All the players were stunned by this turn of events, especially Zhao Wen Shan.
"Y-you... where did you get that flower?" Zhao Wen Shan stared at the white rose in Bo Yi's hand, so shocked that she stammered. She still remembered how Pan Lulu had gotten her rose from the master of the house.
She looked at Bo Yi, then at the rose, then back at Bo Yi, trying to imagine a similar scene in her head-no!
Zhao Wen Shan shuddered violently-that image was horrifying! She couldn't let herself imagine any further!
"He offered it to me, of course." Bo Yi glanced at Zhao Wen Shan. He had no idea what she was thinking, but her expression had suddenly become exceptionally strange.
"Why would the master give you that? Does the flower do something?" Zhao Yi asked.
Bo Yi shook his head. "He only told me I could bring this flower to see him at night."
"In that case..." Bo Yu finally realized why Bo Yi kept bringing up the flower. "Last night, I saw Tian Xiuyun leave her room."
"She... seemed to have this flower with her."
At that, everyone turned their eyes back to the silent Pan Lulu.
"Pan Lulu, what's going on?" Zhao Wen Shan demanded sternly. "Why did Tian Xiuyun have your flower?"
"Did you do it on purpose?"
She looked Pan Lulu up and down, suspicion in her eyes.
After all, she had met plenty of veteran players in this game who liked using other people's lives to test the conditions that triggered death. Clueless newcomers like Tian Xiuyun were easy to manipulate and made very convenient test subjects.
But hadn't Pan Lulu said she was a newcomer?
"D-did what on purpose?"
Pan Lulu had already composed her expression. She looked up, her face blank with confusion. "Tian Xiuyun had a flower too?"
"You didn't give it to her?" Zhao Wen Shan's suspicious gaze searched Pan Lulu's face.
"Of course not..." Pan Lulu looked utterly innocent. "I threw mine away..."
"Ah!" As though she had remembered something, she abruptly changed tack. "But after I got the flower, I did tell her about it..."
"Right, I also told her I'd thrown it away in the garden..." Pan Lulu glanced up timidly. "Could Tian Xiuyun have picked it up herself?" That would explain why they hadn't found any trace of the flower in the garden.
As the other players began to look thoughtful again, Bo Yi gave another soft chuckle. "Why would she pick up that flower for no reason?"
"Especially after you told her you'd thrown it away."
"Logically speaking, throwing away the flower meant you thought it was unsafe."
"If she knew it was unsafe, why would Tian Xiuyun go and retrieve it?"
Pan Lulu was immediately at a loss for words. She hemmed and hawed for a while without managing a single sentence, though tears began welling up in her eyes again.
"Unless," Bo Yi gave Pan Lulu a meaningful glance, "you told her something..." Something that made Tian Xiuyun think the flower would be useful to her.
"I didn't..." Crystal-clear tears slowly rolled down Pan Lulu's cheeks. She looked at Bo Yi with reddened eyes, sobbing. "How could you say that... Besides, why would I hurt Xiuyun? I have no reason to hurt her..."
"My guess is that, like me, you were curious..." Bo Yi's slender fingers toyed with the petals. "What would happen if someone brought this flower to the master?"
The garden fell silent as soon as he finished speaking.
All the other players looked at Pan Lulu with scrutiny.
A tear splashed onto the ground. Pan Lulu wiped the tear tracks from her face with the back of her hand. "I was only sharing a clue with my friend out of kindness. I don't understand any of what you're talking about..."
"If you're blaming me for not sharing the clue with everyone, weren't you keeping the very same clue to yourself? I'm a newcomer. Of course I could only stick together with Tian Xiuyun, another newcomer..."
"But since you don't trust me, you won't believe anything I say anyway."
"Go ahead and use your status as a veteran to bully a newcomer like me..." A stubborn expression crossed her face. "But if you insist on making these baseless accusations and forcing me to admit to things I never did, I absolutely won't give you what you want!"
Seeing that the conflict between them was about to erupt, Zheng Rong hurried to smooth things over. "I think..."
But he never got to finish, because Bo Yi had already furrowed his brows in confusion. "'Use my status as a veteran'?"
"Who told you I was a veteran?"
"Huh?!"
Now the other players forgot all about whether Pan Lulu had deliberately harmed someone and turned to him in astonishment.
"You're a newcomer?!"
"Th-that can't be right..."
"Yeah, Bo Yi, stop joking..."
Everyone chimed in.
Bo Yi looked at them impassively. "Why would I need to lie...?"
The players froze.
Now that he mentioned it, that did seem to be true-Bo Yi had never once said he was a veteran.
There were indeed plenty of veteran players who pretended to be newcomers for various reasons: they didn't want to reveal their abilities right away, didn't want to attract other veterans' attention, or simply wanted to play weak and catch others off guard. But all those players began their act the moment they entered the instance.
That was how they got the most out of it.
Someone like Bo Yi, who had been calm ever since entering the instance and had even survived an encounter with a ghost, had already lost any reason to conceal his identity. There was no need for him to lie to them at this point.
"So you really are a newcomer?!" Zhao Wen Shan shrieked, her voice even cracking with excitement. She circled Bo Yi twice as though she had found some rare specimen. "How do you stay so calm? Aren't you scared at all?"
"But that's not right..." Zhao Yi suddenly frowned and reached out to restrain Zhao Wen Shan, who was trying to study Bo Yi-and tempt fate. "You might not know this as a newcomer, but this game has an unwritten rule-"
"In any instance, the number of new players never exceeds the number of veterans."
They suspected this was an adjustment the Mist game had made to improve new players' survival rate. But if Bo Yi was a newcomer, "Wouldn't that make six new players?"
The newcomers outnumbered the veterans-that went against the game's rules.
So someone had lied.
And since Bo Yi had no reason to lie, then...
"Oh dear~"
The girl, who had been standing quietly without moving, suddenly let out a low laugh. "Looks like you found me out..."
Pan Lulu slowly raised her face. The tear tracks on her cheeks had yet to dry, but the corners of her mouth curled into an eerie smile:
"What a shame. I wanted to keep the act going a little longer~"
Before you continue