The center-parted man's chest, which had been rising with his breaths, returned to normal once he stopped breathing. The strange bulging and twitching ceased. It was unclear whether Honey Shadow had moved elsewhere or vanished for some other reason.
His face had also become twisted in exactly the same way as the corpses in the swamp.
Roughly three minutes passed between Honey Shadow entering the player's body and his death, but Fan Zhe never spared him a glance throughout the process. Instead, he stared intently at a device he had taken from inside his clothes.
His mask covered most of his expression, but his eyes alone revealed the distinct shifts in his emotions-first indifference, then a slight lift of his brows, as though he had spotted something on the device... Then excitement slowly took over, turning into sheer ecstasy when the man beneath him breathed his last.
Almost impatiently, he dragged the center-parted man's corpse out through the passage and tossed it into the swamp. Then he hurriedly used his wristband to close the passage's barrier, turned, and left through the door in the wall.
After hearing Ji Xie's account of what he had seen, Li Xian silently touched the wristband on his own wrist, his expression thoughtful.
The announcement had played through the residential complex shortly after they left the garbage dump... It probably wasn't just a coincidence.
Coupled with Fan Zhe's ecstasy after checking the device, the brutal killing inside the Glass Container had very likely been a research experiment involving the "New-Type Candy."
That explained all the corpses with twisted faces nearby. And while he had been hiding beneath the swamp, that experiment... had succeeded.
"Honey Shadow never reappeared after entering the player's mouth, right?"
Li Xian checked the detail he found strange with Ji Xie once