Chapter 4
Obviously, the man beside the bed had noticed the sound too. He turned his gaze toward the window.
“Knock, knock—”
The knocking sounded again. Outside, the Night Goddess’s eerie, low voice called, “Yin Xiu, open the door.”
Yin Xiu heard the man beside him get up and start walking toward the door.
“Who are you?” he asked from the doorway.
“And who are you?” The Night Goddess was surprised; she had never seen anyone else in Yin Xiu’s house.
But after a few seconds of silence, she put on a kind smile. “Open the door for me, and you’ll find out who I am.”
The man seemed to consider this, then reached for the doorknob.
He wasn’t actually going to open the door, was he?!
Yin Xiu instinctively tightened his grip on the knife tied at his waist. He fought the inexplicable drowsiness with all his might, trying to force his eyes open.
With a harsh creak, the door opened. A night wind swept through the room, and the chill instantly jolted Yin Xiu fully awake.
He rolled off the bed and looked toward the doorway.
The door was already open.
The drenched man in the black suit held the doorknob and looked back at Yin Xiu with a bright smile. Pointing outside, he said, “You’re awake? Look, there’s a huge face outside.”
Beyond the open door was not the nighttime alley, but the Night Goddess’s face, filling the entire doorway.
She smiled eerily, her blinking eyes peering through the gap at Yin Xiu inside. Her eyes narrowed, and genuine delight showed on her deathly pale cheeks.
Yin Xiu tightened his grip on the knife at his waist. “...Yeah, what a huge face.”
He barely reacted. Shifting his gaze from the Night Goddess to the man who had opened the door, he asked, “Why did you open it for her? Are you two together?”
The man looked puzzled, but his smile didn’t waver. “Can’t I open it?”
“I told you to look at the rules. Didn’t you?”
The man nodded with a smile. “I did, but there was nothing on the paper.”
Yin Xiu understood at once. The man couldn’t see the rules. He had no idea he wasn’t supposed to open the door at night, so he wasn’t an accomplice planted by the Night Goddess.
“Then, as your roommate, I’ll tell you something.” Calmly and slowly, Yin Xiu drew a long, razor-sharp Miao Dao from his waist. “In Rules Town, you must never open the door at night. Otherwise...”
“Otherwise?”
The instant he finished speaking, cold light flashed from the blade as it severed a lock of hair that had crawled into the room. Almost at the same time, the Night Goddess thrust her hand through the doorway and slammed it down where Yin Xiu stood.
A deafening crash rang through the room. Pieces flew everywhere as the flimsy bedboard was flattened beneath her palm. Cracks spread across the floor, and nearly everything in the room was sent tumbling. Amid the wreckage, Yin Xiu pressed himself tightly into a corner, narrowly avoiding the blow.
Through the window, the Night Goddess stared at Yin Xiu, who had narrowly escaped. She bared a mouthful of sharp teeth. “Six years, and I can finally bite your head off, Yin Xiu. Don’t let me catch you.”
Her hair seemed to have a mind of its own. It crawled in from the doorway, twisting and writhing as it rapidly spread over the walls. Dense black strands hung from the ceiling and surged toward Yin Xiu from every direction.
He swung his knife, severing the hair as it attacked, and dodged toward other parts of the room. But wherever he hid, the hair quickly surrounded and entangled him.
For once, displeasure appeared on Yin Xiu’s refined face.
Rules Town forbade anyone from killing a conscious being. That rule applied to players, which meant the Night Goddess could kill him, but he couldn’t kill her in town.
Then, escape?
The Night Goddess had blocked the house’s only exit. There was nowhere for him to run.
Yin Xiu’s gaze fell on the smiling man at the doorway. He had lived in Rules Town for so many years without ever breaking a rule, but tonight someone had broken one on his behalf.
“Are you angry?” The man seemed to sense the faint shift in his mood. The corners of his mouth curled even higher.
Yin Xiu ignored him. Simply avoiding capture in a room filled with hair was already exhausting. He could only keep dodging and hacking apart the strands that attacked him.
“Your knife really is special...” The Night Goddess stared at the Miao Dao in Yin Xiu’s hand, its edge sharp and dangerous. “Where did you get it?”
Yin Xiu didn’t answer. He pinned the hair on the floor beneath one foot, then thrust his knife down, slicing it apart.
The black hair twisted and writhed on the floor. Even after Yin Xiu chopped it to pieces, it kept growing and spreading, coiling around his feet.
“Would you like me to help?” The man’s voice sounded in the room. It seemed he wanted to make amends for doing something that had angered Yin Xiu.
Yin Xiu looked up and saw the man casually grab a writhing lock of hair and stuff it into his mouth. Deep inside his mouth, lined with slightly pointed teeth, were rows upon rows of secondary teeth. He chewed the hair to pieces, then swallowed it with a gulp.
Strands of hair still twisted and struggled at the corner of his smiling mouth. He slurped them in, and another round of dense chewing followed.
Even Yin Xiu was stunned, let alone the Night Goddess.
“Who are you? How did you get here? ...Did you come out of an instance?” Her trembling, uncertain voice left Yin Xiu pondering.
Well, even the Night Goddess didn’t know who he was. Clearly, he was an existence from outside Rules Town.
The man ignored the Night Goddess. Still smiling as always, he gazed at Yin Xiu and repeated himself like a stiff, broken record. “Would you like me to help?”
Yin Xiu lowered his eyes to the hair coiled around his lower legs, then looked at the Night Goddess blocking the doorway. His expression grew grave.
Perhaps this man could kill the Night Goddess and let Yin Xiu survive without breaking the rules, but without her, Rules Town would change beyond recognition.
The rules included a requirement that the Night Goddess remain in existence, but no one knew what would happen to the rules if she disappeared.
He didn’t want that. He still wanted to live here.
He couldn’t escape, and he couldn’t kill her. That left only one option.
“I don’t need your help.” Yin Xiu raised a hand and swiftly sheathed his knife in its black scabbard. Then he bent down and picked up the little girl doll he had brought in from the doorway at dusk and tossed into a corner.
This was one of the conditions for entering an instance. Every day, a different item appeared at a player’s door. Perhaps the town’s monstrosities left them there, but that didn’t matter. As long as a player triggered a key item, everyone in the room would be taken into an instance with them.
For six years, Rules Town’s monstrosities and all its players had known that Yin Xiu had never voluntarily entered an instance, nor had he ever been pulled into one automatically.
But now, it was obvious what he intended to do with the little girl doll in the red dress.
“Are you planning to escape into an instance?” The Night Goddess’s smile seemed mocking. “Everyone in Rules Town knows you never enter instances. You’re just a player who lives here.”
Yin Xiu said nothing.
The only way to avoid breaking the rules and escape this room was to enter an instance. But who could guarantee they’d survive this one?
Amid the Night Goddess’s astonishment and the man’s smile, Yin Xiu’s gaze hardened. He suddenly tore the doll apart.
He and the man vanished from the room in an instant, leaving only a heap of debris behind.
After two seconds of silence, a new room suddenly appeared on Rules Town’s public-screen projection. The town’s loudspeakers blared a new announcement into the night.
“Player Yin Xiu of 35th Plane Town has entered an instance.”
The announcement was like a drop of water falling into a pot of hot oil, jolting everyone in Rules Town awake. Lights quickly came on in the darkness as people hurried to turn on their televisions and switch to the feed of the player inside the instance.
In the darkness, the first thing to appear was information about the player who had just entered the instance.
It read:
[Congratulations, player, on entering the instance: The Monsters of the Town]
[Player Name: Yin Xiu
Gender: Male
Residence: 35th Plane Town, Alley A, Room 401
Instance Assets: 35.8
Instance Progress: Fully Cleared.]
When the words “Fully Cleared” appeared on the screen, all the players in Rules Town froze in shock. Even the monstrosities crouching beneath the projection in the square were dumbstruck.
It wasn’t that he had never entered an instance voluntarily. He had cleared them all. The reason instances no longer pulled him in automatically was that there were no more for him to clear.
This was a player who had cleared every instance. And yet he hadn’t left town right away—he had lived here for six years???
In the darkness, the players and all the monstrosities in Rules Town were stunned.
The monstrosities in the instance erupted into wails the moment they received the player information. “Who dragged that man who killed his way through the instances six years ago back in?! We said not to bring him in again!!”