Chapter 13
Realizing that monstrosities had infiltrated the comments, most of the commenters fell silent at once.
Yin Xiu silently tucked the blanket around the little girl. “She’s still alive. She has to be alive, so I’m still looking.”
“When I find her, I’ll bring her to meet you. So go to sleep now, all right?”
“Mm...” The little girl nodded hesitantly, then obediently closed her eyes. “Good night, Big Brother.”
Yin Xiu nodded nonchalantly, stood up, and left the room.
The comments immediately came alive again.
“Okay, now I know why Yin Xiu is so nice to this little girl. He wiped her face and hands and even took her to bathe. He must think of her as his little sister.”
“Treating a monstrosity in an instance like his little sister? Yin Xiu’s been in this town so long, his brain’s probably gone a little soft.”
“Yeah... That little girl isn’t his sister, so why is he so nice to her? He’s usually so fierce with us.”
“If we disguise ourselves as that little girl next time, could we lure him out of the house?”
“Genius. You probably wouldn’t even know how you got chopped in half. You’re practically dancing on a landmine.”
“Exactly.”
Yin Xiu opened the little girl’s door. Without him realizing it, night had fallen. The living room was almost completely dark, with only the faintest sliver of light from outside allowing him to make out its shape.
He closed the little girl’s door and turned toward his own room.
Just as he reached the middle of the living room, a cold wind swept in from outside, making the windowpanes rattle. A chill surged through the entire room, and the darkness swallowed Yin Xiu up.
Sensing that something might have appeared in the living room, Yin Xiu stood still. One hand gripping the knife handle, he slowly let his eyes adjust to the darkness and surveyed the room.
The pale walls stood out most at night. The outlines of the furniture were submerged in shadow, their arrangement no different from during the day. But Yin Xiu saw nothing unusual. He could only sense a strange chill spreading through the living room. With every breath, it felt as if needles were stabbing into his lungs, yet he couldn’t see a thing.
Instance Rule Six: Stay in your room at night. Don’t go into the living room. Don’t let it find you.
Now, it had clearly appeared in the living room, but it wasn’t attacking Yin Xiu directly. It was prowling around him instead.
Was it because it hadn’t found him yet?
Yin Xiu pondered what he might have done without realizing it to keep it from noticing him. Had he stayed silent? Or was it because he hadn’t moved?
As he thought, a heart-rending scream rang out into the night. A player in another room had run into trouble.
At that moment, the players watching the livestream could clearly see that another player, like Yin Xiu, had failed to return to their room in time and was still in the living room. But that player was instantly swallowed by something in the darkness. Their body was torn to pieces and vanished into the black living room in the blink of an eye, leaving only the sounds of chewing and tearing in the air.
They couldn’t even see what it was. The completely invisible thing had killed the player in an instant.
Its overwhelming ability to kill left the players drenched in cold sweat. Their eyes involuntarily shifted to Yin Xiu, who was still in the living room. He was done for now. Even Yin Xiu couldn’t survive this—no matter how incredible his reflexes were, it would kill him instantly.
Yin Xiu stood motionless in the darkness, sensing everything around him. He truly couldn’t see any figure, but he could feel something moving around him. Something even brushed past his skin with a sticky, clammy touch.
This invisible pressure made Yin Xiu freeze instinctively for almost a minute. He stood rooted in the darkness, nearly blending in with the living room furniture.
“What’s going on? All the players still in the living room are standing completely still, and none of them have been killed?”
The players watching from outside couldn’t feel that oppressive presence. They only stared in confusion at the frozen scenes in every living room, where no one was moving.
“You must be a newbie. If the rule says not to let it find you, then obviously there’s a way to hide from it.”
“This rule is actually pretty considerate. It tells you when and where the danger is, and how to avoid it. It’s one of the easiest dangers to avoid. Otherwise, the little girl wouldn’t have been able to keep players occupied.”
“Yeah! I’ve noticed that the rules in this instance love setting up contradictions. On one hand, players aren’t allowed to refuse the little girl; on the other, she asks them to break the rules. So nasty.”
“And when a player encounters the ‘it’ mentioned in the rules in the living room, their first instinct is probably to hurry back to their room. But the moment they move, it’ll notice them.”
“Writing this down. Another strategy. But this is a beginner instance, and I cleared it ages ago. No idea if I’ll ever need it.”
“There’s no harm in remembering.”
The people watching were all players trying to clear instances, so they naturally started studying the instance as they watched. Even in the middle of the night, plenty of them were enjoying the livestream.
Inside the instance, after failing to catch anything, the chill slowly withdrew from the living room until its presence had disappeared completely.
Yin Xiu surveyed the living room from the corner of his eye. Only after confirming that nothing was there did he slowly relax and cautiously take a step forward.
Nothing in the living room attacked him. The only response was silence.
He continued toward his own door, completely unaware that a shadow followed beneath his feet with every step, slowly slipping into the room after him.
“Everyone who was still in the living room and managed to avoid the danger has gradually returned to their rooms. Tonight should be fine now, right?”
“They’ve gone to bed, so I should too. I got up in the middle of the night to watch Yin Xiu’s instance. I’m exhausted.”
“I’m going to bed too. Watching them sleep is no substitute for sleeping myself. That should be the end of tonight, right?”
“According to this instance’s rules, tonight might not end so quietly. Don’t forget there’s another rule about the night.”
“Ah... Rule Seven, the last one, right? But the trigger conditions are so vague. We have no idea what sets it off.”
“In my experience, when a rule doesn’t point to anything specific, its trigger conditions are always connected to other rules.”
“So you’re saying the two rules about the night might work together?”
“Very likely.”
“I should’ve known you experts would have the rules figured out so thoroughly. As a newbie, all I can do is watch.”
“Once you’re able to clear an instance on your own, you’ll start studying the rules too... First, try to survive for a year.”
The comments fell quiet, and Yin Xiu’s room did too.
After returning to his room, he freshened up, then felt his way to the bed and lay down in the dark.
There were no lights indoors at night in this instance, making it inconvenient to do anything. But Yin Xiu had seen lights outside the window. In the distance, a vast stretch of light and shadow shimmered indistinctly, as if there were another densely populated settlement somewhere nearby.
Yin Xiu touched the knife at his waist and decided to take a short nap before climbing out the window to investigate. He was simply too tired.
As drowsiness washed over him, Yin Xiu fell into a deep sleep. The room was so dark that after returning, he hadn’t noticed the pair of black footprints beside his bed.