The two stared at the door, behind which no one answered, as though they could bore a hole through the wood.
Liang Pei reached out and turned the handle. A crisp click sounded, but he withdrew his hand and stopped.
After what had happened yesterday, he did not dare enter recklessly. What if there was something dangerous inside again?
Li Xian noticed the commotion and came over, reaching out to open the door-
He first stood in the doorway and peered inside, but from that angle, he could only see that the bed was empty. After waiting a moment, Li Xian cautiously stepped over the threshold.
Li Xian stopped as soon as he reached a spot where he could see the whole room.
The portrait on the wall was intact, holding up two fingers. As for the rest of the room, there was not a soul in sight.
"Was his portrait like this yesterday?"
The short-haired woman nodded. "Yes. He moved his portrait on the first day... why hasn't the number of fingers in his room's portrait increased?"
"Either he found a way, or he died last night."
Although Li Xian offered two possibilities, everyone knew that the latter was far more likely.
If the person was already dead, the portrait in his room naturally had no need to add more fingers.
Li Xian shut the door and wedged a chair against it as a token precaution.
Meanwhile, Song Qingzhang closed Zhang Guangding's door and shook his head at Li Xian.
It seemed that room was empty too.
Unwilling to accept it, the short-haired woman went elsewhere to search for their missing companions, while Liang Pei stood rooted to the spot, his thoughts in chaos.
"Why? How did they die? How could there not even be bodies?"
He instinctively looked at the person beside him and caught Li Xian's expression.
There was no confusion, only an unprecedented gravity.
"Did you discover something?"
Instead of answering directly, Li Xian asked for confirmation. "Are you sure you want to hear it? This isn't good news."
[What did the streamer discover? How come I have no idea?]
[Same. I've been watching from his perspective the whole time. With just this information, what has he figured out now??]
[Shut up and watch. I've already started giving up on using my brain.]
[+1. The streamer's my external brain. I'll leave the mysteries to him.]
[In other streams, the viewers figure out the truth and get frustrated watching the players stumble around clueless... why is it the other way around here?]
[I really want to experience having a teammate like this...]
Liang Pei thought for only a moment before nodding firmly. "Go ahead."
"The human skin that killed someone yesterday was probably the figure in the painting. It escaped because the canvas was damaged."
What he had noticed yesterday-the absence of a figure on the canvas-probably had not been his imagination. Although the paper had been torn to pieces, the colors on it... had all belonged to the background. There had not been a trace of a human figure.
"Simply blocking the door probably couldn't stop it. Both of them were killed by the 'human skin' last night."
Liang Pei and Song Qingzhang fell silent together, weighing the possibility of Li Xian's explanation.
Song Qingzhang was the first to raise a question. "If that's the case, shouldn't we have found bodies in the rooms? That woman only deflated back then. She didn't disappear."
"Besides, isn't it pretty rare for a Spectral Monster to kill two people in one night? I remember Yi Jing telling me that most Spectral Monsters have limits on how many people they can kill. Ones that can kill two or more in a day are extremely rare. You almost never run into them," Liang Pei added.
[Lmao, proven wrong already.]
[What's all this talk about an external brain? Looks to me like he's rushing to conclusions before finding all the clues.]
[Let's see whether the streamer admits his analysis was wrong or keeps making things up.]
Li Xian fell silent for a moment after hearing their questions. That silence gave the live chat an opening, but before the malicious comments could gather momentum, he slowly replied, "Very few Spectral Monsters can kill two people in a day, so there were two Spectral Monsters doing the killing."
"Two? But wasn't there only one human skin?" Liang Pei still did not believe it.
"Think back to how that woman deflated before she died."
"Didn't she look like another human skin?"
Li Xian spoke calmly, but the two felt as though they had plunged into icy water.
"You mean the player who died was turned into the same kind of monster?"
Liang Pei murmured, as though unable to believe that horrifying truth.
Right, so that was why two people died last night, and why Chen Cheng's and Zhang Guangding's bodies disappeared... wait.
Liang Pei jolted. "Then that means there are four human skins now?!"
Watching the stream, Cheng Xin drew in a sharp breath and asked, "Is this kid's guess right?"
Lin Shiming nodded, approval showing in his eyes. "Completely right."
Only then did Cheng Xin understand where the other death record in Lin Shiming's notes had come from.
Once someone destroyed a portrait and released a human skin, the death toll would begin to grow exponentially, in powers of two...
"Now I understand why you said this Instance was comparable to A-rank."
"If a newcomer who's only cleared one Instance can clear this one, then he really has... a boundless future ahead of him."
With this truth uncovered, even the fingers in the portraits were no longer the priority. The most urgent task was to find a way to fight the human skins.
If things really were as Li Xian had said, they would not even make it to the fifth day. Six people were still alive, and four of them would die tonight.
The remaining two would also die in despair the following night. No one would even survive until the fifth day.
Once he understood the severity of the situation, Liang Pei made an immediate decision. "Everyone needs to know about this."
He was just about to leave when Song Qingzhang grabbed him. "Hey! Don't rush!"
"How can I not rush?!"
"We do need to tell everyone, but Yi Jing..."
"Wouldn't knowing about this situation make him give up on trying to hurt people?"
Li Xian stepped forward, yet, surprisingly, he only curled his lips slightly. "It's precisely because of this situation that we should take the opportunity to negotiate a condition with him, isn't it?"
At the dining table, once everyone had arrived, Li Xian cleared his throat.
"We've discovered an important clue."
Everyone's gaze instantly focused on him.
Yi Jing raised his head suspiciously without speaking, quietly waiting for Li Xian to continue.
The short-haired woman, meanwhile, looked at Li Xian with excited delight. "What clue?! Tell us!"
Li Xian smiled faintly. "We can share this clue with everyone, but there's one condition."
Yi Jing put down his chopsticks and folded his hands together. After surveying everyone's reactions, he frowned.
The excitement on the short-haired woman's face slowly faded. Seeing that no one else was asking, she had no choice but to speak up herself. "What condition?"
"Let me inspect your rooms."
Before you continue