Chapter 6
“Morning.”
The man standing in the doorway still wore his dripping-wet black suit, his whole body radiating an eerie aura. He stood there smiling and greeted Yin Xiu without a change in expression.
Yin Xiu wasn’t surprised. According to the town’s rules, this man was indeed his roommate. He’d entered the beginner instance because this “newbie” was here.
Yin Xiu remained calm, but the little girl sitting beside him instantly lost her composure. The moment she spotted the man, she hugged her doll tightly and shrank behind Yin Xiu, asking nervously in a low voice, “Big Brother, is that person someone Mom asked to look after me too?”
Yin Xiu nodded. “Yes.”
The little girl frowned in distress. After hesitating for a few seconds, she still poked her head out from behind Yin Xiu. “All right...”
She watched the man warily, while he smiled back at her.
After the two remained silent for a few seconds, the little girl looked away first. She nervously tugged at Yin Xiu’s sleeve and awkwardly changed the subject. “Big Brother, are you done reading? Can I see Mom’s note now?”
“I’m not done yet.” Yin Xiu patted her head. Worried that the little girl sitting beside him might inadvertently peek, he got up and paced around the room.
“What are you reading?” the man asked Yin Xiu with a smile.
Yin Xiu handed him the instance rules and asked tentatively, “You can’t see these rules either?”
The man lowered his eyes to gaze at the paper Yin Xiu had handed him and shook his head with a smile. “I can’t.”
“Mm.” Yin Xiu was certain he wasn’t a monstrosity from the town or the instance. Still, following him all the way here couldn’t have been easy.
“By the way, do you want to know my name now?” the man asked with a smile, his gaze as fixated on Yin Xiu as ever.
“If you go change into some dry clothes, I’ll consider asking you.” Yin Xiu turned away, ignoring him.
The man pondered for two seconds, then obediently turned and went back to his own room.
Only after he left did the little girl, who had been tense the whole time in the living room, slowly relax. She continued fiddling with her doll, though she was clearly distracted.
So even the monstrosities in an instance were afraid of unknown beings.
Yin Xiu pondered this, then slowly paced around the room as he began to examine the mother’s note.
[Mother’s Note Rules:
Sweetheart, Mommy has to leave home for three days. While I’m gone, you must follow the instructions I left for you.
One. Never go outside.
Two. Don’t look in the mirror.
Three. Don’t open the door for anyone, and don’t let them find you.
Four. Eat every day.
Five. At night, you must stay in your room and sleep. No matter what the room looks like when you wake up, that’s normal.
Six. Three days from now, take the package Mommy left outside the door.]
The note imposed fewer restrictions than Yin Xiu had expected.
The players’ rules required them to help the little girl follow her mother’s note.
The survival rules were for the players, while the mother’s note was for the little girl and did not apply to the players. But since they were required to help the little girl survive, did that mean it was related to the clearing conditions?
Yin Xiu turned over both notes and discovered that the back of the survival-rules sheet had more rules.
[Instance Completion Rules:
One. Leave the monster’s corpse on the town’s altar.
Two. Make the little girl follow all of her mother’s rules.]
Below them was another line of crooked black writing: Three. Do not kill any monstrosity.
Then a purple line had been drawn through it.
Yin Xiu stared at the third rule for a long time, wondering whether he should count it as part of the rules. If it had been crossed out, that meant it wasn’t a rule, right?
“So that means we can kill monstrosities?” he muttered to himself.
The little girl on the sofa stiffened and raised her head warily.
The door beside them creaked open again. This time, the man finally emerged without being soaked through. The moisture had completely vanished from him, but he hadn’t changed clothes; he was still wearing the same black suit.
Yin Xiu doubted he could have found a second identical suit in this room, which contained only women’s and children’s belongings. He also had no idea how the man had dried himself so quickly, so he simply let the question go.
“What’s your name?”
The man smiled. “Li Mo.”
Yin Xiu nodded. “Hello, Li Mo. Could you open your mouth for a moment?”
Li Mo froze, then hesitantly opened his mouth, full of sharp teeth, just a little. The next second, Yin Xiu rolled both rule sheets into a ball, stuffed them into Li Mo’s mouth, and considerately closed his mouth for him.
A dense series of chewing sounds came from Li Mo’s mouth. Then he gulped and swallowed the notes.
After the countless rows of teeth deep in his mouth had ground them up, even if the little girl wanted to pry Li Mo’s mouth open and search, she wouldn’t be able to piece the rules back together.
Yin Xiu’s sudden move left Li Mo stunned. The little girl was stunned, and so were the players outside the screen.
A long stream of comments swept across the screen.
“I know destroying the notes is the best way to keep the little girl from seeing the rules and getting us killed, but why stuff them into his roommate’s mouth?!!”
“How would I know? He moved too fast. I didn’t even see it clearly.”
“But did he memorize the rules? It’s dangerous to destroy them just like that! Memorizing the rules is the best way to stay alive in an instance!”
“But keeping them in this instance is just as dangerous... And besides, the little girl already asked him.”
“So how’s he going to respond to the little girl now...?”
Everyone’s confused gaze once again turned to Yin Xiu.
Once the little girl realized the note had been eaten, she burst into tears and hurried over.
She wanted to tug at Li Mo, who had eaten the note, but didn’t dare, so instead she grabbed Yin Xiu. Crying, her face turning vicious, she yelled, “I haven’t seen it yet! You’re a bad big brother! Give me Mom’s note back!”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, and her tender face seemed to twist along with them. Her open mouth grew larger, and her teeth grew sharper and sharper. The sound rising from her throat sounded less like crying than a monster’s roar.
Still crying, she dug her sharp nails into Yin Xiu’s hand. “Give me Mom’s note back! Or I’ll eat you! I’ll eat you!!”
In the blink of an eye, she had changed from an innocent little girl into a horrifying monster. She glared at him and roared. Even through the screen, the players instinctively backed away, afraid they would see a scene like the one in the room next door.
But Yin Xiu remained calm.
He stared at the little girl as she continued to transform, seized her clawed hand, and led her toward the table. In a lazy, perfunctory tone, he said, “Don’t cry. It’s Big Brother’s fault for accidentally losing the note. But I remember what it said, so I’ll copy it out for you. How about that?”
The little girl’s sob caught in her throat. Confusion appeared on her freshly twisted face.
Copy it...?
Could... Could he do that?
The instance rules had already been eaten by Li Mo, while the rules Yin Xiu wrote by hand obviously weren’t part of the instance. But that didn’t go against the little girl’s wish to see her mother’s note.
Thanks to Yin Xiu’s bizarre actions, she wasn’t even sure whether she should keep crying.
Seeing the little girl hesitate, Yin Xiu pointed at Li Mo, who was watching with a smile. “If you don’t want that, you can go look for the note in his stomach yourself.”
The comments flew by in shock. “Holy shit, Yin Xiu is really ruthless. He’s trying to get his roommate killed, isn’t he? The little girl will definitely cut his roommate open to find the note!”
“I knew he was a cold-blooded, heartless guy! But I didn’t expect him to be this cruel. No wonder the town doesn’t let anyone else become his roommate. Whoever rooms with him dies!”
“We’d better stay away from him from now on.”
In contrast to the furious comments, the atmosphere in the room turned a little tense.
The little girl’s face stiffened, and she turned to look at Li Mo.
Li Mo smiled, lips parting slightly to reveal teeth more sinister and terrifying than hers. The comments might not be able to hear it, but she could: the desire to devour her roiling up from deep in his throat made her tremble all over.
The little girl’s back prickled with cold, and she shuddered, then instantly let go of Yin Xiu.
This handsome big brother was so vicious. What did he mean, go find the note in that man’s stomach? He wanted to get her killed, didn’t he? She wasn’t falling for it!