Worship the Lady (5)

Early the next morning, a scream rang through the entire courtyard.

"What happened? What happened?!"

Hearing the scream, Xu Xiaoyang and Du Yong shoved open the door to the room next door and rushed inside.

Jiang Xiaofeng sat sprawled on the floor in panic, pointing a trembling finger at the bed opposite his. "He, he-he-he..."

The two followed his finger. The bed opposite Jiang Xiaofeng's was empty. The impressions left in the bedding proved someone had slept there last night, but now all that remained was a pool of blood and a scattering of bloody handprints beside it.

Xu Xiaoyang and Du Yong exchanged a glance, then cautiously approached the bed.

"Something's wrong..."

After circling the bed and examining it carefully, Xu Xiaoyang said in bewilderment, "These bloodstains... why do they look so strange?"

Compared with the scenes they had seen before, the bloodstains on the bed were remarkably "clean." There was only a small pool of blood along the edge of the sheet, and not a trace of blood on the floor around the bed.

Stranger still, the blood looked a little "diluted"... Xu Xiaoyang leaned down to sniff the sheet, then slowly furrowed his brow.

Why did this blood have a... fishy smell?

"Did you hear nothing at all last night?" he asked, turning to Jiang Xiaofeng.

Jiang Xiaofeng shook his head like a rattle drum.

"Then that's strange..."

Xu Xiaoyang rubbed his chin. Since the two shared a room, Jiang Xiaofeng should have heard something. Yet the man had simply disappeared without even leaving a corpse behind, giving them no clues at all.

"What's strange?"

"These bloodstains. Look..." Xu Xiaoyang pointed at the blood, about to explain, but suddenly realized something. His unfinished words caught in his throat.

He slowly turned his stiff neck.

The very "material" he had been about to analyze was standing in the doorway, looking at them in confusion. Spots of blood dotted his white clothes like red plum blossoms, and, bizarrely, he held a pair of gloves almost soaked through with blood in one hand. A strange odor-a mixture of blood and fishy water-emanated from him.

"You're still alive?!"

Jiang Xiaofeng scrambled up from the floor and rushed over to Bo Yi. "I thought, I thought..."

Bo Yi coldly stepped back, avoiding his enthusiastic touch.

"Jiang Xiaofeng woke up this morning and couldn't find you. There was a pool of blood on your bed, so he thought a ghost had killed you last night..." Xu Xiaoyang stared at the gloves in Bo Yi's hand, his tone probing. "So, what did you encounter last night?"

Following their gazes, Bo Yi looked at the bloodstains on the bed, understanding dawning in his eyes.

"I saw fish."

"Fish?" the other three asked in confusion.

Back to last night-

After pulling the main gate open, Bo Yi had actually wondered whether he was sleepwalking. Otherwise, how could he have seen-fish crawling along the ground?!

Black fish packed the path so densely they nearly covered it. They had no limbs, and their limp fins lay flat against the ground, yet they shook their heads and swished their tails, slowly wriggling forward. Stones embedded in the ground occasionally scraped scales from their bodies. Their mouths opened and closed like silent screams, and the fishy, watery odor they left behind spread through the air in faint wisps.

Once they reached the gate, they leaped off the ground and slammed into it with a thud. The fish behind them seemed to learn from those ahead, steadily gaining height and jumping higher and higher.

Bo Yi even saw one fish clear the gate and land in the courtyard where the players next door were staying.

The surprise in his eyes immediately turned into eager interest. So, when a fish slapped the ground, sprang up, and hurled itself toward their gate, he reached out and snatched it from the air.

The fish, which had shown no reaction on the ground, began struggling desperately in Bo Yi's hand like a real fish out of water. The sensation of slick scales sliding against his palm was unpleasant, so Bo Yi had to carry his catch quickly back to his room.

Inside, Jiang Xiaofeng was still sound asleep, oblivious to everything. Bo Yi set the fish on his bed and began rummaging through his few remaining tools. Before he could take everything out, however, the fish started tossing its head, trying to jump off the bed and "break out." Bo Yi had to give it a stab first to make it behave.

An abnormally large amount of blood gushed from the fish, staining both his sheet and his hands, which held the Dissection Knife. Bo Yi fell silent for two seconds, then finally decided to wipe his hands clean on the already dirty sheet.

"Ah!" At this point, realization dawned on Jiang Xiaofeng. "So that's where the bloody handprints on your bed came from..."

"I thought..." He scratched his head, a little embarrassed.

"What happened after that?" Xu Xiaoyang shot Jiang Xiaofeng a slightly disdainful look for missing the point, then pressed on. "Did you discover anything? What exactly were those 'fish' you mentioned?"

"Unfortunately..." Bo Yi spread his hands. "It was just an ordinary fish." He had studied it all night, but sadly, it had neither an unusual anatomy nor any strange additional organs. Apart from having somewhat more blood than a normal fish, even its belly was completely clean.

"Ah..." Xu Xiaoyang let out a disappointed sound, eyeing the gloves in Bo Yi's hand with some suspicion. "How could it have been just an ordinary fish...?"

"It's a shame we didn't hear a thing last night..."

On that subject, Bo Yi had a theory of his own. "I suspect you couldn't hear anything because..."

Before he could finish, however, a player's scream suddenly rang out from the neighboring courtyard.

"Aaaah-!"

"Someone's dead! Someone's dead-!"

The four exchanged a glance. Forgetting all about the fish, they hurried out of the room and rushed to the house next door.

"Wha-" Before he could finish speaking, Xu Xiaoyang, who was in the lead, pushed open the door and was overwhelmed by the overpowering stench of blood inside. He quickly turned his head away, trying to recover with a few breaths of fresh air, but Bo Yi walked past him into the room without his expression changing.

Inside, a player lay flat on his back on his bed. His burly frame nearly filled the entire bed, but beneath his broad shoulders, the places where his arms should have been were empty-

Both his arms were gone.