"Tsk... what a gruesome death..."
"Heh, serves him right, doesn't it..."
When Bo Yi opened his door that morning, quite a few players had already gathered in the corridor.
"Morning-" Hearing footsteps, Zhao Wen Shan turned around mid-yawn. "Did you sleep well last night?"
Bo Yi nodded.
"Right." Dark circles hung beneath Zhao Wen Shan's eyes, and her face was drawn with exhaustion. "I almost forgot you didn't get any of that oil on you yesterday."
"Sleep deprivation really does make you stupid..." Zhao Wen Shan let out another long yawn, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. "Thanks to that bastard Wang Xing, I barely slept at all last night. I spent the whole time on guard against ghosts."
"What, you ran into one too?" Zheng Rong walked over to greet them. He had the same dark circles under his eyes as Zhao Wen Shan.
"Yeah... a female ghost..." Zhao Wen Shan gestured in the air. "Her hair was about this long... she'd suddenly appear in the room, then disappear when I looked at her. I didn't dare close my eyes all night. I stayed awake until dawn."
"Same here." Looking drained, Zheng Rong nodded along. "Last night, I made up my mind that if I survived, I'd smash Wang Xing's door down today if I had to, drag him out, and beat him up!" Even the good-natured Zheng Rong was saying things like that, which showed just how dangerous the night had been.
"Then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed..." Zhao Yi suddenly cut in.
"Why?" Confused, Zheng Rong craned his neck toward Wang Xing's room. "You couldn't break the door down?"
"No." Zhao Yi shook his head. "His door was already open when I came out."
"He's smart, I'll give him that. Running off first thing in the morning-"
"He's dead."
Their voices overlapped.
Zheng Rong froze for a moment before he registered what Zhao Yi had said. "Dead?!" His voice rose. "How did he die?!"
Had Wang Xing accidentally gotten some of the liquid from the painting on himself while setting them up?
Zhao Yi stepped aside to let him through. "There, inside the room. Go see for yourself..."
As Zheng Rong passed him, he kindly added a warning. "Brace yourself."
What's there to brace myself for... Zheng Rong smiled and nodded, but inwardly he was rather dismissive. It wasn't as though he hadn't seen the dead newcomer's body yesterday.
But once he entered the room, a single glance was enough for Zheng Rong to understand what Zhao Yi had meant-
"Urgh-" His stomach churned violently. He hurriedly turned around, clutching his spasming stomach, intending to go outside and recover first.
Bo Yi stepped aside to let Zheng Rong pass, then walked into the room without a change in expression.
Compared with the room of the female player who had died before, Wang Xing's room could be considered immaculate. Everything was still neatly arranged, and at first glance, there wasn't even any blood to be seen.
Wang Xing lay spread-eagled in the very center of the bed. His face was still frozen in an expression of eye-popping terror, and every joint in his body was bent backward at an unnatural angle, leaving him in a horrifying, contorted shape.
His skin had become swollen and greasy. Something unknown filled the space beneath it, making his entire body bulge, and his face was so swollen that his features were no longer distinguishable. If he hadn't still been wearing Wang Xing's clothes, intact, there would have been no way to recognize this balloon-like "person" as the formerly scrawny Wang Xing.
The exposed, swollen skin was also covered in red, crack-like patterns, as though it might burst open at any moment.
Unlike the previous player who had died, his eyes hadn't been gouged out. Even so, they were hardly any better off-
The area around his eyes was a bloody mess, as though a wheel had rolled precisely over it. It was impossible to tell which of the dark red clumps were skin and which were the crushed remains of his eyeballs. They formed sticky, dark red masses of congealed blood over his eyes.
After examining the corpse, Bo Yi reached toward Wang Xing's exposed arm.
The instant his fingertip lightly touched one of the red cracks, the swollen skin burst like a punctured balloon. Thick, dark red liquid gushed from the ruptured fissure, rapidly soaking the sheets beneath Wang Xing.
The rupture also spread swiftly along the other cracks in his skin. Within mere seconds, the "person" on the bed was gone, leaving only a pile of chunks of flesh lying in blood.
Tiny fragments of human tissue floated in the pool of blood, and a heavy bloody stench spread through the room.
Bo Yi picked up one of the chunks. The flesh was limp, and the bone inside had been almost completely pulverized.
"What happened? What happened?"
The smell wafting out of the room drew the players from the corridor. Zhao Wen Shan stood in the doorway, craning her neck. "What happened? Why does it suddenly smell like bloo-holy shit!"
She stared in shock at the chunks of flesh on the bed, then at Bo Yi's blood-covered hands. She was so frightened that she even took a step back. "Um, well... wh-what did you do?" How had the "person" who had been intact just a moment ago ended up looking as though he'd been put through a meat grinder?
Bo Yi gave Zhao Wen Shan an expressionless glance and tossed the chunk of flesh back onto the bed.
Zhao Wen Shan was about to speak again when Zhao Yi stopped her thoughtless words with a timely smack on the head. Braving the sickening stench of blood, he walked over to the bed and sifted through the corpse himself.
"This..." Zhao Yi turned over the chunks of flesh in shock, evidently having discovered the problem too. "This... why does it look like he died from a fall?!"
Zhao Wen Shan started peering in from the doorway again. "What? A fall?!"
"Then he didn't die because he touched the painting... what death condition did he trigger?"
"But that doesn't make sense either..." Zhao Yi frowned deeply. "How could a fall leave him like this?" Given the height of their castle, even jumping from its highest floor shouldn't have shattered his bones to this extent.
"What did he do yesterday?" Zhao Yi intended to work through it by elimination.
"Oh, all sorts of things..." Zhao Wen Shan sighed. "We saw plenty of his outrageous antics ourselves." Stepping on an eye, hurting someone with a table knife... not to mention that after the lunchtime fiasco at the table, he had gone off on his own for a while.
"So we can't narrow it down?" Zhao Yi's brow was practically tied in knots. Instinctively, he turned to Bo Yi for help.
Bo Yi was still staring at the pile of flesh.
Zhao Yi shamelessly sidled up to him, even obsequiously offering him a handkerchief to wipe his bloodstained hands. "Bo Yi, have you got any ideas?"
Bo Yi looked away from the flesh and accepted the gesture of goodwill.
"Is the doll Wang Xing smashed yesterday still around?"
"Yes... why?"
Bo Yi slowly wiped his fingers. "The red patterns on his skin were exactly the same as the cracks on that shattered doll."
"He smashed himself to death."
Before you continue