Skin Hunger Syndrome [9]

Jiang Cong and Che Quan stood together, a breathtaking sight that held everyone spellbound. The others unconsciously held their breath.

Jiang Cong introduced himself. "Jiang Cong, a player. My role in this instance is a student in Class Four. I woke up on the third floor and just ran into... so we came down together."

As he spoke, Jiang Cong looked at Che Quan and gave another gentlemanly smile.

For some reason, that smile reminded Che Quan of the subtle feeling he had experienced in the other man's arms earlier. He immediately turned away.

At the same time, he gave a soft scoff-this man certainly knew how to offer useless information.

Before long, everyone fell silent again.

The clues were fragmented, and time kept slipping away.

Their exploration seemed to have led them to a dead end.

Che Quan broke the dead silence, sounding bored. "Any other clues?"

Yuan Zhou said awkwardly, "My room was spotless. There wasn't anything suspicious."

Ning Dantong looked equally helpless. "Same here. I searched several times and found nothing."

Miao Rouning radiated dejection and panic. "There's less than half an hour until midnight. What should we do...?"

Chen Yuxiang looked around at everyone, gritted her teeth, and mustered her courage. "I'll go downstairs and look. Didn't it say we had until midnight? It should... it should be safe, right...?"

"I'll go with you," Chang Jianfeng said.

Che Quan had no interest at first, but staying on the villa's second floor would probably get him penalized for passive play again.

He had no desire to experience another flare-up of skin hunger syndrome.

Nor did he want to be forced into touching Jiang Cong again.

After weighing his options, Che Quan ignored the others and headed straight down to the villa's ground floor.

Seeing Che Quan head downstairs, Chang Jianfeng and the others hurried after him.

Jiang Cong followed at an unhurried pace, bringing up the rear.

Anyone who had watched this kill-or-be-killed survival game's livestreams a few times knew one thing-Jiang Cong had always been the game's most exceptional top player.

Rumor had it that his real name was Jiang Cong, though other unverified whispers claimed he had another name.

His status as a top player was easy to understand.

At the end of every instance, survivors received points and various rewards based on their performance.

The game also had a variety of rankings.

Of these, the points leaderboard was the best measure of a player's strength.

Without question, Jiang Cong held firmly to first place with hundreds of millions of points.

The points awarded for each instance were hardly generous. Most of the time, the rewards could be as low as a few hundred points.

And sometimes, if players needed to exchange points for items to clear an instance, the extortionate cost ranged from tens of thousands to several million.

Accumulating hundreds of millions of points under those conditions was nothing short of terrifying.

That was why everyone acknowledged Jiang Cong as a top player-the best of the best.

But he was called the most exceptional player because every player except Jiang Cong had a livestream from their own perspective.

Essentially, each player had a dedicated livestream channel.

Viewers could choose whichever player's perspective they preferred to watch the instance unfold.

But no one had ever been able to watch a livestream from Jiang Cong's perspective.

He moved between instances like a bug in the system.

Unfortunately, the other players in this instance, including Che Quan, were all newcomers. Since the live comments also had an information protection mechanism, none of them knew Jiang Cong's reputation.

They were merely dazzled by his appearance, finding him elegant and languid, with an air of effortless composure in his every movement.

But unlike Che Quan's dazzling, brazen aloofness, Jiang Cong was the sort of man no one dared try to fathom, someone who instinctively inspired awe.

Che Quan reached the ground floor.

The light was even dimmer down there, but the specially installed dance floor was still a seething, noisy mass of wildly dancing figures.

Every figure was shadowy, their faces indistinct. Some were so distorted that they barely seemed human.

The instant the players stepped onto the ground floor, an intense blast of icy air struck them head-on.

Chen Yuxiang and Miao Rouning let out involuntary cries, shivering several times in the sudden chill.

No one noticed that Jiang Cong merely lowered his gaze slightly, and the sinister, icy air quietly steered clear of him.

Che Quan, meanwhile, treated the cold air as though it did not exist, completely unmoved.

Chen Yuxiang asked Che Quan in a whisper, "B-boss, how should we search?"

Or rather, what should they search for...? They were all still utterly lost.

Beside them, Chang Jianfeng was already bending down, preparing to search for hidden clues or objects.

Che Quan swept his gaze over them. He neither answered Ning Dantong nor said anything else, simply walking straight up to the nearest "person" and asking coldly, "Know a girl with Qiao in her name?"

The "person" seemed not to hear him clearly at first. She brushed the hair away from her face and leaned closer to Che Quan.

Her face pointed directly toward the others.

Chang Jianfeng and the rest saw it perfectly clearly.

The "person" had no facial features.

Her face resembled a swirling mass of black fog.

The "person" seemed unaware that she was not human. Having heard him clearly this time, she began to think, then looked terrified and shook her head repeatedly, seeming to grow somewhat crazed.

As though she were about to realize she was not human, she began convulsing like a zombie undergoing a mutation.

Chang Jianfeng and the others watched in frightened concern, at a complete loss and terribly afraid that something would happen to Che Quan.

The constantly scrolling live comments were just as nervous.

Only Jiang Cong stood calmly to one side, a little apart from the others, watching Che Quan with a composed expression to see how he would react.

Che Quan had become the center of attention.

He watched the convulsing "person" coldly for a few seconds, then said impatiently, "If you don't know her, move."

With that, Che Quan ignored whatever twisted shape the "person" before him had taken, raised his leg, and kicked the thing down. He stepped over the writhing mass and continued onward.

Reaching the next "person," Che Quan asked again, though he phrased it differently this time. "Who invited you to the villa today?"

The "person" tilted its head, which wobbled as though it were about to fall off, making the sight deeply unnerving.

Once it understood Che Quan's question, that "person" seemed to grow frightened too. Its figure became increasingly distorted until it resembled a twisted rope. Watching it, Yuan Zhou trembled and could not help crouching down with his arms over his head.

Ning Dantong murmured, "Why do they turn into monsters as soon as he asks them anything...? What are they afraid of?"

They watched blankly as Che Quan kicked the rope-like thing aside and returned.

"Go ask them," Che Quan told them coolly. "Even if they turn into ghosts, they won't be aggressive before midnight."

Only then did Chang Jianfeng and the others snap out of their daze and hurry into action.

Yuan Zhou was the most timid of them all, even more so than Miao Rouning. He did not dare approach those not-quite-human monsters at all.

They could only assign him to keep track of the time.

When midnight drew near, he had to remind them to leave the ground floor.