At the time, the Bearded Man's horribly mangled corpse had drifted before them all on the waves, but Zhang Yuyao and Ke Yi had been staying in single rooms, so even after seeing his gruesome condition, they had no way of guessing what had caused it.
The Hoodie Woman shuddered as though he had touched a nerve, the image of her teammate's death haunting her again. She had wanted to lie and sidestep the subject, but when she met Li Xian's seemingly all-seeing gaze, she finally told the truth.
The Instance's difficulty had already reached a level she had never imagined before. At this point, however unwilling she was to accept it, she had to share what she knew-otherwise, if someone else died because of it, the survivors would only be left even more isolated and helpless.
So the Hoodie Woman haltingly recounted what had happened, stopping just before she reached the part where she dragged the corpse into the toilet and then washed off a patch of her skin while washing her hands.
"If only I'd recognized him..."
The Hoodie Woman spoke with a mixture of sincerity and pretense.
Yet after hearing the whole story, Ke Yi coldly countered:
"Recognizing him wouldn't have helped."
Li Xian had shown no surprise while listening to the Hoodie Woman's story, but Ke Yi's words made him raise an eyebrow in surprise. Then he began to grasp what Ke Yi meant.
"Suppose you recognized him-but how could you be sure he recognized you too?"
The Hoodie Woman was momentarily at a loss. "Well..."
"I could make some gesture of goodwill, or something to show him who I was..."
Ke Yi gave a derisive laugh at that, as though mocking her naivety.
"Did you ever consider that your goodwill might earn you a fatal