Chapter 8
Yin Xiu’s eyes darkened. The other person was getting bolder—or, more precisely, testing how far they could push him now.
The atmosphere between them stiffened again. Yin Xiu didn’t want to respond, and Li Mo wouldn’t back down.
Just as silence settled over them, a shrill scream came from another house nearby. This time the voice was familiar. Even Yin Xiu could tell at once that it was the little girl.
Before two seconds had passed, another shout rang out. A terrified figure stumbled out of a house and rushed outside, screaming the whole way.
Yin Xiu abruptly tore his gaze away from Li Mo, sprang to his feet, and opened the door to the little girl’s room.
She was still inside, holding her rabbit doll and looking confused. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t come out.” Yin Xiu closed the door, walked to the window, and swept the curtains open.
Dazzling light flooded the room, almost too bright to look at. At nearly the same moment, an unfamiliar face slapped against the windowpane, making the players watching beyond the screen jump.
A pale-faced woman with bloodshot eyes pressed herself against the glass, straining to peer inside as if searching for something. She muttered, “Is she in here? Is she hiding in here...”
For Yin Xiu, who had seen the Night Goddess appear right in front of him countless times, this was nothing special. His gaze passed over the woman indifferently before he turned to look outside.
The scene beyond the house looked like a remote mountain village, which didn’t quite match the town described in the background prompt. The house he was in was an ordinary bungalow. Each house was small, with just enough space for one family to live in.
The neighbors were players from towns in other planes, also taking part in this instance. Each occupied their own space, playing through the opening events separately. As the story progressed, they would gradually leave their respective areas and gather together.
A player who seemed to have been frightened half out of his mind stumbled and fell onto the grass outside. Clutching his head in terror, he stared toward his house, his pupils unfocused. “She’s dead... That girl is dead... She was killed... I’m going to die too... I’m going to die any second...”
He muttered unintelligible things, rambling as his hands slowly rose against his will.
Before Yin Xiu could figure out how the “girl” he was talking about had died, the player suddenly clamped a hand around his own throat, cutting off every sound.
His hand seemed to be controlled by some invisible force. No matter how instinctively his body fought back, it remained locked around his throat. The player’s face turned bluish-purple and his eyes bulged. After a long, muffled struggle in full view of everyone, he rolled his eyes back and collapsed.
“Holy shit... What just happened?” a player in one of the other rooms exclaimed, their voice full of shock and disbelief.
This was a beginner instance, and most of the players were new. They’d woken up and stayed in their own rooms, so it was their first time seeing something like this. They were understandably terrified.
“He’s dead! He must have broken a rule!” someone shouted in a panic.
“But which rule did he break?! I’m so scared!”
“That came out of nowhere... It scared the hell out of me...”
As the discussions from the neighboring rooms drifted over, Yin Xiu had no time to dwell on the player’s death. He slowly turned his gaze to the woman still pressed against his window.
He remembered the man had been muttering that the girl was dead. The girl must have died inside his house; otherwise, he wouldn’t have run out in such a panic. And the only female in his room whose death could affect his survival was the little girl.
It wasn’t that he had broken a rule. He hadn’t kept a close enough eye on the little girl, and she had broken one.
“Is she in there... Is she hiding in there?” The woman was still clinging to the glass, staring inside with wide eyes. A gurgling sound bubbled in her throat, and she showed no sign of leaving.
When she noticed the little girl’s things in the house, her face slowly split into a huge grin, and her eyes lit up. “I saw them! There are things of hers in the house! She’s in there! She must be hiding in that house!”
Instance Survival Rule Five: Do not open the door to anyone outside, and conceal the little girl’s existence.
And Mom’s Note Three: Don’t open the door to anyone, and don’t let them find you.
A rule that appeared on both notes had to be crucial: people outside absolutely must not discover that the little girl was hiding here.
If he accidentally opened the door and let someone outside discover the little girl inside, and they came in, the outcome might be the same as what had just happened to that player.
The woman by the window grew more and more excited. Seemingly eager to confirm her suspicion, she tried to push the door open, but it was locked.
As soon as she realized that, she turned and headed away, still muttering, “I’ll get everyone else to help me find her! We have to find her!”
“Wait!” Yin Xiu’s brow twitched, and he quickly called after her. The mention of “everyone else” gave him a very bad feeling. “Who are you looking for?”
The woman giggled and turned around. Her pale, bloodless face looked sinister. “A girl. A little monster girl. Is she hiding in your house?”
“She isn’t in my house,” Yin Xiu denied calmly. “I only have one daughter. She’s away at school and hasn’t come back yet.”
Yin Xiu’s deadpan lie left the woman momentarily stunned. After a brief pause, she belatedly picked up on what he’d said. “So those are your daughter’s things...”
Before she could process it, Yin Xiu quickly asked, “What are you planning to do if you find that little monster girl?”
An eerie smile curled across the woman’s pale face once more. “She’s a monster, a scourge on the town. Of course we have to kill her!”
It was obvious that the other player’s mistake had been accidentally letting this woman into his house, where she killed the little girl. But judging by what she’d just said, if she became suspicious, she would call others to force their way in, even if she couldn’t get inside herself.
He had to placate her somehow. Otherwise, the consequences could be unimaginable.
After a moment’s thought, Yin Xiu saw the woman press herself against the window again, her eyes darting around in a sinister, unsettling way. “You look very young. You don’t seem like someone who’s already married and has a daughter—especially one old enough to go to school. The ages don’t quite add up, do they?”
Comments swept across the screen in a panic. “Holy shit, are monstrosities this clever now? Is this even the beginner instance I played?!”
Yin Xiu hadn’t expected her to launch into such a tricky interrogation. After a few seconds of silence, he answered coolly, his expression blank. “I adopted her.”
“Oh? You’re so young, and you’ve already adopted a daughter old enough to go to school?” The woman’s smile suddenly took on a deeper meaning. “Why? Or do you not have a daughter at all, and she’s the one inside?”
Yin Xiu calmly let out a breath. “What other reason could there be? We couldn’t have children, so we adopted. Is there some other reason to adopt?”
“Couldn’t have children? Who couldn’t? Your wife? Or you?” The woman pressed him with increasing malice, smiling as if she’d gained the upper hand. “Don’t tell me you don’t even have a wife, and you adopted a child anyway?”
Under the woman’s sharp questioning, Yin Xiu calmly turned to the side, revealing Li Mo sitting in the corner of the room. “He can’t have children.”
The woman glanced inside. The instant she saw Li Mo, her sharp, arrogant air froze.
A man? His wife was a man? ...Well, then, of course they couldn’t have children.
But... but...
Li Mo’s moves had thrown her so badly that she couldn’t regain control of the conversation. She stood there bewildered for a while before continuing, “So you two can’t have children, and you adopted a daughter?”
“What’s the problem?” Yin Xiu asked with righteous indignation, narrowing his eyes. “You can casually kill a little girl, but I can’t adopt a daughter and cherish her?”
The woman’s expression turned inscrutable, but she couldn’t find anything else to challenge. After hitting a wall with Yin Xiu, she could only back away slowly. “Fine. I’ll believe those things in your house belong to your daughter. Just don’t let me find her.”
As she spoke, she turned, intending to go to the other players’ doors.
Just as she turned sideways, a sudden thud came from the door behind Yin Xiu, as if something inside had slammed into it. The sound immediately caught the woman’s attention.
Her face shot back against the glass. Eyes wide, she searched the room, her voice growing excited. “You said your daughter was away at school. Who made that sound inside just now?! Was it her?!”