of twelve people can survive. It's that simple."
"So you were one of the survivors?" Wen Meng asked uncertainly.
Chu Rong nearly burst into tears and hurriedly nodded. "The two from Lanji and the Fifth Guild's leader are still alive too. I really don't know anything else."
Shen Ru studied the room full of medical equipment and Zhao Cheng's mangled body, sinking into thought.
It was too strange. From Zhao Cheng leading them up to the sixth floor when they arrived to the clues Chu Rong was now handing over, everything had gone remarkably smoothly.
And the numbers matched perfectly.
The screening mechanism had a fifty-percent survival rate, and exactly eight people remained now. It was as though it had been predestined, the ending already calculated by someone.
"The game wasn't hide-and-seek, was it? Twelve players had to use whatever tricks they could to deceive the remaining four. I'm guessing your task was to stop us from discovering the secret. That's how you clear the game, right?"
Shen Ru's clear voice drove into Chu Rong's heart like a nail, finally bursting the balloon of lies.
Among those twelve players were the leaders of several guilds. No matter how he looked at it, Shen Ru found it deeply suspicious that someone this useless had made it into the final four.
Chu Rong jerked his head up. The cold sweat on his forehead had already run down his nose to his chin.
The young man's smile was bewitching, but there was no warmth in his dark red eyes.
In the livestream chat:
[...guys, this is getting a little hard to follow.]
[Holy fuck, five people with eight hundred schemes between them. So I'm the only idiot getting played here???]
[So many fucking twists in just a few minutes. Is this year's screening mechanism really this insane?]
Before you continue