Anger, humiliation, helplessness, confusion... all sorts of conflicting emotions tangled together.
His black pupils, which had looked almost human, gradually flooded with their original crimson under the onslaught of those intense, complicated emotions.
Che Quan simply could not believe that the human before him dared to be this insolent.
His sheer disbelief kept him from pushing Jiang Cong away immediately.
Only when Che Quan felt a wet touch skim over his lips did he abruptly come to his senses, his now blood-red eyes filled with fury at this outrageous violation.
He shoved Jiang Cong away and scrubbed his lips hard with the back of his hand, as though utterly disgusted.
With night vision as clear as daylight, Jiang Cong saw perfectly how the crimson in the proud young vampire's eyes seemed to ignite, vivid beyond compare.
He could not help parting his lips slightly, letting the searing heat in his chest escape.
After his eyes returned to their vampiric color, Che Quan also regained his superior night vision, allowing him to see Jiang Cong's intense, burning expression.
It was the first time Che Quan had seen that expression on Jiang Cong.
His usual elegant, refined restraint was utterly at odds with the blazing emotion he now openly displayed.
Che Quan froze for an instant, then grew even angrier.
He scrubbed his lips several more times, harder still, as though desperate to erase every trace of Jiang Cong from them.
At the sight, Jiang Cong's unrestrained smile deepened.
He spoke in a soft, light voice, with a barely perceptible note of pleasure. "Do you really hate it that much?"
Che Quan could not be bothered to answer.
He approached Jiang Cong step by step, slipping his left hand into his pocket.
His clear night vision made it easy to locate the Molotov cocktail.
-Jiang Cong had casually set it on the coffee table in this little room when he embraced him from behind.
It happened to be on the right side of Che Quan's path.
So Che Quan bent down, gripped the bottle's neck with his free right hand, and tossed the Molotov cocktail straight to Jiang Cong.
"Light it."
Che Quan delivered the icy command.
Jiang Cong smiled leisurely. As his long fingers struck a match and lit the Molotov cocktail, his beautiful eyes, like inanimate gemstones, remained fixed on Che Quan as he approached.
The flames flaring up in Jiang Cong's hand illuminated the dark little room in an instant.
They also finally allowed the countless viewers in the live chat to see the scene that had been shrouded in darkness.
At that moment, the entire chat went wild.
The countless viewers who had been waiting without even blinking erupted with joy.
But a moment later, their smiles froze on their faces.
A shocking sight appeared on everyone's instance livestream.
Amid the roaring flames, the sharp, coldly gleaming tip of the knife in Che Quan's hand plunged straight into Jiang Cong's heart.
Che Quan's eyes were crimson as blood-soaked roses, while Jiang Cong still wore that refined, unruffled smile.
Che Quan's flawless face and Jiang Cong's silver hair looked all the more mesmerizing in the firelight.
One second.
Everyone's livestream instantly went black.
Then it lit up again.
The scene had changed completely.
All the players had returned to the third floor of the haunted villa.
Chang Jianfeng, Miao Rouning, and Yuan Zhou woke first. They were utterly bewildered, with no idea what time or day it was, how they had passed out, or how long they had been unconscious.
As they looked around, Ning Dantong and Chen Yuxiang were the next to wake.
The moment Ning Dantong woke, she jerked upright from the floor and began gasping for breath.
Before Chen Yuxiang had even fully opened her eyes, an involuntary, terrified scream burst from her throat.
Only two seconds later did Chen Yuxiang recognize where she was. Still shaken, she found Ning Dantong and said, on the verge of tears, "Jumping off a building is no joke. It was terrifying. I felt like every bone in my body was going to shatter. That feeling of being on the brink of death really wasn't something to mess around with."
Ning Dantong nodded with deep understanding. "Being burned alive was the same."
Then they helped their still-dazed companions up.
Perhaps because their individual consciousnesses had been suppressed by the instance's consciousness for too long, Chang Jianfeng and the other two felt utterly groggy. When they stood, even their sense of balance seemed temporarily lost.
Having heard nothing from Che Quan and Jiang Cong, they all left the third-floor room to check on them.
Just then, Che Quan and Jiang Cong happened to wake as well.
Their gazes met. Che Quan remained icy and indifferent, as though they were complete strangers, and looked away in less than a second.
As for Jiang Cong, Che Quan did not spare him another glance.
Chen Yuxiang admired Che Quan enormously and could not help asking cautiously, "Boss, um, did you burn to death too? Did it hurt?"
Naturally, Che Quan could not be bothered to answer such a boring question.
But inwardly, he could not help recalling how it had felt.
Honestly, compared with skin hunger syndrome at 200% intensity, the pain of burning was hardly worth mentioning.
Still, he was a little surprised.
He had not expected this stupid instance to simulate real pain. No wonder its clear rate was so low.
And... in a sense, Jiang Cong had also been "truly" killed by him once, hadn't he?
At that thought, Che Quan's expression inexplicably grew even colder.
He told himself Jiang Cong had deserved it.
Who told Jiang Cong to do something so suicidal?
Not actually sending Jiang Cong to hell was already the greatest mercy he could offer.
Che Quan stopped thinking about it and raised his eyes coldly toward "Qiao Qiao" in the center of the third-floor living room.
"Qiao Qiao" still looked like a monster made of a heap of rotten flesh.
Chen Yuxiang had also spent a long time as her best friend in the school instance.
At first, she had only been acting to survive, but later, she had genuinely come to feel sorry for Qiao Qiao. Seeing "Qiao Qiao" in this hideous, decaying state again, Chen Yuxiang somehow no longer felt afraid.
All that remained in her heart was sorrow.
Ning Dantong felt the same.
Che Quan looked at "Qiao Qiao" and said coolly, "We can end this now, right? I've played along with you long enough."
The heap of monstrous flesh did not answer immediately. Its one remaining eye, no longer filled with its earlier hostility and hatred, rolled back and forth, studying everyone's face except Chang Jianfeng's, Miao Rouning's, and Yuan Zhou's.
No one knew what it was thinking.
Then Jiang Cong approached it, took out a photograph, and held it before its eye.
"Here."
Jiang Cong's voice was low and elegant, like a violin.
Bloody tears immediately began to trickle slowly from that eye.
Mixed with the foul, rotting flesh that kept dripping water, they made for a truly horrifying sight.
Yet everyone present except Che Quan and Jiang Cong vaguely felt an immense sorrow settle over them.
From where Miao Rouning stood, she could just see the photograph.
She cautiously tilted her head and made out what was on it.
It was a graduation group photo.
But it was completely different from the one she had received at the start.
In it, Qiao Qiao and Chen Yuxiang stood right beside each other, facing the camera with bright, youthful smiles.
At the instant captured in the photo, Ning Dantong happened to be looking toward Qiao Qiao and Chen Yuxiang, her eyes filled with warm wishes.
Miao Rouning and Teacher Chang were absent, and Yuan Zhou was nowhere to be seen either. It seemed that everyone who had bullied Qiao Qiao was missing.
Having been unconscious the whole time, Miao Rouning did not know that their counterparts in the instance had already been taken away for investigation, with some transferring schools and others being suspended...
The dark surroundings began to turn transparent, and the structure of the house gradually dissolved. After blinking a few times, they discovered they were no longer inside that gloomy haunted villa.
Standing once more on the road outside the villa's gates, they all felt very different.
The eerie housekeeper who had assigned their guest rooms at the beginning now stood beside the villa's gates. Giving them a genuine smile, she said warmly, "You're welcome to visit again."
This clear, with the entire party surviving, shocked every live-chat viewer watching the [Haunting] instance livestream.
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